Poem: Knoxville Hobo

 

Hobo

 

breeze laps the side of a pond

lazy and wet while

lotuses float and i sway

as if a old hound

was leashed to my saunter.

 

down i go to the railroad tracks,

crucifixion of steel

long and unbroken--

should i wait, arms out,

gazing left at the pawpaws,

their greasy fruit ready

for my feast, their

pleasure on my tongue,

 

ooooooooooooooooooh

and a little beer?

 

i’ve gone down many times

for the pawpaw fruit guarded by

devil’s stick and nettle’s breath.

 

be sure not to tickle the thorns. 

 

the sun is a woman’s smile

thin above her green skirt

when you lie back and gaze

at that soft river.

 

 

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

"Aralia spinosa, commonly known as devil's walking stick, is a woody species of plant in the genus Aralia of the family Araliaceae. It is native to eastern North America. The various names refer to the viciously sharp, spiny stems, petioles and even leaf midribs. It has also been known as Angelica-tree.[2]"

Poem: Displaced

 

Displaced

 

maples gesture

like a zealous choir,

not in praise of gulls

who salt a vast indigo,

but that pearl of eternal shining:

honey-giver over deciduous temples,

hallelujah, the golden teat!

 

squirrels tussle

to rile cone-rich duff,

riding the chthonic roots

of the two-faced maples near

a single scalloped doubloon,

long stolen from its underwater cove.

 

calcified, the lonely trinket,

gooey with marl,

tilts as if hunkered down,

a sad mollusk’s tomb,

fleeing alien oxygen.

no advocate with gills

in this upside down world

to offer comfort, let alone

peace.

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

5/1/26 ... changed a word... fixed typo ... rephrased.. again

 

Regarding the Poems

 The poems are all I have.  They are my children.  They will keep growing, full of error and play, at least until I die.  And yet eternal in their wonder. 

Poem: Cloud

 

Cloud

 

flaunty in its fluff, the cloud

failed to find release,

just hung there,

dense with unseen yet obvious emotion.

 

its seamless shell of flesh,

deliberate and obstinate as

tectonic plates, inched and

inched and inched until

 

it became what happens to a body of water

which holds onto a lie so tightly

it rises up, phantom grey,

to inform a tragic statue.

 

yes,

 

belly full of electric lust,

frustrated in a wallow of

merciless gravity, the cloud 

moaned without a sound, ignored

 

by lawn after manicured lawn,

patio squared with patio,

and all the grills of searing flesh

in barbecued lines.

 

 

 

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

4/26/26 .. removed a word 

4/23/26... mods all day .. 

Quote, "Isn't that what evil is? ... "

 ===

… Isn’t this what evil is? A projection onto the world not of overbearing and large intent, but smallness and fear? The consequences of violence are secondary to the validation that comes from inflicting it. Trump’s constant self-aggrandisement, his grudges against political adversaries, the fury at being challenged by the press, the revenge he promises to wreak on the Iranian regime. All are ways to erase and avoid what is a permanent terror of humiliation and obsolescence. (Goya’s Saturn, wild-eyed, devours his son.)

It is in that very puniness that insatiable evil lies. In 1931 … [ Hitler ] was interviewed by the US reporter Dorothy Thompson for Cosmopolitan. “When I walked into Adolf Hitler’s salon in the Kaiserhof hotel,” Thompson recalled, “I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something like 50 seconds, I was quite sure he was not. It took just about that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog.”

… We tend to imbue history and all its grave events with a seriousness and coherence that we struggle to apply in the present. And I think that’s because it’s hard for the human brain to encounter evil in ludicrous form, and still recognise it as such. That’s how it creeps up on you.

 

Nesrine Malik, Columnist

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/20/trump-presidency-evil-absurd-frightening-ideology

===

Poem: New Death

 

New Death

 

in a struggle of a second

i called out, more than loud,

less than a penitent scream.

i listened to the echoes of myself fade,

embers of some thinker hollowed,

a sculptor who became a replica,

etched on an ironic tomb.

 

it was a plot of dizzy asters,

white and purple needle sprays,

and i had just remembered

our ‘walks’ in places where

dust had suckled our bare toes,

sashes of ravens in sierra blue,

cliffs whiskery with sagebrush.

 

i’d come to the realization

your presence was not assured.

a new sort of death which

didn’t hurt as much as the first,

my limitation, not yours,

how i argued into the wind,

as if it knew how to find you.

 

such lovely sorcery

had been our sustenance

ever since it all began,

how we found each other with no explanation

from anyone else who had tried,

only the echo chamber of the fearful

who chipped away at marvel and delight.

 

sheep in the valley, wings in the sky,

only the meander of the foothills

bared pleasures fretless and attainable.

and so it was, you and i,

we fell together, over and over,

far above the jaws of generic cruelty,

faltering in our height.

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

Poem: Cursor

 

Cursor

 

in the chasm between stanzas

a heartbeat of a paring-knife.

it lugs words even as it cuts them

across barrens of pure white hopelessness.

 

its insectoid blink

tells me what i can/can’t do,

frustrates, makes me want to run

faster than its snippet pulse.

 

but that goad is like the throb

of some invincible fiend,

always there, somewhere,

askance, above, below the stage,

tugging and jerking

in the wires.

 

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

4/14/26  .. took out a "which"

Poem: Worms In a Storm

 

Worms in a Storm

 

to twitch in swollen mud,

frantic nerves of drowning wrath.

raindrops pucker gutter floods,

yank the false ecstasy

of the baptimsal squigglers

down through slime-lipped grates,

down through a stygian intestine

of sewer system where they 

dodge the swipe of rats and

feces-fecund gyres.

down, until they dance

as abyssal as possible,

not quite still dead,

vomited into the brine,

luring the mouths of bass.

 

 

 

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

Dream Quote

 ==

We pray to god that there is no hell.
(dream)

==

Poem: Wavery

 

Wavery

 

carried through another night,

to look is to feel

on this bridge of you and i,

this spine-like arch of memories

 

which floats warm but not so safe

amid deserts, snowfall and Tarot-faced leaves,

and then back to our duets,

this intimacy

 

of brio and cadenza.

 

the moon speaks in splashes here

on swirl-painted waters,

each sparkle a wavery footstep

athwart innocence and time.

 

the sun pullulates 

with billions of lit minnows

birthed by our sexual songs,

and when we turn to look back,

at the treasure chest of our hard-bitten and 

yet effortless aspects of trust,

doesn’t it feel we have been, you and i,

everything and everywhere,

 

among tides of chameleons and petrels,

seducing each other to dance

across so many worlds

and elaborate shores.

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

 

"pullulates" and other stylisms honor Neruda

4/6/26 ... heavy mods... difficult love poem

4/5/26  started with eds... needs more