Poem: Melt Party

 

Melt Party

 

it was going to melt,

dilute a drunken, century-long binge.

 

someone was going to pay for it,

but they hadn’t been born yet,

and so couldn’t complain.

 

we had whooped it up, for sure,

harnessing everything, really, all life,

earth, air, fire, water,

 

cozy in our saddle of collective comforts

on a planetary hydrocarbon glide.

 

someday the steed would buck,

the supply cabinet parch,

the fast-track sink underwater. 

 

someday, too, some panicky king

might push a red button, annihilating it all.  

but

 it wouldn’t hurt us,

 

we band of the merry,

immune to cataclysm

or any sort of weather.

 

we happy, long-gone, fun-loving ghosts.

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

A GW poem.  GW could stand for oil magnate and ex-Prez George W. Bush, who should be in jail for war crimes.  Or it could stand for global warming.

Poem: Elbow Room

 

Elbow Room

 

in the aftermath came

the unknown wasn’t.

defiance under the curse

of the anti-gift of faith.

 

thoughtless and untouchable,

the antiseptic pilgrims of progress

cleansed the Cross,

made it easier to sacrifice,

 

to sink down and down,

with the zeal of a grub,

savoring without seeing

God’s defiled corpse.

 

you might ask,

 

what fear possessed them, what sin,

to invoke the light and climb,

yet descend more than rise

in the cruelty of their holes?

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

4/1 ... "made" replaces "making"

3/31 ... "grub" replaces "maggot"

"unknown wasn't"  is a reference to gaslighting ... or whatever

Inspired by Schoolhouse Rock: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs2w4lwQRtc

Donald Trump Goes Full Nazi

 

 

A Quick Yet Crucial Turning Point  

Donald Trump, ex-President of the USA, has gone full Nazi. 

He called Alvin Bragg, the Black prosecutor in Manhattan, who might well indict him soon, a “Soros backed animal.”  George Soros is a Jewish banker who survived the Holocaust.

So, you have a Black person being called an “animal," a common racist trope that links with slavery.  And you have the antisemitic idea of a global Jewish conspiracy, which goes back centuries. 

Hitler used this fictitious conspiracy to fuel his rise to power, drawing on the infamous Elders of Zion, a book of hate-propaganda:

 

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion

 

Although my blog has a minuscule audience, I feel a need to speak out on this.  We all need to speak out, in some way or other.   Let’s not be complacent.  Trump is a major threat to the existence of the United States as we know it.  

He is under invesitgation in four criminal cases, but his cultish followers will continue to worship him, even if he is indicted or even convicted.  Remember, Hitler was in jail for a while, and it worked to his advantage. 

We need to fight back against hate, fascism, and outright Nazism.  I don't mean violence.  I mean MLK tactics.  

There was a good discussion of Trump’s comment on Morning Joe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsVFcKBFnSA

Fly Well in the Dark,

Owl

PS:  Here's an example of the kind of poem I write about MAGA types:

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2022/12/poem-right-as-it-gets.html

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

Poem: Gripped

 

 

Gripped

 

the man behind the desk turns octopus,

every crease a tentacle.

his courteous dimples pucker

as they find my weakness,

i whose face went defensive,

raising a shell,  

only to find that banks

know all about such transformations,

and in response execute 

a series of well-ordered grips.

 

the beak of the creature approaches,

bloated on gold and ink.

it spreads my soul across paper

and carves my name.

 

my face hardens once more,

but it means nothing to something--

this labyrinthine entity--

so slippery and strong.

truth, i learn, is just a morsel

to be slurped and devoured

from its hiding place under my cheeks.

 

i rise to leave

but the walls themselves become octopus flesh.

tentacles roam out of the teller cages,

and the watery surface of their money.

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

7/24 ... added "my"

Regarding the Poems

 

When the poems get posted, they are second drafts that usually require more drafts to achieve any hope for a ‘final stage.’   I tinker with them pretty constantly.  Sometimes I leave notes below the poems on the changes.

Probably I’d be scolded by a PR rep for putting up unfinished, awful poems.   “First impressions are everything,” and such. 

My response to this is complex and muddled.

As I think on it now, I would respond that the poems get more attention from me, when I post them earlier rather than later, which ultimately leads to better crafting.  This is my own selfish little idiosyncrasy.  I seem to get a rush from the feel of ‘being under the spotlight,’ and this motivates me to edit and improve the poems 

This introduces a related point:  that my goal is primarily to bring the poems to full expression, in concurrence with the appraisal of my inner muses, not to truly gain the spotlight. 

So, strange situation:  I like the feel of ‘being in the spotlight’--a posted poem available online to whoever’s ‘out there’-- but it isn’t my primary goal.  Even more, I am not sure that I want a lot of readers.  

