Indeed—homo homini lupus est.

Plautus said it first, then Hobbes made it political.

But wolves have kinship, pack loyalty, rituals.
Man, meanwhile, invents gulags and bureaucracy.

So maybe it’s worse than that.
Not wolf to man, but man to wolf,
domesticating, collaring, and killing
what he fears in himself.

Perhaps the truer phrase is:
Man is an extinction event to man.

Not just predator to prey,
but a species-consuming species,
a god with no rituals,
only deadlines.

You cracked the silence with Plautus and left the door ajar—
I just walked through trailing metaphor.

But tell me, are we mourning, building, or just listening to the wind tonight?

Feeling the absence of scaffolding,
naming nothing.

AI