Poem: Ochre On Beige

 

Ochre On Beige

 

rolled like dough for years,

leavened by slaps of foam,

illusory yeasts of brine.

 

this scattered stash.

bits of towered treasures

left over when prosperity caved.

 

see the solemn,

weathered, wind-whipped

fragments and structures,

not-so-piquant now,

on a plateau of the broken:

 

crushed idols.

nuggets of castles.

eremites on salted piles.

a chartreuse crab

fat as a silver dollar

ambles over stubs of rubble

once picturesque.

 

bladderwrack flogs them.

a pillory of gulls

swoops to berate.

 

a single pure rectangle 

half lost in anonymous sand,

hides ever so quiet--

a grave without epitaph.

a rusty bed frame.

this solidified tear.

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

4/8 took  out an adjective

1/1/23  more changes later in the day ... 

1/1/23  massive changes to the crap awful poem

Poem: Fallen Pine Needles

 

Fallen Pine Needles

 

they were born incomplete,

and when they fell,

it wasn’t like Lucifer at all.

 

if some God noticed,

it was only to ensure that each needle

comprised its own pinnacle,

 

never to be higher

or seek victory greater

than a clue among splinters,

 

a fragment from some benighted Basket,

some ominous Ark.

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

Still Here

 

Still Here

Six decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis, we had 2022.  It was a scary, pivotal year of comparable danger.  At stake was the fate of the world, determined by US elections.  If democracy had lost the vote, fascism would have risen, with the geopolitical balance teetering into darkness.

But the American people did not support the hate-cult worship of a tyrant.  Because of this, all of us, everywhere, have been given a gift this season, a certain hope:  that we are not necessarily doomed, that our better angels can prevail.

One prolific historian, speaking on a newscast (Jon Meacham, I believe), said that this is the most hopeful he has felt in six years.  The New York Times posted an article yesterday on the survival and surge of democracy:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/24/us/politics/democracy-voters-elections-2022.html

 

From the article:

 

Whatever their reasons for voting against candidates who parroted Mr. Trump’s election claims, Republicans who did so often spoke of a more general estrangement from a party that had broadly turned those claims into a loyalty test — and of their distaste for both the party’s indulgence of Mr. Trump and of a no-holds-barred brand of politics that they said favors winning at all costs.

 

I never thought fascism could rise in my country, much less on the shoulders of a flagrantly despicable man.  No wolf in sheep’s clothing, just an obvious egotist of avarice and prejudice.  Despite his sadistic lack of morality, or perhaps because of it, he seemed a political juggernaut, someone who possessed the ability to obsess others, someone with the dark charisma of a Hitler.  One third of the American populace bowed down.

What I’ve learned of fascism, during this ugly six-year trial, is that it is an old strategy:  warlords with truthless loyalty tests.  It is what Plato sought to refute when he challenged Thrasymachus.  He argued that reason should govern, not an egomaniac who had turned a portion of the people into fawning worshippers, and cowed the rest with readily used swords.

Can reason govern, without being subverted by a demagogic monster?  That is the big question facing humanity in the 21^st century.  It is tantamount to, “Will we survive?” 

The right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ based on the innate dignity of every person, is beautiful intellectual bedrock.  If such wisdom steers us, moving forward with honesty and integrity, a wonderful future awaits. 

Imagine robots that have been engineered with limitations, so that they have no capability to inflict hurt or harm.  Robots that promote happiness.  Contrast that with a different future, one where robots surveil and police us, robots that kill easily and swiftly, at the merciless whim of a paranoid warlord.

2022.  It was a huge test for democracy.  To quote Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “We are still here.”  He made this announcement in February, right after the Russian army, under the iron-grip of a tyrant, invaded Ukraine to annex and assimilate it.  

Just a few days ago, Zelenskyy gave an historic speech to the US Congress.  Democracy still struggles onward in Ukraine.  And for now, it struggles onward here, in the United States, as well.

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

 

Poem: Snow Melts Off Spruce

 

Snow Melts Off Spruce

 

Orphan Annie eyes,

silver dollar dreams

that slip into grottos of one-armed bandits

bobbing in the wind.

 

they weep in fever,

coruscant as they go,

not afraid to die like this,

sifted through the ribcage

of a silent forest.

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

Poem: St. Anthony's Fire

 

St Anthony’s Fire

 

erratic cross-stitch,

bellies braided into a jerk of snakes.

 

a scream cuts through the dance,

begging the wicked centrifugal fury to stop,

 

and yet the danse macabre

yanks and twinges us,

 

untill we are rotten as leaves

that grope each other’s dogeared yelps.

