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.

 

Mock Wild Boar

My German granny’s recipe
is something beautiful to see.
The title tells a vivid story
of a hunter’s quest for glory:
the feral tuskers were too big
to kill, so he brought home a pig.

The dinner party had been told
of wild boar, like in days of old.
He begged his wife to make it so
alike that none of them would know.
She reassured him, “Fret not, dear,
they’ll never know it’s pig this year.”

Prick a whole ham, freshly killed,
all over; rub with spices, filled
with pepper, thyme, allspice and bay,
with garlic, salt and caraway;
then marinate in red wine, brandy,
vinegar, olive oil if handy.

Add some onions, orange zest,
celery, carrots and the rest,
and let it sit at least a week,
turning daily, till it reek
of wildness. Then you roast it brown
and become the talk of any town!

World of Hurt

“Hurt people hurt people,” say the shrinks,
envisioning a chain of links
passing the hurt on down the chain,
each enduring equal pain.

I think each link connects to many,
“In for a pound, if in for a penny!”
So some disburse a world of hurt
while others wear a horsehair shirt.

The world is wrapped in a web of hate.
Can we escape? It looks too late.
But each of us gets to decide
how much hurt we will provide

and how much love, and to how many
we will give how much, if any.
The web connects us either way,
tomorrow, now and yesterday.

The Poet Grows Old

My big words desert me, and with them
my thoughts, forever truncated by
diversions shiny or even drab.
I don’t mind so much losing track
of why I came into the kitchen
or how to integrate a gaussian,
but there is still so much that needs saying
and I have to fall back on simple
everyday words.

Driving home alone
I find myself screaming obscenities
at inane radio hosts and other drivers
because they can’t hear me and
I have rage I need to express
somehow.

Perhaps that’s what needs saying.

 

 

(January 6, 2024: my birthday, Christmas Day in Russia, and the 3rd anniversary of the day democracy stumbled in the USA)

New Year’s Day 2024

Last year was a drag.
2024 is here.
Love it while you can.

 

On Poetry

Confusing Muse:
rhyme & time –
clues to choose
make me take
a newer view –
& grow ’em poems!

Narcissus is us!
Double trouble:
viciously ambitious, we
Say, display,
auspicious, capricious,
obscenely preen,
malicious, fictitious
and claim the fame.

 

14 November 2023

Head Crash

Today I mourn the corpse of my corpus:
The work of a lifetime, lost to a glitch.
A power-fail head-crash erased the enormous
collection of all I have done. “Life’s a bitch,

and then you die,” so goes the meme.
But I had intended my work to survive
long after I’m dead, so that it might seem
that some of my essense might still be alive.

Goodbye 787 Quips,
hundreds of papers and invited cants,
22 Stories with rejection slips,
56 poems, 31 Rants. . .

OMG, is that the summation
of all I’ve accomplished in 78 years?
What are my choices in this situation:
Start over now, or just drown in my tears?

 

 

30 November 2023

(No, it hasn’t really happened… yet!)

Other

Other folks in other places suffer,
I’m told today on TV by the News.
It overflows my empathetic buffer
and makes me glad I’m not in their sad shoes.

They know, the entertainment media,
the numbing, callous, cynical effect
of the tragedy encyclopedia
inflicted daily as our world is wrecked.

If it bleeds, it leads,” they say with knowing smiles.
Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
We all are plunging into climate trials,
and they will have to die and suffer too.

 

(13 September 2023)

Caviar

Swim, my silver beauty, swim!
Follow me to river’s source.
Do not make your bed with him,
though he move gravel with more force.

Lay your eggs upon the sand
and guard their orange splendor there
while I employ my milty gland,
shuddering sideways in our lair.

And when the procreation’s done,
when you and I are tired and tattered,
our flesh will nourish everyone;
our lives will then have truly mattered.

For now, we dream of alevins, fry
and darting schools of speckled smolts
who someday will return to die
here too like loving thunderbolts.

 

(24 September 2023)

Facts

Conspiracies converge and stick in clumps
like burdock burs in fur of ignorance.
Trust no authorities, they all are chumps!
cry theorists in chorus. . . “Join our dance!

But past the Dunning-Kruger peak I find
the wisdom of self-questioning and doubt:
Opinon and belief infect my mind
like any other. I must root it out. . .

I thrash in a furious sea of firm opinions,
smothered in crashing waves of true belief,
wishing I could fly on reason’s pinions
into the air of facts, and breathe relief.

ENTANGLEMENT – a 2D Poem

Sun           has     dipped       behind      the          hills
and                      and                     salmon
Moon         has     bulged          a         swirl        of red
together                 the                      and
pulling       on      oceans         to         rise         again

 

 

(Oct 22,  2018)

Old

“Old” was “twice my age”
until that became far-fetched;
now “old” is today!

 

 

(17 June 2023)

Dunning-Kruger

Out here on the tail of doubt
I miss the spike of certainty
I felt when I first figured out
what seemed to be simplicity:

I was special, chosen, good
and so was Homo sapiens.
Together, hand in hand, we would
learn not to be barbarians.

Science and technology
would soon create utopia.
Enlightenment and psychology
would cure social myopia.

But soon I ran into some snags
for which there was no simple cure.
My righteous signs, slogans and flags
failed to convince those who were sure

of just the opposite account
and saw me as the problem’s source!
And when I knew that no amount
of hot debate would ever force

their minds to change, I realized
that maybe I should learn to see
their world through their eyes,
which added some complexity.

So now I know what I don’t know
and wonder if I ever knew
anything at all – and so
I’m at a loss for what to do.

 

 

(01 May 2023)