Poem: Waterless

 

Waterless

 

a mile means nothing,

swallowed by a dry riverbed.

fish in the stones,

so it has always been:

the dead swim petrified

in waterless water.

and those false angels, the stars,

swim the oasis of night.

but the day is a mermaid,

she who won’t let me scream,

who stays nearby, blurry

through many happy, infinite

somewhat real encounters.

i remember, even so,

that it is not possible

to make love in the hot sand.

dunes aren’t tables or beds,

can’t hold an epitaph

like those clay tablet of old

safe somewhere in a museum.

there is no clay, however,

here in this dessicated contrivance, this

death-rich diorama

which those of us too weary to be wary

still sought to avoid.

but it will end.

such is the fate of archers

who shoot too-fast prey

from too-fast chariots,

burning the wheels to survive,

while they crush the bloom

of long-gone flowers

risen from a devil’s bread of stones.

 

NYT op-ed, "The US is no longer the conductor ..."

 

Trump has decided that the U.S. is no longer the conductor. The U.S. is now a player in the orchestra, a big-bully player. He came to power with this slogan, “Make America Great Again.” But what he’s doing, basically, is making America little at last. Because the idea is now: We are going to make America a nation-state like others. It’s no longer this kind of top power, this hegemon who is hovering around the world. And since it has this very, very large amount of power, it can pretty much do what it wants. Which, of course, the adventure in Iran is revealing that not to be the case.

            --Rahmane Idrissa

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/14/opinion/usa-decline-trump-global-powers.html

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A fair historical analysis is that 11/5, the day Trump was elected for a second term (November 5, 2025) is one of the worst days in all of human history.  It was a day that tilted the world.  It de-stabilized the post-WWII order at a time when tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are posed to go off.  The President recently ranted that he would "wipe out an entire civilization" in regard to Iran.    He has effectively blocked any world coordination on global warming by calling it a "giant scam."  He refuses to even attempt to regulate AI, when even experts in the field are crying out about the dangers.  Apparently, in about three months, AI will have the ability to self-replicate, house itself throughout the internet, and create 'worms' that break all sorts of programs [1]).  The recent Lancet Report cites "AI creation of biological weapons" as one of the two current apocalyptic threats to our survival as a species, alongside nuclear winter/famine [2].

This idiotic man has brought us to the edge of the end.  I've vented about this before, if you're interested [3].  I can't overstate my anger at the people who supported him and thereby cursed us with 11/5.  I channel this anger into writing and poetry.  But I struggle to talk to people who are Trumpers.  I have cut 'friends of friends' out of my life, including half the family of a friend of mine, people I used to joke around with and tolerate.  The craven, pitiable Republican politicians should go down in history as exemplars of lickspittle gutter-diving.  Of cesspool toadyism.  I can't come up with enough labels of shame to properly describe them.

Students of human psychology take note: 11/5 is a civilizational example of our capacity for incredible idiocy.  However, we are also capable of creating better and better culture.  We have ethically improved our ethos and it can keep going.  In effect, it's a fight between Good and Evil.  Susan Neiman has made a solid case for using the term "Evil," which she presented recently in a condensed quote-worthy book:  Call It Evil:  Understanding the Trump Era.    

See also my various essays on this blog about ethics as technology, including empirically verifiable definitions of Good and Evil grounded in psychology, science and critical thinking.

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Footnotes

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/research/self-replicating-ai

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/oct/11/nuclear-war-and-malicious-use-of-ai-threaten-end-of-humanity-by-2100-says-lancet-assessment

[3] https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/10/one-of-worst-days-in-human-history.html

Quote, Nuclear famine and AI-created biological weapons

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"Malicious use of AI, including bioweapons, and nuclear conflict with nuclear famine carry risks of extinction in the next 75 years," the [Lancet] report said, adding that while their likelihood remained low, they had the potential to end humanity in the case of nuclear conflict by injecting enough particles into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight and cause famine, or via AI-created biological weapons ... "The scale of harm, should they be realised, would inflict an apocalypse on humanity."

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/oct/11/nuclear-war-and-malicious-use-of-ai-threaten-end-of-humanity-by-2100-says-lancet-assessment

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These god-like weapons (nuclear and biological) require the utmost maturity.   However, upstream from such necessary wisdom is another grave problem:  the reckless, myopic dictators that our primitive culture enthrones.  These petty parasites value ignorance of the masses over reasonable assessment.  It serves their short-sighted, macho egos.  You could argue that the greatest threat to our future, then, is our propensity to put such mentally disordered, thrasymachian men in power.  

The President of the USA, Donald Trump, has effectively quashed the world's ability to mitigate global warming.  He has said he will not regulate AI.  He makes nuclear-level threats, such as his remark, directed at Iran, to "wipe out an entire civilization." 

Can we educate people to spot such dangerous, deluded leaders, these 'strongmen,' and to not vote for them?  Absolutely.  I've written a blog essay on this very subject (The Apotheosis Problem):

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/09/essay-apotheosis-problem.html

Note: Leaders such as Trump and Putin are not 'strong.'  Psychologically and ethically, they are the weakest sort.  They are parasites--I call them enervators--who suck the vibrancy out of a country to bloat their own quantity-obsessed (money, power, praise) egos.

 

Poem: Unseen Ghost

Unseen Ghost

 

she glares,

a flame without red,

swollen yet empty,

ache on a stoic ember,

frizz on a lost pyre.

 

screams weak as lisps

crawl from her and sidle

under the rug.  no one hears

except the family’s

irish setter.

 

but she’s there,

stubborn in a crack,

wound size of salt

in a dust-speck sea.

 

once cutely pungent

now bitter as mold,

her grin only chimes

in a grandmother clock.

