Rashad Houston · Essays, poetry & books
Writing
Rashad Houston writes to keep experience from disappearing. Across essays, poetry and long-form projects, the work examines fatherhood, inheritance, trauma, faith, technology, history and the human cost of power. This is writing as witness: a record of what happened, what it did to a human being and what may survive us.
Selected Writing
A few pieces from the larger body of work.
01 · The Unfinished Temple ·
Back to Rashad
Read the essay →I’m not trying to become a perfect human being.
I’m trying to become a more complete one.
02 · Unruly Doctrine ·
The Tide Has No Master
But a deed can’t command the tide. Money can’t stop a current. Concrete can’t make the earth promise to remain still.
03 · The Weight of Light ·
The War Machine Never Misses a Payment ↗
Military power, Veterans, medication, surveillance and the race toward superintelligence.
Latest Writing
The Freedom to Stay
On desire, intimacy, the sacred body, and learning to want without losing myself.
Back to Rashad
On the freedom to stay, desire, self-preservation, and returning to the man I’ve always been.
Beneath the Golden Clock
Grand Central, the architecture of time, and finding my way home.
Explore the Collections
More writing & collections
Follow an idea
Memory & fatherhood · Field Notes · Fatherhood & Inheritance
Consciousness & philosophy · The Architects of AI · The Unfinished Temple
Power & cultural criticism · Unruly Doctrine · The Architects of AI
Desire & spirituality · The Unfinished Temple
Poetry & Spoken Word
Language made to live on the page, in the voice and through the image.
Sous le crâne, le feu
Beneath the Skull, the Fire. Writing on missing time, survival, love, and epilepsy advocacy in Virginia.
Beyond the Frame
The film ends. The world it revealed does not. Original film-response essays within Afterimages.
The Weight of Light ↗
Rashad Houston’s external Substack publication for essays, poetry, and reflections. Subscribe there to receive new writing.