Poem: Driftwood Journey

 

Driftwood Journey

 

sinewy flute

salted and stout,

 

your keys and stops

squatted by meek shells,

 

once a bough,

now brined in waves,

 

some gust ripped you

off a nurturant cliff,

 

christened you flotsam.

it adventured you, forged you

 

bolder than birch bark,

miniature kayak,

 

wrestler of fierce seas,

of frothy manes,

 

such lions, serpents,

and tossing hydras,

 

you rode indefatigable,

lost, wizened and raw,

 

until a whispery sheen

slithered beneath you,

 

to once more establish

the earthen world.

===========================

Poem: Taken Pebble

 

Taken Pebble

 

quartz-laced pebbles

roll to and fro

as bully waves leave wet bruises

that shine.

 

the slow bleed of stubborn minerals

doesn’t care.  won’t distinguish

forces gradual and murderous

from a window sill.

 

taken, then,

 

from comber to trinket,

perched close to a desk,

to hobnob with fossils

and a few shells.

 

once harried and fretted,

now a staid ornament,

embossed over steady seasons

with all-too-human dust.

=====================

Poem: Boulder In the Woods

 

Boulder in the Woods

 

slumped and lopsided,

shabby with lichen,

over a trough of brown water

where larvae jackknife

through rotted flecks.

 

you chronicle, stand sentinel,

the forest has deputized you.

you are not the rubble

that litters sterile planets.

nor a stone delitescent 

in the abyss.

 

death, too, entrusts you:

with disintegrable leaves 

whose windy sprays

foresee dirgeful events.

 

there’s a hint of warm-bloodedness

when morning slips through,

braving a gauntlet of kraken,

to preen your medullar cape.

===============================

Poem: Turnoff

 

Turnoff

 

stumbling through what she was,

challenged by the pretentious beast,

she knew full well,

without even eye contact,

that the riddle had no puzzle;  

that the quest lacked results 

beyond the trick.

 

there are wings, yes, but no flight.  

there are teeth that cannot chew on substance.

what confounds cannot hear.

 

she turned away, into the cold,

even though god stayed lukewarm

and said he could forgive

this lack of faith.

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4/12/23... cosmetic mods

My Thoughts and Feelings Right Now

 

My thoughts and feelings right now.  With the ransacking of the Capitol, we enter a new phase of the fascist uprising.  Awareness of the threat--finally--seems to have sunk in with the mainstream.  For years, the mainstream normalized Trump.  There is still the foolish  use of “conservative" to describe his followers.  This needs to be changed to an accurate adjective.  Say, “authoritarian.”  Immediately.

In all my 57 years, nothing ever like this.  Capitol not ransacked since 1814, and then by a foreign force (the British).  My initial elation that the traitorous mob was repelled (also, of course, the Democrats won the Senate, and Trump lost the election) has given way to a deeper realization that one of the most hallowed buildings of the United States Government has been defiled.  I myself am a victim of sexual abuse; and so I feel I can say, with great sincerity, that this feels like a rape.  I've been triggered.  Everything I thought was solid--my moor, my trust, my basic framework--now violated. Rendered ugly.  Destabilized.

A scary, scary time ensues.  Because the fascist mob successfully penetrated the Seat of the People, and hasn’t suffered that much for it, not yet, they will try again.  Next time they will be more organized.  Bolder.  Guns.  And thanks to the internet, attacks can be planned anywhere in the United States.  The odds of this escalating into lethal-weapon skirmishes are high.

I don’t think anything will quell this mob mentality now except, at minimum, incarceration or very heavy sanction/fines.  En masse.  Also, it is extremely important to shore up the loyalty of the police and military. 

A good, honest message:  Defend freedom, or descend into anarchy, destroying the greatness of your 214-year-old republic.  The control of thousands of nuclear weapons is at stake.

My prediction is that the republic will survive, but wounded.  There will most likely be a split in the GOP, leading to the existence of a White Nationalist Party, such as exists in at least 19 European countries:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36130006

This is sad, indeed.  The best way to counter fascist fanaticism is (a) therapeutic education, (b) reduce corruption through Robin Hood-style governance (take from the rich, spread the wealth through the people).  How much the USA can do this will determine, well, probably the fate of civilization.

Although I predict survival of the republic, I could well be wrong.  What happens in the near future depends on vicissitudes and dice throws.  If factions of the military or police defect, full-on civil war looms.  And then doomsday scenarios are possible (again, thousands of nuclear weapons, from submarines to silos).

