20201231.0430

The calendar will soon reset,
But we, ourselves, remain beset;
We have a fight awaiting yet.
The foe still lingers in the land,
Crowned and speaking its demand;
Too few against it seek to stand.
Still the Stupid God remains
To spread about unthinking pains,
Provoke Jeremiah's refrains,

As it its grip too strong maintains.

20201230.0430

This year is soon to go away,
To flee after another day,
But its flaws are here to stay,
Even when we are not.
What will emerge may well be worse
Than all the things that we rehearse
And proclaim twenty-twenty's curse,
It must not be forgot.
But we can look for better days
And a year that fear allays
As well as the strange malaise
That many will have caught.
Although it has been quite a year,
In the main, we are still here
And we are like to persevere,
As it well might be thought.

20201229.0430

The album reaches its final track
And as the final strains are sounding
Moving I6/4 to V
Will it be vi or I that follows
Before the disc is ejected or the thumb-drive pulled?

20201228.0430

The work goes on, of course,
Until it kills the horse,
But is it the saddle or the yoke that does it in?

20201227.0430

I have often heard it said
That they would do it for free
If they really loved it
Yet I see few who say such things
Turn down the paychecks they get
And not only from me
I guess they don't love it
Because I have to think
They speak in good faith
Believe what they say
Right?

20201226.0430

Banked coals smolder
Waiting for a breath upon them
And a bit of kindling
But the fire that burned them
Hot and bright
Has taken all the tinder near to hand
And no other shipment is scheduled
Nor yet is a hand ready to the axe
Arm unfit for such labor
Or any, as the claim has oft been made

20201225.0430

Now, perhaps, they are at rest
Who have these past weeks done their best
To ensure that wants are addressed
Despite how they are sorely pressed
And in that, we have failed a test
Done less smartly than we're dressed
As we make merry Christmas fest
At vendors' always-voiced request

20201224.0430

My daughter does delight
In the promise of this night
When many post a light
And look for gifts to come
While I may not believe
And I scruple to deceive
I'll not make her wonder leave
That time soon will come

20201223.0430

There was a time
When even fuller winter chills
Such as rarely happen here
And not for quite a while
Did not affect me
And I stood against Boreas with a smile
But now I do not do so well
The fire dwindling within me
And my insulation less than it has been

20201222.0430

The well may not have drilled in deep
But its pump is ready to the hand
And seldom has it failed to give forth its fluid
When it has been worked upon
Though the flavor may not be to every taste

20201221.0430

Now more space opens for a hanging thing
Than daily use has long been wont to bring
For it, though loss of space will make them sing
Who feel their dangling suddenly curtailed.
(Baritone efforts have thus often failed
As stricken faces suddenly thus paled.)
That which is often girded tight hangs free,
Though still full well ensconced within the lee
Of blowing winds that hidden regions see
But seldom, as if an unscheduled prayer
If offered at the altar hidden there
By layered cloth, pulled up and out with care.
Ah! To have a penitent on knees
Who that within the open space would seize!

20201220.0430

Once again in my accustomed place
I sit with sunshine falling in my face,
For but a moment paused amid the race
The rats still run while yet the plague does spread,
Undriven by the flea that had once led
The valedictor to his dear one's bed
When once she two bloods joined as one did spill.
For now, at least, I have not fallen ill,
The lottery whose tickets pay for thrill
Of going out, unmasking, thus to win
A prize that seems to give itself again
To all it sees. It is accounted sin
For us to spread ourselves without concern
Even when we do not, fevered, burn.

20201219.0430

The light is fading
Not for me as for Milton
Because I expect it will return
As his never did
Yet still I lament how mine was spent
For while I could not see anything else when I looked
I have chosen poorly in buying what I did
The exchange made for the gleaming coin
That was mine to spend today

20201218.0430

I have passed this way before
Many times across many years
And the scenery is more different now
Than ever it was before
Or I am
And I do not know which will make the
Elder I am becoming complain more

20201217.0430

What endures
What decays
In both of these
I am amazed

20201216.0430

Creeping far more slowly down the road than might be thought
Yellow inchworms loud within
Carrying in them seeds soon to sprout and
Grow into a harvest uncertain
Except
That it will be abundant

20201215.0430

Happy birthday to you, Brother, dear,
And know that we are glad that you are here
With nimble fingers and an open ear--
If also with an open mouth! We know,
Of course, that you still sweetly sometimes blow
Your horn, and skill upon the keyboards show,
For which no few do love you yet, and we
Who've known you longest still feel our own glee
As you present those skills for all to see
And hear. But we do also know there's more
Than music's play about you yet in store,
And since we do that absence much abhor,
We're glad to've had you 'round another year
And hope for others yet; thus, you, we cheer!

20201214.0430

Sitting among a field
Blooms of youth in full color
Brilliant blue and mellow goldenrod
The sunset sky looking on
Hearing songs remembered from days before
And others new to older ears
A deep breath calms
Refreshes
And once more 'round doesn't seem so bad

20201213.0430

You may have sat at the table longer
But the chef has grown more daring and
More skilled as the meal has continued
And I have feasted more fully and on better foods
Whose gut do you think I will trust?

20201212.0430

I have not had to drink today
And yet I feel a drunk
After the fun has passed
And the draft likely poured out again
Hopefully after the tap was cleared
And into the ceramic made to that purpose
And I lament that the better part
Was once again denied me

20201211.0430

Howling wolves and screaming eagles
Roaring lions and snarling bears
Grunting hogs and farting deer
And many do no better with words
Or worse

As a note, this is post #2800 to this webspace.

20201210.0430

The voices ring across the concrete slabs
Laughing together, which would be good
Save for the words of hate
Harsh discordant brass against sweet reeds
And I wonder if I ought to be their drummer

20201209.0430

I took the day
I often do
But I could not
Go with you
And so I did not
Carry through
Again, and so
Again I rue
The day I took
And away threw

20201208.0430

There is no pill that Morpheus provides
To take me into better rest or
To let me wake fully
I lumber thus
Far from abed
With eyes sagging shut that
Never fully opened

20201207.0430

The hinges creak
No oil to ease them
And no way to replace them
Matching the old hardware costing
More than a wallet will hold

20201206.0430

Once again
They take away the new bouquets
Each time a new arrangement of bright young blooms
But I only need the one blossom
Growing more vibrant as the days pass
Roots still deepening and no dead leaves yet choking the stem

20201205.0430

The floor needs sweeping every day
To clear the dust and dirt away;
The hand must ever push the broom,
Though weary, if ever the room
Will be found fit to dwell therein.
In this, my sweeping, I begin.

