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The Gate to Fate

Jeremy Baxter

"Shorten the sentiment, simplify the objective, u love not hate."


Turn the screen to black,

turn the noise to stillness,

and listen...

Listen to the whispers buried beneath your ribs,

where the cold air stings and the fire flickers.


Truth lies in the quiet, not in the shouting,

in the lowercase, not the towering I that tempts you with its mirrored pride.


Pain taught me this.

Taught me to tread the thick lagoons

where every breath tasted like ash,

where smut and hatred grew like weeds

and wrapped around my ankles.

But i never let them pull me under,

even as i swallowed the salt,

even as the mud clung to my shoulders.


i saw the faces of gods there,

not above me but beside me,

reflected in the crimson light

that cuts through the fog.

They whispered, "Puck, this isn’t punishment;

this is a sharpening."

And so i bore it.

i let the edges of me grow jagged,

and i let the serration carve away what wasn’t mine to keep.


This is what honesty is:

letting yourself be undone,

letting the lie fall apart in your hands,

and still finding the courage to keep your palms open

for the truth to settle in.


And truth? Truth is messy.

It is not the utopia they painted in glass towers;

it is not the dollar signs they wave like flags;

it is not the script you memorized and recited

in hopes that someone might tell you, "Good job, kid."


Truth is the scraped knees on the way up the hill,

the broken voices in the night,

the movements where you are left naked,

holding your bare body together with trembling hands,

asking, Why? Why do i keep walking?

And still, you walk.


Pain is not the enemy,

but the companion that taught me to breathe.

Taught me to inhale the stench of what i hate,

to name it, to face it,

to carry it to the place where it will finally burn.

This is how we learn to hate wisely:

to hate what kills love,

to hate what blinds peace,

to hate the forces that would see us divided,

clawing at each other for scraps of grace.


But love—

love is the foundation.

It is the earth under your feet

and the sky above your head.

It is the ocean you dream of,

where the waves sing songs you'da thought you had forgotten.


Love is the hand you reach out to

and the one that reaches back,

steady and unyielding.

Even when it’s trembling.


And love is not passive.

It’s not the quiet sigh of resignation,

but the roar of a thousand hearts beating,

each one determined to hold the other.

Love is what builds a home

out of rubble and ruin,

a home with trees you can touch,

thoughts you can hold,

and futures you can believe in.


Turn off your TV,

turn off their endless hum.

They don’t know who you are.

They don’t know what we are for.

They can’t see the red light

or the bridge it carries us back to.

But i do. i see it,

and i'll do what I can to guide us through the thick lagoons.


Piece by Peace by

✌️ by ☮️ by 🧩 by 🍕!—

we will build something real.

A world where love is loud,

but hate is looked in the eye

and shown the way out.


The tech boom they promised?

That’s not the utopia.

The utopia is the I in all our is,

the lowercase gate we walk through

with shoulders high,

heads unbowed,

and hearts open.


So hear me when i say this:

Change got me here,

and i will act.

Not with force,

but with resolve.

Not with noise,

but with clarity.


We are gods

when we remember to be,

when we let the old days fall away

like autumn leaves,

and let the roots grow deep like the oak wood trees.


The future is ours—

if we dare to step into it.

And step i will,

not alone, but with you,

not for myself, but for all.


We will love.

We will heal.

And we will turn the noise to stillness,

until the only sound left

is the rhythm of the world finding its real home.


I will not change that sound,

unless my bias and hate pisses thur too much...


The Divine Comedy's "Empyrean" by Gustave Dore (19th Century Illustration)
The Divine Comedy's "Empyrean" by Gustave Dore (19th Century Illustration)

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