CRITICAL THOUGHT
Deep reflections. Radical clarity. Timeless thought.
This is where the longform lives — essays that challenge and awaken.
Written exclusively by David Mark Speer.
✍🏽 About the Columnist
David Mark Speer is the architect of Critical Thought — a column devoted to longform essays that interrogate culture, language, and power with unflinching precision and poetic insight.
A lifelong observer of the fault lines between myth and modernity, Speer was shaped by the migratory current of the Eastern Seaboard — from Miami to Atlanta — and now resides in Brooklyn, where the polished facades of Park Slope meet the working-class ethos of Sunset Park. His work, rooted in both street-level urgency and scholarly reflection, has appeared in underground zines, Autonomedia anthologies, and independent literary journals. Notable publications include Space & Direction: Grand Island, Nebraska, The Worst Book I Ever Read, and Rag Shock 1–4. His twelve-poem metaphysical cycle evokes a contemporary scripture for those navigating the tension between spiritual longing and political disillusionment.
Each essay in Critical Thought offers a carefully constructed reckoning — part memoir, part manifesto — engaging readers in a rigorous meditation on the unspeakable, the unseen, and the unfinished work of democratic conscience.
✦ Essays published monthly on AlexandriaTava.com — featured biweekly on SOAPBOX ✦
A powerful breakdown of generational language divides, brain rot, TikTok culture, and the collapse of shared meaning in an age of digital noise and cultural drift.