Poem: Romeo Reads Himself

 

Romeo Reads Himself

 

blurs of crushed ants,

black bodies arranged

in rows, he’s dizzy

from the jumble

of their mandibles,

wants to leave

this puny cemetery,

 

but his eyes settle

on the corpses

as they resolve into slivers

of what he shouldn’t grasp

but does—

 

fancy sentences

that inject ache

then melt away,

like syringes of ice—

 

page after page

until the poison between the periods

no longer torments,

 

becomes cold water

he has swam—

the more he reads the closer he gets

to tragedy,

 

but it makes him young

to share the plight of a hero

or the hero’s lover—

 

it seems she loves him too,

that he is what’s written

for her to praise.

 

maybe the words

are what he is, and she, too,

 

a product of genius

that wrote this play then left,

 

leaving the characters

to love and die

forever.

 

 

 

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This poem was originally published in Merge Poetry in 2006.  I have started republishing poems on this blog due to a sense of reaching my end.  It could be WW3, it could be lack of healthcare, it could be AI's apparent threat to take over the internet itself, and so on.  That said, I am trying to live each day fully and have had a rich and full life.  Despite much travail and confusion, I kept being honest while seeking answers, especially continuing to 'Know Myself' in the sense of the ancient oracles.  It led me down a path.  And I would do it again.  

When a psychotic leader ...

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When a psychotic, such as a malignant narcissist, rises to become the leader of society, it establishes a verdict of psychosis for society itself. 

            --Khyrina Vyyrheart, Soulful Solutions

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(fictional quote related to my novel, A Future of Angels (unpublished) 

Poem: Trying To Be Dead

 

Trying To Be Dead

 

who wasn’t dead or trying to be dead?

the load was easier.  less heavier.

no tears like in crystal balls

which foretold the many ways you

would fail to try.

 

you could be a lot of things

in the quest for decomposure.

 

you could be harsh, fast and erotic,

or sedative and trinket-played. 

you could be apron-dutiful

or march to the gun.

you could blow servile in the castle

which forced the original split

while standing erect

over those who serve you.

 

you could pray

to the god of gone nomads who

wandered deserts like sheep and goats.

and you could choose which side

of the flag to worship--fake white, black-and-

blue or carpet red.  but

 

it wouldn’t be the first time

 

you wanted to be exorcised,

the numerical sacrifice

of your identification card:

how it stored your computed behavioral soul

in various assimilated, acculturated

games. 

 

 

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9/12/26 ... added "fake," changed last word to "games" and subbed "played" with "trinket"

9/10/26 ... "blow was a typo (freudian slip?) ... I am going to keep it in for now (forever?)

decomposure = play on decompose (death), breaking out of conformist composure, etc.

less heavier  = always oppressive no matter what

Quote by Eva Umlauf, Auschwitz survivor

 

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Eva Umlauf, a survivor of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp and president of the International Auschwitz Committee, was dismayed.

"As Holocaust survivors, we never would have thought it possible that a far-right party would once again take its place as ​the largest parliamentary group in a German state legislature," she said. "This election result frightens us!"

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/far-right-afd-courts-conservative-support-after-historic-german-state-election-2026-09-07/

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Poem: Quest

 

Quest

 

day one

 

every fray of rot a tress.

the afterlife is here, right here,

this understory of vestiges.

life itself is entombed.

and yet they all continue to feed,

from sprig to trunk.

still, everyone knows

the dead lurk in the humus.

 

day two

 

more terrible than ghosts,

i could peel noses or pare lips,

ignoring the pleas

of the faces in birch bark,

or a toadstool’s lament.

it’s far too lucullan,

too awful what is demanded of us.

i ... 

i am Saturn.

day three

 

the spruce are vicious gossips,

passive-aggressive of hiss and creak.

and yet they are not the damned.

 

day four

 

to rule the damned

is to be what they have been,

what they hate still

and yet also now envy--

and will serve if only for the chance

at a sprinkle, a fleet moment  

of dawnish light.

 

day five

 

i could walk forever here,

among the corpses of moss

which lack all flesh,

far under the callous towers

of a few overlording oaks

and never seek

to return to this place, if i left,

‘in a while.’

 

 

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Poem: Midnight On the Bridge

 

Midnight On the Bridge

 

near a dunce-cap cone of light

an occasional car

slingshots down bottomless

highway,

 

the drivers not urgent

to find out how roofs

fell to populate the earth:

how some noble ideal had crowded itself

and shattered.

 

a mind is a molecule,

the city thick with them.  so many swarm

that only collective purpose

combines to matter.

 

the chemical pulls

that bond us in grids

are also the traps that encase us

alone.

 

you can write about it on paper, on your arm,

in blood, or into the ghost-ocean of a screen.

god did this for a reason,

you could state. 

 

but the ekg

that the angels watch,

while listening to prayers,

is the New York Stock Exchange.

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This poem was originally published in Halfway Down the Stairs in 2014.  I am republishing past poems for I feel it could all end soon.  I am old. I am experiencing grief at the steep decline of the USA.  My heart literally twangs, now and then.  And I have no money or insurance to see a doctor.  

 

Regarding the poems

 

I have a love/hate relationship with my poems.  My lover is in there, somewhere, and she’s probably the only one I am ever going to have, and she remains as satisfying as she is elusive.

Poem: Coachwhip

 

Coachwhip

 

elevate through grass

like a flexible wand,

you supple ripple,

 

cast your spell on me,

until i too dance so well

in the liquid of a field.

 

coil within my mindheart-sense

you lithe creese

till we spiral together,

 

twin galaxy sleek of jewel,

onyx, pale and red,

when we twist

 

to devour and become

again and again and again

the throb of our own tails.

 

 

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creese = kris

ouroboros theme

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masticophis_flagellum_flagellum

NYT quote, "Dead rats all around"

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In Albert Camus’s postwar novel “The Plague,” when dead rats appear on the streets of the Algerian city of Oran, and people fall ill with a mysterious disease, the local government and most of the citizens ignore the signs until it is too late … Today, there are dead rats all around.

Margaret Macillan
"A New World Order Is Coming.  We Aren't Ready."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/opinion/world-order-international-relations.html

====

Poem: Thoughts Of a Fly

 

Thoughts Of a Fly

 

the bumpers and slots

only pretend to let me steer.

 

i’m a ricochet

in a mischievous pinball show.

 

loops of strength

flirt with stretching velocity.

 

one lust-fed weekend zooms to enfold

the crisscrossing haze of time.

 

the game lacks horizon.

complex tumblers fail to resist.

 

i open the gate

everyone else thought tricky--

 

sure, agile, indefati-

gable and smooth--

 

to conquer on a rollercoaster

many mountains of feast.

 

Jacob’s rungs loom

in a honeycomb of prisms:

 

i ascend through acceleration,

through vector, through fraying yips.

 

a last green-fired blaze

of tensor and orgasm

 

burns away my crimes.

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This poem was originally published in Crack the Spine in 2013.  I am republishing past poems for I feel it could all end soon.  I am old. I am experiencing grief at the steep decline of the USA.  My heart literally twangs, now and then.  And I have no money or insurance to see a doctor.  Getting medical help is not a right in my country.  You have to earn it.  And, frankly, I am tired of jumping through bureaucratic hoops, like a circus pony, to get money to see a doctor from the government.  "You want to see a doctor?  First, jump through this hoop.  And then this one.  And then maybe we will pay for you to get medical help.  Maybe.  Down the road."