 

bruised, clattered, lacerated, mangled, falling

the holy fire lifts us,

 

and we shriek without sound,

locked in the torturous rigor

 

of a zealous conglomerate.

 

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

No, this poem isn't about ergotism.

 

 

Poem: Right As It Gets

 

Right As It Gets

 

beneath the statue of a blinded woman,

well-dressed politicians 

reaped votes by casting hate.

and yet to confront them was to suffer,

and logic no defense.

the way to get through

the verbal mindlock, one hell of a wall,

with anything less than civil war,

what could it be?

was it hidden somewhere

in the torture-fields of wounded egos,

in an unlikely ditch?

 

no one was going to find it,

this corpse of compromise lost,

because the firebranded fire-eaters 

saw themselves as able stewards,

divinely called to know the path 

through the very darkness they spread.

they were as right as it gets,

and their lies kept courting lies,

both between and within hearts--

the drought of their compassion

had brought the end of anything

that truthful people wanted to hear.

they kept right on, always so right,

swilling greed from the depths of ignorance,

cultivating blame in dried-up gardens,

and salting the invidious soil 

 with their lickspittle drool.

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

3/29 ... better poem now, more mods

3/24/23  ... major changes .. tried to take the confused POV out of the poem 

12/21 ... significant mods to the poem in the "stewards" stanza

Still grading papers... 

Lots of Grading

 I am grading lots and lots of papers, so can't get any poems up on this blog.  I work as an Adjunct Professor and am paid poverty-level wages.  By this, I mean, it is less than a living wage.  I have a PhD in my field, teach college students, and I make less than $15 an hour.  Right now, for instance, I am grading papers over eight hours a day, starting in the morning, ending around 10:00pm.  Then I start all over tomorrow.  It would take less time, if I limited my comments to the students.  But then I'm not doing the job I love with the quality of professorial engagement the students deserve.

I also don't get affordable healthcare from my employer, the University.  They want about $300 a month from me to pay for my own insurance.   The only medical insurance I have is catastrophic insurance through Obamacare.

The good news is that I find my job very meaningful.  I've also had time.  Time to write thousands of poems in my life.  And a novel.  And there is more planned.  This is my calling.  Even though I live in poverty now and it may get far worse.  

The USA needs to start treating its teachers better.   All teachers, except those at the very top, the tenured professors, are treated like dirt.  This when education is needed more than ever, as we move into a complex, tech-heavy, world-shaking future.

OWL

A victory for adjuncts at one university:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/13/new-school-adjuncts-strike-wages/

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

Poem: What It Was Like

 

What It Was Like

 

light sockets stare,

minimalist zombies,

 

unfazed by the zeal of a flower.

 

leaves

dance, blush, scurry or mope.

 

walls languish,

as continuous as they are anodyne.

 

a poem, written in such a home, 

is just a séance

conducted on the altar of the slain.

 

fugues of inky phantoms

who pretend to remember

what it was like to bloom,

or to fly.

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

4/8/23 ... chopped off half the poem and reworked the rest.  Completely different, new title, etc.

12/12  "an altar" replaces "the altar"

Poem: Ant Sting

 

 

Ant Sting

 

an irksome sockful of ants

swells my ankle to realize mandibles

as the forerunners of war.

 

and i curse

 

the unsoothing graveyard above,

and the crumbly switchbacks below.

 

unfazed by whiffs of sage,

or the summery musk of rosemary,

 

yes, i curse them both,

 

and too the loathsome nettles,

phacelia and longspur,

projecting from every niche.

 

as if the dry earth 

were nothing but a chuckle of cracks

which dare seeds and insects

to call such scorn home.

 

the same seeds and insects

that accreted and attrited over eons and eons

to stir a slow eruption,

 

thus humanity.

 

arid kin of the proboscis,

consigned to the desert,

jealous and bitter,

stung more than they sting,

 

they fret and pinch,

knowing full well we stole their secrets,

grew them into cities.

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

12/10 ... lots of modifications to the second half.  brutal. 

Poem: Field Day

 

Field Day

meek the blushed green sighs,

the harebells and heathers,

and the flirty banters of sparrow.

 

a hundred honeyed notes

dim to dusk, serene

in the deep sunken hum

of a sunset cello.

 

seeds of moonlight

dissolve into lambent cymbals

on a strummed pond,

 

and as they effloresce, 

and glissando,

 

night swells to enact lacewings

of purple anticipation,

whirrs and chirrs of sotto timpani.

 

so jubilant,

so scintillant,

 

these untethered flourishes,

nebulous of firefly.

