Poem: Inferno

 

Inferno

 

to heal the wound

he had to find a crypt

in a hurt place.

had to dig

through silt and shit

and childish striae,

and not cripple

the ladders in his pain.

 

there would be massacres

in written bones,

and nightmarish mineshafts.

tears would bleed,

make love to lies

worse than the original ache.

 

he would have to swim

like a darter that became

a bat in the pulse of 

an oryx inside a tiger.

no Valkyrie, no Beatrice,

no golden thread.  there

would be cannibals that

bit groins, smallpox boiling

in his daughter’s canthus.

 

there would be red ants

in the coffers of his love,

and other worst fears

he could not survive.

 

he took out a piece of his heart

and dangled it down trapdoors

as demon bait.

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This poem was originally published in Danse Macabre in 2012.   I am going to start re-publishing poems published in the past on this blog.  Why?  A big part of it is the potential end of the US as I knew it, and my concern that I will be incarcerated.  I am, too, in my 60s, and could die of natural causes, exacerbated by grief and anxiety at the loss of the country I knew all my life.

Expect more poems like this, and so a bit of a different poetic voice--who I was ten or more years ago.

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Additionally, on this particular poem, it is in the vein of a shamanic awakening to the spirit world.  But it is also about primal, ethical agony.

Quote, getting away with genocide

I’m a Scholar of Genocide. We’re Entering a Terrifying New Era.

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What we have seen unfold in Gaza, where Israel stands accused in the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, appears to portend a new future for the crime.

It is a future in which other nations or leaders may have an incentive to pursue genocidal policies knowing they will not only get away with murder but may even benefit from it. It is a future in which the countries and international organizations that had been committed to stopping and punishing genocide may give license to its recurrence.

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Omar Bartov, Professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/opinion/israel-gaza-palestinians-genocide.html

Quote, Era of Dumbing

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We live in a time of mind-gamery, the Era of Dumbing, which is rife with devious denial of insidious intent.  Not only do most people not know this, they have been trained to not want to know. 

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From my unpublished book, Lightcraft:  ethics as technology

Poem: Last

 

Last

illimitable blue,

the eagle takes wing,

somewhere off a cliff,

the ghost of its mother crying.

 

below, a busy man with a hammer

looks up with eyes that fondle the bird.

but it glides on,

out over a pale bay

where draggers shrimp the seabed

with nets of underwater claws. 

 

the eagle veers onward,

off toward a succulent sun.

soon its wings darken to glints,

blending with the warmth

of forever.

 

 

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NYT quote on the unethical conformity of the TV industry

 ====

Our president does what he wants, where and when and to whomever he wants, and the cowed and craven set of politicians who make up his flock just go along for the ride. It seems more and more as if we’re living in a burn-it-all-down age of greed, mayhem and corruption.

You might never know this from watching prestige TV … There was one show, however, that hit this head-on …

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David Colman

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/19/opinion/emmys-the-boys-amazon-homelander-snub.html

Poem: Barstow Junction

 

Barstow Junction

dry nettlesome air,
it had the heat of a femur-long railroad spike,
nailing him to the motel bed,
or pinioning his knees to pray.

crows added more cast iron,
hundreds listless
on the weapon held by the telephone poles:
that long, vein-sized garrote
constricting the pulse of the town.

Barstow wasn’t round or flat or social or open,
it was a sluice of squares,
an ooze of commodities, chains
of hellbound freight.

its DNA was a snarl of
business molecules loaded on
squeals of metal that whined across
miles of sluggish boxcars.

many victims plodded by–
ore and bitumen, cattle and timber,
suffering the great desert,
enslaved to soulless deposits of cash,

so very small.

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

This poem was originally published in Full of Crow in 2014.   I am going to start re-publishing poems published in the past on this blog.  Why?  A big part of it is the potential end of the US as I knew it, and my concern that I will be incarcerated.  I am, too, in my 60s, and could die of natural causes, exacerbated by grief and anxiety at the loss of the country I knew all my life.

Expect more poems like this, and so a bit of a different poetic voice--who I was ten or more years ago.