 

only the dog sees her

glossing the finial of a poster bed.

she fumes like an aftermath,

a roving quark, endangered

in mahogany.

 

wastelands of damask and lace.

 

every few years a real person

brushes against her thigh.

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

This poem was originally published in Rivets in 2010.  I am re-publishing my work here, trying to consolidate, as well as publishing new pieces.  

Poem: Hamlet of Masks

 

Hamlet of Masks

 

to create or not?

to suffer the shames and

stings from blooms of realm

below a numb-bound surface;

or to abdicate truth and feeling,

plaster a bland fear

over the trek of Veracity’s hunt?

such is the pivotal itch,

hinged on the closure or consciousness  

of unreadable dreams.

which may come:

a time shorn hell more cutting than

than the dull shear of clocks,

or a revel of lovely purpose,

shucking the fluff and

staid serenity of ordered sheep?

this is the riddle, this mystagogue,

whose eyes face to mock me,

loomed in the mirror,

if i dare raise my overgone skull

and ponder such contours and cavities,

the dizzy tunnels and glims which carve out beds,

seductive yet treacherous of play,

affairs most misty of motive,

when i struggle to ride them

or circumvent. 

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

10/12 ... eds... not my style...

10/9/26 .. replaced "would they" with "to"

10/8/26 ... flipped positions of "numb" and "staid"

10/7/26 eds.. difficult vocab issues, phrasing 

 Pleasantville-ish

Poem: Don Giovanni in Hell

 

Don Giovanni In Hell

 

i have been summoned

by what i could be,

a sweet torment

jutting on an apex.

 

and so i climb,

tangoing with a skirt

of weeds—cholla, nettle

and sage—thirsty lovers

part Fury and Norn,

flexing as if their thighs

were rungs.

 

i climb naked,

flecked by bits of wasps, parched cocoons,

and tattered nests.

sandstone crumbles

when i twist to scratch,

like a bitter sphinx.

 

somehow i’ll outlast

all these femme fatales.

the thrill comes from almost failing—

and when i reach the top

lava explodes.

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This poem was originally published in the Monongahela Review in 2010.  I am republishing poems and adding new ones all the time to this blog, consolidating my work.   If a poem is republished, there's a brief statement, like this one, beneath it.  Otherwise, it is new.  

A 'new' poem, however, probably means I wrote it off an old draft.  I have thousands of drafts from the past, some far distant, which I resurrect and work with, like armatures.   Some very few poems I wrote from scratch recently.  An example is "broken on the floor."

Poem: Medium Drunk

 

Medium Drunk

 

cusps of light,

fluid above mahogany.

a gyrate of glows,

cyclops drained of the cruel

to inhale the room

with illusory whorls

of twisting bronze.

 

fascinate

on the spherical strum

of rainbow’s refractive strings.

could it be that the past itself

blossoms in quadrilles

of spectral kaleidoscopes?

 

sail along

with yardarms of spectra,

riggings of glisten, rudders of flux.

soar on foamy sparkles

lucid in feathery wakes

to kiss the boundless charms

of unfastened horizons.

 

again and again, far more

than drama could ever conceive,

and yet then abrupt to fade,

the adventures flare and glister:

galleons aplenty, phoenixes on wing,

siphoned away

by the perimeters of worlds.

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crystal ball theme .. some lines seem familiar.. maybe from another poem  ("Crystal Ball"?)

double entendre.  might change it.  or not.

Quote Susan Faludi, Barbie vs Odysseus

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Among the many afflictions distorting our current politics, one has gone unrecognized: We’re in the midst of a zero-sum struggle over which gender gets to own the hero’s journey … Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Mr. Nolan’s “Odyssey” are the same objects with different shapes … The hero’s struggle resonates so universally because we’re all up against monsters of one sort or another …  That’s at stake in the zeitgeist shift between “Barbie” in 2023 and Mr. Nolan’s 2026 he-man travelogue: Which sex gets to own that ennobling elixir? … It’s no longer Menelaus fighting Paris for the possession of Helen — it’s Menelaus versus Helen. Or Odysseus versus Barbie.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/opinion/culture/heroine-journey-odyssey-barbie.html 

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Brilliant analysis by Faludi.  But if it is women vs men for ownership of the stage, as she frames it, then we are doomed by a mentality of dominance and war.  The Barbie movie is more about women being heard and getting fair and equal voice than it is about a "zero-sum" battle to dominate men.  This is brought out, say, in the immortal monologue by America Ferrera.

It starts out this way:

It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.

You can read the full statement, which took a long time to craft, here:

https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a44640422/america-ferrera-full-barbie-monologue/

The Barbie movie is about advancing the collective consciousness of civilization to a higher level of ethics technology (see my many blog essays on this, like Lightcraft, 5/25).  Whereas Odysseus is a status quo myth, and does not advance our ethics technology. 

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Poem: Moonrise

 

Moonrise

 

waves clutch and snatch,

but can’t down the shine.

clouds, stealthy as squid,

cling with furlongs of suckers;

but no sea, not even the underbelly

of a wolf with fangs of cirri,

loping through the night,

can swallow again

what has already been.

not now.  not this reach,

these canters which shimmer

to outride.   only patches

of fur left.  a tentacle wisp.

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

Guardian quote, "Digital pathway to hell ... "

 

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At last census count, 342 million people live in the United States. Of that population, between 2 and 3 million watch cable news in a given day. The vast majority of those people watch Fox News. And the majority of that majority is over the age of 54.

"I spent a full hour watching Trump TV. It’s a digital pathway to hell"
            -- Dave Schilling, The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/27/trump-tv-cable-news 

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