Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Poem: Sins

 

Sins

 

anemone tentacles

on the throat of a dove,

or threads unwinding

from a beggar’s coat,

 

they barely bind,

hints of jail or guilt,

a trace that won’t sleep.

adulterous silence.

 

when it’s dark enough,

they chant, soft as dew,

patterns in clammy octaves.

the wards of skeleton keys.

 

an armoire opens.  who guessed?

grandparents pine there,

their frowns turn thumbscrews.

hands secretive as moths.



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

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

A Note On Poems

 Thank you for looking at the poems!

A quick note.  I often edit a piece quite a bit after it goes up.  The more-or-less final version, the one that settles in, arrives after a few days of the initial posting.  (It's almost fair to say that a true 'final version' is like the Holy Grail and not likely to ever materialize). 

Admittedly, this is a feeble strategy.  I use it simply because it gets me to edit faster and more attentively than if the poems were merely tucked away in a folder.

The big downside is that readers who visit right after a work goes up are often met with a less-than-stellar version.  For this I apologize.  Again, my only excuse, albeit feeble, is the quirkiness of my own craft.

If you have comments or suggestions, or potential topics you'd like to see, you can email me:

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

Fly Well in the Dark,

OWL


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

Monday, December 28, 2020

Poem: A Widow

 A Widow


a widow culls

the lies of men,

smiling still,

wanton as she goes,

 

shack to shack,

or mansions of the heart,

every accident or bed

beleaguered.

 

ants to lions, none remark.

 

but humanity, profuse,

gasps to curse when lungs stall,

cashiering chains and chores.

 

elephants, they dwindle down tusky roads.

 

but ill to violent crowds

beat on misunderstood ground,

mawkish as they sink,

clutching their wasted lives.

 

birds chirp last fermatas.

insects chirr in choirs.


these, the widow feels,

never turn to dust.

 

only those tethered to tombstones,

or ladderlike prayers,

or who cling to lists of what wasn’t or was--

because because because …

 

and so it goes,

shack to shack, bed to bed,

mansions of the heart,

wherever desperation lies naked.





=======

I would prefer to use "wym" instead of the male-aligned "men."  "Wym" escapes gender.  But the neologism would be distractive.


===========

Friday, December 25, 2020

Poem: A Love Poem

 

A Love Poem

 

my dawns and heights,

the mansions of my throat and heart and breath,

the rootstock of my life,

my laughter and reflections,

each molecule and aura--


her hands a sextant.  such hands!

the lockpicks of my evolution.  


and her eyes redolent healers.


her body swoops and slopes with my avalanches,

agile over my cordillera chest.

my tides, my fault lines, my fails, 

lean into her oceans.

i float in her fluent bed.


candles serenade us, those wooed stars,

multi-celestial, unfathomable, irreligious. 

this mystery of her.  

this fair hypnosis, she 


melts protean under my kisses, 

shivers a rain of pleasures 

through a lack of my secrecy.


her whispers write crescents of music.


within our love, its scale of hourglasses,

nocturnes or sun-burnished,

whether chasm or pinnacle,

seasons that sprout or sink,

aloft or wept, rough-clad or satin,


i need not search

 for she enfolds with wings.  

sculptress of my muscles,

weaver of my moved veins,

she 


seduces as art, as lost inspiration,

this hurt magic that i am, or forgotten,

so in each other’s arms to play,

seamless in this theater of senses.  alive


pulse by pulse, motion by motion,

where tempests behold what must be,

revealed in us, to form stairs.




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

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Poem: Still Life Late

 

Still Life Late

 

wafer

of pearl and eve,

dim,

 

soon to fade,

i see myself

in its weak depth,

 

this gloss

that daubs my thoughts,

this nimbus, this depression,

 

this puddle,


a dusky last offering

of communion bread.

 

all hue wanes

from such tender heat.

my fingers

 

mimic wax,

slow yet fluid,

melted then caught

 

in reflection.


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

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

 When I was young, the world was so big to me, and ugly.  Now it is beautiful and yet so very very small--Galaras Sphynxwyld.

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Poem: A Gamble

 

A Gamble

 

mousy,

brown against black,

scurrying on paws

once maple lobes,

 

wind its muscle,

decay its flesh.

mottle dripping off,

such brittle rot.

 

it rushes a busy tire,

eager to kiss,

earn an autograph,

or perhaps a speck of peace.

 

always so swift,

Fate obsessed with dice games,

rolling over and over,

bidding leaves to tumble

 

and resolve.




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



Thursday, December 17, 2020

Poem: Alder and Deer

 

Alder and Deer

 

a doe in the woods

shies from an effortless signpost

of thorns.

 

none of the thousandth

scrape her.  hasteless

she flows,

snaps no twig.

 

brittle jags of shadblow

comb her fur

in quiescence.

 

drops of sun glister,

sifted by noonday birches,

when she cranes

fair.


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

Monday, December 14, 2020

Poem: Quiet Bay

 

Quiet Bay

 

azure basks in slack breezes.

it's hard to tell reflection

from lobster boat.

 

water scolds skipped rocks

with successive brief mouths.


nothing is supposed to be quick.

 

clouds are origami.

rocks gargoyles.

the sway of an arm

unwanted flame.



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

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Poem: At the Keyboard

 

At the Keyboard

 

fingertips.  bishops and rooks

primed to slide.

diagonal.  orthogonal.

hostage to a rash hopscotch,

obsessed and servile

over sleek tiles glisteny,

troublesome as Darth Vader’s chest.

 

eyes track mumbo jumbo.

ears dog a ridicule of clicks.

hours of this.  hands now

twin crabs in a shuffle.

fingertips--now--

a faltering clog dance.

