Fatale
god built beauty to harbor evil.
it was the Big Why.
even love
lurched to the cruel parodies of an erratic Clown.
there were two Nails.
they loomed and crucified the way of all
things:
serenity and cataclysm.
and the Earth, that forgiving
abundant magnificent executioner
waited.
==================================
11/30/23 ... slight mods for flow and consonance
Weeds
if you hug a flower
and get cornered by the petals,
some of them will speak of heaven,
others of absurd ruckus,
or even a lawnmower's blade.
the various florets
flirt with primeval mandalas:
archeo-operas whose pollinic dramas
prop the world with their sexual feats.
deeper still,
the spores unveil savvy moods,
seductive in their trans-kingdom relations.
secret eggs of never-seen insects
mutter sub rosa, cloistered by december.
the protocols jump about, trangress, activate!
they haggle with beehives,
banter under parleys of knotholes,
all of it so agog,
colors stalking and rooting hither and thither,
while birth and death just complain.
==================
There should be a day for all of us to give thanks for
what we have. But it shouldn’t be linked
to the myth of the ‘happy, joyous’ get-together between the Wampanoag and the
Pilgrims in 1621. There was a feast, but
the Indians weren’t invited. Adult male Indians
showed up when they heard gunfire, ready for war. The Wampanoag had lost two-thirds of their
people from disease in The Great Dying. And so on ...
Even less should Thanksgiving be tied to ‘happy, joyous’
unity between Indigenous People and European and American settlers. This is a tale of treachery, genocide, slavery
and cultural annihilation.
Here is some audio:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-myth-of-thanksgiving/
Here is a newspaper article with interviews:
Thanksgiving, as it is, continues to gaslight the reality of
what happened -- and who we are.
===================
Face
plastic silk
caters to docile daily games,
related to leather yet less dead,
preface to rigor-mortis,
volatile and pert of reflex,
mostly a smile,
and yet
when dreams intrude,
cheeks pillow to mask
the starved pleading.
==============
Ab Ovo
ooze sloshes soil
sex mixers mixing
swizzles of ropey strands
snippets of jump ropes
skip skip skip
pleaching plasmid protohounds
algal fungal dogfight freak outs
methane collapse
boom
jellyfish
boom
trilobites
offshoots
and offshoots
of trilobites
branch branch branch
polyps minnows dinos sharks
hydras of assorted hackle
branch branch branch
boom
mammals
branch branch branch
boom
humans
uppity
hungry kind wise sad happy cruel
sex sex sex sex
fear fear fear fear
fearful fearsome tools
tech tools machine tools
males high females low
laughter song art
god god god male male male
war slaves love
god god christ christ
female = sinful
gay =evil
sex sex sex evil evil
gay = evil
female = sinful
heaven devil judgement war
war war war
impale crucify
drawn and quartered
guillotine
guns industrial
guns
sweatshops cotton rum slaves
cheat cheat cheat
war war war
guns guns guns
despots dictators genocide
male male male
women = trophy fascist baby-maker
thousands millions billions
trillions of computer bytes
decillions of quadrillions
more more more
guns guns guns
greed greed greed
uproot expand exploit
cars guns drones
nukes nukes nukes
robots
AI lovers
smiling robots
a nanite in every quark
quantum = love
AI killers
hit return
boom
Grey Sky
no tells in the old face
of this tufted, eroded scholar
waiting waiting waiting
for the prick of a dream to decide.
does it couch jubilant rain, vacuous mettle,
or the terse dissonance
of a lost windsong's sob?
a solar signet, dim in the folds
of the amorphous envelope--
what what what why why why!--
maybe a shy star,
urgent of brilliant seethe to spread?
who knows … these …
semi-frozen cheeks
of meditative monotony
wait perhaps for nothing, no thought,
pure of hover, no aim or care
whether spendlor erupts
from a soft-knitted, grey-silked chrysalis.
===============================
7/15/24
As the American people and their leaders navigate this dangerous period of crisis, interregnum and paradigm shift, they will need to resist seductive illusions and refuse easy answers offered by hucksters who assure them there is an easy way out. To defeat and survive the rising fascist tide, there is only one solution: Accept that the old world is gone, and fight to create a better one.
