Poem: Pebble

 

Pebble

 

to blare from its minor perch,

to sing with the blaze of

an asteroid leaving outer space,

 

it craves to be heard

and laments the exile

of its admixture.

 

it scolds the quirk of its own honest substance 

with a gall so derided 

it is obsolete in the cities of gravel.

 

it has so much to say.

every fleck on tegument

could be a crease sporting lips.

 

but who will notice

such a cloistered hideaway,

where a nova masquerades as a glint?

 

 

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10/14/24 mods

10/13/24 ... mods to make this mod sound more about the danger of honesty 

Poem: Under the Gun

 

Under the Gun

 

an occasional ant

upgrades the course of the colony’s chores,

lucky to avoid the pluck of a spider.

 

the ant clutches the podium

riding a dice roll that somehow slips

dismemberment by righteous mandibles.

 

once daft and deviant, malign and rampant,

the previous pariah basks in accolades,

inscribed now as a hero in the pheromone codes.

 

atop its servile scurriers,

and the corpse-husks of hated failures,

the new leader legislates,

 

godly over those who are similar, superior even,

except the babble of time

didn’t call their names.

 

 

 

 

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10/14 mods

plays on, "there is nothing new under the sun"

Poem: Kettle

 

 

Kettle 

 

my february-cold face sinks

toward a coil under kettle and water,

a serpent of warm orange

deviantly hot-blooded,

whose industrial mettle

plays young to the cataract stare

of windows glazed by frost.

 

the kettle casts a spell,

encouraged by my quest,

of little emissaries of air

which launch ocular as they plunge upward

toward my fevered gaze.

 

first a few then streams then a

kettleful of eyes which mushroom

in the effervesce, each one

of them a momentarily ogle

devoid of anything at all

except perhaps a hint of innocence.

 

such is the bubble-boil brouhaha,

a frenzied figleaf of drama,

sandwiched between clones

of drywall and ancient pale-lime paint and

those wizened panes of icy squares.

 

on and on

the replenish of little dots

rises in sways of columns,

tucked in their bell-curve of glass.

collectively a specter,

they condense into a blurry patina of steam,

concealing the weave of  tears

on my flushed face.

 

 

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10/9/24 ... renamed poem "Kettle"

Slyia Plath inspired 

The Monster Netanyahu (WaPo article)

The Washington Post has had the guts to publish what the monster Netanyahu has done:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2024/gaza-reconstruction-rebuild-process-plans/

And, yes, Hamas is wicked and evil, too, it should be disbanded.  But Netanyahu is the one who has carried out his dark vision of ethinic cleansing and, as well, genocide, in Gaza.

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Poem: Downtown Rush

 

Downtown Rush

 

conformity, conformity,

shirt-button pips on dominos.

 

one stray truth could topple

the whole busy sidewalk of oxfords.

 

urbanites, faces full of micro-knots,

stretch into spurs of a bobbing fence:

 

we are pedestrian cattle, after all,

roped and herded

by our own internal wires.

 

i try to be lazy

in the bustle of twill and leather.

 

i dare, for just a moment,

to dangle in the stressed crosscurrents,

a jostled marionette.

 

a single human being

curls at the foot of a dumpster.

 

is such the price of wisdom?  

 

is it acuity

to become a bipedal piece of trash,

slovenly and unseen,

crumpled and unkempt?

 

the vagabond-guru.

it comes easy, a pill

to sugarcoat perambulatory denial.

 

and yet, it is true,

even a moment out of step

and one's feet become a nuisance,

wayward in this greedy lattice.

 

 

 

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10/6 ... mods 

NYC circa 1996

Poem: Doors

 

Doors

 

we weren’t meant

to tango vivid with ghosts,

the gone should not outflesh the day,

nostalgia never never dreamed

to be so concrete.

 

for how fragile we were then,

were we not; and not to witness

is what magnifies this togetherness,

we who once begged to immerse in bliss

and yet now are far less

than a glimpse of that which

was never meant to be.

 

this past of ours

holds much more than canvas or sculpture,

and reaches out as if singing

so many songs without answers

behind the doors.

 

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

USA Media abandons Gaza to doom

 Mainstream US media is completely ignoring Gaza now and the genocidal conditions inflicted on them by Israel:

Analysts have identified Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as one of the deadliest and most destructive in recent history. Large areas of Gaza, including critical infrastructure, have been bombed to the ground, with about 63 percent of the total structures in the Gaza Strip estimated to be destroyed, damaged, or possibly damaged. According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), even if a five-fold increase in construction materials were allowed into Gaza, it would take until 2040 to rebuild completely destroyed housing units. But it could take “approximately 80 years” if reconstruction were to follow the same pattern as after previous escalations.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains abysmal. At a recent press conference, UNICEF Director of Child Nutrition and Development Victor Aguayo estimated that “over 50,000 children suffer from acute malnutrition and need immediate treatment”, before warning of the ongoing risk of famine.

(UN Security Council)

https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/monthly-forecast/2024-10/the-middle-east-including-the-palestinian-question-17.php

2.2 million people in Gaza have been subjected to genocidal conditions by Israel's violence, which at best means a grey area, between genocide and atrocious war crimes that don't quite reach that status.  Now they are going to be forgotten as the war goes into Iran (my prediction).  

The US Empire, supplying weapons and now military support for the expanding Israeli aggression--Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, soon Iran--is showing its Evil side.  

Genocide is what the US empire inflicted on the Native American people in North American in the 17th-19th centuries, and it whitewashed that over (perverse pun intended)  Apparently it will do the same with the genocide in Gaza, gaslighting it into the non-existence of mainstream-media silence.

I cry out to the gods, why did you create a world where might-makes-right, the force of Evil, always seems to win?  And why put us in this position, where might-makes-right, the force of Evil, will damn us all, very soon, it seems, to the fires of WW3?  

I love my country for the progress it has made.  And I hate it just as much for its global wicked cruelties.

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