The best way to deal with the stress is to focus on day-to-day.  Find beauty, find happiness, in specific moments.  Isolate and be in those moments.  Make time to shut out all the noise and just retreat into your own recreational, meditational or relaxation mode, whatever that entails.

There are miracles everywhere.  For instance, when I am washing dishes, I sometimes marvel at the amazing properties and lovely fluid magic of H20.  Simple water.  

Immersive activities are good for longer escapes.  For me, this is writing, reading, gaming, hiking, or other exercise.  And yes, Netflix.  Do your thing.

However, everyone should take this seriously.   To US citizens:  Your freedom and republic are in peril as never before, since the civil war.  Take care of yourself, but FIND SOME WAY TO FIGHT.  I don’t mean physical battle (though if you are law enforcement, yes).  I am not advocating violence.  Use your words.  Use your status in society, your job, whatever it is, to send messages, whether blatant or subtle, whatever seems best.  Pick your battles and strategies.  But strive.  Do something.  Fight.

This is it.  Step up.  If you don’t, your country, the USA, will become a fascist dictatorship under Donald Trump.

Fly Well In The Dark,

OWL

 

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Poem: Conversion

 

Conversion

 

within a blizzard of faces,

somewhere in a catacomb of rectangles,

another when erodes into a financial if.

 

a conversion.

another two-legged sort of the six-legged slog.

columns, rows,

 marching in bottom lines.

 

an obit haunts the face.

the cheekbones now like tombstones,

firm in the garden of compromise.

 

this whole city, long ago,

once celebrated petals 

that starbursted into now extinct plants.

 

today, 

just another pair of drained irises,

bobbing and crushed

in the Cauldron of Clocks.

 

outraged inside, true,

 

but still strait-laced.  calm-surfaced.

the heartbeat a riptide

sucking the heat back down.

 

a single cringing thought rises for a breath:

a middle class beggar

in a pressed wool yoke.

=======================

Margaret Sullivan, of the Washington Post, Gets It Right: the Trumpists are NOT conservatives.

Some of the key points in my blog entry on 9/24/20:

Owl Who Laughs: Stop Calling Republicans Conservative. It's Totally False PR

closely match an op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday (1/4/21), by media columnist Margaret Sullivan:

Stop calling Trump?s enablers ?conservative.? They are the radical right. - The Washington Post

 

Sullivan suggests the term "radical right" to describe those who, following Trump into darkness, claim that the recent election was rigged by Democrats (it wasn't, as 50 court cases, brought by Trump, have shown).  

I use the term "authoritarian."  Better would be White nationalists.

My piece engages in a lot more conceptual analysis, at the philosophical level, resulting in a broader indictment of the GOP.  Sullivan, though, hammers home the point that the radical right gets a comfy ideological shield, a "free ride" when the mainstream media refers to them as "conservative."

Look at the definition of conservative, as I do in my blog entry.  They are NOT conservative in any sense.  

I find it so frustrating that the media continues to use the label "conservative" to effectively coddle a cadre of traitors.  The label is contradictory and denialist.

Face the music:  This is one of the most dangerous times for democracy in the history of the United States.  

I am not alone in saying this.  On Morning Joe, for instance, the Lincoln Project guest commentators (Republicans who fled Trump's leadership) have been making this point for a while. 

 Fly Well In the Dark,

OWL

============

Poem: Ice Play

 

Ice Play

 

peppery on naked oaks,

feisty tadpoles of glitzy sun.

boisterous in bevies, they scamper off,

renegades amok, mischief so ardent,

to incite gales of primrose and goldenrod.

illimitable seas of glassy whips.

 

dawn,

the dawn had been seraphic and gossamer.

noon a mortalized bliss.

and yet, now, the finale, the red horizon

succumbs to purple nightshade.

 

onyx, after all, 

onyx haunts the crystallized branches.

those fashionable hairdos of hydras

that only half remember

the lost drama of sauvignon tears.

 

moonless, now, so moonless …  

 

no, a pomegranate moon,

above a basin of brittle tongues in wind.

are they so desperate to lick, 

to taste but a scintilla

of that castaway glimmer?

stars, 

so brief the stars, before the next dawn,

 

the stars, 

wish seeds, nubilous,

above the frosty medusan heads.

what oasis their darkling dome,

that desert?

===============