The Undaunted Phoenix

A song for the turning of the time

I’ve been exploring the theme of the phoenix rising from the dumpster fire since 2020, when the world stopped for far too long, and then when things started moving again it lurched off the rails with a rusty screech and ever since then nothing has been the same. I refuse to take the black pill, and this song rejects despair and futility explicitly. It may seem like your life is hot garbage, but at those moments when you are at your lowest, is the renewal of hope and joy, purpose and meaning. The phoenix is undaunted even on their own pyre.

I wrote an essay a couple of years ago, now, for the new year at that time. It’s still resonating for me, but I wanted not to just repost it. In the essay, I waxed lyrical, and at the end of the essay I concluded with a stanza of a poem.

We rise, we fall, we rise again, from all that’s come before us.

We know, we fear, we cannot stay, and none can restore us.

Yet hope still sings a soft-heard song in the far-off dawning

Another day, another year, and in our despair the pawning

Of all that is joy, and good, and beauty must come due

A debt unpaid and unpayable, if nothing is true.

This year, I pulled the lyrics out of the poem, hacked and refined and polished, and came up with song lyrics with a little help from Grok because I am not a good poet. Then I got the music with a little help from Suno, illustrated with a little help from MidJourney, and voila! I have a music video for you to ring in the new year.

Like the illustrated poems I publish, from public domain where the authors have been dead and gone a century and more, these illustrations are intended to tell a story along with the lyrics and yes, even the structure of the music as they are sung.

The Undaunted Phoenix

Rise… undaunted… from the ashes…


We rise, we fall, we rise again,
From all that came before us.
We know the fear, we dread the end,
None can restore or save us.
Yet hope still sings its soft-heard song,
In far-off dawning light.


Another year, another dawn,
We pawn our joy in shadowed strife.
All beauty, good, and truth must pawn
A debt that cuts like a knife.
Unpaid, unpayable, if nothing true,
Survives the fires of life.


And so we rise, undaunted!
We rise, haunted!
By ghosts of history that color our sight!
The phoenix burns, no happy end in sight!
We know it falls—we fear the flame!
Yet hope endures, we claim the name!


The human heart can cruelly cut,
Or bleed with kindness in the night.
We cannot dwell in one alone—
The ashes feed the coming light.
Out with the old, in with the new,
We spin around this dying sun.


In shadows of assured destruction,
Where war could glass the earth and sky,
Demagogues cried, “No hope remains!”
Yet forests stand, the green defies.
We teach the past, we raise the young,
To see the world reborn in flame.


And so we rise, undaunted!
We rise, haunted!
By knowledge that the phoenix must descend!
No fairy tale, no ever-after end!
We know it falls—we fear the pyre!
Yet hope is the thing that never tires!


Seek good, seek true, seek incorruptible!
Bring beauty forth in every form.
Deny the gray futility,
Deny the black despair’s storm.
When ashes settle, soil grows rich,
Green life springs up again.
At the end of all things, hope endures—
There will always be hope!


We rise, we fall, we rise again…
Undaunted… haunted… forevermore.

I intend for 2026 to be a year of growth both professionally and personally. I have the tools, I’ve begun to learn how to use them, now is the time to begin to create with them. Let’s see what I can make! I have hope, and from the ashes I know that the garden will grow. I’ve seen it before in small ways, I know that it also works on a grander scale.