Poem: Blizzard Snips

 

 

Blizzard Snips

branches thicken, pitchforks 

in funnels of inter-twisted 

rollercoasters and their 

hectic cri de coeur--

a zillion zealots in rant, 

swept off in snowflake sprees.

what is said and was said and what will and 

could be be said by this indecipherable jeremiad of

 

orgiastic tattered linens

shroudy to unravel even as they are stitched,

it doesn't matter now.

we are simply lucky that such nude monsters 

disperse as soon as they howl,

that none of them flies long enough 

to exist.

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

6/26 ... pffft

8/7/25

5/28/24 ... 

Original title, Blizzard

Poem: Boomerville

 

Boomerville

 

plowed by commercial decades,

this mind could never break leash.

 

grooves have been cut

for neural ivies to trellis in my head.

cartoonish plants.

 

my last dying thought

might be Coca-Cola.

 

maybe if you rip off layers

of toilet-tissue-papery prods,

those soft sorts of goads

that make human beings salivate like dogs,

 

and maybe, too, if you could ignore

the economic circus of greed,

there might be something more,

 

beyond this logo-face city,

smiles, walls, signs, wrappers, screens,

weedy from gutters to computers,

up to the top of my beliefs.

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

2/20 ... removed 2nd-person references to keep the poem focused on 1st-person

2/2 ... "human beings" replaces "humans"; "could ignore" replaces "ignore"

1/29 ... baffled minor edits ... "sort" or "sorts"  ??... etc.

Foot hurts, hobbling.  Lonely.  No humans around to help.  Just me and my muses.  So I write stuff (give up my body to spirit guides).

Poem: Ice Oaks Day Dusk Night

 

 

Ice Oaks Day Dusk Night

 

flashy branches stream whorls of sun.

a surreal, hypnotic thrill, surely,

and yet not kind,

amok with ravenous gossamers

which soon succumb to purple nightshade--

 

those crepuscular filigrees of twigs  

laden with wine-tinged tears,

haunted, fated, frozen in their sparkle,

wistful and serpentine,

these mantles half-remembered

to the raucous glory of the day,

desperate now

for a mere molecule of star.

 

and yet

could heaven be a pomegranate moon?

in hover, gorged on delight, 

above the medusan mantle of the canopy?

 

could it be

 

an oasis bathed in the spectral,

celebrations of tapestried glints,

so many pinpricks, illimitable yet soft,

joyful in their midnight?

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

5/28/24... 

Poem: Layers

 

Layers

 

we can’t see much in mirrors,

or even clouds.

 yet there's too many phantasms

to distress our veneers,

our flesh their mutable ache.

 

too many twists under sub rosas.

we’ve lost accommodation.

 too many tyrants in the belfry

who lack clockwork in their swagger-

and-cloaks.

 

when the tower of our strata collapses,

what heart, if any, what truth,

slouches the dunes of flimsy rubble?

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

5/28/24 ... 

"truth is the product of orderly systems" --  phrase that came into my head just now

1/24   ... "dunes from our hearts"  replaces "the dunes"

Poem: My Mind Races

 

My Mind Races

 

dogs with lank tongues, curled as scrolls,

sever the trail.

 

who invited  

such startled violence,

 

roadblocks with as many questions

as teeth?

 

does god favor dogs

who scent out pleas in urgent breaths?

 

do angels chase to harass

the fawns of curiosity,

 

until they run frightened

from any glimpse of what’s sweet and true?

 

shocked branches and weeps of nettle

rip at my flight,

 

and such things pursue,

barking to spread confusion

 

through the nude treachery

of this raw place.

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

5/28/24 ... "gone" replaces "lost"

 1/22 ... "such things" replaces "the monsters" ... "lost" replaces "dark"

Poem: Incubus

 

Incubus

 

across continents

leaves no footprint,

 

harpoons a heart

while hidden in a thought.

 

whispers about blood

to affect pulse,

 

goads hearts to trample

fields of pride.

 

without sight

controls vision,

 

enchants bright stares

so they blindly plead.

 

no dream

has such a false kiss,

 

yet so true 

how lips open from the force

 

of this lack,

even as they whisper

 

why.