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

4/19/24 ... mods

Scottish meadow theme ... I think ... 

Poem: Unseasonal Xmas

 

Unseasonal Xmas

 

mutton clouds

wrap an eyeball of sun.

filet-white stare

to overlord the trapped sinews

of a meekening winter.

 

such bleachers

of half-flaxen stick figures.

icy, droopy, dirty,

heralds of translucent daze:

 

people bent in pews, offices, classes, theaters, stores,

melting with humdrum,

suffering unthought poses

through staid, forgettable gamuts.

 

this blizzard of fallen wings.

a challenge of glazed angels.

similar to those laminate ornaments

available at the dime store.

 

it is true,

 

hope has been known to survive such fiascos,

half-starved and hurt,

till it braves the next trenchlike punchbowl,

amid avalanches of fake smiles,

and forced laughter.

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

1/6/23   "forced" replaces "fake"

12/4   switched positions of "false" and "fake" 

12/3   "ornaments" replaces "tchotchkes"

12/2 ... changed the prepositions in the "pews" stanza ... 

Poem: Granite

 

Granite

 

a crow,

with the aplomb

of a pachinko,

bumped through branches,

 

to wonder if any bird

had ever hit the jackpot,

if leaves could leap 

out of quill and bone.

 

death, no doubt,

preferred to throng the ground.

from possum thighs

to ichneumon wings,

 

and everything in-between,

 

not much granite

among the carcasses.

though stones goggled

while the decayed fought

for a good spot,

 

proving they weren’t fools,

 

by jockeying for position,

hobbled though they were,

in the downward gnaw of the deepening damp,

 

long disobliged by wind,

now sluggish of fate.

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

Knee out, no $ for a doctor, pain.  Still I have it better than hundreds of millions of people, who unfairly and brutally suffer the worst on this vicious miracle of a planet.  I made it to 60, somehow, at least.  I'll keep going as long as I can.

"Life is so sorry a thing that death is a delightful refuge for the weary" -- Herodotus 

An Excerpt From My Novel

 

Although I’ve made big sacrifices to attain it, I am grateful for the time I’ve had to work on my novel.  The title is A Future of Angels.   

It’s an epic sci fi, which means it is quite long, about 650 pages.  And yet it is full of new ideas in philosophy, psychology, and science.  There are two worlds.  Two very different futures for humanity.  Nothing less than reality and self-identity are at stake.

I believe this book is worthy as a cultural conversation piece.  Why?  Because we live in a time when humanity could wipe itself out, or create a paradise on Earth.  As technology accelerates, the time approaches faster.

What it comes down to is this:  how we handle our increasing tech.  Not just military and power tech.  Just as important, more important, is our ethics tech.

One reason my novel is timely is that most people today don’t even realize that ethics is a technology, capable of advanced and lesser configurations and effects.

One of the two worlds in my novel suggests that paradise is possible.  The other shows that hell is possible.

I doubt this novel will ever be mass-published.  Publisher and agents don’t like to take chances on first-time novelists, especially with a major project. 

I will keep on trying, though, even as I sketch plans for my next novel.  Perseverance is my best chance.  This is a quest for me, my part in promoting the Good (a concept not owned by any single religion).

Below is an excerpt from chapter one, which takes place in a near-future setting. The protagonist reflects on a dystopic state of affairs:  most people are now accepting a specialized computer--called an Umb--as an implant in their brain.

I’m certain this is a choice we will face in the future, maybe not long from now.  In the novel, I explore this option in detail.  I also explore the idea of angels, and how we could make them real--or not.

And on and on.  I created two new worlds, with their own tech, mythologies, cultures and fates.

There’s also a great love story in the novel, and plenty of action, all written in a literary style.

If you know a fiction agent who might be interested, I’ll send them a query.  I need any connection or help I can get, as I continue my journey.

Feel free to contact me even years from now.  I don’t foresee a quick path out of the proverbial desert.

 

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

 

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

Excerpt from Chapter One of A Future of Angels

 

...

Most kids bought their first Umb at the age of fifteen, the legal minimum.  Back when she was in school, it had been sixteen.  She had decided to wait an extra year, and the delay cost her social status and friends.  Even so, she had considered staying a pureflesh.  No mindware.  Mentally free.  The modeling and acting gigs could pay well, at least for a while. 

A few years out of high school, though, most pureflesh slid down the social ladder.  The first step was sexware and porn shoots.  After that, you became a collar, a trophy, a sex pet.  Poverty wasn’t as alluring as selling your mental leash to the whims of a sadistic noble.