20201204.0430

The wind may stir the waves
But the sea remains in place
Letting the disturbances pass
Soon forgotten
I
However
Am landlocked

20201203.0430

Being taffy might be nice
Pulled but on one hook
Put back again after
And if cut into pieces
Welcome in each
For its sweetness

20201202.0430

I have attempted to water it
Sought to feed it
And, yes, fertilized it, too
But its roots never did go deep enough
Even if its green offshoot is growing well
And its own green is sickly enough
The color of a monster's eyes

20201201.0430

Sounding like a sailors' chorus
But neither agreement nor acknowledgement
Instead a self-assertion
Markedly different if sounding the same
And sounding depths the others don't
Perhaps no return from thence should be

20201130.0430

The little birds
Flittering about in their plumage
Proud of it
In its many colors and shapes
Each unalike to each
Twittering and chirping
Singing out as they flutter off
And, once again, I smile

20201129.0430

They flock to catch the flowers
No new weddings soon to come
While I
Content in my lengthening marriage
And the fruit that still grows from its bloom
Sit and smile just a bit
Not needing to struggle

20201128.0430

Uprooted too many times for
The roots to run deep
However much manure was spread about
The scrub cedar somehow survived the storm
Weathered the winds
Stood fast against flames
And the seed that sprang from it
Seems to have found deeper soil
And is making much of it

20201127.0430

Take their limbs
Hack away the hangers-on
Cut their trunks
And I will feast upon them
Ravening in my heat
To the delight and sometimes pain
Of those who look on me
Who seek to bring me forth
My speech cracking
My presence illuminating
The smith's helper and the cook's
Say what I am if you can
And of what food I speak

20201126.0430

Today should be marked by a feast
On the West Coast as well as the East
And lands in between
But that does not mean
That elsewhere, the joy should be ceased

20201125.0430

The branches pruned
The limbs cut back
The amputated boles stand naked in the evening sun
And whom such nudity attracts
I surely do not know

20201124.0430

Sitting at this distance is not easy
Closer would be better
But the building has to stand without scaffolding

20201123.0430

The Helian cerulean spray spreads no wider than
The unfolding Ouranian cloak
And if the one has a brighter jewel
Nobody went blind staring at the starlight at night

20201122.0430

Why should I hunger after breadsticks
Baked from depleted flour
Dried out under heatlamps or
Lacquered with
Some stale spread sprayed from a can
When I have a full loaf of
Good brown bread
Warm and fragrant
Dripping with butter and honey
All for my own?

20201121.0430

She stands there
Waiting to take her daughter in
As I have already done
Set the brightly colored flower to twirl without the wind
And I mark her presence
And she mine
But if her eyes narrow
It is not for the reason mine do
Because she is not facing into the sun

20201120.0430

The sun shines in
A clear sky, and
Warm breezes blow so
Butterflies dance on
Particolored wings but
I cannot enjoy it
Cannot be out among such things because
There is work to do and
Nobody to do it but
Me
What can I do but
Turn away from the window and
Try to refuse to see
What I cannot have?

20201119.0430

Forgetting how to rest
Taking time in the sun and breeze
Warm and cool at once
And not too much of either because both
To hunch over some meaningless task
Because work has always to be done
Even if to no end and less delight

20201118.0430

How long has the cypress stood
Beside the creek that has always seemed to flow?
Is its height the mark of age
Or should it be taller
Stunted by thin soil broken off
One tiny piece at a time
From the graves of swimmers long forgotten?

20201117.0430

Sitting on the outside again
While the wind is blowing
There is joy inside
But no heart to come in out of the cold

20201116.0430

Doggedly
I jog out my allotted laps
And if I break no records
Do not snap my leash
I am at least loyal to the task
Though it may well not reward me with
Even so much as kibble

20201115.0430

Eyes growing green as
They see so many laugh and play
Never counting the cost
An accountant whose ledger is
Always in the red
Not firm enough to be firm with others
Or to show them how
Soft lump too much self-indulged
Unfit for nobler times or harder
But suited only to the rot and decay
Of too much fat in the body politic
Going gangrene because bloodless
Hoping the amputation never comes
And laziness trumps vanity
Keeping the liposuction away

20201114.0430

I should long to
Throw myself upon the grass
But I always worry
The stains will never out

20201113.0430

Somehow
I managed to miss the fire ant mounds
The sticker-burrs
The yard raisins spread around
Presents from the bucks and does
Coming into season sooner than they'd like
If they were able to understand such things
And I don't even have a rock jabbing me in the sciatica as I
Lie upon the grass
A bottle in my hand
A butterfly perched for a moment on its lip
And keeping me from lifting it again

20201112.0430

Running along its jagged paths
And leaving its strange trails behind
So those that follow far or close
Find new things to keep in mind
The racer seeks to leave its mark
On the trees' pulped and bleached rind
And if it falters, those who track
Its course may pause; they may be kind

20201111.1111

Better pens than mine
Better hands upon better keyboards
Better minds behind them and
Better hearts

Have said what can be said of this
More than a century on
But I maintain
My old refrain:
Would that they had been right

20201110.0430

Once again in his prime
For the eighteenth time, in fact
Having run with us the solar circuit
He puts off Holst's Saturnian claim just a bit longer
Fitting enough for a man whose tool is not the sickle
And whose younger son regards him more kindly than that
Emulating him in ways his elder did not
He has more laps to run
And we look forward to him continuing on the track
Glad of his company still
Eager for more

20201109.0430

Do they think I breathe
With deep-sea diver sounds?
I rarely sit on a park bench
And the flowers' bloom is no madness in the spring
Yet I know that I must mind my eyes
Because it is not my intent that matters
But the effect that others feel
And I know from experience
I need not touch to repulse

20201108.0430

The newer singer sings
Somewhere there is
A place where all the things that live and breathe
Exist in harmony
But I have known
Harmony does not exist without separation
And too much closeness breeds dissonance
To which listening is productive
The tensions making new ideas
But too few are willing to be good audiences
For that sort of song
Unequal even to the attempt
Let alone the challenge itself

20201107.0430

It was a hopeful strain that
People everywhere
Have seen the light in what they found
But the singer then did not see
The light was from consuming flame
And it is not dust in the wind
But ash that blows
Smoke-sucked scraps all that remain
Dancing in the lonely wind

20201106.0430

Knowledge and reason change like the season
A jester's promenade
Prophetic lines from a song decades old
A pinnacle of achievement
Except not even so much dignity still attaches itself thereto
For a jester has a purpose
And the challenge to tight-held notions
And the words of the mighty
No longer find acceptance even in such abject guise

20201105.0430

They start so young
Twenty minutes late to class
And sad their teacher turns them back
But at least Mommy is not arguing
Yet

20201104.0430

I am going down the staircases again
To wit
But now I am stopped upon this one
Uncertain I should take another step
Or start back up

20201103.0430

I don't have a poem today. There is no need. Instead, I have this to say:

If you haven't, and you're eligible, VOTE.

What passes for regularity here will resume tomorrow. I hope.

20201102.0430

The shrapnel wounds became tattoos
Recovery and acceptance of the sacrifices made
But they read them instead as covering in shame
Badges they would never want to bear

20201101.0430

As the day draws near that many dread
As making to snap the remaining thread
By which that hangs that is now near to dead
And never was as hearty or as hale
As held the myth that for long did prevail
Because they lifted it with great travail
Who wanted to believe it, terror grows
From sources that the Stupid God well knows
Inasmuch as knowing acts in its repose
And it convulses, squamous, eldritch, foul,
Within the multitudes that are its cowl,
Puppets shaken hard upon its dowel
And joying in the rod applied behind,
Thinking its abuse is acting kind.

20201031.0430

On this day
Precisely equal to
The subject of another one of your false wars
As the Good Doctor put it once
Will you
Still
Say that masks are folly
When you are all too apt to
Cover your own faces in
White draperies
And hide behind a thin line
That must not be very strong if
It needs so much support
Or to hide yourselves among
The feigned emblems and images of those
Whose deaths and dislocations
Have not been enough to satisfy your greed?
Will you still say
It's just a joke
It's just good fun
And will you laugh when
Your own martyrs are lampooned
Bruited about as bunting
More on one day
But not only on the one?

20201030.0430

Boasting not the best of bardcraft,
Still I seek to stories tell,
Long for laurels and laud and honor,
Yearn for youths of years to come
To know my name, not forget it
When the grave gapes and gathers me in,
Sleep-space in common. So I write,
Pushing a pen or the pixels fixing
That show on the screen, seen, hopefully,
Maybe by many; I must act so.

