Adam G. House

The emperor has no clothes,
throwing rocks from his glass house,
atop his ivory towers,
watching each quiet church mouse.

Oppressing the subjects with his greedy dictates—
self-serving proclamations for power.
Thieving sleight of hand from behind his holy veil:
sanctimonious stench, sheep-skinned wolf,
thorny fading flower.

The royal lighthouse goes dim,
but the patriarch says it’s getting brighter.
The masses blindly surrender faith to his word,
and his comforting grip grows ever tighter.

Paper monarchs presiding over a house of cards,
building little kingdoms around big egos,
perpetrating ignorance with their scholarly wisdom,
drunk on power unchecked by any veto.

One voice cries out:
“All is not as it should be,
all is not as it seems.
Man is meant to live free!”

Who is this lowly peon
daring to question the kingdoms?
Such independence isn’t acceptable—
these foolish notions of individual freedoms.

Ordained of God and for the greater good,
we stand on what is absolutely right.
There is no room for heretics and dissent,
irreverent to trust in one’s own guiding light.

The authorities in power may not be questioned.
You must dispense with speaking as you feel.
Suppress that rebellious spirit.
We shall teach you what is real.

But the lonely voice exclaims again:
“I must satisfy my own mind.
The integrity of truth is my highest calling—
and this is what I must find.”

But the aristocracy casts out the traitor,
damned his darkness and confusion.
We shall bear witness to the judgment for his candor,
holding to our grandiose illusions.

The eccentric heretic wanders away
from the tall cities of pure light,
down a lonely, deserted path
into the eerily irresistible night.

It is here the outcast sees a truth
the city of lights hid in its splendor.
The inquisitive mind is drawn to the dark,
where curiosity may yield hidden treasures.

You see, when the lights are so bright
and all the answers come too easy,
where the city walls keep out the dark and taboo,
and all the king’s robots bid to his pleasing…

The darkness without is shrouded in mystery and fear,
as discouragement and coercion
drive ponderings from the mind.
The rest of life’s experiences remain undiscovered—
unless you’re a maverick,
willing to face what you may find.

Adam G. House is known by some as a licensed Muay Thai Kru/coach/teacher/instructor (Muay Thai International Association, Bangkok), retired United States Army Airborne combat veteran, retired drummer, writer/author, liber(al)tarian independent, eXvangelical (former licensed minister), atheistic-Satanist (secular skeptic, agnostic anti-theist), and perpetual autodidact who is currently pursuing college degrees in law and the social sciences as a non-traditional (old) student.

However, Kru Adam likes to think of himself as a sovereign sentient mortal of no particular significance. Follow him at: substack.com/@independentthinker/posts

This poem appeared in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age — Summer 2025, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.