Poem: Possessed

 

Possessed

 

the haunt came over me,

what a frisson of emptiness.

shards of hope tinkling off.

there would be no aftermath.

no this or that.

loves, paths, myths, cares,

how my flesh took up space,

they all became a strand of time,

playable like a bent piano.

black and white,

spread and tender,

winding off

on a balustrade from Dr. Suess.

a clef so perilous and wise 

i would never figure it out,

or escape.

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

This poem was published in Rufous City Review in 2011.  Actually, according to my records, I published two poems titled "Possessed."  But I can't find the other, and my poor record keeping doesn't say where it was published.  

I am republishing more of my older poems on this blog, because I feel my future is uncertain, largely due to the death of US democracy.  I'm an old man.  Grief is painful.  So is incarceration.  

I hope my poems can be of worth, in some positive way, to others.  They have provided me with catharsis and sublimation as I rage at the stupidity of human conformity and its horrific effects.  They have helped me to develop both worldview and philosophy.  In the depths of despair, I have the ongoing cry of the poems, their salvation.

Poem: Rogue

 

Rogue

 

this aching planet,

 

a handful of healers cry daily

over its burning, excavated ribs,

 

where no wild things come.

 

crowds scurry in packed cities

amid obvious evil,

but only a few raise their heads.

 

one brave women

watches a wall of smiles

freeze-dry her pleas,

 

swallow them into cold throats

stainless as upscale refrigerators.

 

some teenagers

 

rage against the blood money of empire,

yet the streets ignore, ignore, ignore,

 

or laugh and hurl scorn

 

or ignore, ignore, ignore …

 

a few college students

call those who bow down locust and ants,

call the middle class pharisees,

call the rich posh swine

 

who soil pearls.

 

a sliver of authors, journalists, casters, artists and professors

make a calm case,

 

but no truth of any kind does anything

to steer the march of the scuttlers,

 

or impede the swarm.

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

8/17... changed a word

8/16/26 ... eds off and on all day

NYT quote, Jesus vs "Tribute and dominance"

 ====

Jesus says, "In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you ... "

Such an ethic is demanding. Few of us live up to it. But the problem with adherents of the modern right is not just that they don’t live up to it; the issue is that they detest it. To treat the foreigner residing among us as well as we treat our native-born is derided as suicidal empathy. The Trump administration glorifies cruelty toward the immigrant, the stranger, the weak and the poor. It takes money from Medicaid to cut taxes for the rich. It threatens the destruction of whole civilizations. The modern right is built on the logic of tribute and dominance.

====

Ezra Klein, Christopher Nolan's Trojan Horse
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/opinion/christopher-nolan-odyssey-elon-musk.html

Regarding the poems

 The poems don't like you and they especially don't like me.  "What are you doing," they ask, "pretending to hear?"

Poem: Inventor Reflects

 

Inventor Reflects

 

the higher you go, the less you breathe,

and the more beautiful the air.

a why beyond dirt and sweat,

peace mulled by floatation,

reclusive as Lao Tzu’s clouds.

 

nerve endings took eons

to sprout out of bacteria and perceive this.

more quickly we ruined our awe

by inventing flight.

 

we praise no god now,

only mechanical wings.

whether brilliant or damned,

only the angels we replaced could say.

too many tricks

have been played on our ideals.

 too much thimblerigging

between judges and thieves

knotted in warrens

in the switchbacks of the metropolis.

 

we weren’t created

to see where we’ll go,

only to get there lost.

to suffer chains of puzzles

in doglegs of whys.

the gods need us

to unfurl like opium rings,

waft from their fickle rush.

 

if you invent something

it’s just the gods

using you as a mirror.

you’ll be dropped

and then no more insight,

just a brief ritual of shatters:

the giving of yourself

to the glow.

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

Icarus theme... 

This poem was originally published in Samizdat in 2013.  I have started re-publishing poems on this blog, as well as adding the new ones.  A big part of it is the end of the USA 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 democracy and freedom I knew all my life. 

Micro-fiction: New Perspective

 

===

All I was asking people to do was to consider a new point of view:  what if 5,000 years, the approximate age of human civilization, was not a lot of time?  What if it were a mere blip in the consideration of where and how civilization can go, how it could evolve, given that the universe will continue to unfold for billions of years?

Just by changing their point of view in that way, even for a second, many people found new hope and purchase in their own identity.  They became an expression in something vast, something that listened and watched their every behavior for clues on what could happen far into an utterly magical future.

What is clear is this:  the mental aspect of the Universe is just starting to Bloom; and each person is a part of that, especially if they have the courage to be aware.

Ayestasya Ulswofe, Petal of the Passionance,
Blue Butterfly Green Spider Coven

===

This derives from the characters and philosophy presented in my unpublished novel, A Future of Angels

Quote, "I remember, too, the stories of older women who marched ... "

 

==== 

I remember, too, the stories of older women who marched on August 9, who reminded younger activists that many of them had taken to the streets over the objections of their husbands and fellow male comrades. They explained that at the time they did not have the language to explain how race, class and gender intersected; they just knew how sexism felt in their bodies.

By the time we were marching for a new set of rights, they had gifted us the language and analysis to describe how race, class and gender shaped women’s experiences. Their stories also showed us that sexism did not sit neatly outside the struggle against apartheid: women could stand alongside men in a liberation movement while still having to fight for equality with those same men.

 ====

“Women’s Day in South Africa turns 70 with equality still out of reach”-- Sisonke Msimang

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/8/9/womens-day-in-south-africa-turns-70-with-equality-still-out-of-reach

Poem: Red Squirrel

 

Red Squirrel

 

sputter and chip,

rebuke me with variants

of raucous croon,

 

you perky piccolo of fuss,

high on a spruce,

helming azure.

 

if i could shimmy, bristle,

and cackle like you,

besotted by the spirit of

 

Puck,

 

would i, too, dash

from my own moods,

a child lost to daredevilry,

 

and forget the madness

of the mean world

through the quicksilver roan

 

of my flips?

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

This poem was originally published in Bolts of Silk in 2012.  I have started re-publishing poems on this blog.  A big part of it is the end of the USA 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 democracy and freedom I knew all my life.  

Poem: Sims

 

Sims

 

it was easy to feel ankle-chained

to the neighborhood.

its transistor-like fences,

and pomeranian-sized lawns--

 

as if the will

of the residents suffered a hex. 

only fishbowls with their blobs of poi

trending nonlinear.

 

how to find voice

among cathodes and laminates?

no Muse braved this straight-laced

stratified oasis, except

 

once when a coyote

wormed under a construction fence.

 

wakes of worry

followed the beast’s deviant slouch,

fawning over every plump

cosseted cat.

 

no one could ever truly leave.

escape was circular.

they always returned, became

their own replaceable part.

 

women took up

the software of the smile again.

men shook hands as if gears had meshed,

a fingerworks of pawls.

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

This poem was originally published in Ithaca Lit in 2014.  I am going to start re-publishing poems on this blog.  Why?  A big part of it is the end of the USA 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 democracy and freedom I knew all my life.

Poem: Unseen Tears

Unseen Tears

 

can’t be scrubbed with what’s fresh,

or shed in a church,

 

or unhitched from a loom of memory,

where they shuttle sure

 

as fate.

 

sad dimples swallow them,

tarnishing the eke

 

of on-the-edge irises.

 

they are jaded nutrients,

little packets of pump

 

in neck and fore veins,

 

milligrams of heavy, heavy iron,

mined from brittle cheekbones

 

which tend to turn away,

chasing after the dark side

 

of the moon.

 

 

 

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