The poems are a lot of work and mainly a curse. Who are they helping? Maybe some god that laughs at us stupid, puny humans from afar.
Most of us obsessed with writing poems are back-up prophets,
even less heard than frontline prophets.
At best, it is beautiful therapy, such as a dandelion, lovely yet ignored, just a weed, blooming in a crack in a world of well-paved minds.
Humid Day
air crowds us,
a puffy abdomen
of spongy muscle.
can’t breathe,
such wet heat
the weight of a hulking grave,
oppressive,
air, water, ground,
this tepid, wormy simmer.
can’t move much,
a stuck stride,
gluey enough to catch mice,
and the feet of birds.
this quicklime of humidity,
so wet,
we are caught, half-dead animals,
hot and still moist,
under the cellophane of the atmosphere,
and the trees fat redcoats
bled, bled, bled--to die
in a motionless war.
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9/4 "to die" ...
Ordinary Dungeon
angry in the hideout,
wrestling protocols,
and suffering for my failure,
why defuse this faith,
contrary to vision though it is?
to debunk fear
and rationalize escape,
such hooks of heretical logic
drag the heart punctured deeper,
until truth asserts a terrible price,
while excuses whipsaw from this broken mouth,
faster than the prattle
of inexcusable commercials.
we all toadeat before the curse:
god exists, hallelujah,
to sting, bark, and segregate,
to outfox us with ecclesiastic sanctions.
i try, try, try
to improvise a lack of manners,
but the leap for deviance feels always fake,
and i fall back,
into this ordinary dungeon,
knowing i can tantrum only so far,
with an authorized smile.
================================
9/9 "while" replaces "and" (clarity issue)
Dead Grass Before Spring
do not confuse them with minnows
rioting from an earthen shark.
they are not disheveled wicker,
or shards from a tan season of dynasty.
consider them needles
that sewed themselves into their own quilt;
and yet now the slumbering green juju
awakens
to poke millions of centipede legs through their cross-stich,
so they dissolve into what they truly are:
pawls of a clock guzzled down,
easy as a darkening dearth of wine.
when the last threads of snow flee their maze.
they have no more prisoners, no escape,
only to wait, blind beyond hurt,
for the skewer of a dandelion.
================================
12/11/23 four mods ...
Hidden Questions
faces hide questions
no one can see,
small as pores, dwarfed by grins,
those latitudes of longitudinal lies.
leathery plains span cheekbones,
hide peek-a-boos of prairie flowers,
as teardrops of deep-sea clues
hunt for glimmers of something wise.
such sad expressions.
they can’t heal,
mere wax under the caress
of a volatile, helpless fingertip--
a chin would dissipate into quivers,
a brow reform into a tomb,
a nose descend through aromatic sonatas,
long-lost
and far too far away to cherish.
10/1 ... significant changes to two stanzas
Another day passes by. Yee-haw ...
8/28 "volatile, helpless fingertips" replaces longer clunky line
8/21 ... Major changes a few hours after posting ... more changes later in the day
Little Karmas
i ache
as if someone broke glass
and stashed the shards
in my brain.
the problem is this:
i feel the little karmas
of ants and chickens,
and everything in-between.
they shout up at me,
these puny scorecards
that hail back
to the first oozy womb.
they’ve found a way
to preserve genesis
in long, endless threads.
what’s being woven,
i don’t know, but every leg
on every insect is a needle.
every feather on every bird
sews the wind.
the tiniest scuttle services fate,
and if you nudge it,
you tweak the tapestry
of a billion years.
============================
To the Gods
i send trinkets of my life
in a basket of disloyal tears.
my armor of wounds,
more feeling than blood--
that i add first.
next i fold with care,
and tuck in place,
such brutalized truths:
those cities of cursed children,
whom i sobbed to invoke,
and yet never dared to see.
dawn’s ocean,
rain-voices of songful spring,
sage aromas of chaparral,
and prism-garlanded forests--
these go in.
i place an enduring kiss, too,
one that I received long since,
and yet it has healed me of decades.
finally a dandelion of sunlight,
and dances of joyous breeze.
the gods, they will not respond,
or even understand, i know,
this difficult gift.
but by offering, i
have some hope,
faint as an angel feather,
to forgive the gods.
===================
10/30 "disloyal" replaces "unloyal"
8/24 "garlanded" replaces "sprinkled"
8/17 "add" replaces "place"
On first glance, this is one of the best poems I have ever written. Of course, as is usual with such things, I am probably wrong.
Once More
to idolize the warmth
on the roof of the mouth,
while the rest of the body hides.
the tea drains lukewarm,
thick down a throat,
softening feathered phrases,
while a tarantula with arthritis
captures and scratches,
with pencil to bind.
a whole pot of earl
passes through the urethra
before the writing is just okay.
some of the words breathe, lissome,
nectarine with hope,
if not the verve of pleasure.
caffeine and steam, now dead,
unparalyze a tense drama,
releasing the tarantula.
fingers quibble with tremors, then,
whether to screw the thermos lid,
or whether, like the brain,
it is drained of purpose,
any last semblance of emotion--empty now.
empty.
empty as a lake
that turned to sand
long before the first mammal cried.
eyes sizzle-fizzle,
moving zeros next to zeros
under lids gone wild.
======================================
11/16 removed "other" before "zeros" ... added some commas
10/19/22 "softening" replaces "softened"
Last Call
the upheaval of bliss in the elixir
massaged the world
with biochemical paws.
it was appealing, indeed,
this dearth of confusion
in a lack of tomorrowness--
the paychecks mere math,
without grace or art.
which up was
up, really,
and why so much descent?
why kneel sad yet glib
before a magistrate of illusion?
but
if a lion ant lurked
in a toothpick-skewered olive,
it had to be a trap,
a smooth slide of sinking allure
in a funnel of gin.
maybe this eerie dizzy banquet
lacked euphoria, after all,
no longer steep,
neither seductive,
just along for the cab ride.
===============================
8/15 corrected typo
Haunted
doors tilt to spin walls,
but the no-way-out victim-
hood shifts denials, no way
to get clean, this uninten-
tional roulette, to run
faster around more corners in
more panic to achieve less, yes,
you are the spin, the pill, the drug
in curves of halls that hunt
and yet still falter into fungus, mirrors, yes,
it is you who must press your skele-
ton to your beating chest,
you who must not feel the bones,
none of the bared truth,
zero pitfalls, no chance
to outchallenge the lurking
cellar of risk.
This image from the Washington Post today sums up the Republican prejudices and ignorances (self-defeating and country-destroying strategy).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/dana-milbank-republican-destructionists-book-excerpt/
Before The Court
pleas of truth
before a caterwaul of lies.
against the bruxism of empire
to fight and declaim.
to cast logic out,
amid knives of buzzy scorn.
to argue that armies
oppress in the name of freedom.
to call out tyrants,
who salivate above a drool of dogs.
to lament scared citizens,
whose rush erodes the very streets.
to acknowledge a rubbish of vagrants,
eyes as smoky as bullet casings.
to remark on the loyalty of altars
irrational of sacrifice,
and the loud fanatic arenas,
drunk with hate-thirsty grunts.
to dare kindness,
and deprive cruelty with love--
and, for such acts, to pay,
to be accused and entombed.
===================
Sept 8 "drool of dogs" replaces "drooling dogs"
August 12 more changes...
August 5 "dare kindness" replaces "dare advance kindness"
August 2, structural changes for better flow
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