Category: POETRY
Again, look up “poem” in the dictionary if you don’t recognize the word. Or, better yet, just have a look at what’s here and form your own impressions.
T.S. Frost
Some say the world will end with a bang.
Some say a whimper.
For them of us as gives a dang
about what sort of knell gets rang,
we’ve been sailing on a shrimper,
watching how crustaceans die,
and seen how royal ladies simper
fishing for the open fly:
we’ll take distemper.
…or maybe…
Some say the world will end with a bang.
Some say a whimper.
From watching as Sopranos sang,
recalling when a loud knell rang,
I tend to have a violent temper.
But if I really have to die,
what use is there in more distemper?
I might as well relax and try
to exit limper.
Abstraction
At the age of ten,
waiting for the car to come
take me off to church:
Clouds of hungry gnats
circling in the hot sun
focus thought on thoughts.
Self-centered thinker
thinks of self thinking of self…
finds the infinite.
(A description of the moment I became fully conscious.)
Unceded
Let me acknowledge my gratitude
for being allowed to occupy this volume of unceded space
on the site of this unceded plot of land
in the unceded territory of the Snaw’naw’as People
on the unceded continent of Turtle Island
on the unceded planet Elohi,
part of the unceded system of Tjindu,
a small unceded yellow sun
in the unceded Wodliparri galaxy,
on the outskirts of the unceded Laniakea Supercluster
in this particular unceded Dreamtime
of the whole unceded Multiverse.
I am gratefully unceded here.
Appropriate
I wanted to write a poem of Raven returning
to check up on the Humans in this World
and how he’d be dismayed at forests burning
and at the fascist monsters’ flag unfurled.
And how he’d try to muster some amusement
or play some tricks to make us realize
the folly of our natural abusement
or anything to cut us down to size.
But Raven isn’t mine to play around with.
I can’t appropriate the Native culture.
I’m just another white male wordsmith,
not an idea-thief or meme-vulture.
I guess I’ll have to find a way to tell
my tale in my own words at least as well.
14 March 2025
Here Comes The Sun!
My very soul is heliotropic.
My interest in snow is microscopic.
Let it be warm, let all of it melt!
Let BC resemble the African veldt!
Quit Your Bitchin’
I’m tired of hearing your climate rage…
and stop complaining about your age.
You’re just as incensed when it’s getting colder,
and nobody ever has to get older.
I’m your oppressor? How do you figure?
Did I say a word you consider a trigger?
Everything’s somebody else’s fault.
Disagreement constitutes verbal assault.
Your opinion’s as valid as that of Authority,
in spite of your rational inferiority?
You’re more indignant at the price of gas,
beer and what you use to wipe your ass
than at their effects on the Earth’s ecology.
Now you create a convenient mythology
that the “day 1 dictator” isn’t your fault
because you didn’t expect the assault.
Day One
(This is not really a poem.)
20 Jan 2025
Today Donald Trump was inaugurated.
Again.
After bragging about “grabbing them [girls] by the pussy.”
After being convicted of 34 felonies.
After being indicted for treason.
After saying several times that he would be “a dictator on day 1.”
How did this happen?
I feel compelled to try to understand.
I think it began with the Internet,
which liberated us all from Authority:
the great democratization of information,
that allowed each person to declare individual autonomy —
the right (nay, the duty) to trust our own instincts
and make up our own mind what is true, what is false,
what matters, what doesn’t,
what is necessary, what is not,
what must be done and what must not be done.
That is gratifying, but it is also a burden —
especially when applied to what we must all do or not do.
That’s not how it works.
Getting anything done collectively requires cooperation.
Cooperation requires negotiation,
and sometimes compromise: sometimes you have to have faith
in others’ good faith and the collective wisdom.
We no longer have that.
And so, both to get things done
and to escape the oppression of choice,
the people of the United States elected a dictator.
Lab Fever
(apologies to John Masefield)
I must go down to the lab again, to the lonely lab and the beam,
And all I ask is polarized muons, as strange as that might seem;
And the flashing lights and tangled cables and bright computer screen,
And a spectrum showing a signal that has never before been seen.
I must go down to the lab again, for the call of the muon’s decay
Is a wild call and a clear call that has great things to say;
And all I ask is a well-tuned beam on a tiny final focus,
And a magical sample steeped in theoretical hocus-pocus.
I must go down to the lab again, to the isolated life,
To the pion’s way and the muon’s way where science replaces strife;
And all I ask is a data plot that all can comprehend,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the owl shift’s at its end.
(For Rob Kiefl’s retirement party, 8 Feb 2025)
Rifracimento
15 November 2024 — in memory of W.B. Yeats
The fascist thermals rising once again
elevate the eagle on a vulture’s quest:
shred our legacies and serve the carcass
of democracy for scavengers’ breakfast;
loose the killers, give them tools
to execute your bidding on the innocent;
none with better judgement dare protest
while thugs tumesce with lust for dominance.
Surely a greater crash is coming;
surely the nuclear codes will come to hand.
A final war! The end of human plunder
may come soon enough to save the other life
with whom we share this small polluted sphere.
Bring it on! What we called civilization
was from the outset doomed, creating horrors
beyond imagination from our good intent;
building virtual cities to lodge monsters.
We thought a better world was in our grasp;
but every century the beast returns
to lift its disciples in its bloody jaws
and set them on the universe again.
If only this time could be the last.
The Rapture
I’m a’gettin’ set for Armageddon.
The Second Coming’s gonna be a gas.
Righteous folks’ll rise up into Heaven
while Jesus kicks some wicked Sinner ass.
Arabs and Israelis gonna start it.
It don’t matter which of them will lose.
You’ll rejoin your loved ones long departed
if you make a big donation to the Jews.
Oh The Rapture is comin’,
The Rapture’s on its way.
The Sinners are runnin’,
but they can’t get away!
Some friends of mine think Palestine
is only trying to be free.
Others opine that vengeance is fine
long’s it ain’t on you an’ me.
We all will shout, when the nukes come out,
“Spare us! We all are innocent!”
But there’s no doubt that it’s all about
the Judgement of Jesus that’s imminent.
Oh The Rapture is comin’,
The Rapture’s on its way.
The Sinners are runnin’,
but they can’t get away!
(10 Dec 2010)
Written in response to a news report about a Christian sect in the USA that was urging its
members to make donations to Israelis settling illegally in the West Bank, in hopes of bringing on
the Second Coming ASAP.