Poem: Keep It Up

 

Keep It Up

 

prouder than putty,

we break not bend into smiles,

primped yet grim

in herringbone and trench coat,

bobbing along

in our crowded currents,

sometimes eaten by trap doors

on the sides of cars,

or sucked into mouths

of giant marble facades.  but

we keep it up,

up and down the busy streets,

allotted our place to troll:

whale or swordfish,

eel, squid or shark,

halibuts, flounders, groupers, sunfish,

alewives and the multiplicitous minnows,

all fated to be digested in towers, 

each a morsel for a cube.

one by one, sometimes in gulps,

we get picked off, gone--

into the monstrous guts

of the machinations of the city.  but

we keep it up.

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7/3/25... mods after posting... off and on all day

Genocide and 'Hunger Games' in Gaza

 

What is happening in Gaza is not fiction. It is not a horror movie. The “hunger games” are real and so is the genocide they are part of. That the world is allowing such dystopia to unfold is damning evidence of its own loss of humanity.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/6/29/in-gaza-the-israelis-are-staging-hunger-games 

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

When you point out evils like this to Americans, you get hit with non sequiturs like, "You're antisemitic, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas."  

None of these conclusions even remotely follow from condemnation of the ongoing barbarism and genocide in Gaza.  

When media frame it as, "You are either pro-Israel or pro-Palestine," which is a false bifurcation, the response is, "I am pro-humanity and dignity.  I am for all people to have rights.  I am anti-genocide."  

There is nothing about Gaza on the front page of, say, the Washington Post.  Prominent is an article on Republicans and tax cuts, and the Opinion pieces, which read:

pinions

Robert P. George and Cornel West

To save themselves, universities must cultivate civic friendship

Laura Rose O’Connor

Why some Canadians are choosing Trump over their country

Monica Hesse

What is a jury supposed to make of the Diddy trial?

1 hour ago

Will Leitch

The Dodgers are not the resistance, and that’s okay

1 hour ago

Ramesh Ponnuru

The Republican shell game on tax cuts

  

An unstaunchable glut of evil has drowned whatever figleaf of conscience America professed.

Poem: Floaters

 

Floaters

 

mouthy menageries,

they complain about the sun.

it’s not all that brilliant, after all,

only an intellectual sink

which sucks cool shadows away.

 

the sun, they mouth,

from their many puffed pulpits,

is a disciple of that chairman in 1984

who said,

 

we shall meet again in that place

where there is no darkness.

 

these dull clouds,

they hover herded,

clumps of neutered dreams;

cocoons woven

by caterpillars of duty.

 

they follow quick

the merest hint of wind,

obedient and derelict,

digested and complacent

as feces.

 

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6/29/25 ... "duty" replaces "grey" .. fixed typo

Many people are born into the savagery of dictatorship.  It’s not their fault.  But the people of American, they are allowing their democracy to be transmogrified into totalitarian state, complete with masked squads of enforcers who make people disappear.  It is far and away the most pathetic and loathsome failure of morality to watch, firsthand, this annhilation of any elements of justice, fairness and equality.  This full victory of fear and  hate, under a narcissistic, tyrannical fist of might-makes-right.

Just one effect of this:  global warming will not be addressed, because the USA refuses to admit it's a problem.  Why?  The dictator Trump demands that it is not a problem, and demands that people agree with him to pass a loyalty test.  Trump is now keeping coal plants open that even the operators don't want to keep open anymore.  Why?  To mock the truth, science and anything they can do to challenge his power.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/climate/trump-coal-gas-plants-energy-emergency.html

I write the above thinking that I might well be disappeared myself, within a few years.  Why don't I leave, you ask? 

I'm 61 years old, have lived in a beautiful, peaceful natural spot for 25 years, don't have the financial resources and, given my introversion and lack of know-how, am bewildered about how I would even begin to, say, get into Canada.  I'd need a job offer, I believe, at the professional level, and that is not going to come easy for me.  Part of me, too, wants to remain here and fight to the bitter end.  I should start saving my poems on my blog into a separate thumb drive.  But I haven't yet... maybe part of me is still in denial, or has hope that Trump can be stopped. Maybe part of me fancies myself a a prophet, who is called by the forces of Goodness to do certain things.. and no more.

People tell me I'm overreacting.  I don't know.  I don't think so.

We all sit and watch the masked police arresting immigrants and disappearing them.  "First they came for ... "  ".. and then they came for me."

Poem: Night Solo

 

Night Solo

 

a boulder, whalish,

with mottled hide of unguessable deeps,

breaches the summit

to earn a vertigo of moonless perch.

 

with magic rare and clear

it can see for parsecs,

through a starlit glitter of spectral rain

which flirts forever down,

delicate yet coruscant.

 

down

down down down

and yet higher still,

immortal and diamond.

 

to the lichened eye

of the weathered, old rock

arrogance is nowhere.

ants and moths and the ensouled lights

of all other creatures in the stars

pulse natal and humble. 

 

the universe,

in this brief, lucky, lost moment,

offers the boulder the celestial glint

of its mysterious ear.

 

and the boulder, suffering

a nightly gnaw of ice and wind

rhapsodizes

from its perch of meek fissures,

singing forth, eerie yet jubiliant,

faint whistles and moans,

drawn from the secret corridors

of once elusive dreams.

 

 

 

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

I watch the descent

I watch the descent, write and protest, powerless, as Darkness closes its grip.  And we descend. 

[Comment from a WaPo article by “HerdingDog”]:

22 hours ago

If Harris had been elected, Health Care would be intact. The CDC, WHO and NATO would strong. Universities would not have lost research funding. Women would have choice. Inclusion would still be a priory. There would be no tariff war. Canadian/ US relations would be business as usual - literally. Government services would not have been dismantled and gutted for data. The people would not have been forced to spend 50Million on an asinine birthday display. Immigrants would not live in terror of masked Gestapo.

