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