20201029.0430

Sometimes the ore is plentiful,
Ready to the pick and easy to refine;
Sometimes there's a struggle to bring it to light,
A challenge to get it up out of the mine.
Sometimes, though, the lode appears to run out,
And the digging must turn another way;
Sometimes the poor miner must leave off the work
And return back to it on another day.

20201028.0430

Who ruined the depths called out from the pastures,
And from near a rally came the reply
Done in, somewhat fishy, some time in the future,
A sequence attended, as none can deny.
What Oread comes from Cithaeron these days
To follow the flower-face all writers are,
Or is it only in god-cursed times
That any would think to travel so far?

20201027.0430

When night falls for me alone
The daylight spent and gone away
And darkness shrouds my sight
The stars that twinkle shift and sway
The firmament not firm at all
That holds them and me in its grip
Nor black, but dimly coruscating
Along fractal patterns' trip

20201026.0430

Too many seek to be the jester in
The court where Stupid God rewards the sin
Not of not knowing but of turning again
Away from knowing when knowledge is plain
To find, as now, and none have to refrain
From drinking deep at its well. No, the stain
Upon their souls is in refusing gifts
Of such sort as each of us uplifts,
Preferring instead to maintain the rifts
That hinder them and keep them from their ease,
That keep them riven with the foul disease
By which the Stupid God alone is pleased.
They can cavort, of course, as they desire--
But we must pay who did not give them hire.

20201025.0430

A chicken pecking after grain
Takes up more than the refrain
A songsmith writes, sometimes with pain,
And often to far greater gain
Than pecking done upon the keys
Upon a board approached with ease,
Though neither case will often cease
Until each finds desired release.

20201024.0430

The finish on the keys is worn away
Unevenly
Leaving a polished shine behind
Backspace gleaming brightest

20201023.0430

Sitting here
In my preferred parking spot
Hidden by trees and back from the street
I feel I should do some more scurrilous thing
Than compose short bits of verse
But then I remember
It is an addictive, insidious drug
And I think I ought to charge more for it
Knowing the day may well soon come
That I am a criminal for making it

20201022.0430

They have no need for ghosts
Whom memories haunt
No rattling chain and screaming siren voice scares more
Than things done badly and recalled in full detail
At odder intervals than a tritone
No apparition's touch more chilling than
Knowing what ought to have been done
And did not happen
And no spectre is more real than those

20201021.0430

Again, the bean sidhe scream
Thrice in far less than an hour
And I can only think an offering is being made
To draw them off from where they'd elsewise go
But where that is, I do not know
Nor know I who would send to such a shade
Who would presume to command such power
And mightier yet seem

20201020.0430

The electric bean sidhe scream again
Scant moments after they ceased crying
The sound of their mourning ringing through the town
And others' tears are soon enough to follow
I wonder when it will be mine that fall

20201019.0430

It's usually the slammed car door
Or rumbling diesel engine coming just a bit too close
That interrupts the susurration of
Cars driving past on the nearby streets or
The joyful ululation of
Children leaving class in their parents' care
But sometimes it is wailing sirens
Electric bean sidhe screaming down the way
And
On occasion
Some obnoxious fuck
Blaring bad videos at full volume
Heedless of others' peace
Guess which it was today

20201018.0430

Is the snail begrudged its shell
Or the crab or the turtle?
Is fish or fowl begrudged its bones?
Is the worker denied shoes
Or the dancer
The football player pads and helmet
Or shinguards in more sensible places?
Is a writer then held to a higher standard
For all of the smaller fanbase
And less compensation?

20201017.0430

Did you read each book on my shelf
It would not be enough
Though it would be a start
And more than many care to do
For I am not so set on canon as many
Nor so much as once I was
And my library has purged some volumes
Added more
With some not on display now
And others opened only once

20201016.0430

If poetry is a distillation
Let me pour a shot for you
I take mine neat more often than not
Though you might well want a mixer
Or some kind of garnish for your glass

20201015.0430

Some have called poetry distillation
Of life
Of language
And there is something to be said of the metaphor
The impurities removed to leave something more unified behind
But what is distilled is often more poison by volume
More costly
Even if the more prized for sitting long in the quiet dark
And the corpses of trees

20201014.0430

However deeply it might be buried
Someone with a shovel can dig it up in time
And sometimes the wind will shift
Or the rain will move the soil
Showing a piece of it for children to find
To their parents' complaints

20201013.0430

Alloys are made
In the hope of finding something better
And perhaps one can be found
But it is not this one
An early trial made of low-grade stuff
Advertised as far higher quality than the fact
And left to weather unattended
The rust has eaten it through
And one more shape or strike might
Break it

20201012.0430

We are on occupied land
Taken unjustly and through great pain
That lingers still
No scar over the still-open wound
At which too many pick and think themselves enlightened
And we have the audacity to celebrate the opening of that terror
State-sponsored violence to achieve a political end
But "we have to remember our history"
After all
And "our history" has to be the right one
Because we are supposed to be the right ones
Living in our city on the hill
They never talk about the hill being
Heaped up bodies of the dead
And we can all be grateful that they are not angrier than they are
As they have every right to be

20201011.0430

Although I seek to rest, the day drags on
The shining sun streams brightly
And the work cries out for doing
It never goes down for the nap
I myself would love to take
But hungers; I feed it
Clean the mess that follows from it
Clean the mess that comes yet later
Food all changed through being used
And as soon as I do one
Another calls
It is not as for my child, who
Came in time to feed and clothe herself
And who no longer needs me to wipe her
Tasks I do not miss
But will be ever thus
And I will stagger, sleepless, on

20201010.0430

The small spot on my scalp
Attracts my attention, itching
Prompting me to peel away a piece
Of myself, making my hair red
Dye in small doses deriving therefrom
Fading quickly as the flow fails
But soon enough, I scratch again
Trail out its traces through my fingertips
Pen-hand less pretty, perhaps, than my wont

20201009.0430

O, to be the stone
Rugged and reliable!
But I am instead the water
A cupful easily spilled
Drying in the sunlight
Mourned in a moment, perhaps
But like to be forgotten and replaced
The same is true if
I am the hand that holds the cup

20201008.0430

I feel myself being a Baggins again
Of the kind that came before Bilbo
Sitting in a strange place and sighing
That staying where I am is for the best
Even if habit would have me elsewhere

20201007.0430

Watching the hens scurry nervously
While my little chick feathers her own nest
I know she will fly far and high
Even if I cannot show her how
My wings long clipped by a beak too sharp
And too often too early set to preening

20201006.0430

There is always more to do
Another task to carry through
Yet more labor fit for rue
And another thing is true:
Some of those who will complain
Will repeat the sad refrain
That they labored to attain
So others needs must work again
But they do not count the cost
Used a system that's now lost
Giving nothing like a toss
For others' pain when they're the boss

20201005.0430

While watching the traffic go by,
He thought that he might oughta try
To follow the chicken,
But he took a lickin',
And some find they now have to pry.

20201004.0430

Yes
I understand
I get it
I hear you
I know
Acknowledged

20201003.0430

As local air begins to cool
The smoky threads will warp and weave
And form a pungent tapestry
The eye abjures but nose won't leave,
And in the warmth that weaving brings
Of boughs united while they char
There is delight and sometimes ease--
Though it will not, we hope, spread far!

20201002.0430

It may be I die today.
If it is, then who will say
That I always had a way
With people, or the other things
That eulogizing often brings
To mind for paupers and for kings
Alike, the gentle lies
With which the sermonizer tries
To soothe while fun'ral-goer cries?
I do not want them not to weep
When I am gone, or say I sleep,
For if they cry, they surely keep
Some ghost of love for me.

