broken on the floor. what are all these dots in the parquetry, impossible to see when standing tall and pretending to be something able to have a conscience which doesn’t rot from misuse or drive me to lose everything. so i fall, down in a mess, and suddenly now see all the little cracks and cuts which have glared for so long from the underbelly of the shine. they lurk somewhere in the alphabet of my heart, these symbols which never found shape, desperate still, on the brink of nothing, yet ripe with hope, gazing up from the gone.

 

broken on the floor.

what are all these dots

in the parquetry, impossible

to see when standing tall

and pretending to be

something

able to have a conscience

which doesn’t rot from misuse

or drive me to lose

everything.

so i fall, down in a mess,

and suddenly now see

all the little cracks and cuts

which have glared for so long

from the underbelly

of the shine.

they lurk somewhere

in the alphabet of my heart,

these symbols

which never found shape,

desperate still, on the brink of

nothing, yet ripe with hope,

gazing up from the gone.

 

=======

Dream Quote

 

=====

 

“I don’t think anybody who is supporting the USA’s blatantly racist agenda believes in God or heaven.  If they did, they would be terrified of going to hell.”--  Angelica Fixtrous

 

=====

Random fiction-character stuff from when I am dreaming or half-asleep.

Poem: Sucked

Sucked

 

the gully had lost its tongue of water,

could not sing from broken staves

with clefs of torn bark. 

long gone hooves of whipped horses

sweated the bed in haunted cacophony;

had stabbed it with their dead stampedes.

even now a few tail-eating shoes

fretted like rusty knives.

 

the only liquid was a mousy dram

snagged in the night by a cloaking owl,

or fanged from a faceless rabbit.

heatwaves chewed

on what could not be sucked,

and the jumping cholla reached high,

sihouetted kin of a crucifix,

praising their golgotha.

 

shadows outflanked a coyote,

unrolled a slow sarcophagus

over a sprinkle of paralyzed lizards.

the one cloud looked down,

bulbous gavel of an absent judge;

or the rudder of a helmsman

absconded to the pub, unable to score,

a carouse more wisp than teat.

 

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

6/5/26 ... eds all day ...  

“Cylindropuntia fulgida … possesses many common names, though the most common one is "jumping cholla", which comes from the ease with which the stems detach from the main plant when brushed, "jumping" onto passing animals.”

"tail-eating"  = ouroboros = visual symbol for a horseshoe, symbol for desert, etc.

Poem: House Cat

 

House Cat

 

the pet on the couch

wears no clothes.

it walks under beds and could

through dark woods.

 

it never seeks money,

purrs in content and often

gets touched (compared

to my lack of hugs).

 

it doesn’t grasp war

or addictions or obsessions

or adulteries.

no ghosts seem to haunt it,

 

now anyways.

 

long ago, it was neutered,

its siblings perhaps discarded.

it fled the feral, meowed and

meowed at a random door

 

and stayed.

 

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

Poem: Marketplace

 

Marketplace

 

never but today,

a crossroads of tomb-shaped stalls

with poppies all over them,

floating in a shiny, colorful sky of

packages shaped like crazed genitals.

 

and the carts and drays which clop and  

bubble with gourds and greens

and cascades of apples and ginger and

onions and bananas and sassafras and

all manner of basted snake-oil sheens of

pricetags shimmery.

 

and the dulcimers blooming.

and the barkers extolling.

and the children as shrill and frantic

as oversized parakeets.

 

and the razzle-dazzle of the

fortunetellers and jesters,

show bears and prancers,

casuists and priests.

 

and the burros horselaughing.

and the long wet dog tongues

whiny near the knees of fishmongers

and butchers.  so many

 

barely hidden, spicy needs

under the saunter of chaps and

straps and juts of dresses and chests and

so much sexualized confidence

riding piggyback on a finagle of finances--

squadrons of flag-tongues aflutter,

battling it out with gusto amid a fray of

happenstance and haggle.

