Edge of Freeze
moths flit to rake
a pillaged moon’s embers.
their splintered wings,
threadbare glints in stardust,
it’s hard to see
what keeps them aloft,
swing-dancing so late,
zealous through the night.
some fey alembic, surely,
of trick and tide,
seductive yet monstrous,
obscure of chemistry,
must stoke their brute vigor,
the delirious squander.
===========================
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The primal irony. The freedom of brain plasticity can be wielded to forge a cage of dullness inside our own heads. - Uuva Viperbless, Petal of the Passionance Covens
===
From my novel, a Future of Angels (unpublished)
====
… Friends who finally stopped returning calls. Siblings who no longer talk politics, or sometimes don’t talk at all. Parents that people still love but can no longer pretend to understand. A racist uncle who gets blocked on social media. Thanksgiving dinners that get skipped. None of it has been easy. Walking away from people you care about rarely is. But again and again, the conclusion sounds the same: at some point, continuing the relationship required excusing things they could no longer excuse. And that’s OK. …Doors swing both ways for a reason — sometimes they need to be closed. We don’t have to compromise our ethics or excuse beliefs that cause real harm, no matter how close we once were to someone. Even if they were family. - Nick Allison
https://ca.yahoo.com/style/asked-libertarian-friend-trump-response-033102704.html
====
Stare
dawn circles onyx,
twin pools brimmed
by ancestors yanked back up
on ladders of lightning.
the fallen to rejoice,
cradled rapturous,
darkness now heaven sent:
a veil, rampant in its
relevations of justice,
blithe to uncurtain
the fallacy of death.
=================================
No Clear Path
a fracas of leaves tickles the sun
with googols of young green.
shadows flicker and sliver
through laced cemeteries of
fallen decayed heroes,
coursed by beetles which seem on fire.
greyblue puddles of lichen, inedible,
dry and flake on shabby stones.
a single arrow of light
hits a pine tree right in the chest,
impaling an amber bull’s-eye,
sticky heart turned to gold.
who will earn its love?
an ant, a moth, a squirrel,
some chickadee?
==============================
From the NYT article, “The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team
won gold — and then lost the room”:
It would be a copout for me to blame only the environment that they must navigate, to rant about how everything is poisonously political now, to lament the impossibility of sustained joy in a culture that incubates outrage. These are all factors, but let’s not infantilize this team. These are men who thrilled a nation and rocked the world, and as adults, they need to be more savvy
That goes for every prominent team in sports. It’s nice, even expected, to be feted as a winner. But who’s celebrating you – and why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it – matters more …
Jerry Brewer, Senior Writer, New York Times
Ethical analysis of the US Men’s Hockey Team accepting Donald Trump’s invitation to the White House
Leaves at Sundown
branches surrender as tame as
throats under those seductive
leaves which hum with autumn’s blush,
rich in sauvignon joys, soaring off
never to fall again onto
cushions of mussed forest beds,
more sensitive than lips when
wind strums their withers and
sparks such fantasticated songs:
such moans and coos and trills
of sighs and delights, higher still,
until the amaranth sky
inhales the flighty lust to churn--
to burst and cascade and whirl with
fugues of mosaics, emotional
tinctures of canopied cloaks and gowns,
such brave siennas and vermillions and
umbers and butters whose
myths whisper in waltzes of
silhouettes cast from a campfire which doesn’t
dare to exist except in glades of semi-dark,
where the vibrant flames of the
oh-so-never-spent! leaves
sweep away, players now, forever,
precious as jewels in spectral roam.
================
2/27/ .. more
2/26/26 ... mods
One reason for public docility in terrible circumstances is fear. In the last years of the war, a Berliner could be arrested and, often, executed for doubting the final German victory ... But there is something more insidious, something not unfamiliar to many of us today: the hope that things will turn out all right soon, that the political outrages are temporary or at least that they can’t get worse. One way of dealing with bad times is to pretend that they are normal ...
This is the problem when the destruction of moral norms and the rule of law is incremental ...
When Donald Trump refused to say whether he would accept the outcome of the election in 2016, people should have sensed the danger. And yet at the time, respected intellectuals told me that everything would be fine ...
Since then, one red line after another has been crossed ...
All this was incremental, too, but compared with 1934, everything goes much faster. And yet life continues as usual. What was unthinkable only yesterday we now take in stride, and we wait for that moment when things really have gone too far this time ...
But that moment probably won’t come. Things have gone too far too many times already. Hoping for better is still the right attitude, but only as long as we prepare for the worst.
Ian Buruma
Historians Confirm: Tomorrow Won't Be Better Than Today https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/opinion/history-hope-delusion.html
==============
Office Party
chuckles and chatter
distort into a circus.
the scene could be far worse
than the ordinary, that is,
the automatic weekday sunny-grey
of the i don’t hear you chin nod.
or maybe it’s the same.
another episode of failure
unwitnessing itself.
actors who prove that exiles
die out there somewhere
in soundproof chambers
far too loud with truth.
far too pushy and nosey
with questions of fair pay
and harassment.
all of us, actually, at the party
sound like those little rotors
in micro-copters which drone wherever
warblers, larks and sparrows once sung.
it’s that kind of lack.
machines which taffy-pull laughter.
pretzels of tricky remark.
a snazz of phrase lifted from bots,
all shifting and swaying in a
punch-bowl hall of mirrors
and bravado.
===============
When Warheads Launch
our dream perishes
but the stars collect it,
and with care prolong that brave choice--
for they have radiated hope
from the very start,
assurance it can be beautiful to breathe.
Earth, in their eyes,
is a silverblue minnow,
swimming sweet waters to drink the light.
no matter
how fast or far fear chases joy,
jealous through chasms of abyss,
the embers of the dance ignite again,
and even more,
the stardust of lovers
who are not so small, after all,
never to extinguish
what they were, are, or will be--
not so forgotten
to the bosom of the universe,
the praise of the cosmos,
not so forsaken, irrelevant, empty
or alone.
================================
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