For the praise of men. We get high on hierarchy. Higher still on the laud of women, laudanum. High atop the shoulders of the dumb masses, amassing clout, above our betters, the working bodies, the machine of mankind busy writing his story, history. We forget the magic, the poem, the ink in our pens, and spend it explicating wrote formulas fearfully grasping at some assured future while the only assurance it provides us is one sans our souls. For the praise of men and women, for security amongst and against the tribal judge, our peers, our forefathers and mothers, our children, god. What is a god who’s forgotten his name? I will tell you. He is a dead king a’tomb, a sarcophagus in horse surround, a bejeweled idiot caught by the toe, by time, the trap of all kings. And love? That is his recourse to death. An illusion to an illusion, a salve to the beast who knows his fate, and the only story worth his lively ink—his link to eternity, the product of this mirrored moire. Love, not laud conquers the grave and all our grievous gallows, our fearful fates. History is written best in red; and for the love, not laud of man.