20201001.0430

She said
Daddy
You can come and watch
The other parents do
And I know it's true
But I also know
Despite the years
Seeing me provokes the fears
Of deeds as rightly lead to tears
And I cannot fault them for it

20200930.0430

They balk at such words as speak of lust
Swellings of breast and cock and clit
Claiming their faith inveighs against them
When the song of their wisest king of old
Says her breasts are like deer too young to hunt
And other verses speak in their holy text
Of donkey dick and horse cum
The Tijuana show of old in the temple book

20200929.0430

Take me in your arms and make me yours
Kiss my lips and touch my heart
And lower still that longs for you
Until at last I can find rest
A second simulation of death tonight

20200928.0430

Hoping to be
The center of attention
The center of affection
To address an affliction
The cure for which is
A sandwich or a
Sausage dinner
And tacos

20200927.0430

Do I do poorly to long for you so,
To lament, if in silence, whenever you go
Away, even when I well know
You will back again?

20200926.0430

Who has skill enough
To follow after Deor
Add another verse to the litany of pain
That bends back again to the hopeful refrain
Which in modern English may well be explained
"That passed away; so, too, may this"
And can see an ending?

20200925.0430

The stands echo
Hollow
Where voices normally rise up
In anger and in joy at once
While the drums beat and the horns call out
And perhaps they ply the field
But it is not the same

20200924.0430

The bed to myself
Enfolded in soft blankets and draping sheets
Snuggled in and warm
But it is into you I'd rather slip
And you I'd rather have surround me
Even if you do snore after

20200923.0430

Strain against the ropes that twist about
And it may be that they break
Their fibers separating before yours do
But it is certain you will feel their marks
Whether you make an escape or not
And the not is more likely with the knot that catches you now

20200922.0430

No few complain how poetry elides
The things it treats, how it often hides
Its meaning by presenting stranger sides
Than commonly are seen and rides
Out in stranger gallops that betide
A drunken horse. Denied
Their easy access, they deride
Verse art and do not look inside
Themselves to see where they are tied
With hitching knots and left alone.

20200921.0430

Even as summer must fade
I prize the breezes and the shade
Gotten even if delayed

20200920.0430

Though I mean to stay my hand
I cannot help but stiffly stand
And seek to answer the demand
That nature instills in me
No little death I seek to deal
Yet still the longing thence I feel
Although I cannot well repeal
The act that almost twins me

20200919.0430

Some of the blossoms have opened again
Swaying with the winds of coming autumn
And new buds arise to join them now
While their tenders bustle about
All unsure what they should do and fretting
When the answer is to let them grow
The master gardener will prune away what needs it
And shape the growth to best effect
When it is time to put on the show

20200918.0430

Neither seated in the See of Rome
Neither celibate
Neither yet in Avignon or Pisa
But likely sedevacantist
And claiming both
Inspiration divine and sovereignty
I will be their Luther if I must

20200917.0430

She rushes in where other children play
But finds no bosom friend today
For as she comes in, she finds they
Are called to come in, go away,
And she alone sits on the swing
And climbs to slide, and each such thing,
Comes back again, begins to cling
To parents' sides, no more playing.

20200916.0430

The sun shines
The breeze blows
The child laughs
Her mother knows
The time is short
The darkness grows
The light recedes
The ugly shows

20200915.0430

My inkwell seems too dry at present;
Being spat upon does not make for the needed moisture
Unless it is from much higher up than those expectorating now
Or with a mouth far bigger
If such a thing can be imagined.

20200914.0430

Please close your eyes, O Stupid God, and see
No trace or hint of family or me,
But rest a while, and sleep, and let us flee
Who strive to never bear the knobby crown
That you have put on offer the world round
And that has, heavy, borne many heads down;
We seek no exaltation thus. We thought
We might in time, by doing as we ought,
A swift escape effect, but we are caught
As mice or birds before the watchful eye
Of staring snake, of hawk up in the sky,
And if we move, our lives we may belie.
But still, we may the vulture yet attract;
Who stands between the two is painful, wracked.

20200913.0430

They gather around the small-handed stand-in
That Stupid God sent, the citrus affliction
Painted but poorly and draped just as well,
Horse's ass standing as if centaur's front,
Their golden calf cult-focus, heeding no flame,
No wrath from on high, avenging angel,
But think themselves blessed to have such a one
Standing among the and raving as fevered,
All a-twitter and at all hours
While blood flows in the streets not ending blue lives;
They would play in the puddles and think themselves pure

20200912.0430

Puzzle its name out who can:
The sentinel that solemnly stands
Working, warding off the worst
Bends and bares its burden to
Steerers of stink that stalk the roads
Hoping to heave it heavily up
And call out again what was fed to it

20200911.0430

It has been nineteen years.

The wounds have still not healed
But many scars show pale and bunched
And every movement still pulls at them
Reminders for those who remember to pay attention
Of whom there are fewer each day
While for more this is
The way it's always been

There is no nostalgic hope
For those who have known nothing else
For those who had it, looked, and saw
For those who saw it closest

Things have changed
Yes
And they have been made to change
As ever has been the case
As ever will be the case
But are they better?

20200910.0430

I do not make the same time every lap
But I still work to race ahead in each
Because I know there are days that
Any run is out of my reach

20200909.0430

My wit descends many staircases
Seeking ever-lower floors
But they are silent, lonely stairwells
That useful time abhors

20200908.0430

Free samples are small things, and,
If enough of them are taken together,
They will fill the belly
But they will not well
As will a meal meant as a meal
And served at once or in its courses
Made to be together
Sometimes, of course,
Taking what can be gotten is all,
But that's never the ideal
And better ideas are there to be found

20200907.0430

At this point in my life, I am management. I direct a treatment facility; I do not provide treatment, myself (which is good, because I am in no way qualified to do so). But I have still been a worker for more of my life than I have been a manager, and I remain appreciative of what organized labor has done for me, both directly in the days when I was a union man and indirectly in the social changes it has effected.

The work, of course, is far from done. There are still massive inequities that need to be addressed and that are not being addressed by as many of my peers--and I suppose it's a loose use of the term; I'm not exactly a luminary in directing the small non-profit I direct--as needs to be. Even if there were more managers and administrators working to improve things in the ways they need to be improved, making lasting changes of the kind that are needed has to have a broad buy-in--and that kind of buy-in has come from the labor to which some small lip-service is paid today.

I am well aware of the ideological onus under which organized labor operates anymore in much of the country. I can hardly live in the Texas Hill Country and be out among people and not be; it is decried and bemoaned in grocery store and gas station, and not only by those who would have to pay their employees more in a union system. But, unlike many who make the complaint, I have worked a union job--and while there were problems (as there are in any job; I've yet to meet anyone who didn't gripe about work), they were a damned lot easier to handle than many others I've faced, and I don't know that performance was any worse with them.

No, I think it was better.

20200906.0430

They do not fear to start again
Who have not gone so far,
But those who've had a journey long
Understandably are
Reluctant to begin again
And give up what they've had--
Even when what they have gotten
Served to make them sad

20200905.0430

How often I forget how they do please
On a hot summer day, the shade and breeze!

20200904.0430

My eyes grow green as I look on
And other colors in abundance spray
But I do not know how to handle other dyes

20200903.0430

Am I being forged
Being heated as I am?
I have felt the hammer enough of late
And not because of quenching

20200902.0403

The sparrows sing together and the wrens
While the owl sits and stares in silence
Hunting for its prey and vomiting up
What it takes in
Does it envy smaller fliers their fellow-feathered flocking
As it sits, itself an omen
To which many turn in need and few in joy?

