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.
For me, analysis follows feeling. Before I could articulate the "Imperial Playbook," I felt its violation as a roaring river of anger. Before I could discuss "Declaring Sovereignty," I had to scream my own into existence.
This page holds those two foundational pieces. "Old Rage River" is the witnessing of the pollution. "Reclaiming Sovereignty" is the law I wrote in response. Together, they are the emotional and spiritual bedrock of the entire framework.
They are shared here for those who wish to see the source of the map.
Reclaiming Sovereignty
~by Sunny Wang, 25/12/2025
Noble Spirits of Éire,
Let my heart and soul be held,
I come to you with a grief,
I come to name a falsehood.
So the truth may be witnessed,
and I be cleansed of its taste.
A traveler came in the guise of a sister.
She spoke the language of the heart,
but her tongue skilled in coercion.
She wore the mask of a seeker,
but her eyes scout for raw supplies.
She took the gift of time, demanded the keeper's schedule.
She took the gift of trust, demanded our conformity.
She took the gift of shelter, a foothold to take all.
She turned our kindness into a key to our treasure chests.
Our compassion became her opportunity.
Our goodwill became her dispensing machine.
Our vulnerability became her ruling land.
Our boundaries twisted into “blocks of the heart."
We were not fellow pilgrims.
We were workers who build her bridge,
left in the dust of her strides,
and the echos of her commands.
Her control poisoned our goodwill.
Her micromanagement polluted our care.
Her entitlement soiled our spiritual practice.
Her false pleasantry contaminated honest connection.
I see this pattern, I speak it clearly.
I name this dynamic for what it is:
A system for exploitation, cloaked as connection.
A theft of vital energy, disguised as light.
A psychic chokehold, perfumed with pleasantry.
I revoke her claim on my compassion.
I sever her strings of obligation.
I take back my narrative from her play.
I stand in unassailable sovereignty.
Let the enduring land hold this truth.
Let the wind carry off her falsehood's dust.
Let soil transform her poison into compost.
Let the gash of manipulation heal.
Let this sacrilege fade.
The Old Rage River: on Exploitation and Boundaries.
Old Rage River, I see you:
the roars and rumbles of your currents,
perpetual ringings in my ears.
Heavy with history of erosions,
where kindness was met with endless consumption.
Murky with remnant of sediment
when my being was compiled with swallowed rage.
I’ve been swimming in those waters,
Struggling to stay afloat.
I…am…exhausted.
I am not here to fight you,
but to redirect the water.
My being will no longer dissolve in the current.
The flow of exploitation ends here, today.
I feel the solid ground beneath my feet,
the land of my presence, my essential self.
Sovereignty is the everlasting bedrock,
on which I shall build my dam.
This is not a weir of departure,
nor a by-pass to get away.
It is an intentional filtration,
diverting the river through layers of my becoming:
Let sediment settle into the bedrock.
Let filters catch the shards of old hurt.
What passes through is no longer the old river water,
but clarity earned by the journey,
held in the reservoir of my own making.
I stand not at the river's edge,
but in the treatment house I built.
I am the architect, operator, keeper of the gates.
The dominion is in my hands.
The taste of clean water on my lips.
From this land, I speak.
With this land, I create.
And the Old Rage River?
a tale I tell—
about the day I built the dam
and purified my own water.
~by Sunny Wang, 27/12/2025
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