Quote: Boastful talk about slaughter ...

 ====

Boastful talk about slaughter is as old as war itself. “The wheels of my war chariot,” bragged one Assyrian king, “were bespattered with filth and blood. With the bodies of their warriors, I filled the plain, like grass.” But America’s founders asserted universal principles that should make such an attitude unthinkable. If you believe not only that all men are created equal but also that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, then war cannot be justified as a pure display of power and dominance …

Power does not grow out of the barrel of a gun, cruelty is not the same as strength, and a politics built on such ideas promises ruin, delusion about the limits of our power and a betrayal of the promise of our founding. -- Phil Klay

        https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/opinion/trump-iran-war-memes.html 

====

Poem: Misstep

 

 

Misstep

 

a tote of ants

swells over the desert flesh.

jags of shredded wing and torn ort

vain as crowns.

 

eons have trained them

into a chain gang of riots,

lent them the surety

of a frenzied magnetic field.

 

one lack-of-mind

ignores all concept.

one heart diffusive

revels in arterial lust.

 

the ants have eaten the eyes

of a bricolage of fallen creatures,

have taken the lessons

back to the gulch --

 

that time-broken oracle

of mangled strata,

that great original unforgiving

insatiable bowel. 

 

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

3/22/26 ... changed a word and a line

Poem: Hwy 15

 

Hwy 15

 

the sound of breeze,

then meteors encased

in a growl.

 

this is the afterlife.

cars scamper to shriek quietly

across a curdled plain.

 

cars,

 

they are magic carpets,

but only for sabotaged wishes

of prisoners hungry in metal beds.

 

prisoners,

each  a drop of flesh

on a bleeding line of orange glare,

wardened

 

by a relentless vampire sun.

 

and the Mojave just stands there,

holding up the slink of the 15

like a girl offering her wrist.

 

 

 

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

3/17/26 ... changed a prep

used "girl" and "her" instead of "boy" or "boi"  and "he" ... personal choice, I guess, based on more girls/women committing suicide by slash in the culture I live in.  On the crisis hotline, I talked to women and girls who did cutting.   Felt more authentic and engaged to me.   I could've used the generic "teen" and "their"  ... but that sounded detached.

Poem: Old School

 

Old School

 

spoiled dreams of teary patients,

unleashed vitriol, sexual or

infantile, and such exceeding

parental hate --

 

it gnaws on his own defenses

to break theirs, chafes his super-ego

to endure the labyrinths

of melancholic counterfeit --

 

lie after lie,

webs of tentacles which

tense as tight as they can

to deflect the agony of insight;

to shield the tender ravages

of some wrecked childhood,

cradled dear and fulsome,

deep inside memory’s womblike

nest.

 

the Id,

always a demonic glare

from its half-psychotic eyes,

which never reach the surface,

even when the last mask falls away,

dissolved and desolate.

 

how do i see that glare? he wonders.

 

it’s as if a pus of evil

crammed the sinuses of the human brain:

accumulated cannibalisms and

much worse perversions,

lascivious and incarnadine,

the whole of it striving to pretend

behind teddy bears and lullabies.

 

is every desire so retrograde?  he wonders.

do the curved plates of the human skull,

of necessity beyond cure,

embody some thorny bassinet?

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

Standard theory of Freud, still used to this day

Poem: Edge of Freeze

 

Edge of Freeze

 

moths flit to rake

a pillaged moon’s embers.

 

such splintered wings,

threadbare glints in stardust,

 

it’s hard to see

what keeps them aloft,

 

swing-dancing so late,

zealous through the night.

 

some fey alembic, surely,

of trick and tide,

 

seductive yet monstrous,

obscure of chemistry,

 

must stoke their brute vigor,

the delirious squander.

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

 

 

3/9/26 ... changed some stuff... changed another word later

The Primal Irony

 

===

 

The primal irony.  The freedom of brain plasticity can be wielded to forge a cage of dullness inside our own heads.  - Uuva Viperbless, Petal of the Passionance Covens

===

 

From my novel, a Future of Angels (unpublished)

Quote, Nick Allison, shunning friends and family over Trump

 ====

…  Friends who finally stopped returning calls. Siblings who no longer talk politics, or sometimes don’t talk at all. Parents that people still love but can no longer pretend to understand. A racist uncle who gets blocked on social media. Thanksgiving dinners that get skipped. None of it has been easy. Walking away from people you care about rarely is. But again and again, the conclusion sounds the same: at some point, continuing the relationship required excusing things they could no longer excuse.  And that’s OK. …Doors swing both ways for a reason — sometimes they need to be closed. We don’t have to compromise our ethics or excuse beliefs that cause real harm, no matter how close we once were to someone. Even if they were family.  - Nick Allison

https://ca.yahoo.com/style/asked-libertarian-friend-trump-response-033102704.html

====

Poem: Stare

 

Stare

 

dawn circles onyx,

 

twin pools brimmed

by ancestors yanked back up

on ladders of lightning.

 

the fallen to rejoice,

cradled rapturous,

darkness now heaven sent:

 

a veil, rampant in its 

relevations of justice,

blithe to uncurtain

 

the fallacy of death.

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

Poem: No Clear Path

 

No Clear Path

 

a fracas of leaves tickles the sun

with googols of young green.

 

shadows flicker and sliver

through laced cemeteries of

 

fallen decayed heroes,

coursed by beetles which seem on fire.

 

greyblue puddles of lichen, inedible,

dry and flake on shabby stones.

 

a single arrow of light

hits a pine tree right in the chest,

 

impaling an amber bull’s-eye,

sticky heart turned to gold.

 

who will earn its love?

an ant, a moth, a squirrel,

 

some chickadee?

 

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

Jerry Brewer, NYT on US Men's Hockey accepting Trump's Invitation

 

From the NYT article, “The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team won gold — and then lost the room”:

 

It would be a copout for me to blame only the environment that they must navigate, to rant about how everything is poisonously political now, to lament the impossibility of sustained joy in a culture that incubates outrage. These are all factors, but let’s not infantilize this team. These are men who thrilled a nation and rocked the world, and as adults, they need to be more savvy

That goes for every prominent team in sports. It’s nice, even expected, to be feted as a winner. But who’s celebrating you – and why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it – matters more …

Jerry Brewer, Senior Writer, New York Times

Ethical analysis of the US Men’s Hockey Team accepting Donald Trump’s invitation to the White House