20200901.0430

Practicing still the gentle ways of natural wizards
Incanting such spells as can be said
And making mystic marks that send thought and power along
The rituals may offer no comfort
As the wisest lies dying
And their opposite numbers somehow survive

20200831.0430

With plodding heavy legs I move ahead
And if each stride is one small step
I still take a damned lot of them
So I will get to some strange "there" in time
Even if I do not know the way

20200830.0430

Cheer the sprinter now
And know the greatest of them
But recognize that the marathon
Is harder on the body
And less likely to be set aside next season

20200829.0430

Not every sacred cow is gilded
But every one should be fed to the fire
And if it does not melt or char
Then might there be some value in it
For steel is sronger after forging
And clay more useful after kiln

20200828.0430

Every word is a contract
Grown up over time and
Forced upon its speaker
A metaphor someone made up
And with which others go along
But use forces adjustment as it should
And though some with the courts disagree
There is no judge to overturn the ruling

20200827.0430

A thing oft seen to sound delight
That does far different than benight
And most when comes down from the height
From which it spreads itself to sight
And on the world's face will alight--
Who can its name in truth recite?

20200826.0430

It always galls
When someone calls
The work sent in
Not good enough
But it's not all
I must recall
As I begin
Some other stuff

20200825.0430

Too often
I give the nod
Unwillingly
Only to find I
Cannot find it to give
When I mean to

20200824.0430

How does your heart not burn within you
Your blood boil and bubble with fury
Your hand clench and tighten till tendons will crack
Seeing what happens?
Yet you will not even
Lift up your voice against a clear evil
A mill grinds no flour if given no grain
And such silence serves to furnish no grist

20200823.0430

The stink of onion in the next day's sweat
An old adage said suddenly to surprise
Husks of corn-kernels seen after eating
Father's voice or mother's from the child's own mouth
Belches of beer taken into the belly
A letter written after another's fashion
Asparagus smell in the morning outpouring
Smile that can come from only one source
Puzzle it out who can

20200822.0430

I might lay my head in Summer's lap
And put my tongue to country matters
Tasting juicy bush-borne fruit
Or instead let her unaccustomed softness
Lull me to a lustless sleep
I would be refreshed either way I lie with her

20200821.0430

I glimpsed the pages once
That her pen had left behind
And she
Saw the lines inscribed
Heard only later that
There had been more
Destroyed across the years and
Once again in a final fury of flame
Save for a very few held by one
And never shared
Because she and they were scared
But not for why they should have been

20200820.0430

I till no field and herd no stock
But sit sedate in shade and cooled air
As sciatica flares up and subsides
I am no son of farming folk
Scarce recalling grandparents who grew
Amid grain and grit and gristle
Never amid the corn-rows or a hundred head of cattle
I do not suffice to such food-making
But my pen still tends thence often

20200819.0430

I plant the seeds of poems in many places
And often forget where I have sown them
Leaving them to molder away from sun and soil
Where they might grow and spread
Bearing fruit for others' hands and mouths
But at least no shut spreads on them where they lie
Forgotten

20200818.0430

I almost long to hear again
That fae cry that hides
Amid the squeals of subways' wheels
That I have felt called to answer before
But there are no such screams here
The caterwauling of feral housecats
Howls of dogs and of coyotes
Grunts of pigs and farting of so many bucks
Do not thus compel

20200817.0430

I should be sitting inside
Enjoying conditioned air and
The efforst expended, but
That coin buys more when I am not around
And I want her to have the better bargain

20200816.0430

It is less an exhalation
Less winding a horn
Than having drawn the breath too soon
And not knowing when the cue will come
Or a focus on the fingering
As vision shrinks and dims
Breathe in

20200815.0430

It is only in fits and starts that I find time to write
Small times amid large distractions and
Larger tasks that demand attention
And such conditions do not admit of
Deeper visions that
Sustain themselves upon themselves and
Reveal greater truths by what they do not say
If I can move the curtain for a moment
I have to hope that it will be enough

20200814.0430

I have sat in a study with a pen in my hand
Hunched at a desk staring at a bright screen
Wandered in woodlands and paced out the meadows
Stopping at benches to jot some words down
And each has yielded its own novel vision
But now, for the moment,
I park in my car and find the words flowing
Yes, some rust has caught in the pipes
But turning the tap on flushes it away
And the water is sweeter and colder afterward

20200813.0430

Some things suggest solemnity.
Grand works gather gravitas,
Demand devotion through decorum,
And such shows a sense of awe
Fitting what is felt the finest.
Much in manners manifests,
Follows from the forms thus used,
But best is not always most baroque,
And any tool is an easy weapon
In hands hard-set to hold it so.
Courtesy can cut, of course,
And bludgeon.

20200812.0430

Who would have thought that
This would be the product of
Time working a shaft in
The seat of a car?

20200811.0430

Oblique references
Reducing so many things to
Thrusting and splatting
Finding fucking in as much as can
What, then, does the sex stand in for
What metonym or synecdoche
Whole for its dangling parts?

20200810.0430 "Not a Good Day"

Chest tight and
Heart racing raggedly in it
Despite sitting still in the quiet
The dim
And adding the fear of an
Overactive anus
Too much cabbage taken in, perhaps,
Or sauerkraut just a little older than was ideal
And wondering if I would shit myself
Or had
And rubbed my ass raw with wiping
Rare meat not to be eaten if it ever passed inspection

20200809.0430

Voluptuous and clad in a red and green plaid that
The sun has bleached to browns
The whiff of a petrichor perfume thrills
Teasing with the offer of warmth and wet to come
One not always fulfilled in days like these
But often enough that hope remains for
Drinking the juices that will flow

20200808.0430

Two temples show the labors done between them
Windows letting light into the rooms they share
Backing up against each other
Three ports for passing out and in
And through both ways
With two more balanced for ingress only
Unless something goes wrong, like
Cotton not turning away soon enough
What is this complex called
That stands as capital to its attendant body?

20200807.0430

Answer it who can
That which covers beds but none turn down
Who live at every occasion
And which sees sleepers stir to meet
The lines cast out by often-quiet actors
Not seldom seated or standing on
Platforms for which they are paid
And which runs in season but stops
When too much gold is given it--
Gold is given for it then--
And which is ever never the same
What is it called?

20200806.0430

As some, more formal, might switch to dinner jackets
Four-in-hand exchange for bow
In red amid a short white coat
The hills here, now, mark little difference
What angle offsets made up by the return
Of what was given through the day
Gift going back whence it came

20200805.0430

I have not been selected for a crown
And I do not want the
Mimicry of a halo on me as I
Sit upon the throne I claim daily
Or kneel before it in an hour of need
Besides
It is only a flimsy castle in which I live
A poor fief to which I have no title
And where I have remained too long

20200804.0430

The rolling green carpet grows thin
Its pile wearing away
But people are still walking across it
There is yet comfort in it for tired feet
Seeking solace from the yards
Grown prickly and clinging

20200803.0430

Be complacent
And endure
And all of this will remain
Because it should be good enough
For you
Or that's the story
Anyway

20200802.0430

Remember
When they tell you
Speak good English
The way it used to be
Shit
Was in the language centuries before
Beautiful entered it

20200801.0430

Again
I do not appreciate the implication in
The eyes of many mothers when
I sit and watch my daughter learn to dance
Along with her classmates
I mean
I am a lecher
But my tastes run otherwise

20200731.0430

Not everything fades as the waters recede
The smells strengthen of
Muck and mire, frog and snake and turtle
Fish almost out of water and all their ordure
Not the best breeze to feel while
Driving across the bridge
That should not be there

20200730.0430

The spring-fed creeks begin to run dry
The naked stone of their beds bared to the
Blue skies so bright they shimmer
Stainless steel pan scoured bare and left on the burner too long
With no liquid to simmer in it

20200729.0430

She does not spurn the gifts I mean to give
Not exactly
Though she does not make much of them
And I am hurt by it
Though I ask myself
Did she attend more closely
Would she reject the more vehemently
What she now accepts without much comment?
Silence is better than some words

20200728.0430

Why do I work to get words on the page,
Reveal to readers, too rare for comfort,
The midst of the mind claimed as my own,
Word-hoard unworthy, wonderless ever,
Full, yes, of folly and fable unheeded?
Better to breathe the bad air than none.