 

heart yanked

as if in a time machine.

from Z’s to ampersands,

drowsy then aroused.

commas are chores, but then semen.

hyphens are hymens

losing innocence.

 

how long can this length of repeated period marks last?

 

fingerprints erode, now, drip by drip.

they lose face on the geo-topo-creative-conversational map;

and so ponder whether to retreat,

satisfied enough with the mission,

into video games.



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

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Poem: Diagnosis

 

Diagnosis

 

infested with warfare,

blood on your blue

and white.

 

we’re not sure

how to remove the bullets

sunk in your organs.

in effect, cysts.

 

you have canons for femurs,

sabers for ribs.

why did you embrace the Enola Gay

in the first place?

 

did you know

you’ve had radiation sickness

ever since?

 

we're putting you on a diet.

no more bingeing on prejudice.

this sclerosis of fear

and its paroxysms of hate,

they attack the heart.

 

and the gold that plates your veins,

quite the heaviness, you know.

it sucks up all the warmth.


we sent a shovel, not a scalpel,

to extract the corpses.


==========



Tuesday, December 8, 2020

The Democrats Need to Do Much Better

 This is styled as an op-ed for newspaper submissions.  Unfortunately, I have less than a 5% acceptance rate.  Part of the reason is that the biggest newspaper in my State (Maine), the Bangor Daily News, leans Republican in its endorsements.  They did take one of my pieces last year, though.

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


 The Democrats Need to Do Much Better


We live in a corrupt system, and the Democrats have been a big contributor to the problem.  They need to do much better.  Otherwise, a redoubling of outrage will make their recent victories short-lived. 

The wealth curve in our country, over the last several decades, has been like a broken lung, one that deflates the middle class and pumps up the wealthiest.  Four hundred citizens now have as much wealth as 50% of Americans (about 150 million people).  The mathematics of the distribution graph don't lie.  It is the clear sign of a sickly nation, not a healthy capitalism.

Who has spoken up about this?  Until the last election cycle, Bernie Sanders, who was not even a Democrat until recently, was the lone standout when it came to wealth inequality and obscene grift.

Consider our healthcare system.  It has come to the point where a hospital is ready to fleece someone for their entire lifesavings if they dare, heaven forbid, to get sick or injured.  Big pharma has no cap on pricing, unlike in other countries.  Once affordable drugs, such as insulin, have skyrocketed in cost.  Not long ago, the pharmaceutical industry had no qualms about flooding the country with addictive opioids to make a buck. 

I won't even go into the maddening, byzantine machinations of the health insurance companies.

The Democrats have been onboard with this decades-long moral decay.  They take plenty of donations from big insurance and big pharma.  Jobs went overseas or to Mexico thanks to Bill Clinton as much as the GOP.  Even very recently, Democrats have defended absurd tax cuts for the wealthy (such as the SALT deduction).

We have become an Alice-in-Wonderland nation.  If wages increase, the stock market suffers (worries of inflation).  If people lose jobs, the stock market benefits (overseas profits).  With a slant worthy of Svengali, increases in the Dow Jones are seen as more vital to our country than indices that monitor the health, income and happiness of the people. 

Case in point:  The Dow has soared to over thirty thousand points while Americans suffer the worst phase of a pandemic.

The siege on the middle class has been so sustained, so awful, that Donald Trump, an extreme outlier, took the White House in 2016.  He would not have been able to accede without tapping into outrage at how rotten our structures of governance and finance have become. 

Trump is even more blatant in his corruption.  But that's not the point.  Large segments of the population, say the 85% who don't have sizeable investments in the stock market, have lost confidence in America.  They have lost faith in our principles.  Many are ready to follow a new kind of leader, one who would change everything by acting as a monarch.

We should all, in fact, despair at the decline that has taken place.  We should recoil at the kleptocracy.  At the sucking away of middle-class life into a grotesque distribution curve.  At the obvious, brutal grift that has wrecked families and homes, and cost lives, health, and hope.

Are we now, even somewhat, that City on a Hill?  The Democrats need to do much better.  Heroically better.  They cannot be as weak and compromised as they have been, or we will continue our worsening decline.

 

=======

Friday, December 4, 2020

Poem: Lily and Spider

 

Lily and Spider

 

tarweed, bindweed, shorn plots of grass,

they know nothing of the nine blossoms on the hill,

gold and purple crowns

of the mariposa lily.

 

they do not know

the secret name of the chalky spider

poised like a cross inside the fifth lily.

guardian pure as pearl,

a navel in a tiara,

portrayal both pentacle and christ.

 

this sacred vigil

mates with the corolla's curves

to dance a spell, whirl it, flourish it,

through the texts and bends of things.

 

don’t ask pesticides and ragweed to explain.

they haven’t watched ravens

soar to make love in a moebius strip;

or seen the coupled butterflies, festivals of sylphs,

twine in purple yaw,

ascending in a helix.




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

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Poem: 107 in Sunland

 

107 in Sunland

 

the sun gnaws on sprinkler-fed lilies.

it pinches ants till they riot,

irascible manic flames.

 

crows gloom the phone wires,

cursing at cars on an asphalt abacus,

and squawking at the blur

which bakes their onyx.

 

only seven jacaranda maidens

redeem this hell-tinged town,

drizzling soft flakes 

to dust the curbs an ephemeral purple.

 

a fat owl hides

in the crook of one trunk,

same as bark,

face more of a knothole

than the gourmand it will be

 

when night unveils 

a banquet of espionages:

a prosciutto of gophers.

a platter of voles.


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





7/19/23 ... edits for flow and quality