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Tag Archives: poetry

dart

October 30, 2024
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the dart left the hand of the expert player/and its tip clove the cork/within the quasi-trapezoidal section of the dartboard/that yielded a triple seventeen/to win the game

the dart quiesced in its foam-rubber nest while its owner and operator attempted to persuade/a much younger female in a cotton dress designed to reveal but not flaunt/to accompany him and his pickup truck to a nearby hotel

she declined

the dart next unseeingly saw the light of day/in the woods near a campground/where its owner, irritated by the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker/decided to teach the woodpecker a lesson

but midmotion of the dart-launch that would have pierced the bird/where her spinal cord met her head/an artificial wasp plunged its titanium-alloyed stinger/into the dartsman’s throwing hand

the dart missed the tree altogether/and was abandoned by its owner/who drove himself one-handed to the hospital/where baffled surgeons removed his necrotized hand and half the adjacent forearm

while the operator of the artificial wasp sent a drone/to retrieve the fallen dart and bring it to her/for documentation/of a successful field test/of one of the newest weapons/developed by the department of defense

as for the wasp/it darted homeward as well

traps

October 29, 2024
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the springloaded mousekill the flyeating plant/the holder of grease°line of questioning°web/the finger embracement°thematical rant/the souls being pulled from the beach on the ebb

bland protocol traps us in nets of decorum/deft headhunters trap us with dazzling enticements/swift factchecks trap lies in a broadcasted forum/a verse traps attention with sugerandspicements

and gravity binds us in vast looping spiral/high penthouses pen us in decadence heaven/harsh scripture compels us to stone and go viral/and crap games sing siren songs seven eleven

seduction abduction reduction and rape/enflankment embankment tank airless no breath/the scars of a lifetime are hell to escape/but we are all sprung with omegatrap Death

we to the gods

October 28, 2024
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“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.” –Blinded Gloucester in KING LEAR by William Shakespeare

he is naked in a huge sphere in interstellar space and cannot remember how he got here

the sphere is transparent and he floats near its center gently pushed hither and yon by a cool breeze

there is a galaxy nearby but no star near enough to be a local sun

he drowses and sleeps and when he wakes he sees another sphere quite close

it is blue but for a tiny human figure floating near its center

he realizes his sphere must be blue too

gently the spheres draw close and when they touch there is an anticlimactic clacking sound

the figure within the other sphere floats toward him and he wonders if it is their personal gravities pulling them together

she is female and would be far too young for him except he sees that the body he is in is no longer old is somehow many years younger than it had been

both of them instinctively put out their hands when they arrive at the touching place and their palms are mere intimate inches apart

her softly swaying hair and enticing shape arouse him and he blushes and pushes away

“children,” says a voice, “i plucked you from your planet after learning something about it, and about you.

“you are perfectly suited to each other. you never would have met but for me. and i have made of you a work of art.

“but do not rejoice. the theme of this art show is Futility. and the title of my piece is Pale Blue Balls.”

with that, the spheres dissolved, and the air within them as well…

…

but before the two could die of decompression, they woke in their separate home-planet homes, thousands of miles apart, their bodies as they were, with the grim knowledge that they would never meet in real life…

…

unless they defied Reality Itself.

folly

October 27, 2024
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so you ask What Is Folly? and a wise guy says that it is the season after Summery and immediately preceding Wintery

and then you say Seriously? and the wise guy says that though Seriously is not a season, the weather has been known to become Seriously Hot or Seriously Cold or Seriously Humid

and then you stop asking the wise guy and you dig and you find that the word derives from the old french Folie which at core meant Madness but also had notes of Stupidity and Delight

you dig more and find that the Folies-Bergère was established in 1869 and later in 1882 during the Belle Epoque its bar was immortalized by Edouard Manet and a fun fact is that he put a bottle of Bass Pale Ale on the bar

and having dug and digging the dig you dug you realize that Ziegfeld’s Follies and Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley are also part of the tapestry

as are we all

in this crazy stupid delightful world

unfoe all

October 27, 2024
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unfriending is rife/unfoing less so/though enemy life/is painful we know

which side are you on?/whose hat do you wear?/by light’s early dawn/whose views do you share?

it’s easy to mock/but best to console/and soothe and unblock/a tortured old soul

take heed of the pain/take charge of your fate/and cease to disdain/by unfriending Hate

Rumor Has You

October 26, 2024
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Even after we wake up we are asleep most of the time aware but not sensate but dumb as rocks

Exhibit A is Clickbait we never wise up we sometimes resist but it bugs us because the little lizardbrain voice keeps saying Cmon Cmon the Gollum voice says We Wants It

And so we are essentially crippled when it comes to selecting candidates for political office and positions to take on ballot propositions

Because like a brain a campaign has compartmentalized operations with often contradictory motivations

And rumors fly that their guys are outspending our guys and They have an evil agenda and We must meet our fundraising deadline

None of which have much to do with The Right Thing To Do

Because at root it is persuasion and salespersonship and you don’t sell to Sweet Reason you sell to We Wants It

And since we are asleep though awake we are subject to hypnosis

Let’s think of that next time we are in a restaurant and the server utters the hypnotic question “How is everything tasting?”