Quote, "The great constant of history ... "

 

The great constant of history, [Gibbon] believed, was self-delusion: the willful inability of people to recognize how much the habits, rituals and laws they took for granted had slowly changed — until it was too late to bend them back into shape. Mankind “is governed by names,” he wrote, and Romans seemed willing to “submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom.”

Charles King, Professor at Georgetown 
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/opinion/edward-gibbon-empires-fall.html

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

Although I agree with this quote, its sense of defeatism is wrong (so was Gibbon's).  As I've been writing on this blog, through many essays, we have the brain- and cultural-plasticity to move the collective consciousness to a place of maturity and advanced ethics technology.  We have already started on this journey, as evidenced by the invention, for instance, of Universal Suffrage.  From the perspective of advancing our ethics tech, which should be number one, this is the greatest invention in the entire history of civilization, breaking one of the ancient cardinal rules of Big Lie governance.  We have a long way to go to reach MLK Jr's mountaintop.  But it's a feasible journey.  And people need not necessarily dwell in "self-delusion."

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2026/05/essay-sustenance-and-darkness.html

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/05/draft-intro-of-my-book-better-angels.html

etc/

Poem: Out of Place

 

Out of Place

 

questions lurch,

born in cocktails

with lewd names.

 

those of us with minds

as guarded as soda water

do not know the answers.

 

we appraise wastelands

of sassy youth,

wanting to be part of the grunt,

 

but unable to sway

like these sexy philosophers,

who broach casual taboos

 

and do not sing of fear.

 

we stare

as if stunned by godlings

agile and immune.  how easily

 

they stalk pleasure for hours,

devouring each other,

chasing necks.

 

when they die

they moan up again, half destroyed,

and the rest lovely, toned,

 

supple with war.

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

This poem was originally published in Barnwood Magazine in 2012.   I am going to start re-publishing poems published in the past on this blog.  Why?  A big part of it is the potential end of the US as I knew it, and my concern that I will be incarcerated.  I am, too, in my 60s, and could die of natural causes, exacerbated by grief and anxiety at the loss of the country I knew all my life.

Expect more poems like this, and so a bit of a different poetic voice--who I was ten or more years ago.

Poem: Vale

 

Vale

 

eldritch oak

and incense of sage,

the foothills so serene.

sweet silences

of sumac and tiger lily,

and the luscious clarkia cross,

and the ceanothus

imbued with dashes

of last moon’s rain--

and the deer weed and

the desert chia and chicory,

they too extol

a mountainous Earth

tumbled to fissured gardens,

hanging woundless

to conjure moist shoots.

 

a flint of scant vulture

sharpens the blue,

while banquets of pollen

and bees down below

leaven the meadow with swells

of a golden zephyr.

and the mustard grass rustles,

and the willows

their frondy songs,

weaving shy notes 

with a stream's gurgles 

of clockless, giddy zest.

deeper still, spells

of unseen fossils, young green hopes--

the never-dead bones

of ravenous youth--

with immeasurable circles

and impossible trysts

play on.

 

 

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7/16/26 ... more mods... ... mods all day ... .. 

7/15/26... more mods ... not really my wheelhouse at all... 

7/14/26 ... removed a word

7/13 more mods ... fractious

7/12/26 mods ... not really my wheelhouse.. more mods throughout day

7/11/26 ... changed some phrasing 

Poem: Snatchers

 

Snatchers

 

animate posters,

as if propaganda had bred

a living gel, cheeks, chins

of mistrust rubberstamping  

a shellack of custardy

smiles.

 

this dinge of streets.

this tarnish of behaviors.

this unthought guile thin as office paper

while it wades through days of sloggy hours,

wan from cosmetic mold--

 

a rouge unnoticed

in city after city of hollowed cheeks,

despite the long-toothed force

it took to inject so many spores of mediocrity

into so many hearts

and corrupt the very dream.

 

what an integral invasion.

to pump silence

into the mainstream blood vessels. 

what a disease of bipedal blemishes,

rampant within a warming

of cement vegetation.

 

hotter and hotter,

the skinlike fungus of the mask.

no one can peel it off,

even from their own face,

not without jeopardizing

their weak, fearful name.

 

 

 

 

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7/7/26 "smiles" replaces "fatalism"

7/6/26 ... mods throughout the evening.. .night

Invasion of the Body Snatchers theme