20200727.0430

All the while I sit and peck away
Crow-like, seeking after corn
Or tasty bloody gobbets before they blacken with rot under Arien's charge
I could be doing other things of greater profit
Meeting more the measure of a man in my part of the world
Where money means so much
But while my head is down
I do not see the opportunity
Cat ready to pounce upon me

20200726.0430

There is something to be said for
Sitting quietly in the shade
Windows down and engine off
Hearing horn-blasts and engines pushed
Harder than is wise for no good reason
I know they'll be off the road before
I get back on again

20200725.0430

The hardest lesson
And one that I still struggle to learn
Is that I am not special
And it is not because I got
Participation trophies
But because I used to excel
And do not now

20200724.0430

The Muses
When they speak to me
Do so in disjointed voices
Not as a harmonious choir
Or even trading fours or eights
Riffing in sequence in a common chord progression
And my ears have never been the best

20200723.0430

Somewhere in the pages I have penned
A perfect poem awaits
But I am inept and cannot find it

20200722.0430

The air inside grows stuffy
Filled with the smell of my own exhalation
Memories of a miasma which I did not perceive until
I breathed it in and out and in again
And I shudder at the stink of it
Parts of myself I had thought cast out only
To be taken in again
Uncelebrated prodigal children
Given no inheritance
But still better breathing than
What I must otherwise inhale

20200721.0430

I have erred many times
Unwittingly in the moment
Indelibly in the ink
Do I blot the words and stain the page yet more
Or tear it from its binding
Or leave it in place with an
Apology
Tendered
An example of the ease of failure
Reminder of vigilance still needed?

20200720.0430

I must remind myself
Sometimes
The exhalation onto the page
Does not satisfy the lungs
I do not breathe deeply enough

20200719.0430

The longer run remains the
More demanding task, but
It is the shorter sprints that
Remain in memory

20200718.0430

If it is the case that
The poem says best that
Says most with least
Then
No
Must be better verse than
Yes
And that is not a comfort

20200717.0430

Some have said
A poem succeeds in what is left unsaid
A hole by what has been removed
And what can be hidden in
Remaining emptiness
But what shovel fits best to such digging
And what is laid bare from its use?

20200716.0430

I am no Hercules
But that is for the best
For it is not twelve tasks that face me

20200715.0430

However skilled with words I may be
Or may well not be
As the case may be
I will never really get them right
Set them such that they could not be better
Or keep meaning what I thought I meant them to mean
And I am not the only one for whom it is true

20200714.0430

I have never known which bird I have been hearing
Some silly song-thing flittering by
Or an owl, an omen I never thought to heed

20200713.0430

The molten gold pours out over the trees
Burning their leaves brown again
And chasing from my flesh the fluids it needs
That I someday will not be able to replace

20200712.0430

The others' mothers look askance at me
Wondering which of their daughters I'm leering at
As I look out across the mats and smile
And even the fact that my girl, my world
Runs up to me again and again for
A hug and a kiss and a word of encouragement
Where everyone can see it does not help
Them not to think that I am waiting for their inattention
And doing so with bad intentions
And I find I cannot blame them

20200711.0430

Oh, thank heaven
The joke remains in mind
Today of all days
Decipher it who will!

20200710.0430

Everything you do speaks of you
The choice of every word
Every phrase
Says more than itself
It says you are the kind of person
Who uses that word
Instead of another
Who favors that phrasing
That cadence
That rhythm
And even if you do not care
The fact that you say such a thing
(And it is not true
Because if you did not care
You would not say
The act itself demanding caring
To perform
Even if not much)
Says that you
Can afford not to care
And that is not a wealth that all share

20200709.0430

The force of Helian ire is felt
Even as that charioteer moves away from this place
Racing circuits that each grow further off than the last
And it needs not Icarus to fly so high as to melt
As those who stand upon these stones
Even in the shade of oak and cedar and mesquite
Well know

20200708.0430

It is not surgery, delicate and precise as it may need to be
Trimming away the unwanted bits and bringing together things
That had not been joined before but do better now that they are
And it is not the construction of devices
Small and strange and wonderful
Even if tiny bits are arranged together in ways that
Proceed in part from design and in part from sudden inspiration that
Emerges without warning
It benefits from no such sterility as either of them
No speck of dust of sudden splatter will corrupt the whole
Even if it might make the medium more unwieldy for a time
And it endures longer
While the subjects of surgery crumble in the grave
And the devices built burn away or rot in landfills
Taken up again and again and again
Or so it is always to be hoped

20200707.0430

Why is it so hard to understand
That you are not alone in this still-young land--
Of which much was built by stolen hand
That was forced into labor by whips' cruel demand--
That, horn-handed or no, you march in a band,
Even when cadence is called by command
Of Stupid God's worker who follows no strand
Of music that is not written as in sand,
That a drum-beat is sounding and you can remand
Your braying and bleating, thus better suzerain'd,
To it, and thus make better music?

20200706.0430

Once
I thought I could tend a garden
Feed it from my compost pile so that it would
Produce what others could take in and
Put to use. But now, I have
Tended too long a pile unused, and
Storms have washed the nutrients away, and
Fungus grows within it that cannot be
Eaten more than
Once

20200705.0430

The fertile compost between my ears admits many worms
And while each of them sings a jaunty tune
No two have hit upon the same song
And finding a single melody to follow amid the tumult
Would take a bigger shovel than I have ready to hand

20200704.0430

The fireworks may still go off
With fewer there to see them,
And cookouts still the backyards fill
With fewer to glee in them,
And grumblings about the lacks
Will doubtless proceed from them
As, in this year, the pushed-off fear
May well soon have undone them.

20200703.0430

Avert, again, your eyes from me,
O, Stupid God, and do not see
Where I go and what I do!
It is my only prayer to you,
That you never will me bless;
I do not need to feel that cess.

20200702.0430

Sometimes I think I should in worship fall
Towards which me the Stupid God does call
And join the throngs that lie within its thrall,
For I am not less angry than they are,
And they than me seem happier by far.
If I would join them, I would face no bar,
But would be celebrated for a time
As I became complicit in each crime
They do against good sense and the sublime--
Which they will claim to praise as they abjure
What they mistakenly believe impure,
And in those wrong beliefs, they are too sure.
But in such cause, I cannot take a knee.
Too many praise the Stupid God; not me.

20200701.0430

A number of years ago today--
And just how many, I'll not say--
She left the room where she first lay,
And I am glad she did,
For had she not come out from there,
I'd not have met her, come to care
For her as I intend to e'er--
And, no, I do not kid.

Happy birthday to my beloved wife!

20200630.0430

Sometimes it seems the only color I can see is red
Whether because the haze has descended again
Or that is the color of the lights that shine for me
And I will not say such have no place
But I miss the broader spectrum
Wish I could see the rainbow again

20200629.0430

I did not expect to enjoy the bratwurst so much
Though I confess
I gagged a bit when the greasy spray
Hit the back of my throat
Still
I swallowed it down
And the rest of the meat followed it

20200628.0430

Life imitates art
A saying said many times
Passing all seasons
Mackay makes a claim of art
Wherein do we mimic it?