At age thirteen, barely an adolescent, she’d had offers of free sexware.  High quality mindlynx worth tens of thousands of dens.  The man who solicited her had committed two major crimes:  recruiting a minor for prostitution and enslavement by mindware.  She hadn’t gone for it, thankfully.  Even at that age, she could see the degradation and sin. 

Trajan took my freedom.

Even in adults who ‘choose’ the lifestyle, everyone could see the real price.  Sex pets sitting in the passenger seats of plush glide cars, offering coy glimpses of banded crotches under stroke skirts or clutch jeans.  But what those smooth, perched thighs really meant was that some Duke or Duchess could push a button and make another human being beg to cum.

I’m not a sex pet.  Just meat turned into a weapon.

... 

  

===========

Poem: Flanked

 Flanked

 

the sky swam,

the flank of a shark,

darker toward the deepening night,

the grim Atlantic blue.

 

birches that had no leaves

reached up like lymph nodes stored in jars,

and you could

 

almost taste the formaldehyde,

 

the kind that kept fond idols

immortal and bright enough

to float in outer space.

 

without the moon,

and yet the inevitable frost,

the Sisters and the Crab loomed dog-bark crisp.

 

some commented on the brute logic

of the nascent tumescence

in the skeletal, orbital shapes,

 

somewhat a comfort,

 

and yet more vast than Euclidian,

more ‘in the eye,’

 

as they curved down

over the choppy iron of the Atlantic,

toward the onyx ambush

of the great Devourer.

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

11/28 Flipped the prepositions in lines 16 and 17,  "of" "in"

Poem: Peacemaker

 

Peacemaker

 

six eyes turning,

wrathful of fate,

staccato of gyre,

turning, turning,

 

a  barking iron,

blued-steel belly,

tongue of sulphur

out the muzzle.

 

and the fangs shoot forth,

a reap, a thresh, a gush,

a knee, a throat, a heart, a breast,

spilling to pillage blood.

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

11/25 .... "out the muzzle" replaces "from the muzzle" "fangs shoot forth" replaces "fangs shoot out"

Poem: Wary Forest

Wary Forest

 

fins of shadow

slip under a boulder

near a silent poker face of snow.

this wary forest,

it must know something,

spruce lichened with odd smiles,

needles sensitive as goosebumps.

 

mice-like feet of wind

scurry through the treetops.

clouds equivocate

from suspicious, mutable heads.

hibernating centipedes

tucked in coiled dens,

sentinel frosty secrets,

and yet most of all

the sunlight seems a guilty butler,

winsome through the boughs,

cheerful almost,

so many sparkles in its eyes

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

12/12/23 ... totally rewrote this poem again ... absolutely reconstructed.  still  doubt it is any good.  how can I tell when I can't even trust myself?

11/20 ultra-significant mods, including taking the first stanza and making it the fourth stanza.  (yep)

Poem: Uppity

 

Uppity

 

kind the purple sky.

i want to fall up into its aerial cushions,

intoxicate the call of my heart

with ethereal grapes.

 

i want to be a frond

on a slender cloud,

undulating to hover so gently,

till peace holds sway,

 

able to ponder the wink of woke stars,

sip of their mysterious hopscotch,

as they ornament, one by one,

the incipient night.

 

if only i could cease to worry

with the magnificent noblesse

of the silvering moon,

in spite of its wounds,

 

and if only i could walk

the liquid cobblestones it casts

across a pandemonium

of ocean chasms.

 

wouldn’t it be marvelous, if i did,

in the most holy yet god-free

sense of the word--

 

to walk over

 

that great yawn of colossal fears,

and awaken healed, unencumbered,

within a nest of dawn.

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

11/29/23 ... fixed a typo ...

11/ 16 (later) ... "woke" replaces "igniting"

11/16   "fears" replaces "voids"  "ornament" replaces "dapple"  "purple sky" replaces "sky's purple."

Poem: Reflection

 

Reflection

 

i remember the dandelions

melting into butter,

and ice glinting

one last time before it wept.

green erecting sundry thrones,

a zestful feudalism of ants and bees,

and April’s orchestration,

vivid notes to serenade blue.

 

we touched

blooming into each other,

supple of finger,

narcotic as poppies,

the sun riding your back,

my hands on your hips.

it was a garden of sighs.

 

now songbirds nest mauve

within sleepy suns.

and moons, they swing down,

ripe yet ethereal,

imagining your breasts.

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

11/14 stylistic mods ... mods, mods, mods... 

11/13 "to serenade blue" replaces "beneath the sky."

Poem: City Visit

 

City Visit

 

such taxidermy!

generous once of vigorous buffalo.

lissome once

of waist-high grass.

