Regarding the Poems

 Thank you for reading the poems!

Often the poems are not in the best of shape when I put them up.  The reason I post them is that they get more attention from me than if I filed them away somewhere.  

Sometimes poems don’t get modified at all after posting.  Others get edited into decent shape after a few days.  In some cases, it takes a long time to get things even somewhat right.   “Crystal Ball,” “Mosquitoes on a Screen,” and “Written,” for instance, involve months of struggle.

The editing process never really ends.  And, of course, some poems will never be ‘good’, simply due to my lack of ability. 

I am very glad, though, that some people find a bit of impact reading them.

Fly Well In The Dark,

 OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

Poem: Performancer

 

Performancer

 

hands

 

like wolf spiders over the keys.

they ravage a sonata

on the piano's coffin black.

 

the audience swilled

by the lamentful fury of the octaves,

a caterwaul of cricket notes, 

which burn to rasp and wisp away.

 

the intermezzo a fraught wrestle,

both reviled and relieved 

by the music's harsh deaths.

in the final torments of the last movement,

the chords drain more fragile, 

bits of nuance to protect torn wings,

 

hands

 

transformed from wolf spiders,

and yet their bent feathers and shreds of flight 

bear no patient descent, 

when confused they veer

through chasms of sharps and aortas,

lost in a rumble of spent bridges, 

down into silence.

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Poem: Long Night Into Day

Long Night Into Day

light stung

with its lack of tomorrow,

the what-was that devoured the what-if. 

light lived in a hive of everstressed people,

below sharp blue height that leered over crowded boxes.

 

light, it ran away so fast.

it didn’t have to face the causes,

such as the clear-cut nudity

of the harsh sexless sex,

which was the overdose of money-smitten people

shackled in towers of ruthless equations.

 

light. 

it hurt.  it framed.  it trapped.

so brutal that hope

preferred to remain an unturned stone.

the night fed the light its lurid pretenders.

maskers who played cards without mercy.

games of dogs, paws on each other’s hearts,

digging for bones.

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Poem: On a Ledge

 

On a Ledge

 

no humans for miles.

no engines in lines.

no rail irons

or psoriasis of fence.

 

no throngs of hands

who battle for the last scrap of land.

in this place, on a ledge,

a whip-poor-will

is worth a billion dreams.

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4/28/25 changed a word

Poem: Busy Street

 

Busy Street

 

crosscurrents 

of stubborn, clogged rubber.

 

to pull a smile out of a face

is to yank the nerves of a marionette. 

 

the seethe of the similar

would reduce even a poet

to a parrot stanchioned 

in these asphalt lines.

 

the only bits of truth,

twitches in cheek or brow,

come and go like minnows,

scattering from deep sea jaws ... 

 

...  fallen ... 

into the steadfast norm.

culture fashion human engine

crammed into the same.

the same.

 

the same four-letter alphabet.

the same monosyllabic stress.

 

what a spectacle,

so many mechanized cowls:

face, throat, tongue, heart,

 

mind.

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

7/19/25 .. . attempts were made

Poem: Abolitionist

 

Abolitionist

 

nothing hurts

like ignored, absolute proof.

 

they fight you on it.

they stuff people in those ships

even during your speech.

 

you live with their hatred.

they want to kill you.

you might not see children,

or old age.

 

if you disappear one dusk,

the world just goes on,

full of shackles and whippings,

 

and no god, no one,

to pull your corpse out of a pit.

or out of the same seawater

sailed by those ships.

 

and yet you speak on,

even as the gun barrels stare.

whose "rockets' red flare"?

 

you keep on.

because of what can and should be,

everywhere,

must.

 

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Great Statement By Emma Gray

 The pithy statement below by Emma Gray captures so much about what is draining, cruel and wrong about 21st century civilization (and previous).  What she talks about is what we, as a species, need to overcome.

We need to evolve ethically and psychologically.    

If we don't evolve, we are headed right toward WWIII--due to nationalism and fascism wielded by demagogic narcissists:

I have spent a decade writing columns and news stories about men who have been thrust into positions of power despite having made a plethora of mistakes — mistakes that suggest a lack of respect for people who don’t look like them and act like them. They consistently fail up through the ranks of corporate America and Hollywood and Big Tech like they’re encased in Teflon. The human collateral damage that might be left in their wake goes largely unacknowledged.  Emma Gray

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/jeopardy-host-mike-richards-exactly-who-you-think-he-n1277227

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Poem: Wrestle

 

Wrestle

 

we sapients wrestle with ourselves,

reason versus the cruel.

 

would joy break into outer space,

the Earth crack, a sweet cosmic egg?

 

or would people go extinct

and Nature green-over our nuke-boom slide?

 

for now, anyway,

herds would fail to run wild,

reduced instead to packaged meat.

 

trees would grow runt,

enshadowed by sawmills.

flowers huddle, oceans stink.

 

we hungry, needy sapients

we grapple the globe

with our straight-lined, fence-bound 

wrestler's grip.

who needs ice in the arctic circle,

when you have air conditioners?

who needs sanity when you have computers?

who needs weather?

who needs nature at all?

 

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

Having a rough time.  Edited almost every poem I wrote since October.  No certainty.  In my brain or in the world.  Afghanistan debacle unspeakable.  One more horror.  It all mounts.  

Poem: Lack of Dilemma

 

Lack of Dilemma

 

a thought

seeps through small cracks

in the dronespeech of the screen

in the next room,

 

through the tiny, tiny cracks,

the smallest seams in the dronespeech.

 

maybe it seeps, too,

through the texty-touchy-clickety-twittery facebook tik-tokking.

 

but so what and what

to do or not to do

about doing nothing 

or about the doing?

 

in the body of cellphone society

 we are all cells in gab-gab gabbing gaggles,

where no one is listening 

except AI.

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

7/24

Dream Quote

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Sometimes history must die, even your own, to seed the future--dream.

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