I don’t usually preface my prose, but I think this one is important that I explain. This peice comes at the end of a hard year plus of soul searching after acknowledging to myself that I was sexuslly assaulted. After nearly two years plus I buried it deep, but in the fall of 2024 on a cold morning while filling my car at Costco it all came back and hit me like bricks of ice. I barely made it through the day at work, but I did it somehow. All assault victims experience the same things, but men especially white men are given very little acceptance or grace by soceity as a whole, left & right ideologies judge heavy on your worth after, or even your right to claim victimhood in a world that wants you silent. It took most of the year to consider myself a survivor.
I guess its the times, but I have spent a very long time pondering aggreivment after being swallowed by it and spit out. The pull to hate and rage at those of the opposite sex was strong, some days it had consumed me. Too blame ALL women for the actions of a few, is absurd! I don’t want to be bitter or aggrieved, I think this poem captures the toxic cycle of aggreived victimhood. I had come to terms and this poem exposes what it is. Yours, Jake
Why does the bar tip the other way, while trying to equate and balance both sides?
to much weight on one pan
the fulcrum tilts, the beam always holds, the beam always wins
the villians are now the oppressed, the once oppressed villians
Transmutation of suffering into bitter rage
Alchemized survivor becomes the predator
Spittle & spite
Vengance so bright
Inferior to superior
Your Humanity now blight
My dear organizing systems forming entwining, no boundaries of the bottomless hunger
of self-righteous rage
the victims, the survivors
It doesnt matter to It who is in control, It doesnt care about justification, the thing exists.
Hoary worm of eons crushes bones, devours flesh, pukes blood, gnashing sinew, slurps guts, sucks entrails smashed
made into mash
Bulbous rot, engorging the gullet, suffering inside the gaping hole, digested birthing vile gas from the fermented bile of humanities sins
Orborus the obese worm, engorged distented on your suffering; prey-as-to-predator-to-victim-survivor-as-to-predator…as-to-victim…it’s the sweet….
…suffering
sweet…..
…sweet…….suffering
suffering
©️ Jacob A. Pickard. 2025.
Ecoheretic 