Fatale
god had built beauty to harbor evil--
that was the Big Why.
even love
had to lurch to the cruel parody of an erratic Clown.
there were two nails
that constructed and crucified the way of all
things:
serenity and cataclysm.
and the Earth,
such a forgiving
abundant magnificent executioner
waited.
==================================
11/30/23 ... slight mods for flow and consonance
Weeds
when you hug a flower
and get cornered by the petals
some of them speak of heaven,
others of fussy ruckus,
or even lawnmower blades.
in the florets,
seizures of mandalas;
prototypes for archaic feathers;
pollinic atoms that prop the world
with their sexual feats.
deeper still,
spores become complex.
botany develops moods.
secret eggs of never-seen insects
mutter like old men bitten by december.
protocols start to jump around.
they haggle with beehives,
banter with knotholes.
all agog, the stalks root and leap,
while birth and death just complain.
==================
There should be a day for all of us to give thanks for
what we have. But it shouldn’t be linked
to the myth of the ‘happy, joyous’ get-together between the Wampanoag and the
Pilgrims in 1621. There was a feast, but
the Indians weren’t invited. Adult male Indians
showed up when they heard gunfire, ready for war. The Wampanoag had lost two-thirds of their
people from disease in The Great Dying. And so on ...
Even less should Thanksgiving be tied to ‘happy, joyous’
unity between Indigenous People and European and American settlers. This is a tale of treachery, genocide, slavery
and cultural annihilation.
Here is some audio:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-myth-of-thanksgiving/
Here is a newspaper article with interviews:
Thanksgiving, as it is, continues to gaslight the reality of
what happened -- and who we are.
===================
Face
plastic silk,
how it caters to docile daily games,
a relative of leather
yet less dead, a rigor-mortis preface
with a volatile, pert smile reflex,
and yet
the battle is lost
when dreams intrude,
such candid pain,
till cheeks pillow to mask
the starved pleading.
==============
Devolve
ooze cloyed, soil sloshed,
germ to rex, sex mixers mixing,
swizzled chromosomes, dopey chaos,
hag-ridden gusts, ballets of flakes,
pegasus then fiend, see-thru seizures,
snippets of spliced jump ropes,
pleached plasmid protohounds,
algal dogfights, fungal freak outs,
emerald offshoots, trees varicose,
polyps, trilobites, monsters, sharks,
hydras of fanged furry blood
branch branch branch branch
branch branch branch branch
hackles far too aroused, uppity,
kind wise sad happy cruel,
sex sex sex sex
fear fear fear fear
fear to craft fearsome tools,
laughter, song, impalement, war,
god = love, slavery,
heaven, crucifixion, hell, war,
drawn and quartered,
slavery, sweatshops,
wipe out whole peoples,
suppress women, slay difference,
deceive deceive deceive,
war war war
despots, dictators, fascists,
avarice makes billions,
trillions, quadrillions, more,
exploit, extinct, consume,
cars, guns, drones, bots,
orgasms in algorithms,
orgasms in modified gene pools,
computerized molecules,
deathless robot weapons,
boom.
Grey Sky
tufted and eroded,
no tells in the old face of this long neutral sleeper
waiting waiting waiting
for the prick of a dream to decide.
such lofty mist,
it couches passion or tripe,
jubilant rain
or the terse dissonance of long-lost windsong sobbed.
what is that solar signet
dim on an envelope of ancient grey and
what what what why why why?
maybe shy stars within?
a poem urgent to be read?
who knows … these …
frozen billows of endless ivory
meditate meditate meditate--
is that what they do?
wait for thought to erupt, pure of hover?
gods from a soft-knitted, grey-silked chrysalis?
===============================
As the American people and their leaders navigate this dangerous period of crisis, interregnum and paradigm shift, they will need to resist seductive illusions and refuse easy answers offered by hucksters who assure them there is an easy way out. To defeat and survive the rising fascist tide, there is only one solution: Accept that the old world is gone, and fight to create a better one.