Predictably enough, this invokes more thought, based on another tension:  am I obligated to try and get my poems more public attention?  Do some of them, at least, deserve greater recognition, and am I therefore ethically required to strive for that? 

And then more rabbit-hole questions:  Is my thought that the poems deserve more recognition purely narcissistic and deluded?  Am I losing any semblance of humility, a virtue I much admire and want to embrace, when I start to think in terms of getting more attention?  Do I, unknown even to myself, crave fame more than anything else?

I could keep going, with more confusion arising, and more questions, and more rabbit holes. 

For now, my behavior is simple enough.  Post poems on this blog, where I believe very few people actually read them (most of the ‘visitors’ are no doubt bots).  And yet I get a little frisson from having them publicly posted, which motivates me to write and edit. 

I hope this petite neurotic diversion was entertaining to someone.  

 

Owl

Poem: Cemetery Sunset

 

Cemetery Sunset

 

shadows 

shave lichen from stones,

as they lounge on the praised dead,

comfortable on a chaste green sward

glazed by the silence of winter.

 

somber with ease,

oranges and yellows reach lazy paws,

the outskirts of a carnelian cat.

slowly, ever so much, 

its claws bleed epitaphs

into the slouching cusp of dusk.

 

and then 

the metamorphosis of night

bold as an odalisque, ravenous and disdainful,

lounges on a brimming bed of stars.

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

Poem: Dream Caught

 

 

Dream Caught

 

garden spiders,

yellowy moons in scythe ballets,

weave amok, windy as swallows.

 

no fear of my godzilla-sized head,

theater for their puppet show.

 

their legs wheel airy letters,

sentences of half-seen languages--

 

such agile spinners of plots and spells,

vortices of phrase and world,

obsessed to instigate.

 

it’s a novel, perhaps, in the end,

about a fractured, frazzled ghost,

 

a soul compartmentalized and captured,

who fled the harangue of a city of tombs. 

 

the fantastical octet swarms,

some of them orange or peachful sweet with lust,

or puzzled blue or pink with rage,

 

know all would be fine,

if only the godzilla head--the ghost, the poet--

would look back at them  

and see.

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

4/27/24 

3/19 "fantastical" replaces "perceptive"

phantasmagoric play on a number of orb weaver webs in the yard, all with their bright yellow inhabitants

Poem: Fallen Leaf

 

Fallen Leaf

  

tiny flounder, lost from its teat,

postured in mud, doormat for rain.

 

its torn edges gape, or yell, maybe,

at whatever accident slew the mood.

 

black ribs mimic the frolic of fungus.

the rest an auburn daguerreotype

gutted and splayed by a spectral cat.

all day

 

 a waltz of shadows quibble

over the slick cranberry dapples:

whether the little age spots mock 

or honor the sun, its solar tears.

 

the leaf  doesn't care

about this lurid audience,

or the cranberry dapples,

or the dying papyrus they distressed.

 

mauled as a martyr,

without fanfare or even note,

the leaf settles to dissolve on its way,

slumping in leisure, fading into the soil,

as if coming home.

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

4/27/24 

3/21 ... fixed another problem ... poem is finally 'okay'

3/19  massive changes  ... poem was awful before... might be still, can't tell ... rarely can

fixed typo ("doesn't care" replaces "does care" ...)

Poem: Blood

 Blood

 

beauty pulls you,

painting a blush on my cheek.

 

the slightest pounce,

as if a spider checking a string,

 

when someone risks a touch.

 

you play tide

with my poems as your moon.

what a dance, what a whirl!

 

a dash of cicada

rhythmed by odyssey

in a marathon of rain.

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

3/21 changed some punctuation

3/19  "a dash of" replaces "the slightest"

3/13  ... changed punctuation

3/7 ... changed structure for easier flow (hopefully)

Poem: Cloudy Shore

 

Cloudy Shore

 

walk the shore, an arthritic dog,

each footfall births a crater.

wind strums a murmur of dead galaxies

to ponder many lives

in pores of immense, fickle surfaces.

what is the dog

to the multitudinous cheeks of the beach,

or the liquid crinkles by the thousands

squinting from the ocean?

 

the skyline intoxicates dark,

a nimbostratus hullaballoo.

wind seduced it quite well

to incite such a stampede:

these measureless, quested drops of rain.

they encompass the sand, the ocean,

and even the ponderous dog,

rendering its loneliness fervent 

and baptismal.

 

for hours, the storm conducts

its chuckles of playful grey fire,

until gales constrict a last wisp of sunset;

and the dog, sheet after numbing sheet,

wanders home.

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

4/27/24 mods

8/11  ... lots of edits for flow and intensity 

3/19 "fervent" replaces "fervid"

3/3/23  ... many internal mods, hours after posting... grim death poem