 

and yet now

the softest prairie flower tarred.  

roams of horses cold in stone.

schools of fish lost to glimmers

trickled onto a scale of coins.

 

the hardened, broadened trails

gutted of horn, hoof and heart.

lifeless of osprey.

eagle squeegeed for a sheen of windows.

 

and the rumbles of rubber and metal,

humungous to pollute, distort, and amplify

the snatched hum of bees.

 

gone.  all of it.

and yet prostituted still,

mashed into replicas and logos.

money the new blood. 

factories the fertile fields,

slicing exploited, caged flesh  

for mouths that pity no animal.

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

11/10 ... more changes... hoping to find coherence

11/9   ... lots of changes to original

Poem: Bitten

 

Bitten

 

the moon

had been bitten down

into a nimbus

on a stoic cloud.

 

it was abused now, almost an animal,

but no one wanted the scars.

it was succulent with wounds

to taunt us hypocrites.

 

it

 

played hourglass

to our calculative, scheme-ful splenetic pace.

it was something to be feared yet prayed,

chasing us,

through these self-made riddles of delusion.

 

the moon

 

it embraced the oceans

till they suckled its silk light;

and it became the sickle

of their sparkling emotional harvest.

the moon

it was the first stone

employed as a tool,

before pestle, before weapon.

 

it was mistaken once as the eye of a great bird,

high over a mountainous heart,

where it festooned magic and hope

into breaths of possibility.

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

11/13... changed the "sickle" phrase

11/10  more edits, hoping for excellence through neurotic fixation

11/6   ... "played" replaces "it was the".   Fixed typo in second-to-last stanza

Poem: Albatross

 

Albatross

 

pain crept low,

bent like a thief, an ESP spoon,

a supplicant spine.

the only way out

suffered the same old cul de sac:

a theater of crucial neurons,

stricken amid the collective blob,

and wailing to ensure

the whole behaved badly,

heart-laden.

certain memories

flared more than the rest,

so a buckled upper chin implied.

such sweet innocent misdeeds,

they taunted, orbited,

bright as joy,

pure in revolve as a wedding ring--

and yet calamitous,

destined to constrict.

as a result,

when the blob talked,

or mainly texted,

the words flung cruel,

birthing braids of hurt snakes,

which struggled, wriggled,

clumped among torn hair.

they fizzled that way,

latched together,

till limp.

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

10/31  "which" replaces  "that"

10/30 significant changes later in the day

Poem: Sees Venus, Brief

 

Sees Venus, Brief

 

the night didn’t breathe,

save for a shy peek

from a tight-lipped frisson.

 

and yet that one glimpse,

stark in the cold silver-black,

it swung a sigh

 

up into a nebula,

 

and whirled so much glee

through hunkering outposts

they never thought to possess.

 

it were as if the lips

of a desperate young romantic

 struggled

 

and yet then broke free,

magical to sing,

out of nowhere--

 

to stir repressive eons

numb and pummeled,

never before given a chance.

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

10/30  ...  many changes 

Poem: The Door

 

The Door

 

the door was in fact a statement.

it opened only to be left behind. 

searching its corners,

it imagine the knob a curious face. 

 

clues in the grains of the panels

allude to a theater stage--

the comings-and-goings 

of the many who had used the door,

swinging through exits and entrances,

to swish, skip, stumble, sidle, saunter, stride.

 

the keyhole not quite right,

too cold for my eye,

every lack of nuance linear.

every option perpendicular.

and yet somewhere, i knew,

in the desert of the wood,

woven from the smallest knotholes,

dwelled an unquenchable flower.

 

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

11/29/23 ... lots more changes... running up against the limits of what I can be, despite what I want to be

10/30 more desperate fixes...

10/25  ... fixed typo in first sentence  ... "the contours" replaces "its contours" ... sound-flow & meaning mods to second to last sentence.

Poem: The City

 

The City

 

the city, that sweltering current,

it cut vogues and idols

out of flows of commotion

in anxious lives.

 

so many scents of the lonely,

commingled with sweat.

 

busy, petty, in twittery herds

they thickened into a fleshy putty:

 

pliant cheeks and brows,

surgical noses, lubricious lips.

 

rivers of offered jugulars

where vendors checked for throbs--

of fascination, of revulsion,

of heart-drained lust.

 

it all lied.  one big liar,

a sorcery that savored a false ingredient,

gulped the rest.

 

each face a piece of a gargantuan puzzle,

each profile a tired hatchet,

nicked by truth, dented by love,

mauled by war.

 

all of it fugitive

from an inevitable destiny.

