truestoryku
dined last friday with
seven poetic women–
Paradise enow!
.
diveku
desperate fellow
sleeps close to the front entrance–
my kind of Bar, eh?
.
hardballku
the stitching suggests
blunt force trauma and assault
taken for the Team
.
cupku
first i fill the cup
then the cup i made fills me
we are all Vessels
some cats are mostly monochromatic
some have a pattern of stripes
but I know a cat who is pure punk
whose random splotches make her into a fireworks tapestry
splotch and skidmark
starburst and smudge
.
she is craycray
wears her heart on her sleeve
and she is all sleeve
furrodivergent
with a flyby from far space to us/our awareness begins with the sight of a new dot in the night sky/and we train better-than-human eyes on the dot/and learn more
those rocks with volatiles we call comets are such former and future dots
sky scrutiny is as burgeoning as the supernova blast-debris we now image and display
and here at home we make stuff/with sensoria and solar-power paneling/that are at ground level the size of large animals or tiny houses/but are destined to ride controlled explosiveness into the sky/to become dots/out-there messengers of the realities/that have piqued our curiosity
this dot-forming impulse has the power to be our salvation/or our undoing
the one will require sanity
the other its lack
Hallways
Through windowless corridors
The lady with stiletto heels and veil steps,
The snap of her footsteps
Echoing in the narrow spaces.
She stops at one picture of a family of four
With a grinning dog,
Looks at the woman she was,
Shakes her head, and mutters,
“What was I thinking?”
She pulls a fresh long-stemmed rose
From the vase on the little stand
At the juncture of corridors
And de-thorns it,
Shortens the stem,
And puts the rose in her hair
By her ear.
She’s done. There’s a lot more to see
But she remembers most of it,
And it makes her shake her head again.
At the door
She says to her assistant,
“Demolish it, then sell the property
As quickly as you can.”
She holds up a hand
To the sputtering protest
And says coldly and firmly,
“Do it.”
In the town car she tells the driver
To take her to the airport.
Then slides a tear.
“Changed my mind. Take me
To the cemetery.”
Graveside
She places the rose gently
At the foot of her man’s headstone
And whispers,
“See you soon.”
Back in the car
She says, “Airport now.
How is your family, Edward?”
This poem first appeared in slightly altered form in the Facebook poetry group Poets All Call.
upscaled models
miniatures promise
and thumbnails hint
maquettes sketch their dramas
and prototypes squint
..
then cashbackers do
as their sales resistance
dissolves into goo
and recedes into distance
..
our sweet lady liberty
was sculpted in small
then upscaled she came to be
goddessish tall
..
so might your dream-fountain
my friend/ally/neighbor
cascade from a mountain
with upscale of labor
..
so take your fine notion
from under your wig
take raindrop to ocean
take tiny to big
..
for fission and fusion
are both nuclearity
we need less contusion
more breathtaking rarity
The everywhere comments
From people who are STILL
Cheerleaders on his team
Say all kinds of variations
On “He gets so much stuff done.”
They say it
Because a propagandist, maybe AI,
Figured out it was both easy to repeat
And undeniable,
And put it out there,
And his lackeys picked it up
And ran with it,
And now his parrots repeat it endlessly.
He gets a lot done, all right.
He used a drug-addled billionaire
To fire thousands of people
Who were doing good work, then did a Whoops
When it turned out
That some of those folks
Were vital to National Security.
He sent planeloads of brown people
To an El Salvador prison
In blatant violation of the Constitution
He swore to protect and defend,
Then brought in some white folks
From South Africa
To balance it all out.
He sold pardons to deep-pocket contributors.
He manipulated the stock market,
Letting some of his pals in on it beforehand.
He sold cryptocurrency in a scam he had set up
Just before he was inaugurated.
And he played a ton of golf, and denounced a lot of judges, and called half his fellow citizens “SCUM.”
Busy as a beaver, this guy,
Digging our Liberty and Justice for All
Graves.
“My brain is playing tricks on me”
We say. But, you know, the older we get,
The more body parts get involved
In the trickery. One trick stirs
Another. The skin
Decides we need new constellations
In the form of deflated-balloon skin tags, and
Then the hair, the skin’s epithelial partner,
Says “New fashion statement coming up:
Recessional Follies
Featuring Silverthread Sadie
And Thinny Minnie!”
Then the Gout Beast quiesces
For three days after that naughty McFlurry
Chased with three-sigar coffee,
And on the fourth day chooses a new home,
The Pinky-Toe joint, alchemizing humility
Into agony…
Whoa. What was I just saying?
My brain is laying bricks on me . . .
june
june is a month just begun
june is powerhouse poet june powers
june is the month billy joe jumped
june is amazing arizona comics superhero june monsoon
june is a member of the thirty-day club
june was june pinchback, beloved friend of my mother jane
june has flag day and the life-changing flag day in 1971 when i met my first real love
june foray was the voice of rocket j. squirrel and natasha fatale and tweety bird and talking tina and chatty cathy and lucifer the cat and dudley do-right’s nell
june includes juneteenth, also known as freedom day; if you don’t know why, tsk tsk
june is pride month
june is usually a scorcher from day first
but today she decided to rain right here in the so-called valley of the sun
she decided the usher herself in with 71° F temp in mid-afternoon
so today i love june in all their aspects
with bones that crepitate and ache
with flesh of crepe and fissures
it may be time to ponder and make
my peace with Fategirl’s scissors
it may be time to tally and settle
my modest life’s affairs
let not that last-plucked calendar-petal
send me off unawares
.
the wind’s no longer bracing
the birdsong does not cheer
the passing hours are racing
the cliffedge draws so near
so out go final messages
forgiveness of all debtors
eradicating vestiges
of jealousy of betters
.
the deathbed’s warm and cozy
and ringed with weeping friends
the media are nosy
and love to mark our ends…
so
fuck it!! time to rally;
throw off the bedclothes! RISE!!
EMERGE from shadowed valley–
it’s Party Time, you guys!!!!
help me live say organisms
to the oxygen and cee oh two of the air
and to the soils and nutrients of the earth
help me become say babies
to the elders who feed and umbrella them
help me eat say the holders of signs
and the exchangers of money for foodstuffs
.
they are the needers of Help
and it is curious that needer and nadir
are so phonetically similar
.
help me reap say the movers and shapers
to the law-twisters they buy
and otherwise control
.and it is curious that reap and rape
are so phonetically similar
One with Clay, Image and Text 