tariffs imposed on an uninhabited island

April 7, 2025
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the penguins were minding their own non-business

suddenly it was decreed that non-uncle sam would require 10 percent of all sales from the  export of their merchandise to the united states of america

suddenly their safe haven was scrutinized

the penguins became a symbol of mindless incompetence

and while it is true that they are indifferent to these recent developments

my fear is that the mockery inspired by these waterfowl will incur the wrath of the commandeer-in-cheep

i mean commander-in-chief

and following his illogic that leads him to seek retribution for anyone who chaps his hide

he will try to make the penguins pay

through the beak

doubling and quadrupling and octupling down

until the poor lil krillsuckers are booted out of the land of the fee [sick] [sic]

even with a green card

NaPoWriMo 2025, day 7: Mount Rushnomore

April 7, 2025
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I will never be a head on Mount Rushmore/Nor cast my capitated lot/With those four dead presidents/Whence came such woe/So I humbly propose:/Those who wish my Wright[my middle and momside family name]eous visage/sculpted on a mountain/fountain up some seed money,/Honey, and let’s make a Mount Rushnomore/For me and three nonslaveinvolving pals to be headscaped/Scrapedstoned/Shape-cloned into a fitting nonument to lay-backedness/Stray-hackedness and politically neutral

You troll no one when you’re Mount Rushnomoring/Soaring instead above such strife-begetting matters

Begatters of aggression (TR) andor passive-aggression (AL) andor typo-critical hypocrisy (TJ) andor domestic oppression with a side of cruelty (GW) will be invited to mend their ways

Raise the money and let me sculpt a scale model/What’ll consist of Jane [That was my mom’s first name too) Goodall and Jeff Bridges as The Dude/Who’d be between the Great/Raitt, Bonnie and me

See us under anarchic Antarctic ice/After we reverse the genocidotropic anthropic climate alteration

Altercation-quelling proof as snow and then ice resettles on our gently smiling phizzes/Whizzes a more humane humanity into the Undark Ages and that gentle snowfall and ice incrustation on the newly snowcapped peaks of Mount Rushnomore will be the icing on the cake clique

Unique.

NaPoWriMo 2015, day 4: bird flue

April 4, 2025
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the birds are crafty/they invade my attempts to make functional pottery/and rise from the wreckage of a wobbly vase

they whisper hurry up when i am raising a cylinder/and hurrying up guarantees the disaster of asymmetry

and then they wheedle i can still be a bird

and they goad and seduce/until a new bird arrives/not hatched but crafted

it is worse than the alfred hitchcock movie

no tippi hedren for one thing

the birds come in jester and gargoyle/for another

and i am the villain for a third

most horrifying of all: i love them/like rosemary loved her baby/like subbies love doms

they fill a table and cram/shelves and nooks/of my apartment

and i can’t wait to make the next one

and have it escape up the flue of my creative fireplace

a birthright citizen of Phoenix

NaPoWriMo 2025, day 3: The Potter’s Progress

April 3, 2025
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Note: The prompt offered on the NaPoWriMo website invited poets to explain obliquely why they are poets and not something else. But I AM something else, so let’s see what happens when I start with that.

These pieces were done by the author on April Third, 2025, at Lively Minds Art Studio.

The Potter’s Progress

Clay speaks to me tactilely/And telepathically

I need form/I need life

Clay chides me here and there

I deserve better/I do not deserve slapdash

Clay on the wheel connects me/With the Spin with which Creation began

That hum you hear is Universal

Clay has her delights and cruelties/And sometimes a will of her own

Stop trying to make a bowl. I do not want to be a bowl. Make me into a bird with four eggs on my back.

Sometimes cleanup is messy./Beware her dust!

Clay urges me to improve./I asked her why she was so demanding.

You know it is not I who demands. It is you yourself.

I am however thrilled that you do so.

It’s good for both of us, Darling.

NaPoWriMo 2025, day 2:  Camera (Chamber) Obscura (Dark)

April 2, 2025
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Note: today’s prompt says address a person, be anachronistic, invent a new word, etc.

Hey, Caravaggio/Love your chiaroscuro/(Daylight come and me wan go home)

You painted hundreds/Used camera obscura/(Daylight come and me wan go home)

I call you Mike/You’re a second Michelangelo

Castrating duellist/Inventing manstruation

Price on your head/But you kept on painting anyway

You were driven crazy by your mercury and lead

And hundreds of years after you were dead

Your paintings found their way into a first-year Latin textbook

And fourteen-year-old Gary saw them and was stunned

And thought Wow

Wish I could do that

move and be moved and do not move

April 2, 2025
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you sit still/but you also whirling around/the axis of a planet/which whirls around/the center of the sun/which whirls around/a black hole holding a galaxy together/yet you are not dizzy/because it is chiefly velocity at play/and not acceleration

you are calm/but your country has gone sideways/its leaders thieves and liars/its allies antagonized into disbelieving rage/but you are calm/because one of your own battles/is with overwhelmedness/and one of your defense tactics/is compartmentalization

an earth-striking asteroid or a nuclear strike/would be so game-changing/as to end the game

but so far so…uncatastrophic

so far unlikely

.

there is so much inherent sensibility/in laws of motion

so much wonder/that we got a chance to be alive/and to feel

yet so much danger/we must move to avoid it

and be moved/by beyondness

unwrit dress codes

April 1, 2025
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unwrit dress codes

in my country it is illegal

under penalty of scorn

to tuck in your shirt

unless it is under

another, untucked shirt

and even then subject to side-eye

.

in my neighborhood it is risky to dress well

people who loiter at bus stops

or around grocery-store entrances

tend to ask ask ask you for money

and you may get a sarcastic “god bless you”

if you don’t cough up

or at minimum give them a sincere “sorry”

and it is safer to look down and out

but sometimes when you do it will be

“got a lighter?”

or “can you sell me a cigarette?”

in which case a sincere “sorry, i don’t smoke”

is acceptable

unless you do smoke

.

on social media you can dress casually

or goofily

unless your employees are watching/your social-media presence

or you are looking for work

and then you better look as if you are up

for a performance review

or a job interview

sharp but not opulent

.

even in the privacy of your abode

avoid nudity unless hygienically necessary

you never know

you never know

you never know

who’s watching

and how

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 1–Watt: The Fugue

April 1, 2025
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On the NaPoWriMo website the optional prompt is an invitation to base a poem on a term or terms in a glossary of music or art. I have chosen fugue.

Watt: The Fugue

James G. Watt was precursive

Of modern folly’s MAGA

Interior subversive

Exterior oil-gaga.

.

James Watt was an inventor

Helped industry to flower

Steam engines at its centre;

Gave voice to his hoarse power.

.

James Bruce Watt helped found Brewdog,

And after countless rounds,

Earned more than me or you, dog:

He’s worth two million pounds.

.

So here’s to James and James

And BOO to crook James G.

And What the Fugue? Hell’s flames

Are Oil-based, sez me.

.

Note: The glossary I used described a Fugue as having at least two and usually no more than four voices, but not necessarily singing voices. And WTF might stand for any number of things. And the American James G. Watt,  Secretary of the Interior during the Readan administration, helped trash the environment with profligate use of federal lands for oil drilling, was fired, became a lobbyist, was indicted for felony perjury, pleaded down to misdemeanor document-withholding, and lived out his last days in Wickenburg, Arizona. And the Scot James Watt helped jump-start the Industrial Revolution with steam engines, and invented the term horsepower; and the Brit James Bruce Watt co-founded BrewDog, a wildly popular string of pubs in Aberdeen and elsewhere, and Wikipedia says his net worth is around £250 million.