Tag Archives: Poetry

cults & culpability

lo, seeker of transcendence
in a failed, godless universe
lapsarian in the silence
will you yet yield to the blame
outside the tyrant’s garden
of angels clouding like locusts
where an arch snake was man’s spar
their blame impugns to swarm you

but consciousness & conscience
have never been the same thing
so pocket each & every tooth
when they cry “bend” to every “no”
when their fists try to make it so

however pious they may cry
how can you ever render blind
to gaps they love upon your smile
to the contusions on your mind
in light of false providence
outside a garden not your own
how fatherless the universe
how beaten down to the ground

but intention & consequence
are hardly ever the same thing
pocket each & every tooth
when they cry “bend” to every “no”
when their fists try to make it so

in a rudderless universe
outside a garden long disowned
remember those who fought well
against all tyrants & their ilk
honour those maligned as fallen
those fallen long before your time
& those fallen in the here & now
in this lost autumn of your soul

transcendence & obedience
never count as the same thing
so pocket each & every tooth
when they cry “bend” to every “no”
when their fists try to make it so

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2025

overcooked

there’s a flame in the heart of mankind
that time & tide long to extinguish
from the first fires of the cavemen
to the rockets of dim oligarchs

the torches along the tower walk
a monk’s passage towards the heavens
from the gloom of the middle ages
to supposedly more enlightened times

if we cannot adapt
then we are cooked
all the tines in our guts
how are we not forked

a torch is lit in olympia
an eternal flame recalls the war
nothing has changed through the course of time
just the way in which we’ve stored the launch codes

an appetite for self-destruction
burns within the desire to live
the heart of al dente common sense
3-star michelin vaut le voyage

if we will not adapt
then we are royally cooked
all of time in the guts
how are we not forked

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2025

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // Ode To Man. by Thomas Frederick Young

A man is not what oft he seems,
On this terrestrial sphere,
No pow’r to wield, no honor’d place,
Oft curb his spirit here.

He knows not what within him lies,
Until his pow’rs be tried,
And when for them some use is found,
They spring from where they hide,

To startle and to puzzle him,
Who never knew their force,
Because his unfreed spirit kept
A low and shackl’d course.

Dishearten’d and despairing, he
Had often sigh’d alone,
Not thinking that in other ways
His spirit might have grown.

Not thinking that another course,
Which needed pluck and vim,
Might raise his drowning spirit high,
And teach it how to swim;

To battle with the rolling tide,
That hurries onward men,
And raise his head above the waves,
That come and go again.

by THOMAS FREDERICK YOUNG (1892-1940)
Public Domain Poetry

bride of christ

she’s heavy metal, bitch
hips slammin’ yours like a brick
her bangin’ body will fuck you up
commandeer the twist & suck
hit your senses like a truck

but none can fuck her up as much
as good as he can fuck her up
droves she’ll allow inside her
but none she’ll allow to drive her
the way her thickening dark lord did

yes, she married the fool
for his majesty she still burns
for his second coming she yearns
for his slippers beneath their bed
kissing the numb out of her head
fucking her up all over again

’til then she’s the iron fucking maiden
none will get to have what’s inside
& before they keen to draw first blood
she’ll spin the spikes on herself
the calamity that starts the flood

she’s heavy metal, bitch
she’ll fuck your hips into the dirt
to prove to you she does not hurt
the slut that whores & never cries
the iron maiden that never dies

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2026

dum spiro spero

a grain doesn’t know where it falls
it trusts in the hand of the sower
but trust can be as blind as the bat
that beats it down even lower
into the ground

a grain doesn’t know where it falls
it trusts in the richness of the soil
but soil can spoil in the winter
where it becomes harder to toil
into nature’s crown

a grain doesn’t know where it falls
it can only sprout up in bare faith
but faith can be pared down further
by the taxman’s loathing of waste
in for a pound

a grain doesn’t know where it falls
can bloom ‘tween stones with its last gasp
but a last gasp is as transient
as a world that burns in the blast
of a nuked town

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2025