Regarding The Poems

 

Thank you for reading the poems!

The poems are often not in the best of shape when I post them.  They go up because they get more editing that way.

Many of the ones I put up recently have been edited.

An example is “Man Watches January.”  Originally, it had two uses of the word “single”:

 

and yet nothing is gone.

not a single sin is dead.

 

a single white rabbit

snowshoes over the tombs.

 

That was totally inadvertent.  This double-use created an unwanted overlap, so I changed it:

 

and yet nothing is gone.

not a single sin is dead.

 

an old white rabbit

snowshoes over the tombs.

 

 (As an aside, it was hard, I found, to describe myself as “old”).

 When someone reads a less recent poem on OWL, I can sometimes see the history.  I then go back and check the poem.  Of course, it's too late for whoever read it, if I make a change, which I often do.

 Some poems will never be ‘good’, due to my lack of ability.

 I am glad, though, that some readers find a bit of impact.

 

Fly Well In The Dark,

 

 OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

(unfortunately I cannot respond to anonymous email)

Poem: Stone On Shore

 

Stone On Shore

 

glintless tide-lathered grey,

an egg-smooth monochrome,

 

here we are,

 

the Earth without azure,

not even laurels

of cloud-dull quartz.

 

just one of a hapless many,

a tumble of the multiple,

brooded by dutiful surf,

 

and the wear of numb water,

patient, inexorable, slow.

 

what will hatch

from this not-even dramatis

personae,

 

this wallow of kinship

with ceaseless dunes?

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

7/8/24

 

Ethics Is A Technology: the USA is leaning in the wrong direction

 

Ethics is a Technology.  The US is going in the wrong direction.

 

One thing I’ve learned, teaching college for decades, is that ethics is a technology.  The tools that humanity employs to make moral decisions have advanced to become more fair and equal.  The Golden Rule--do to others as you would them to you--is such an advance.  So are human rights, which are an attempt to elaborate the Golden Rule.

 

Ethics tech needs to advance with other sorts of tech, otherwise a society can be in a lot of trouble.  Right now, nuclear warheads are poised to wipe out civilization.  What keeps this from happening?  Self-preservation, sure; but also a sense that this would be evil.  An evolved sense of decency helps prevent the worst.  Without it, the risk goes up.

 

Another example is hunting rifles.  Maine hunters have a superb code of ethics that promotes the responsible and proper use of these powerful high-tech guns.  What would happen if that code deteriorated?

 

In the US, right now, our ethics tech is in danger of sliding backwards.  The political climate makes this obvious.  Whichever side of the political divide you are on, there’s a good chance that you think the other side is attempting to overthrow democracy in ways that are treasonous and despicable.   Readers of this article will disagree on which side is guilty.  However, given the mutual allegations, it is likely that one side is trying to tear down our constitutional republic. 

 

Even as our ethics tech level is in danger, perhaps of decline into despotism, our weapons tech is on the rise.  Examples of advancing weapons tech are designer-engineered viruses, and drones that kill with stealth.  There are also psychological weapons.  These include AI surveillance and propaganda networks.  Better understanding of the human brain can bring more happiness to all, but it can also be used to cement domination by a few at the top.

 

A common saying, with roots in the Bible is, With great power comes great responsibility.  The concept of responsibility is part of ethics tech.  And yet our ability to act responsibly, as a country, is under threat by those who care more about seizing total power.

 

The good news is that big advances in ethics tech have taken place in just the last few hundred years.  It seems normal to us that women have the right to vote.  That wasn’t the case about a hundred years ago.  A most recent advance was the legalization of gay marriage, something that seemed impossible just a generation ago. 

 

Ethics tech is based on developing reasonable moral standards, drawing from axioms like equality.  Human beings are, however, as irrational as we are rational, which is all the more reason why we need virtue--that part of ethics focused on mental health and harmony--as a guide. 

 

Because ethics is a technology, it is possible for humanity to reach a brighter world than we’ve ever known.  But the road is fraught.  The 20th century saw two world wars that dethroned countries.  There were only two atomic bombs to drop then.  The situation is different now.  We must advance our ethics tech to match our weapons tech.  The US is currently leaning in the wrong direction.

===========

Poem: Watching Screens

 

Watching Screens

 

so many wide twin black holes

of bouncy bread-and-circus eyeballs

wolfing the mocha rhubarb apricot

mango lime cinammon cranberry raisin fix;

the marzipan profrockian babbitry 

of the conspicuous status indulgence;

all in latests models, voguest clothes, plushest beds,

and the fat-priced wines and worms in finest tequilas,

and such.

days of our lives of the parade of bees-turned-to-gold,

sins of poked honeycombs, scandals, vogues, fashions,

shockers of peccadillos, hoarded in mainframe-spleens,

so everyone knows, everyone saw

something of the somewhere in the archive

of some personal private pulse of aroused life,

now a scorecard of gossip on mockery’s dartboard.

 

more and more and more screens,

screens more and more human than the people watching the screens,

billions of eyeballs flirting along,

swallowing to wallow and worship

and melt into the airwaves of some overarching artificial Octopus.

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

7/8/24

Poem: Man Watches January

 

Man Watches January

 

a stumble of a trek

through forgotten snow.

 

if my heart warmed,

would grief thaw off my face?

 

the lessons unlearned, frozen here,

scars from harsh failures,

 

winter simply buries them,

pure in its icy chisel.

