This past weekend so many died for the cause… How shall we hallow their names…
The Wednesday Word
for 28 January 2026
lambent
What does lambent mean to you? Think about it. If you’d like, send me a quick poem or story… or just a few thoughts. If you really have something to say, maybe enter my Wednesday Word contest on AllPoetry.
for alex
he stood alone in the morning
wrapped in a mantle of faulty stars
one fragile flickering flame
against the howling storm
trailing whirlwinds in his wake
streaming from the void in his shape
voices raging and rising
with the first shot
with the last exhalation
in the anguished reverberation
rolling forth from a stilled heart
to roil this empire of deception
and they sought to silence his witness
with bullets and gaslight
but perfidious falsehood will turn
to devour its devious children
and fire will bloom in the darkness
for there is no quelling his truth
yea, though he lose his life
for they made him martyr
and damned their cause
his name so lately unknown
now enkindling the lambent flames
a torch to lead us
a searing light to unmask lies
a thunderbolt to jolt the rotting center
and this brutal enemy has sown
their own defeat
for we shall sound our victory
blazing our common truth
with one mighty cry
and one remembered whisper
are you alright?
no, we will not extinguish
his witness
we shall carry it forward
and we shall end this treacherous dominion
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 
No Alex
We are not all right.
Prologue:
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
**********
Are you all right?
The last words of the caregiver
to a woman brutally assaulted
by ICE thugs.
Just before he was thrown
to the ground, beaten
then executed in ICE cold blood.
No Alex, we are not all right.
Our society’s social contract
has been ripped to shreds
as our nation-state descends
into barbarism and cruelty.
Your lambent words though
still radiate softly amid
that hard brutality which
has engulfed we the people,
in the time of monsters.
Your simple words
shine with a lambent light
illuminating though dimly
a new world that
struggles to be born
in the caring solidarity
of native and foreign born,
who are no longer
black or white or brown or the colors of the rainbow.
Showing kindheartedness toward those strangers
who have come to live amongst us.
Those whose only crime is
seeking a better life and to
contribute and be part
of a new world
that is yet to be born.
In the lambent light of kindness.
Postscript. They call themselves Christians, yet their actions are a blasphemy to their God. And what exactly are the crimes of those they oppress, that they should be treated so brutally. Who are the real criminals?
When they were few in number, of little account, and strangers in the land, wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, he allowed no one to oppress them; he rebuked kings on their account, saying, ‘Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.’
1 Chronicles 16:19-22
The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
Psalm146:9
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.
Zechariah 7:9-10
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
Matthew 25:35
Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren you did it to me.
Matthew 25:40
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