And the only way to snap out of the lull is to visualize hyenas tearing away at a rotting corpse–did you just wake up, Reader and Friend?

Isn’t Blue a soothing color?

Or Doesn’t Red mean Passion and Purpose?

Wake up!! You fell back asleep

When they get you to give them money they bank on the fact that that act means YOU ALREADY VOTED

They have you

Please hit your Reset button!!!

grit

October 25, 2024
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comic-book-reading kids in the 1960s/were invited to sell a newspaper called GRIT/in one of those sears&roebuck-esque ads/that stood chockablock next to for example the adolescent-aimed Vacutex

i was never a GRIT newsboy/but intrigued enough now to do a little research/and find that in its heyday GRIT had 30,000 kids on 33% commission/keeping a nickel of each 15-cent sale

also it published fiction and trivia/and as far as trivia goes i hereby submit these meta-grit items:

if you grit your teeth gritlessly with freshly brushed teeth they squeak

a lady named duckworth wrote a book championing a combination of perseverance and passion that she labeled “grit” as a success-touchstone for schoolchildren

grit in an oyster gets coated with a nacreous substance called mother of pearl

if you have a drained blister on a footpad/and run four miles on beach sand in san diego/grit will erode the blister epidermis/and then get into the blistersac/and abrade the tender flesh beneath/and with every other footstrike torture/you will be forced to cut your planned five-mile run short

and you will remember that grit for thirty-nine years

politics

October 24, 2024
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politics

one seems sky/one blood/but both dream/both bleed

one faces right/one left/but to get around they pivot bob and weave

both have barbs on their talons/both think fierceness proves the point

but the scales are tipped

i made these birds/and pondered them

and i am voting blue

cubic and tetrahedronic and pentagrammatical supper

October 23, 2024
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if i eat in the late evening/then i am one who sups supper/making me a supper supper

and if i habitually greet friends with “‘Sup?”/ as a contractual corruption of “What’s up?”/ why then i suppose/whether or not i wear supp-hose/that i am a supper supper supper

but then if a pterodactyl swoops down and dines on me/well guess what?!/i will have become a supper supper supper’s supper

and the pterodactyl/also one who sups

and if i am clark kent also known as kal-el

then we have a super supper supper supper supper’s supper

and speaking of super

this poem is over

fish lesson

October 22, 2024
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forty-two years ago a gaudy tropical fish/was flipped by a net akin to a flyswatter/into a saltwater aquarium

to the human watching the fish looked stunned/paralyzed/it did not move so much as a fin

long minutes went by/and at last the fish stirred

stirred as if it were a spoon/handled by a sleepy someone in no hurry/and it made a slow tight circle/around the spot where it had been dropped

and over many more minutes/the slow circles the fish made widened/as if it were tracking the spiral/of an impossible small galaxy/from its core to its outskirts

and eventually it skirted an edge of the tank

and it changed course and started to explore/nosing into and around a loose web/of coral skeleton/and nodding at the fake miniature deep-sea diver

and in not long/it acted as if it were home

i was the watching human/and forty-two years later the memory of that fish/sprang into my thoughts

i was remembering yesterday/being at the potter’s wheel/at a studio open to the public/and an interesting woman i had met some months ago/younger than i but probably by less than a decade/came up to me and asked me what i was making

and i glanced up at her/and felt some voltage of attraction

and my eyes went back to my hands/and i told her that i was throwing off the hump/making bases that would keep the mugs i would later make/a little bit up from the surface/so less heat would dissipate

she was friendly and nice/and i imagined having coffee with her/but the voltage started coming up again

so i kept my eyes on my hands/and after a little more nice chatting/she sensed my shyness/and left me to my work

now i realize how much i am just like that longago fish/and how in a new interactive situation/i start stunned/and must proceed with caution

but the fish/wiser than i/learned to gain familiarity/to liberate itself/to relax

i hope i see her again