The Past, the Present, the Uncharted Heart

by Raimond Klavins

The past few years have been a journey of profound unraveling and reassembly. After leaving a life that eroded my being, I found myself navigating a path between despair and sovereignty. 

This poem is the distillation of that experience—a map of the interior wilderness I traversed to find a new voice and a steady peace. Writing it was an act of reclamation, a way to shape pain into something beautiful and true. 

Sharing these words is the very reason I began this blog: to offer a testament that from the ashes of a cremated past, an uncharted heart can begin to beat.

Book Review: Rejection Letters

 — A Vaccine Against Rejection

Book: Rejection Letters by Edward O’Dwyer
Published: May 2025, Truth Serum Press

Most self-help books teach you how to deal with rejection. Edward O’Dwyer’s hilarious short story collection, Rejection Letters, does something far more powerful: it inoculates you against rejection by reprogramming your emotional response to it. After reading it cover-to-cover a few times, the result wasn’t a new strategy in my mind, but a subliminal shift — a new default in my nervous system. The very concept of rejection began to trigger not dread, but laughter, even in real-life situations.

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Alpha-Seeker, the Scapegoat, and the Silent Chorus

For anyone who’s ever left a gathering feeling small

This poem is a mirror held up to the most common—and most damaging—social power play: the Alpha-Seeker, the Scapegoat, and the Silent Chorus. You’ve felt it: the glance that cuts, the laugh that excludes, the subtle script you’re forced to follow. You’ve been the Scapegoat, shrinking under someone’s sneer. You’ve been the Chorus, trading your voice for peace. This poem maps that ecosystem with devastating clarity. If you’ve ever been any of these three—and most of us have—save it. Keep it close. It’s more than a poem; it’s a diagnostic tool.

A Constitutional Note: Two Poems

In my article, 
The Modern Empire in Your Living Room, I conclude by saying I'm drawing a new map, and that "its constitution are the poems forged from my rage." Readers have asked what that means.

The Modern Empire in Your Living Room

The Modern Empire in Your Living Room: 
When "Friendship" Is a Colonial Charter

~How I learned to spot the extraction disguised as connection—and how you can too.

By Sunny Wang

It started with a vision. Not a grand one, but the kind we’ve all had: the hope for a new friend. She was a fellow writer, a spiritual seeker, someone building a new life an ocean away. She spoke the language of the heart. We shared stories of survival. I offered help—a ride, some sightseeing, links to houses for sale. It felt like the beginning of something beautiful and mutual.

The following year, she returned. I offered rides, and we spent time together. This year, she bought a car, but her house hunt stalled. She asked me for storage space and an introduction to a friend with a parking spot before she left the country again. A few weeks after she was gone, I realized I had become a character in a play I never auditioned for. My time was now part of her “shared

The Totalitarian Playbook in Plain Sight

How to Spot Authoritarian Control in Spiritual and Academic Groups

Who Shot the Sheriff?

A Whimsical Look at the Virtue-Vigilante Inside Us All

Hello, dear reader. Let’s sit together for a moment in the quiet space between our ideals and our imperfections. If you’ve ever sought to be better, kinder, or wiser, you’ve likely met a curious character along the road—the part of you (or someone else) that mistakes virtue for a weapon, and compassion for a compliance checklist.

With a gentle smile, let’s call this character the Virtue Sheriff.

It’s that internal (or external) voice that patrols the borders of right thought and correct behavior, siren blaring, ready to pull over any soul speeding too fast toward enlightenment—or idling too long in doubt. It confuses righteousness for being right, and policing for peacekeeping.