Chauncey DeVega
https://www.salon.com/2021/10/18/fascism-or-freedom-america-is-stuck-in-an-ugly-and-in-between/
Jawbone On The Beach
it emanates brute,
askance atop a cracked whelk,
with thistle-mean molars that leer,
and the cuspid gleam of white scythes.
force stole it from a skeleton
as easily as wind snaps a branch off a tree,
now a bit of aimless barracuda
on wet-sand gray.
maybe a beachcomber
will need a backscratcher,
or an artist might mistake it
for a fanged eighth moon--
or perhaps it will rise up again,
haggard as a raptor wing,
ecstatic in the palm of a dancer.
==============================
Graveyard
i slink into an ignorable place,
where all-White names
cling to history on buoys of gray stone.
such poor choices for lifting hearts,
gnawed by lichen, tottering and heavy,
barely able to sneer
from their eroded, chiselled pores.
why is an extinct passenger pigeon
perched over a child 153 years old?
no breeze to soothe as i kneel at the next stone,
and peer at the final figment
of someone whose son had impregnated
my great grandmother’s aunt.
after a tussle with manners,
i laugh at all these heavy pimples of sanctimony,
things that only pretended
to hoard truth in their fleshless throat.
i leap to run, larkful in my swoops,
until the runty hovels and stern crosses give way
to balsam steeples.
==================================
11/29/23 ... lots of edits, hopefully improved this poor poem
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180111084953.htm
The passenger pigeon wasn't in trouble prior to Europeans arrival in North America. Nothing suggests that the species was struggling in any way.
Perhaps this isn't that surprising. In the 19th century passenger pigeons were so numerous that there were contests to shoot as many of them as possible during a certain period of time. In one competition, the winner had shot 30 000 birds.
From A History of the World in the Twentieth Century, by J.A.S Grenville:
[Pre-WWII] fascism was a movement designed to secure the support of the masses for a leader without the intermediary of a democratically elected parliament. It was a substitute for democracy, giving the masses the illusion of power without the reality. Thus, though violently anti-communist, fascism appeared to support the existing social and economic hierarchy of society and so appealed to the right. Fascism made a virtue of destroying the powers of parties and divisions in the state. It stood for 'strength through unity' at the expense of civil liberties. The cult of the leader was fostered by the leader above all and his principal lieutenants. Fascism was a chauvinist male-oriented movement assigning women to the role of child-bearing and raising a family. It was stridently nationalist. The leader, with virtually unlimited powers, stood at the apex of a party, a private army and a bureaucracy. Violence against opponents cowed possible opposition. The fascist army and bureaucracy of course ensured that tens of thousands would have a vested interest in preserving the fascist state. Here loyalty to the movement, not social standing, provided an avenue to advancement to the unscrupulous and the ambitious. (ch.18, p.152)
Why can't we stop calling the Republicans "conservative" and call them what they really are, authoritarians? Why must the Democrats be so cowardly?
http://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2020/09/stop-calling-republicans-conservative.html
==========
Lucky Second
the clear of the mind
is the still of the room
is the quiet of angels
looking down at a bigger blue than anything ever before.
too many aspects to approach with words.
the first should be the last,
and yet it struggles with a deep apprehension
of its layered failure.
the effort itself a trap.
all attempts moot.
and yet passion rushes in, anyway,
appalled by sheep and stones,
to jump ghosts of ink onto a purity of paper.
of course, they fall.
fall off a pinnacle never reached;
fall like fools tarred-and-feathered with flourishes,
no longer fresh on the magical, moving seat
of a lucky second.
misgivings
and fascinations, promises
and desperate sins, and the ideals
that strengthened brazen, naked tears,
they wallow on the hot harsh bone-strewn ground--
summarized--
as if crawling on a sideways ladder,
one confused for piano keys.
but the music of the symbols
in the sounds of the lack of concerto
is just words. mere words.
================================
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