One moron would not have started WWIII.

 

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

 

 

[Excerpt from an article in The Guardian]:

 

Democrats were quick to point out that [Trump’s actions bombing Iran] were a clear violation of the constitution, which grants Congress the power to declare war on foreign countries. There was no evidence of an imminent threat to the US that might have provided grounds for Trump to act unilaterally …

But once again, Democrats find themselves shut out of power and shouting into the void … Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called for Trump’s impeachment.

Fat chance. Republicans, who control the majorities of both chambers, are willing accomplices in their own subjugation.  …  Do not expect Republicans to pull the emergency brake on a Trump train that might be hurtling towards world war three. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, and John Thune, the Senate majority leader, led a chorus of praise for the attack …

The Trump who threw a birthday parade and used the military like a prop invited ridicule. The Trump who deploys troops to the streets of Los Angeles and drops bombs on Iran is altogether more dangerous.

Exit the showman. Enter the strongman.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/23/trump-iran-strongman-analysis

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

Why am I posting this?  Simply a scream, hopefully cathartic.  It helps me to go on, to write.  To do good acts when and where I can.  Why?  For no purpose or end, except to do good, which yes, by definition, gives me meaning, even as evil takes over the world.

How do I define evil?  Facism, stalinism, hitlerism, totalitarianism--and key aspects of them, such as sexism, racism, homophobia, massive continuous hermetic deceit... and so on... an abusive realm full of hate and fear.  A place where people are so afraid they turn on each other to suvive and lick the feet of local officials who, in turn, lickspittle those up the chain, all the way to the dictator.

And, of course, war is evil.  War World III would be the ultimate victory for Evil.

Poem: Twenty Percent

 

Twenty Percent

presentable people

whose attire trends stylish and shiny,

who flock through rituals

of paperwork and antihistamine.

social people

whose poise and cadence lubricates,

while eyes glance down at chests

but not really,

or flirtable butts mouths hands eyes feet legs

faces arms throats.

 

afficianados

of well-bred cat-poodles and fondues,

who banter through another workday,

then rush home all clickety to consume

an escherian rabbit hole 

of whack-a-mole peekaboo screens.

 

in the underbelly

of their electronic briefcases

maybe there lurks a nonrefundable

‘who-am-i-and where?

why so starved for time?’

 

or maybe not.

 

fussy people

who appraise croissants

and the nuances of coffee beans,

who crave the latest chic and surgical skins.

lucky people

who squat on porcelain

to steal a moment to ponder--

or simply not to think at all

about whatever else

is going to be.

 

 

 

 ===========

6/21.... changed last line.

 

society

kicking me in the head

gotta do things fast

tik tik tik tik tik tik tik tok

tok tok tok tok talk talk

talk talk talk talk

cannot be free to

find a moment where

i just feel

awe for the miracles

really just feel

not just act  

or watch

or copy

from that screen.

gotta write write write write

write write write write write.

for while it plays the game,

it is my only way.

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

 

Quote from an Interview with Marci Shore

 

“When John McCain chose Sarah Palin, I felt like she was a character right out of the 1930s.” The Republican vice-presidential candidate lived, Shore thought, “in a totally fictitious world … not constrained by empirical reality.” Someone like that, Shore believed, could really rile up a mob.

And then came Trump.

Once again, it was the lack of truthfulness that terrified her. “Without a distinction between truth and lies, there is no grounding for a distinction between good and evil,” she says. Lying is essential to totalitarianism; she understood that from her scholarly research. But while Hitler and Stalin’s lies were in the service of some vast “eschatological vision”, the post-truth dishonesty of a Trump or Putin struck her as different. The only relevant criterion for each man is whether this or that act is “advantageous or disadvantageous to him at any given moment. It’s pure, naked transaction.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/why-a-professor-of-fascism-left-the-us-the-lesson-of-1933-is-you-get-out 

Poem: Overcast

 

Overcast

 

white sun,

color-drained bay,

overcast cerement,

ribs of shade,

 

and the seagulls toss,

gone bits of stars

caught in old breath.

 

foam

flees a chant of waves,

sand the skin

of all that’s shed,

 

our lives

brief winks

in the play of the ocean,

raindrops like sex,

 

and the treasures we crave,

day in and out,

scuttle shiny as crabs

over slick black rocks.

 

philosphers are oars,

boats skulls,

buddha one fisherman,

jesus another,

and witches three.

 

 

 

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

6/16/25 ... added "slick"

6/15/25 ... mods

Short Essay: Heavy Cost

 Evil has a heavy cost.  I don't mean people are evil, not unless they are soulless leaders, whose whole life revolves around crushing everyone and everything into capital to serve their devourous ego.  I mean people get caught up in movements that are based on hate, fear and division, a trap of deceit requiring the acceptance of vast, vast lies, the sort of Big Lie that Hilter refers to in Mein Kampf.

We won't survive another wave of fascism. Or Stalinism.  Both Hitler and Stalin committed genocide, killing millions of people.  World War 2 saw nuclear weapons dropped.  The country that dropped them, the USA, is now supplying Israel with weapons -- weapons being used to wage war to inflame the world, moving from Gaza to Lebanon and now into Iran.  Israel is also using US weapons for ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza.

The evils of WWII are back.  And the threat of WWIII.  But too many people have been pulled into a spiral of fear around a black hole generated by the bottomless insecurity of demagogues.  There is a way out of the pull, but I doubt  we will find it.  Which makes our descent all the more tragic.

The answer is simple, but the solution is impossible.

Light has come into the world, but the people preferred darkness, for their deeds were evil (John 3:19)

(The Bible is a great source book of wisdom, even when one is not Christian)

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