Poem: Sims

 

Sims

 

it was easy to feel ankle-chained

to the neighborhood.

its transistor-like fences,

and pomeranian-sized lawns--

 

as if the will

of the residents suffered a hex. 

only fishbowls with their blobs of poi

trending nonlinear.

 

how to find voice

among cathodes and laminates?

no Muse braved this straight-laced

stratified oasis, except

 

once when a coyote

wormed under a construction fence.

 

wakes of worry

followed the beast’s deviant slouch,

fawning over every plump

cosseted cat.

 

no one could ever truly leave.

escape was circular.

they always returned, became

their own replaceable part.

 

women took up

the software of the smile again.

men shook hands as if gears had meshed,

a fingerworks of pawls.

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This poem was originally published in Ithaca Lit in 2014.  I am going to start re-publishing poems on this blog.  Why?  A big part of it is the end of the USA as I knew it, and my concern that I will be incarcerated.  I am, too, in my 60s, and could die of natural causes, exacerbated by grief and anxiety at the loss of the democracy and freedom I knew all my life.

Poem: Unseen Tears

Unseen Tears

 

can’t be scrubbed with what’s fresh,

or shed in a church,

 

or unhitched from a loom of memory,

where they shuttle sure

 

as fate.

 

sad dimples swallow them,

tarnishing the eke

 

of on-the-edge irises.

 

they are jaded nutrients,

little packets of pump

 

in neck and fore veins,

 

milligrams of heavy, heavy iron,

mined from brittle cheekbones

 

which tend to turn away,

chasing after the dark side

 

of the moon.

 

 

 

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

Poem: Far Gone

 

Far Gone

 

slight tilts of wind

sculpt easy drifts

when my palms are feathers,

so i imagine, perched 

above a boulder, not on it,

and so cannot fall.

 

no death here,

for to soar as i am,

i must have died already.

there is no weight,

peace all around, depthless.

celestials in a pageantry of blue.

 

so high above,

my own antics now minuscule,

i forget about competition.

none of the fussy worries

of ego or money.

 

it becomes all too natural to ask why,

and then not to care.

to dwell, instead, on a gift

which no one in the

valley of asphalt down below 

can see.

 

it isn’t fair.  how my urban life

is so easily destroyed,

doomed now to watch the

criss-cross sluice of shiny cars,

swineherded as they are by the anxious rich,

never again to believe.

 

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

7/31 ... mods all day, off and on

Poem: Rain Universe

 

Rain Universe

 

can anyone count the worlds born

in howl and sizzle now falling

among shoves of wind to smash

and be gone, utterly gone?

they were too quick for me.

i sought the spell of hue and ghost within

the spheres.  but the speed, it was

terrible.  it would take a microscope

and a camera that magnified

until oblivion became sane, a camera

that sliced time faster than

the scribbles of a mad god filling

the sky with water.  only then maybe

would there be a song in a raindrop,

a glint that gave back the bard

i sent to find the dreamt artifact,

a gleaming blinding jewel of an eye. 

this eye that would not care about eons.

something in its gaze would last.

the war of horizontal and vertical

would become mere lines.  the faster

that worlds fell and died the stronger

it would get.  as the instant of its

life shrank it would grow to encompass

the storm, leaving it far behind,

as a tide leaves a cowry on the shore.

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

This poem was originally published in Blue Unicorn.   I’m not sure of the date due to poor record keeping on my part.  Maybe 2006?  I am going to start re-publishing poems published in the past.  Why?  A big part of it is the potential end of the US as I knew it, and my concern that I will be incarcerated.  I am, too, in my 60s, and could die of natural causes, exacerbated by grief and anxiety at the loss of the country I knew all my life.

 

Expect more poems like this, and so a bit of a different poetic voice--who I was ten or more years ago.  Probably smarter.  And saner.

(I will point out, for every poem I published back then, there were many, many rejected poems.  I still work with those old drafts, trying to wrestle them into shape.  And most of the poems I've posted over the past five or six years on this blog (2021-2026) are of such a nature.)

Poem: Highs and Lows

 

Highs and Lows

 

mercury or zinc, servant or throne,

which races or oozes inside me?

am i cellar or pinnacle?

do sparks, wind-tossed petals,

whirl from pinwheels of torn sunflowers?

will this maze-ful abacus,

squirmy yet sluggish,

incinerate from beads of burning thought?

 

of burned-out death?

 

should i have never

exhumed my krakens?

these short-circuited galaxies,

which ramble in gardens of blossom and rot,

far through marled or astral earth,

only to be pruned--fiercely, hungrily--

left to hang in a breath--

by novas and blackholes?

 

 

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

 

Poem: Inferno

 

Inferno

 

to heal the wound

he had to find a crypt

in a hurt place.

had to dig

through silt and shit

and childish striae,

and not cripple

the ladders in his pain.

 

there would be massacres

in written bones,

and nightmarish mineshafts.

tears would bleed,

make love to lies

worse than the original ache.

 

he would have to swim

like a darter that became

a bat in the pulse of 

an oryx inside a tiger.

no Valkyrie, no Beatrice,

no golden thread.  there

would be cannibals that

bit groins, smallpox boiling

in his daughter’s canthus.

 

there would be red ants

in the coffers of his love,

and other worst fears

he could not survive.

 

he took out a piece of his heart

and dangled it down trapdoors

as demon bait.

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

This poem was originally published in Danse Macabre in 2012.   I am going to start re-publishing poems published in the past on this blog.  Why?  A big part of it is the potential end of the US as I knew it, and my concern that I will be incarcerated.  I am, too, in my 60s, and could die of natural causes, exacerbated by grief and anxiety at the loss of the country I knew all my life.

Expect more poems like this, and so a bit of a different poetic voice--who I was ten or more years ago.

====

Additionally, on this particular poem, it is in the vein of a shamanic awakening to the spirit world.  But it is also about primal, ethical agony.

Quote, getting away with genocide

I’m a Scholar of Genocide. We’re Entering a Terrifying New Era.

 ====

What we have seen unfold in Gaza, where Israel stands accused in the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, appears to portend a new future for the crime.

It is a future in which other nations or leaders may have an incentive to pursue genocidal policies knowing they will not only get away with murder but may even benefit from it. It is a future in which the countries and international organizations that had been committed to stopping and punishing genocide may give license to its recurrence.

=====

Omar Bartov, Professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/opinion/israel-gaza-palestinians-genocide.html

Quote, Era of Dumbing

====

We live in a time of mind-gamery, the Era of Dumbing, which is rife with devious denial of insidious intent.  Not only do most people not know this, they have been trained to not want to know. 

====

From my unpublished book, Lightcraft:  ethics as technology

Poem: Last

 

Last

illimitable blue,

the eagle takes wing,

somewhere off a cliff,

the ghost of its mother crying.

 

below, a busy man with a hammer

looks up with eyes that fondle the bird.

but it glides on,

out over a pale bay

where draggers shrimp the seabed

with nets of underwater claws. 

 

the eagle veers onward,

off toward a succulent sun.

soon its wings darken to glints,

blending with the warmth

of forever.

 

 

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

NYT quote on the unethical conformity of the TV industry

 ====

Our president does what he wants, where and when and to whomever he wants, and the cowed and craven set of politicians who make up his flock just go along for the ride. It seems more and more as if we’re living in a burn-it-all-down age of greed, mayhem and corruption.

You might never know this from watching prestige TV … There was one show, however, that hit this head-on …

=====

David Colman

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/19/opinion/emmys-the-boys-amazon-homelander-snub.html