20200627.0430

Lowering ceiling
Darkening over stained walls
Their brown trim greening
How long will the summer sun
Take to strip that color off?

20200626.0430

Excited as Aestas approaches
Ouranos cannot hold back
Spraying what he has had mounting up
Over Gaea's hills and valleys
And she does not seem to mind his excitement
At another form than hers as she moves under him

20200625.0430

Did those who fired off the rounds
Now legendary for their size
Noted for their impact
And the craters they left behind them
Know their guns to have been so large
Or have they expanded in being the targets of
Massed fire themselves?

20200624.0430

Shooting round after round
Perhaps blindly downrange
Spraying and praying as the saying
Goes for such things
It is better that a smaller caliber round be loosed with
Each finger-motion
Than a larger round or load of shot

20200623.0430

How often I shoot from the hip
And place my shot on target,
But how much tighter a grouping when
I take the time to line up the shot
As I too rarely do,
Though I will still empty my magazine
At every opportunity!

20200622.0430

My Muse speaks to me in idle moments
Her words the whispers of wind in the leaves
Long brown on the ground no less than
Still green on the branch
And I struggle to account for all that I hear
Stenography not among my best skills

20200621.0430

Sitting still might seem to be
The best balm to a body overworked
But the settled stone may shatter when
It must move again

20200620.0430

The stage is set
The lights shine hot and bright
And they will dim but little for long
While Summer dances
And many will have to fan themselves

20200619.0430

I note the day
Because it is not mine to mark
A reminder that
Though one step was taken
Long overdue
The journey is far from over
And too many drag their feet

20200618.0430

I speak the words in halting lines
Listening for faint echoes
Delighting in what few return to me
From a chasm that must be deep and ragged
For how quiet it remains

20200617.0430

Being apt to be a brandished brand
I must wonder what tinder I kindle
And how the heat and smoke I produce
Make dry and stunt the growth of
Still-young green

20200616.0430

Harsh words and hard feelings
Hammering upon the wedges that will
Split the family tree
Making the solid bole and the spreading boughs
Chunks reunited only to feed the pyre
And with how long and hot the bitter fires burned
It is a marvel that any warmth remains
Any substance yet smolders as ash
Greys the brown charred black
Made brittle

20200615.0430

Even with the sweat beading
Between my breast and my belly, both swollen,
And with the kindly sun sliding towards summer
I thrill at the work of four brothers' lips
As they blow

20200614.0430

If I am flushed so
And salt fluid wrung from me
Even at the rumor of her approach
What will Aestas have from me when
She flops into my lap and
Grinds on me in earnest?

20200613.0430

Aestas has given an early show
Dancing through the hills before her billing
The gleam struck from her kindling much
And bringing rising heat where she will have
A longer residence

20200612.0430

Too long away from
Rhythmic pulse and thrust
And wondering that
What is dry may rust
That what is near no
Oven grows a crust
And grows stale, too
Too brittle for a bust
That stands firm, pale
And, still new, in full trust
That it remains untouched
Or hopes, at least. It must
Be kept contained
By those who think it just
And not, as oft,
Antenna raised for lust

20200611.0430

Trying to clap along with the beat
And falling athwart it every time is
No good thing for someone who once thought
To anchor an ensemble
And it is worse yet that
No baton traces out its pattern
Where it can be seen

20200610.0430

Fear has tripped me up again
Cracking my shins upon itself so often that
I fear to stand, even
In anticipation of the pain I am certain will come
And to the bruises that form I can but apply a poultice
Of bitter herbs and sour
But it does not draw the hurt away

20200609.0430

Again
Cervid libido runs along the same paths
Wearing them yet deeper as it
Presses on to a familiar ending
Reaching it quicker and quicker
And needing to
Though the ever-growing number of points
Should make for slower approach

20200608.0430

Hands have worked upon the clay
Gathered in from many places
Though it has not passed through so many potters' hands as might be thought
Or hoped
So the clay is only roughly formed
Its shapes gross and blunt
Rather than showing the intricate detail
That more work and more varied allows

20200607.0430

A good rain is always welcome
Where oak and cedar and mesquite grow
To cloak the limestone hills in greening shades
But the rain is not as good on the second day as the first
Or on the third as on the second
And hail is no kind of rain at all
Which my roof does not turn aside
As it does the falling water not made quite so cold

20200606.0430

Floods and torrents move much earth away

Smash against buildings and ruin them

But their flows at length trickle into the earth

And build up sparkling columns

Glorious to see

And their shining structure seems to have grown stronger

These many years

Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad

20200605.0430

They mouth their lies in calling now for peace
Who have inflicted violence without cease
And seek to glory in abrupt release
Of passions that they claim are all inborn
In them, though they lack fang and claw and horn,
And even those that bear them have forborne
To use them on their own more than they've not,
Putting them to their use when things run hot
And not otherwise, as is oft forgot.
But in the anger that informs them lies
The Stupid God, as should be no surprise,
And they think, fools, who do not it despise,
That none will mark their many acts of wrath
Or think they might prevail on such a path.

20200604.0430

They were walking on the sidewalks
Hobbling on their canes
Sitting on their porches
Sitting in their homes
Where were they supposed to be?

20200603.0430

Against the long systemic horror
When those currently impotent long for the day they can do the fucking
And do not want to wear a condom when they do
There are no little blue pills that are effective
Indeed
Such small things in such a color seem to be the problem
Not the solution

20200602.0430

Sitting in the sunsets of late spring
And sweating such as surely leaves a ring
Or circle on the shirt, to censuring
Someone sees no smaller thing
Than certain seizing of some pleasuring

20200601.0430

No marching feet bestride it now
But broken cadence still somehow
Is sounded on it, breaking down
The rhythms of the aging town

20200531.0430

What makes good verse
I can't rehearse
Because I do not know it
It is my curse
I am not terse
And all my stanzas show

20200530.0430

A swan did sing of life as acts
Portions of a play imposed by later editors on
The shifting scenes first written
But lines and stanzas may be better
Gathered into fitts
And living often enough sounds
Like a tantrum

20200529.0430

I may not know the names of the
Flowers that spring in such abundant colors from
The thin and rocky soil, but
I need not know their names to know
Their beauties, nor yet need I to
Pluck them

20200528.0430

Even over the percussive drone
The coruscating melody sings out
From small fowl in their unintended
Harmonies proceeding from no score
And answering to no baton

20200527.0430

Aestas approaches again
The bountiful curves of her full figure showing well
Exciting in their voluptuous swellings and pulsings
But even Priapus falters before her feet tire
Of dancing across the limestone hills
Threading through the oak and cedar and mesquite
While many bare themselves to the vision of her passage

20200526.0430

If drunk on anything
It is insufficiency
Left to ferment far too long in
The too-large tank of a belly swollen
Not with new life but
A still and bitter brew
Flat on the tongue and stinging to the nose
No spirit worth imbibing
Even eschewed by the urolagniac
That revels in life that has been
Not distillations that cannot claim so much proof

20200525.0430

Again, they pause, and claim now to recall
Those whom they say gave even their all
By standing strong until their final fall
Were they the Isaacs or the rams
Whose ends were met at Abrahamic hands?