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

5/23/26 ... changed the flow

Some phallic imagery leads to the choice of Incubus over Succubus.  Though gender norms are sexist, so maybe I'll change the title to Succubus/Incubus.  All so complex to my puny mind.  Thoughts on this can reach me at owlwholaughs@gmail.com

Poem: Stars On a Lake

 

Stars On a Lake

 

still and serene, but then rushed:

sizzle-sidles of ping pong ball

frantic à la cartoon.

 

no more noblesse.

no immortal carriage

staid of constellation.

 

the great velvet of forever 

now pulled back to puppet

a sparkler-melee of cosmic jugglers.

 

what could it mean? 

these torn seizures of hypersonic glitter,

Canus, Draconus, Cygnus?

 

this fireworks of armageddon

and boundless ecstasy?

 

everything, so sudden,

the whole damned dome,

volatile and fragile now,

heaving to corkscrew, wamble, whipsaw 

and oscillate,

so bright!

this fervor of chaos,

this once-peaceful, logical course,

and why, you ask,

why all this?

 

a single smack

by the flap-and-flutter

of a disgruntled quackful

scaup.

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

6/26 ... changed last line 

7/1/25 ... major edits for this atrocious mess

5/28/24 ... 

1/16   "a la cartoon" replaces "in a cartoon"... "puppet" replaces "expose"... added "wamble"

1/15 (hours after posting) ... "swan" replaces "duck" ... "exposed" replaces "revealed"

Poem: Alteration

 

Alteration

 

mourning cloak

on morn's gravel,

 

royal of lithe light,

indispensable

moth

 

the pebbles below now precious,

perch for the supernal,

 

no other moment

of my long, grey life

 

to be touched by 

such inexpressible wings,

 

rich purple 

aureate depth,

no,

 

none of me,

beyond this lucky token,

 

ever to measure

such life.

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

7/1/25 ... removed a word

2/24/25 ...  mods.. 

5/28/24 ... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphalis_antiopa

1/17 ... "lithe of light" replaces "lithe light"

Poem: Writeless

 

Writeless

 

this bedrock inside my head,

such cracked and turgid ducts,

lava the pulse as my fingers massage fast-

forward storms which rage across 

cranial continents.

my m y  y y my breath strives to 

contain this cerebral albatross

as it vents such voluminous fulminations sulfurous, nauseous, neuro-

dyspeptic, what is hell, 

hell

this thing inside my head, this 

crucible of the anti-civil,

this stubborn, primal, antediluvian lack of

principia?

what is this emotion?  why?

whyfully i ask why?

 

thumbs plug nostrils & knuckles prop ears.

maybe God, like this,

shoulders the world, like this, a 

world that is a head too 

heavy for the neck,

a world intertangled,

irreducible, overdetermined atop  

stilts of web, this balance in a play 

of madcap flesh on a stage tilting 

nowhere.

 

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

11/19/25 ... horrifically bad...

5/28/24....

1/16 ... a couple minor changes

Poem: Lessons of History

 Lessons of History

shelves of books

lean beggarly

to prop each others’ isolation.

 

genius festers

under slabs of dust,

wise yet antiquated

 

in an old man’s condo.

 

a moth,

color of the last leaf

of a miniature autumn,

 

settles,

meek in its finitude,

on a spine.

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

5/28/24 ... "a" replaces "his"  (no, I don't know what I'm doing)

1/5   ...   "his" replaces "a" 

this is a poem about my father

Poem: Ceaseless

 

Ceaselesss

 

curtains opened before searched

stretch responses from riven mouths

to swarm geysered breaths.

 

beauty poses there, sculpted

by a commotion of hands

and clapping jaws that dissemble

urges to own and control.

 

around and back, from all sides,

every angle spreads,

a succession of shapely dunes,

brave to bury unsightly reviews.

 

the news, it transforms so quick.

coronations and abdications.

airwaves of riddles, veers and swerves.

eyes, smiles, hips.

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

5/28/24 ... 

7/17 ... fixed typo

2/17 .. ."riven" replaces "rave" ... other mods