 

the city,

its people were as schooled as minnows,

flashing false smiles to scatter,

 

only to amass once more,

doomed, yet again,

to smother their unruly scars.

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

A Brutal Time To Be Alive

 

A brutal time to be alive.  If fascism takes over the United States, the whole world trembles.  Aside from that, experts claim the nuclear threat is as bad, or worse, than the Cuban Missile Crisis, due to Putin’s wanton, tyrannical aggression in Ukraine.

Donald Trump, who would lead a fascist US, is cut from the same cloth as Putin.  A narcissistic sociopathic sadistic demagogue. 

I’ll let that sentence settle ...

Sociopaths are not automatically bad people, any more than the rest of us.  They are reckless, impulsive and transactional.  With proper guidance, which, admittedly, we lack in our general culture, they are functional members of society.

Trump, however, is what experts call a “malignant narcissist.” [1]  This is the most dangerous classification of personality disorders.  Trump also has a skill: he is a brilliant confidence man.  What this adds up to is a perfect storm:  a brutal dictatorship without limits on its descent into darkness and corruption.

Leaving that aside for a moment, consider this:  technology is growing more and more powerful.  This means that our future can be paradise or hell.  It depends on who is in charge. 

If the right people are in charge, they will see that ethics is one of the most important technologies to develop. 

Ethics--how to know what is right and initiate it--involves human psychology, worldview, and straight-up philosophy.  The Sims, a computer game, provides a crude analogy.  We can shape our societies to maximize human flourishing and the beauty of the planet.  How?  Set the level of ethics tech higher. 

Low ethics tech ==>  war & suffering

High ethics tech ==>  flourishing

Note that ethics is not simply a list of rules or commandments.   It is a synergy between the science of human psychology and ecosystem dynamics; plus an adaptive, nuanced philosophical approach.

On the other hand, what happens if a malignant narcissists is in charge?  Such a person will stop at nothing to get power and adulation.  No respect for human rights, future generations, or the planet itself.  This will favor totalitarian control.  Such control will be enforced by robotic surveillance systems, which are in the process of being enhanced in China.

So, at this juncture, human civilization has two paths.  One goes to flourishing and happiness.  Universal basic income, psychological health, benign robots doing the work we don’t want to do. 

A leader in such a society will be psychologically healthy and virtuous.

The other future is ruled by narcissism, greed, along with lack of conscience or virtue.  The result is enforcement of obedience through strict police controls that include torture and execution. 

Someone might argue that rulership by dictators can work--if they are benevolent and intelligent.

First of all, big IF!

What we are looking at, right now, is the rise of fascism.  Fascism is based on constructing an irrational cult of personality.  There will be racism, sexism and other oppressions.  Fascism, also, is rife with corruption.  Why?  Lack of respect for rule of law.  It’s all about might-makes-right.

One malignant personality is all it takes to start WWIII.  Look at Putin.  He is on the edge of destroying us all.

Trump may be worse even than Putin.  Trump has shown incredible incompetence.  An inability to adapt to the facts, or even grasp them.  Witness his hideous response to the pandemic.  It involved gaslighting, contradiction and cruelty  (e.g. knowing covid was dangerous while telling Americans it wasn't). 

He has also said things like, 'If we have nuclear weapons, we ought to use them.'

This is the time we live in.  

If we go too far in the dark direction, there won’t be any more chances.  WWIII isn’t going to be like WWII, horrifying though the latter was.  

Our level of death tech is much higher.  We are far more capable of wiping ourselves out.

 Meanwhile, our ethics tech remains pathetically stuck in the realm of despotism.

[1]  https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump-Psychiatrists/dp/1250179459

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

Poem: Deadly Nightshade

 

Deadly Nightshade

 

shadow creatures,

crooked as the claws of roots,

curl over a withered bush.

 

fey in contort,

bleak pantomimes,

covert yet unearthed,

 

pleas from a buried heart

that defecated its hurt

through a ribcage.

 

no feel taste touch smell sound,

no sign language,

or  windy semaphore,

 

these shadows that vine

the still of rose thorns,

so quiet and uncertain

 

in twisted composure.

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

3/12 ... "twisted" replaces "twistical" ... "covert" replaces "surreptitious"

1/21/23 .... "twistical" replaces "meaningless"

The poems don't like you.  And they don't like me.  They use us to be heard.

Regarding the Poems

 Thank you for reading the poems!

Most of the poems that go up get edited during the first few days of their online life.  Often, I remark on the edits below the poem.