Chauncey DeVega
https://www.salon.com/2021/10/18/fascism-or-freedom-america-is-stuck-in-an-ugly-and-in-between/
Jawbone On The Beach
askance on a cracked whelk,
spiky molars that leer,
and a little white cuspid gleam
of scythes.
plucked from a skeleton
as sure as wind drops fruit,
now an aimless bit of barracuda
on a wet-gray slab.
a beachcomber
will find a backscratcher,
or a poet might mistake it
for a fanged moon.
perhaps it will rise again,
haggard as a hawk wing,
ecstatic in the palm of a child
or spirit-dancer.
==============================
Graveyard
i slink into an ignorable place,
where all-White names
cling to history on buoys of gray stone.
such poor choices for lifting hearts,
gnawed by lichen, tottering and heavy,
barely able to sneer
from eroded, chiselled pores.
why is an extinct passenger pigeon
perched over a 153-year-old child?
no breeze to soothe as i kneel
and peer at the final figment
of someone whose son had impregnated
my great grandmother’s aunt.
after a tussle with manners
i both laugh and cry
at these slabs of sanctimony
which pontificate from the tongue of a chisel.
i leap to run, larkful in my swoops,
until the marble hovels and stern crosses give way
to balsam steeples.
==================================
7/20/24 edits ... I struggle onward ... till I die, and get graved myself, or just burned
11/29/23 ... lots of edits, hopefully improved this poor poem
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180111084953.htm
The passenger pigeon wasn't in trouble prior to Europeans arrival in North America. Nothing suggests that the species was struggling in any way.
Perhaps this isn't that surprising. In the 19th century passenger pigeons were so numerous that there were contests to shoot as many of them as possible during a certain period of time. In one competition, the winner had shot 30 000 birds.
From A History of the World in the Twentieth Century, by J.A.S Grenville:
[Pre-WWII] fascism was a movement designed to secure the support of the masses for a leader without the intermediary of a democratically elected parliament. It was a substitute for democracy, giving the masses the illusion of power without the reality. Thus, though violently anti-communist, fascism appeared to support the existing social and economic hierarchy of society and so appealed to the right. Fascism made a virtue of destroying the powers of parties and divisions in the state. It stood for 'strength through unity' at the expense of civil liberties. The cult of the leader was fostered by the leader above all and his principal lieutenants. Fascism was a chauvinist male-oriented movement assigning women to the role of child-bearing and raising a family. It was stridently nationalist. The leader, with virtually unlimited powers, stood at the apex of a party, a private army and a bureaucracy. Violence against opponents cowed possible opposition. The fascist army and bureaucracy of course ensured that tens of thousands would have a vested interest in preserving the fascist state. Here loyalty to the movement, not social standing, provided an avenue to advancement to the unscrupulous and the ambitious. (ch.18, p.152)
Why can't we stop calling the Republicans "conservative" and call them what they really are, authoritarians? Why must the Democrats be so cowardly?
http://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2020/09/stop-calling-republicans-conservative.html
==========
Lucky Second
the clear of the mind
is the still of the room
is the quiet of angels
looking down at a blue
much bigger than anything before,
so many aspects,
too many to approach with words,
the effort itself a trap,
all attempts moot,
the first the last,
and yet passion rushes in
amid sheep and bones,
to jump ghosts of ink
onto a purity of paper.
and so there they are
words, words, words,
falling off pinnacles never reached,
tarred-and-feathered with flourishes,
fresh only for a lucky second
in the magical glissade of time.
words, words, words,
fascinations and misgivings,
promises and desperate sins,
ideals and brazen naked tears
which wallow
on the hot harsh sheep-baahed, bone-strewn ground,
summarized
as if crawling on a sideways ladder,
a ladder that could be ceaseless piano keys
whose music is symbol, mask, pride,
a flailing, frothing fate to drown
in the inability to get it right.
================================
7/20/24 eds
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