The poems are a lot of work and mainly a curse. Who are they helping? Maybe some god that laughs at us stupid, puny humans from afar.
Most of us obsessed with writing poems are back-up prophets,
even less heard than frontline prophets.
At best, it is beautiful therapy, such as a dandelion, lovely yet ignored, just a weed, blooming in a crack in a world of well-paved minds.
Humid Day
air crowds us hapless animals,
its puffy abdomen
of spongy muscle.
can’t breathe,
such wet, bluff heat
height of a hulking grave,
oppressive
tepid, slimy merger
of air-water-ground.
can’t move,
a stuck stride,
enough to catch mice,
and the feet of birds,
this quicklime of oxygen,
so mean.
we are half-dead, hot and moist,
under a cellophane
of soggy atmosphere.
the roses in the garden are fat redcoats
bled, bled, bled,
dying in a motionless war.
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9/14/25 .. changed last line
6/24/24...
9/4 "to die" ...
Ordinary Dungeon
angry in the hideout,
wrestling protocols,
i suffer for my failure.
why defuse this faith,
contrary to vision though it is?
to debunk fear
and rationalize escape
these hooks of heretical logic
drag my heart punctured deeper,
till truth asserts its terrible price.
and excuses whip from my broken mouth,
faster than the prattle
of inexcusable commercials.
we toadeat the curse.
god exists, hallelujah.
god stings, barks, and segregates.
god outfoxes us with ecclesiastic sanctions.
i try, try, try
to improvise a lack of manners.
but the leap for deviance always feels so fake,
and i fall back,
into this ordinary dungeon,
knowing i can tantrum only so far,
within my authorized time.
================================
7/19/25 ...
6/24/24...
9/9 "while" replaces "and" (clarity issue)
Dead Grass Before Spring
do not confuse them with minnows
rioting from an earthen shark.
they are not disheveled wicker,
or shards from a tan season of dynasty.
consider them needles
that sewed themselves into their own quilt;
and yet now the slumbering green juju
awakens
to poke millions of centipedes through their cross-stich,
so they dissolve into what they truly are:
pawls of a clock guzzled down,
easy as a darkening dearth of wine.
when the last threads of snow flee their maze.
they have no more prisoners, no escape,
only to wait, blind beyond hurt,
for the skewer of a dandelion.
================================
10/28/25 ... took out a word
12/11/23 four mods ...
Hidden Questions
faces hide sweet questions.
slight as gleams,
no one can see them on latitudes of lips,
which only pretend to lie.
spans of cheekbones,
peek-a-boos of prairie flowers,
protect teardrops of deep-sea clues,
glimmers of something wise.
shells of social wax
cannot hinder favored dreams,
such caresses
from invisible fingertips.
a melt of chin into quivers.
a swoon of scent from aromatic arias.
a brow elated,
lovely as a tapestry loom:
just below our daily masks
hope awaits,
not so long-lost,
not too hidden to cherish.
9/15/25... may the gods have mercy on this poem's soul
8/20...
8/18/24...
6/24/24...
10/1 ... significant changes to two stanzas
Another day passes by. Yee-haw ...
8/28 "volatile, helpless fingertips" replaces longer clunky line
8/21 ... Major changes a few hours after posting ... more changes later in the day
Little Karmas
i ache
as if someone broke glass
and stashed the shards
in my brain.
the problem is this:
i feel the little karmas
of ants and chickens,
and everything in-between.
they shout up at me,
these puny scorecards
that hail back
to the first oozy womb.
they’ve found a way
to preserve genesis
in long, endless threads.
what’s being woven,
i don’t know, but every leg
on every insect is a needle.
every feather on every bird
sews the wind.
the tiniest scuttle services fate,
and if you nudge it,
you tweak the tapestry
of a billion years.