20200524.0430

The ship reached its harbor
Offloaded cargo
Set sail again with the same crew and captain
And the storms that wracked it left only the one
Who now drifts in an uncertain sea
The sun beating down upon a too-bare body
That plots no course
While others sail by
Driven by winds that do not stir the drifter's hair
Pushed by currents the drifter does not feel
Speeding along to certain ends
And while they may well run aground
At least they know where they are going

20200523.0430

What truth there is that is in words contained
Is hidden that it has to be explained
And there are many who will not be pained
By taking on the task of understanding

20200522.0430

Bells ring again from the spires of the ivory tower
Summoning them to worship who seek to be ordained
And my heart leaps within my breast, though I am apostate
Growing more heterodox with every ignored knelling
Even if I still inveigh against heresies

20200521.0430

Amaryllis springs up
A weed among the bluebells
Where hyacinths have long since withered--
And they only grew sickly and twisted--
And the willows ever threaten to take hold
Stifling all the rest

20200520.0430

Maybe if I
Stare at the carpet long enough
I will see something in the warp and weft
Emerging from the pattern to present itself
The weaver's underlying message that I can
Put into words
But it is more likely I will simply get a headache from the eye strain

20200519.0430

That thing at which I can claim to excel
In some small measure--though, if I do well,
It is in not, if I will the truth tell--
Does not excite whom I would bring to glee.
I take some comfort that it is not me
Who discommodes her thus, yet I still see
Her turn away from such gifts as I give,
Such gifts as by which I long sought to live.
She holds such gifts as water in a sieve,
As well I know, yet still I pour them out;
The faucet ever open sprays about
And moistens others--therein is no doubt.
As my Aquarius I would have her,
And would, could I give her what she prefers.

20200518.0430

The ball
Volleyed back
Struck a player already leaving the field
And even if it was not meant
A bloody nose is no nice thing

20200517.0430

Treading the same paths again
And again
Has long since worn ruts into the ground that
Stepping out of them would trip a person
And now the rains are falling
Making sucking mud of the tracks
Keeping those standing in them from
Moving ahead even on the narrow path to nowhere

20200516.0430

The laurel's leaves are withering
The boughs brittle upon my brow
So I shall have to cut some new ones
Weave a new wreath
If my hands remember how

20200515.0430

I do not know what I have taken in
But it has stopped me up tightly
And I feel the pressure building inside me
As what I have digested seeks to burst forth
I expect it will be a mess when it does

20200514.0430

I should adhere to what
Polonius said of the soul of wit
Rather than what he showed of it
Far more rind than pith

20200513.0430

There was no Golden Age
Iron was the best we had
And now we are in Plastic days
Even as the landfill yawns
And we have left off recycling

20200512.0430

One writer writes
Ford's in his flivver
All's right in the world
And it seems he has always been so
Or someone enough like him
In a like enough place
That it makes no matter
No more than many
Then is as now
As it has always been

20200511.0430

Wearing their masks as they argue against them
Waving around their guns because they are afraid and
Cannot allow themselves to be so they make themselves
Angry instead
They show their true faces or
Recognize that their ugliness deserves to be kept away from where
Others can see
If only dimly
If not enough

20200510.0430

On Mothers' Day, a mother's gift she gave and she received
And since then, many times again, as must well be believed
She's been a gift and gotten gifts, not always well perceived
Because those that gave them had they themselves deceived,
And once again, today's the day that she will be relieved
Of one number for another, and we're not aggrieved.

Happy birthday, Mom!

20200509.0430

As the sun sets on a long day
The light that shone fading past a horizon that
Ever recedes when it is approached
Hides what lies beyond it
The hardest thing is not that the night will fall
But that another day will begin
And must be faced

20200508.0430

Some claim to dance upon the strings of fate
But I think that
If I am a puppet
I am less like Pinocchio was
And more like Kermit or Fozzie
Though less well performed

20200507.0430

How proud, once, what is now fallen,
What stood so long so firmly and tall
But when blowing upon it became too much
It faltered, and now lies flattened
Dying from within

20200506.0430

I have savored the salmon, smoked and tender,
Contented myself upon the cod and the catfish,
Made with the mackerel no small merriment,
Taken the tuna into me with glee;
Fain am I to feast on fish again

20200505.0430

Many arms wave as solemn sentinels stand
Crowns upon them dipping and bowing above
Tossing green seas rippling in glints of gold
Festooned with brilliant colors yet remaining

20200504.0430

Against what would have been the
Crowing of a cock standing proud
Testudine, the head rises
Cannot return to the soft shell
But must cast off the turtle's trappings
And plod ahead until the burrow calls again
And though that siren song is sweet
It offers little release
Else the the head would have withdrawn
And dug back in where it had lain

20200503.0430

We tell the heroes' stories in the hopes that we'll be great
But that tales lead to greatness is a matter of debate
Since storytellers often are among those we berate
And they must ever have a care whose egos they inflate
As they go on and spin their tales, as they will at length prate
And greatness, we must all recall, may not be a fair fate
Because as great as glory is, at least so much is hate,
And fear spreads wide, as well, as we have seen of late,
And no small peril presses forth to on us hunger sate.

20200502.0430

They weep, not wrongly, for what they thought to have
And now may not because the world is wrong
And I weep with them, more than most,
Because I was also dispossessed
But mine was more my fault
And bitterness is not hidden by the salt

20200501.0430

Brightly though the sun may shine
And warm though winds may blow
They scarcely touch those in this time
Who look through the window
Where once the world had, fast, rushed by
And now is nearly still
As those who worry they will die
Abandon daily thrill
Yet this does not much satisfy
And nothing, really, will

20200430.0430

And when they choke on their own sputum
Suffocating upon themselves
So that Karen could get her hair cut
So that Chad could get a beer
I hope they will think themselves happy
Having gotten what they said that they wanted
Somebody will have to be
I'm sure

20200429.0430

If April leaves us drenched by showers
When she comes
One has to wonder with whom she was on
March
Though it is clear that May and June get something out of it
Coming after as they do

20200428.0430

There is a reason Phoebus and Helios
Tend toward the west
Moving whither Zephyrus labors
Longing towards that blowing
And I cannot argue with it
Enjoying the same

20200247.0430

Eurus is not so callow as has been held
His emissions making sails swell and bulge out from
The structures that have held them aloft
Pushing cargo that pitches up and down
Along old paths long since known
And emulated even now despite
Thrumming machines and pumping pistons
Working to make things complete

20200426.0430

As illness spreads itself across the land
And covers waters with miasmic hand
Still Stupid God's devout together stand
And scream for freedom they think they deserve
Who in the test prove they have not the nerve
To do as they had said they'd do, and swerve
From what they call a straight and narrow path
To virtue. They commit the sin of wrath
And in so doing wallow in the bath
Of sickness others still strive to avoid--
All because they find themselves annoyed
That some would rather healthy than employed
Find themselves and those they love. And they
In folly gather foolishly to pray.

20200425.0430

What of the world the window shows
Bares between the blinds that open
Comes between curtains cast to the side
Is never enough; it does not satisfy
As no few are finding who fought their enclosure
But as many batter against their own bars
Others accept the ill-enforced arrest
Calling their captors as they have been called
For none here are free; all flesh is fetters,
And release from the restraints is rejected by most

20200424.0430

I tried to get up from the table
Tried to leave the feast that others have relished
Where I got only scraps
And those the fetid rinds and cut-away fat
Cooled to a sticking, quivering glob
That I was supposed to suck down with glee
Before I quoted Oliver Twist
And I have never much liked Dickens
But when I rose
I got stuck with the bill
And I pay on it as I can
Though it grows more quickly than the stomachs
That bloat as they gorge yet
While the table creaks and groans

20200423.0430

How many are taking the money
Promised by the painted toadstool-dicked
And how many are about to find themselves
Fucked by the same
Pounded again from behind
Briefly but still for far too long
And left without aftercare
Taking a small blown load because
Some money is better than none
And regretting it but not denying the need?
We are all of us whores.
Some are more honest, and more power to them.
But none of us aren't
And we should remember more fondly those who are more open.