AuthorsDen.com  Join | Login 

 
Where Authors and Readers come together!

Authors | Books | Audiobooks | eBooks | Signed Bookstore | Stories | Articles | Poetry | Blogs | News | Events | Reviews | Videos | Success | Gold Members | Testimonials

Featured Authors:  Kalikiano Kalei, iMatt Miller, iJohn Burns, iPaul Lonardo, iMaria Rushing, iValerie Boggess, iTichaona Chinyelu, iJennifer Miller, iAlvin Romer, iTracey Morait, i

  Home > Poetry > Poetry        Popular: Books, Stories, Articles, Poetry        Authors: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z     

Odin odin@aflx.com

 Follow Me  

· 4,268 titles
· 12,669 Reviews
· Share with Friends!
· Save to My Library
·
Member Since: Jul, 2008

   Sitemap
   My Blog
   Contact Author
   Read Reviews



Books
· Perceptions

· ECHOSIS

· Prosetry at Work

· Said and Unsaid - Vol 1

· 3 WAY MIRROR


Short Stories
· Patience Waning

· Ladle Lines (A prosetry memory)

· A Gentle Man

· Pacing Love's Journey

· Gratitude

· A Sticky Conversation

· Blazing Now and Then

· Vulnerable Captivity

· The Kite That Would Not Bow

· Time


Articles
· War and Peace

· Desperation Breeds Desperation

· Preference Manifest

· Innocent Guilt

· Barbed Isolation

· A Place...

· Sanity's Loss

· Organs Anonymous

· Fatuous Beyond Absurdity

· Truth is One


Poetry
· The Life-long Pernicious Evil

· Cherishing Sounds of Silence

· Understanding the Unexplainable

· Reality of Another Kind

· Finding Trust Again

· Aromalicious Memories

· A Jungle-rain Pastorale

· Sediment Within the Soul

· Life's Enormous Green Chest

· Roadkill Memoriam

         More poetry...

Odin odin@aflx.com, click here to update your web pages on AuthorsDen.

Books by
Odin odin@aflx.com











See all Books
by Odin odin@aflx.com


   
  Share   Print   Save   

Demagoguery Never Wins

by Odin odin@aflx.com — Read all 3,869 poems by Odin odin@aflx.com

Perhaps Peace-Makers just plain don’t get it. (Image by Getty)

Friday, June 12, 2026


Poem Artwork

Demagoguery Never Wins



Even demagogues know there’s more than one way


Mideast smoke may never clear
Forces know inversion
Custer set out to eliminate Crazy Horse
Only to find killers get killed too

Thus

Fate opts to continue as
One’s long term landlord
Mending hurt feelings
At times
Repairing aging plumbing
At times
Providing odd company
At times

Then

As consciousness takes up arms
Destiny is challenged
The enigmatic and reality
Face each other
In life’s enormous battlefield of experience
Decision time

Each turns
Moves away from each other
As if returning to their respective
Exhausted and impoverished armies

Not unlike unavoidable gravity
Making two planets pass
Out of conjunction
Or
Two political adversaries
Unwilling to note the other’s existence
Or
One’s own habitual stride
With legs of a miniscule lifetime
Coming together and parting
Like mercury at one’s fingertips

 

Let us hope…

Fate and consciousness
Being but parts of the whole
Each with different directional pull
Each with a varying true north reading
Each a part of one’s complete story
Remains inevitably ordained for freedom
One way
Or another

Without fists

 

 



Want to review or comment on this poem?


Need a FREE Reader Membership?

Reviewed by John Herlihy
Reviewed on June 13, 2026
You take the reader thru the tension of the collision between historical violence and the quieter, interior forces that shape a life. I like how you let “fate” and “consciousness” stand not as opposites but as estranged partners, each pulling in its own direction yet bound to the same orbit. The imagery of armies withdrawing, planets passing out of conjunction, even the simple stride of a human walk, all echo the same truth: conflict exhausts itself, while awareness endures. The closing hope, that freedom might emerge without fists, feels both fragile but necessary. Some powerful thoughts on the limits of demagoguery and the deeper forces that outlast it. Well done.


New Poetry by Odin odin@aflx.com
hhh