============================
To the Gods
i send you trinkets of my life
in a basket of disloyal tears.
my armor of wounds,
more feeling than blood
that goes in first.
next i fold with care
and tuck in place
a brutalized truth:
those cities of cursed children,
whom i sobbed to invoke,
and yet never dared to see.
next comes dawn’s ocean,
and rain-voices of songful spring.
add sage aromas of chaparral,
and prism-garlanded forests.
i place, as well an enduring kiss,
one i received long ago,
and yet still heals across decades.
finally a dandelion,
joyous in sunlight,
quivered by breeze.
i know the gods will not respond,
or even understand my gift.
but i have some hope, by this offering,
faint as an angel's feather,
to forgive the gods.
===================
6/24/24 ...
10/30 "disloyal" replaces "unloyal"
8/24 "garlanded" replaces "sprinkled"
8/17 "add" replaces "place"
On first glance, this is one of the best poems I have ever written. Of course, as is usual with such things, I am probably wrong.
Once More
to idolize the warmth
on the roof of a mouth,
while the rest of the body hides.
tea drains lukewarm,
thick down the throat,
softening a few feathered phrases,
while a tarantula of arthritis
captures with scratches of pencil
to bind.
a whole pot of earl
passes through the urethra
before the writing is just okay.
some of the words breathe,
lissome and nectarine with hope,
if not the verve of pleasure.
the caffeine and steam, once dead,
unparalyze a tense drama,
releasing the tarantula.
fingers quibble with tremors,
whether to screw the thermos lid,
or whether, like the brain,
it is drained of purpose,
any last semblance of passion gone
empty
empty as a lake
turned into sand
long before the very first mammal cried.
eyes sizzle-fizzle from the pangs of sleep,
zeros stacking zeros
under lids gone wild.
======================================
11/25 ..
10/9/25 ... impossible to fix...
6/24/24
11/16 removed "other" before "zeros" ... added some commas
10/19/22 "softening" replaces "softened"
Last Call
the upheaval of bliss in the martini
massaged my mind
with biochemical paws.
it was appealing, indeed,
this dearth of confusion
in a lack of tomorrowness--
which up was
up, really,
and why so much descent?
why kneel sad yet glib
before a magistrate of paychecks and delusion?
and yet
if a lion ant of a wish lurked
in a toothpick-skewered olive,
it had to be a trap,
a smooth slide of sinking allure
in a glassy funnel of gin.
maybe this eerie dizzy banquet
lacked euphoria, after all,
no longer steep, neither seductive,
just along for the cab ride.
===============================
6/26/24
8/15 corrected typo
Inside the Mind of a Ghost
doors tilt to spin walls
and the no-way-out victim-
hood shifts its denials to no way
to get clean, not in this uninten-
tional roulette which runs
faster around more corners in
panic to achieve less, yes,
i am the spin, the pill, the drug
which curves in halls that hunt
and yet still falter hungry to become
tricks, mirrors, yes,
it is i who must press my skele-
ton to my beating bosom,
and yet not feel the ribs,
none of the marrow's screams,
no chance, zero pitfalls then ,
to spin the silver into the lurking
cellar of risk.
This image from the Washington Post today sums up the Republican prejudices and ignorances (self-defeating and country-destroying strategy).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/dana-milbank-republican-destructionists-book-excerpt/
Before The Court
the poetry of truth
meets a clench of lies,
against the bruxism of empire
to fight and declaim.
to cast a logic of wings
among knives of buzzy scorn.
to argue that the empire
oppresses in the name of freedom.
to call out the 'great president,'
who salivates above a drool of sycophantic dogs.
to lament the fear of the citizens,
whose rush to obey erodes the very streets.
to see vagrants left as rubbish,
eyes as smoky as bullet casings.
to remark on the sacrifies
irrational on a tilt of sinking altars,
and the fanatic arenas,
drunk on hate-thirsty grunts.
to dare kindness and love
deprived by the cruel--
and for such hope to pay,
to be accused and entombed.
===================
Sept 8 "drool of dogs" replaces "drooling dogs"
August 12 more changes...
August 5 "dare kindness" replaces "dare advance kindness"
August 2, structural changes for better flow
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