Aspen Writes Poetry

when you call a murder a  tragedy of fate you excuse the hands that built the bomb give the truth its sharpest edge speak the word they spend billions trying to hide.

A Note for Readers: In Aesop’s fable  The Sick Stag , an ailing beast lies weakened in its pasture, hoping for quiet recovery. Well-meaning and opportunistic forest animals visit to offer sympathy; yet while staying in the meadow, they graze upon every blade of grass, leaving the stag starved and destitute. It is a stark classical allegory for how external intervention, humanitarian theatre, and resource plunder often destroy those they claim to observe or assist.   The meadow bleeds into the stone. You lie beneath a sky of white-hot steel, your ribs mapped thin beneath a dusty coat, your breathing shallow as the falling night. And across the sea, the visitors arrive. They arrive with cameras and with heavy boots. They talk of  self-defence  beside the wall, then graze upon the grass beneath your head. They call your broken legs a  complex clash , they urge  restraint on both sides  through the smoke, while quietly pocketing the offshore gas, the ...

A Note for Readers: This piece takes its inspiration from Aesop’s classic fable,  The Leap at Rhodes  (often remembered by the Latin phrase  Hic Rhodus, hic salta ). In the original tale, a boastful athlete returns from foreign lands claiming he executed a world-record long jump on the island of Rhodes with countless witnesses. A weary bystander, unimpressed by the rhetoric, simply draws a line in the dirt and tells him:  “Here is Rhodes; jump here.” He tells it from the podium, every night. How down in Mar-a-Lago, on that sun-bleached isle, he took a running start against the fake, rigged wind and cleared the harbour in a single, perfect bound. A leap so vast, he says, the generals wept. A golden arc across the wine-dark sea. He wears the story like a heavy, gilded ring, turning it on his finger till it shines. You should have seen it,  his small, pursed mouth mouths. The crowd size. Millions. The sheer, impossible height...

It is a common misconception that the Patriarchy is a fortress. People picture high stone walls,  portcullises,  and perhaps a moat filled with tiny,  litigious accountants.   In reality,  it is mostly held together by an incredible amount of filing,  a slight draft beneath the doors,  and the collective,  unwritten agreement that if everyone stops pretending to listen to the Chairman,  the whole building will simply dissolve into a light grey dust. The system relies entirely on your presence to explain where the spare staples are kept. Leaving,  therefore,  is surprisingly low-tech.  It does not require a dragon,  a battering ram,  or a particularly dramatic speech delivered from the top of a table.  It mostly requires a coat with functional pockets and a complete,  clinical refusal to nod along. First,  you must recognise the primary weapon of the structure: The  Extremely Long Explanation . When...

It’s always a quiet message in the dark, a notification blinking on a screen, a voice over the line saying  you ought to know, naming the blood that runs inside your veins. They call it an allegation,  soft as gauze, wrapped up in courtly,  legalistic prose, while behind the hedge the cameras wait like flies to feed upon the rotten family tree. Not all men,  they sing,  a tedious chorus hummed by the ones who sit upon their hands, yet there is always a father,  a cousin,  a uncle,  a prince, enough of them to sour the milk in the glass, enough of them to make a woman turn her head and vomit in the immaculate porcelain sink. You build a castle out of silk and gold, you leave the country,  change your name,  your clothes, and still the old man’s shadow crawls the floor, smelling of yellowed paper,  greed,  and spite. How neatly they carve the daughter from the stone, demand her tears,  demand she answer for the sins brewed i...

The Great Red Ox of the Valley had a great deal on its mind, mostly concerning the fact that a large, iron-booted giant was currently standing on its chest and methodically setting fire to its home. The Ox had been standing there for a very long time.  It was bleeding,  its pasture was gone,  and its children were trapped under a pile of very heavy,   very expensive rubble. High above the smoke,  sitting comfortably on the tip of the Ox’s left horn,  sat a small,  ginger-furred Gnat. The Gnat was famous.  Across four continents and three oceans,  millions of other insects paid substantial amounts of sugary nectar just to hear him buzz soft,  rhyming tunes about falling in love at a tavern.  He had a very soft voice,  a very clean acoustic leaf,  and a management team that advised him,  above all else,  never to express an opinion on weather,  giants,  or the sudden absence of pastures,  as it ...