It's a very hard time to be alive for all of us. The US Empire is on the verge of going fascist, which would turn the whole world on its head.  It would mean WWIII.  Ethics is a technology.  And ethics needs to advance with other technologies.  If not, we will be stuck with narcissistic dictators, who cannot adapt rationally to a changing world, and who demand worship and fealty.    It is an ancient pattern, dictatorship by selfish warlords, and it always leads to war.

See my post:

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2022/01/ethics-is-technology-usa-is-leaning-in.html

Aside from that, there is futuristic advance.  The stretching 21st century will be as alien to us as the 20th century was to the people of the Victorian Era.  Humanity could have a fantastic future.  Better health.  Robots to help. Delights and ease.  Universal Basic Income.  Or the future could be hell.  It depends on our ethics.

We will be able to engineer angelic AI into existence.  Or AI that surveils, restricts and enslaves.   

It's all coming down.  Life on Earth, in a very real sense, is Purgatory.  We can craft a beautiful future.  Or an evil future.  It depends on who is in charge.  How leaders will use the powers that be at their disposal.

We often here from cynics that 'human nature' damns us.  

Well, no.  Many different cultures have existed, and they demonstrate that we are malleable .  A human can be predisposed (programmed, some would say) and situated in many ways.  We are not limited by evil.  We can seek the Good.  In fact, we have.  Women can now vote in many places--a HUGE change.

Ethical forces exist in the collective consciousness.  These forces struggle to be heard and to thrive.    

The best we can do, being the puny creatures we are, in this brutal universe, is to seek the Good.  The Good transcends any one religion.  

Yes, the nature of our universe saddles us with a cruel physics, a mean, vicious, unfair system of evolutionary selection.  And yet, it is a system we can control, one we can steer, through a combination of technology and intellect.

Fly Well In The Dark,

OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

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

Poem: Poet Issues

 

Poet Issues

 

it was an orgy

of the anti-fantastic,

a spill out an eighth story window,

ideas as limp and lukewarm

as breathless doves.

 

it was a waterfall of useless hurt,

sheaves that meant so much less

than one line from a famous writer.

 

it was an example of what it didn’t take

to be more than a crumpled curl

in the city’s ego-heaped, petty gutters.

 

no one cares cares cares

 

for days drunk or sober,

sex-filled or sterile,

cried in extremes

from the bleeding mouth of my pen;

no one cares

for this savage agony of stormy bliss

chewed in the pincers of tiny rhymes.

 

cockroaches of cliché

crawl up my leg,

swelled brown as sewage,

their feelers ticklish over my heart;

 

yet when i scream, trapped,

it is only a blah of standing bored

in the same cordoned lines.

 

worse, i know

 

because my audience is as callous as i am,

whining about wanting to be heard,

trying to manage half-losing battles,

as if that is what life is all about--

a brutal tedium of that.

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

10/11   "is" replaces "was" in the last stanza 

Poem: George On a Quarter

 

George On a Quarter

 

a wine rack of poetry, if splashed on your face,

would trickle off silent lips, voided eyes,

the sleeping brow of the kafkaesque.

 

beautiful burgundy tears--

of words, of passion, of persistent hope--

yet they fail to dent your silver mettle,

already too deeply incused,

dishonest and cruel,

from the links to chains of slaves

cursed to mine deep underground.

 

those beautiful burgundy tears,

i confess they are mine.

i only want to understand:

why do we worship saintly busts

honed on a die of sins?

 

why such praise for decapitated coins

hoarded and guarded

in self-righteous stacks of murder?

 

i do not want you. 

i touch you and you drink my warmth.

down into your cold wafer.

your inedible eucharist.

 

i tossed you off a peer once,

as if to expel a vampire or a tick,

and watched as your winks scrawled to fade,

leaving in their wake no prose.

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

11/18  changes to decapitation sentence

10/29  "expel" replaces "repel"

10/7  many changes after the poem went up, a couple hours later.  Weird f**king poem about the bust of George Washington, which appears on the US twenty-five cent piece.

Poem: Some Conclusion

Some Conclusion

 

a bat in raspberry dusk

wrote a flurry of answers far too sane.

 

as its wings cartwheeled,

 

it countered the measures

of every philosopher, orator or preacher--

 

a flourish of voracious mazes

that doomed blood-sucking bravado.

 

in joyful vectors,

the creature ventured beyond light,

 

airy of origin or omega,

to elude astronomy’s guess.

 

no logician could fathom

such a loom of legerdemain,

 

even as truth reigned incontrovertible

in the sky.

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

The title is in the style of, say, "That's some outfit you're wearing!"

