Poem: Cloud

 

Cloud

 

flaunty in its fluff, the cloud

failed to find release,

just hung there,

dense with unseen yet obvious emotion.

 

its seamless snail 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.

 

 

 

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

4/23/26... 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

Poem: Tempted

 

Tempted

 

vultures turn a blue keyhole

above the taut steeple of

my needy fingers.

 

lips of lava, blurry within stone,

chew on my prayers

and the tremble of my knees,

 

and they refuse to sponsor

the delusion that they harbor bread,

or any power or wish,

 

should i chance to fall, head down,

like the bill of a ibis

seeking wisdom in supplication.

 

i would instead

crash to mangle the frail platter

of my hope,

 

offering a feast that would unlock

all of god’s miracles and mysteries,

exposing them

 

for what they are,

what they were,

and will always be--

 

a vanity of bones.

 

 

 

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

4/1/26 ... removed a prep, changed a word

Poem: Deep in the Woods

 

 

Deep in the Woods

 

ants raid the corpse of a bee

near a branch sprawled

like a fallen madonna.

 

mushrooms rear, white-knuckled,

to ride a cratering stump

of irretrievable wounds.

 

everywhere the headless husk

of some gutted spruce

earns no special attention.

 

the quiet floor of leaf-and-root

moulders from a truancy

of porous ghosts.

even the youngest of sprites, 

the ferns,

 

fan vegetal pharaohs

below a granite ridge  

destined to tackle pines.

 

only a few trunks left,

wind-whipped as the arms of titans

beseeching a fillet of clouds--

 

and blue agnostic heaven.

the moon is heaven! 

crickets purr from their rot-rouged niche.

 

the moon,

sideways smile of night,

it comes to eat another day 

while season devours season

and the footfalls of lovers and jesters

prance over the bones.

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

3/26/26 ...more edits

mods after posting ...deep into the night...

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 

====