 

but they remain, deep below.

not a single loss is dead.

 

i look up to see a white rabbit

snowshoeing over the tombs.

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

7/9/24 ... mods 

11/30/23 ... lots of mods 

Poem: Coastal Trail

 

Coastal Trail

 

cobble-shore frost,

it nips at at me, forty miles an hour,

awkward stupid animal

who slips on icy boulders

to squelch in smoky seawater.

 

only a hundred sperm-whale lengths to go.

 

waves crash on the curse of the crags, 

ratcheting up the odds of my death.

i watch the waves turn ocean spray into Lot’s wife,

over and over,

a disassemble of salt and ghost,

over and over,

she vaporizes, leaps, vaporizes, leaps,

this nameless wife,

who deserved a name,

though when i die 

my name will mean even less

than it does now, 

which, on this coastal trail,

is nothing.

 

no angel will protect me,

no strings of a parachute

in this donnybrook of hail

if i fall off a boulder, or

 

maybe an angel will.  

it must be.  it must!

thousands of poems to write

before i go.

 

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

7/9/24 ... keeping on

7/19/23 ... considerable flow and quality edits

https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/sea+smoke

Poem: Santa Susana Foothills

 

Santa Susana Foothills

 

remnants of spiderwebs in cracks of sandstone,

remnants of giants that gnash teeth dreaming,

fractured now, jaws that screamed of ignored skulls

till a valley brimmed with their dusty breath

and a vulture droops through sockets and cavities,

waiting for the spiders to spin again.

 

nightshade swallows the sun

deadly with the instinct-wrath of viper-on-mouse.

in a pelvis-shaped canyon

the wind moans as coyotes raise their eldritch piccolos

and a few last bats paroxysm over

the charred, charred, charred

brushless ashen faces of burnt slopes.

 

dawn swarms boulders with spray-painted pentacles

near sage leaves that cat-lick a flipped car,

maybe Charles Manson’s rusty chassis,

maybe, who knows, his enslaved killer cultists',

or maybe another big bust coffin crash

from a B-grade movie set.

 

just another day gnashed by sandstone,

dust and rust settling into cracks,

coyotes, vipers, bats mice mice mice char char char

wrinkled splintered faces on rocks

with herbs as cruel and kind as cats,

those amorous murderers

when the spiders spin again.

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

Poem: Restless

 

Restless

 

sapphire and gold of blush,

the ocean wallows

on sumptuous pillows

no human ever slept.

 

beauty devoured and uplifted,

amorphous and nude,

long before the gods 

made death a one-way door. 

petals of froth

trellis the absinthe that is the ocean, 

bristling to wane;

and the restless petals of foam,

they pulse in their white-green gardens,

wet of flame, lustful of arch-and-sink,

such swollen aches,

swaying to a heave of pendulums.

 

the ocean, its great Gaze,

amasses every fluid lens

swallowed and shaped

and waits with them all,

multi-restless-faceted,

as shipwrecked as a lover

who stares up at the deeps of the universe

searching for a trace of fiery kiss.

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

7/10/24

Poem: Hungry Moon

 

Hungry Moon

 

a bat is nothing but a cursed fly,

a shriveled cherub,

mene mene scrawled tenebrous.

 

songbirds are long gone flirts,

tasty arpeggios,

no longer to titillate

every pore on the body of sound.

 

sunset, it's always the same,

the same cheshire cat grin, 

fiery languors on spent horizons, 

stashing the feathery morsels away.

owls and loons, 

too lean and haunted,

the cryful crickets 

more boney than plump,

and so the moon, so hungry, 

yearns and yearns in its perch,

craving a new sort of chirr,

some kind of fandago, maybe,

where the dancers 

can actually see each other twirl.

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

10/31/23  ... Lots of mods... still not much confidence.

Poem: The Ancients

 

The Ancients

 

uncrushable flounders agile in dust, 

they fawn below marble,

hoping to butterfly-kiss our toes.

 

these stricken veterans of misdeed,

such anachronous anchors,

zealous civilizational shackles.

 

they apologize, yet whiny,

hurling both jibes and pleas,

barbed as they barb with their not-so-gone sins:

 

“suffer, suffer,

you should and you will--and you have--

because we were so damn cruel.”

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

7/11/24

Poem: Upset

 

Upset

 

wind herded fat clouds,

but the stars bit their white virtue away.

was that the prize for my patience,

these glinting caltrops

that wouldn’t let anything pass?

 

could a way out of my pain

lounge behind the stars?

i would never know.

perhaps because the clouds regrouped

to close like a jawbone over Cygnus.

but it was more than that...

i thought about the old myths of love,

how unsuitable they were for the stars.

how deranged we were, us humans,

to co-opt the sidereal armature

as a drape for our fancy delusions.

 

no wonder

the constellations tasted so cold.

it was hard to listen

to a  strung-out Olympus. 

and so i turned away,

not wanting to be lessoned

by a projection of my own hopeful fears,

something that pretended to perch--

 

up there, somewhere …

 

if the stars hid a secret

they wouldn’t reveal that gift.

why?  too many times

they’d seen us revel in crimson,

too often seen us guzzle down what we can get,

turning wine into greed into hate.

 

no.

 

the stars are not so foolish as us.

They glare, little auras bristling,

and will not be our guardians.

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