 

and the ripe underworld

of envy and secrets and hate so red in

eyeballs yet often coaxed forth by the alehouses.

and the smear of pig guts on aprons.

and the procession of fops and tramps and

wenches and lasses and urchins and middle classers

bolstered by a pale of police.

 

and the savory and yet also sewer scents.

and the gilt wheels relentless to roll and

crush the stiff rats of yesterday’s poison.

and the loud calling from the street corners

of prophets and gigsters and

criers and hawkers and officials

who decree and declare.  and

the lack of thought and sanity and

the insatiable greed whipping it all,

the merciless gait.

 

 

 

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

6/3/26 removed a word

6/2/26 ... fixed typos .. changed a word

Quote from "This Is How to Defeat an Autocrat"

 ====

Hungary’s economy is a mess, but post-election polling by Median, an organization that had predicted election results with uncanny accuracy, shows that voters saw corruption as the most important issue by far. Asked why they thought Orban had lost, 49 percent cited corruption, and only 18 percent thought it was the “worsening economic situation, rising cost of living.” The next three reasons cited were “lies” (15 percent); “fearmongering, war rhetoric” (11 percent); and “people got fed up” (10 percent). In other words, Hungarians seemed to see the damage that Orbanism had done to the nation as more important than any harm they felt they had suffered as individuals. They were united by a sense of moral outrage — “value choices,” as one person close to the incoming government described it to me.

--M. Gessen,  This Is How to Defeat an Autocrat, https://www.nytimes.com/by/m-gessen

====

Poem: Listening

 

Listening

 

i’m not, but who is?

cats study dogs who watch people who

don’t know they give off

so many signs.

many, many ears get shrunk

down to tiny pieces of a punished grid.

the economy cuts. 

industry slashes.

hostile hierarchies of

skeletal organizations

prowl hungry for takeovers,

capitalize on leftovers,

scramble to cannibalize.

the math says  

no fear.

justice is a product

built into the integers

of the great equation.

no guilt.

x number of workers,

y number of kicks,

z percentage of

spun-out spun-off sins.

i’m not, but who is?

maybe the pigeons and rats. 

we hear what we need

and do not listen

to anyone who cares.

 

 

 

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

5/28 ... mods.. on and on

Poem: Wish Hungry

 

Wish Hungry

 

the trees could have been

the ‘scaries’ in Where

The Wild Things Are

and the gravel was a mystical

walk in way too real fogbanks where

plummy insects whirred in magnitudes and

ecstasies of universal chime but then

an owl like six-cloaks-built-

into-the-body-of-a-warlock swooped

a sigil of defiance until one star dared to profess,

slipping through the shapeless roam of

a fluid cirrus to tilt some vagabond game. 

what rules were these, anyhow,

and could, really, a faraway

wish-hungry poet ever win?

 

 

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

Poem: Limbo

 

Limbo

 

uncertain at 4am

of a fox with the wail of a stabbed girl

or an owl who berates this asylum, 

i roll the two faces of my skull

left to bright, right to dark,

underestimating

the harlequin's paw, how drunk

with sleep my fancies seem

and yet barbed by visions

of some terrible logic.

this place

where timelines knot, where specters

could be lovers not yet born,

and paupers in gutters

speak like gods, and worse still

those infants from long ago, when lions

capsized what they devoured

right in front of you--you

witness the red depths,

not even gifted the grace of fear,

only to wonder at the giant figures,

brutish to transform,

very much unswayed by your loss,

and always, in some heart-wrung sense, once more,

wild with rage.

=====

5/27/26 ... changed tense of a verb

5/22/26 ... eds all day

Violence vs True Power, NYT quote

 ====

Power, Arendt argued, is collective, consensual and relational. Violence, by contrast, is instrumental and coercive, its strength evaporating the moment the threat is evaded or withdrawn. “Violence can always destroy power,” Arendt wrote. “Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.”

            --Lydia Polgreen
             https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/opinion/trump-xi-iran-war.html  

=====