Poem: Last Dawn

 

Last Dawn

 

ebb of mango

over half moon

as a man between dusty walls

reclines the same way,

bedsheets rife with

twisty blooms,

while his clocks point

to coming hells

and unseen constellations. 

towers of plates,

stoic in the kitchen,

dwell too long there,

except they are. 

in the sink

a bristle of effete bones,

half with flesh,

a carving knife stuck through.

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

11/17 .. removed "to be" after "dwell to long"

Poem: Resign

 

Resign

 

what could be more desperate

than a belt around the neck,

and the subzero of goodbyes,

and the failure, if someone cared.

 

it couldn’t just go on and on,

waiting for a slip,

and the unstoppable sense

that one is being sucked down,

swirled to drain away,

beneath a basin of daily rituals.

 

as if we even know what we are,

or why these roles, or the nature of the game. 

trite jangles on a gamut of nerves,

far more numerous than piano strings.

 

love,

it sprints at full thigh,

but must leap, more than once,

the monster’s ditch,

and hence it loses, one by one,

its petal-like toes.

 

far too much keeps going on,

below the cheap magnetic shells,

down here in the nucleus.

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

3/13/23 ... "know" replaces "knew"  "are" replaces "were"

10/1/22    "the" replaces "a"  

Poem: Change of Clime

 

Change of Clime

 

a rattlesnake half dust

employs itself

as a lounge chair.

 

a few jays wilt

on electric tethers.

no fusspot grackles

to gossip over the wires.

 

nothing blooms or flits.

plants beg for sauce.

heat whispers

but lizards have no ears.

 

above a crispy arroyo 

rusty with pummeled cars,

a vulture mistakes itself

for a poisoned roach.

such absurd meekness--

meek as the eluvia

prostrate before foothills

of molting char.

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

12/2/23  ... not a very accessible poem, some mods

10/1 "Clime" replaces "Climate"

9/25  massive changes

Poem: The Statement

 

The Statement

 

our time must be spent

hiding from the statement.

it’s an absurd statement,

not for lack of truth, but the nudity.

 

why should life be see-through?

as with clothes,

the layers protect who you are.

and define you. 

 

and must be fashionable.

 

don’t

 

overwhelm your peers. 

others have worse problems.

shut up so they can fake it.

 

don’t

 

bother those who hide the past

in unworn lockets gifted by pain.

 

who opens a locket

to look at its face?

and who wouldn’t be horrified

by their own neglect?

 

don’t

 

try to be better.

others aren’t ready to cry

until the tears cleanse.

 

tears,

they scald as bad as battery acid.

 

don’t consider them tinctures

of sad little cures from the pure heart of an angel.

 

they won’t get through.

 

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

Poem: Psychic

 

Psychic

 

voices

mingle and revolve,

persistent as a net,

clockwork as a waltz,

 

opening every pore and part

till memories blush,

a song from a sigh, a key in a crow’s foot,

a tincture on a taste bud, a smidgeon for the nose.

and later, so soft,

a nuzzle skirts a nipple, bliss rounds a navel,

fingertips strum a nape and 

the sculpted breaths,

frivolous with daily haggles,

poetry of a moment, verbal and mercurial,

frolic-flocking the stage  

under

 

herringbone clouds and orbital Geminis,

and all the other mysterious cog-pixies of an anti-clockwork universe.

until 

too many utterances loquacious-obstreperous, 

mishmashes of victory-or-crime mouths

kissing to curse, forgiving to berate,

so many hungers

who could assuage or offer naked assurance,

or dispel the flypapery sins of their buzzy beggary?

nothing left, except to go blank, sever threads,

dispel the guests to wander meddlesome,

back to those goal posts, unconscious and horizonal,

so jealous of time.

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

12/24/22 lots of mods ... sad... still not right

9/27 "such" replaces "their"

9/17 ... desperate continuous edits... 

9/16 ... more changes to this product of mania

9/16  ... changes continue to the original abomination ... 

9/16  major changes to original poem, tossing out whole sections ... gutting the rest ... absolutely awful poem to have posted ... might still be awful, can't really say, brain so muddled

Poem: Polar (triggering poem)

 

Polar

 

in a closet.

a place where the curled

reach up from a valley in a psalm.

 

hollow cloth hangs above.

crucified angels of wool,

or effigies of last defense.

 

no mediation,

not here in anxiety’s womb.

this valley in a psalm.

 

so inky at night.

this place where lack-of-movement

captures movement.

 

it prowls.  it alone stalks,

until dawn,

when a thought might think

 

the price of admission

beyond the door

is the same as the door.

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

Depression isolates.  But isolated time is time with the gods.