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.
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.
Incel’s Lament
The girls won’t fuck me. It ain’t right!
Looks like more wet dreams tonight.
The Good Book says it’s wrong to jerk,
but Man! I see those honeys twerk
and I can’t help myself, you see?
Why won’t they twerk it just for me?
Someday I’ll be a billionaire
and then they’ll learn to treat me fair.
I’ll become a TV star
and run a pageant – there you are!
They’ll beg me for it, don’t you know –
for fame and fortune, or for the dough.
And when I’ve fucked them all and get
too old and fat to do the deed,
I’ll run for President, and set
my sights on planting bigger seeds:
I’ll fuck the world itself and put
myself above the law and God.
And as I stamp my booted foot
you’ll cheer for me, you stupid sod!
Pond Haiku
Eight lotus blossoms,
the garniture of nature,
grace my summer pond.
Pellets strike water,
calling up to the surface
hundreds of goldfish.
Stillness at twilight:
heron standing on one leg
waits for a target.
The pond shrinks with heat,
leaving green algae billows.
The fish wait for cold.
(July 4, 2024)
PROFIT
Commerce is forever based on Profit —
on denial of the First and Second Laws.
No need to be an Economics prof; it
means transactions only get applause
when someone gets the best of someone else
and reaps a greater harvest than they sow,
while losers have to tighten up their belts
and cry in shame while profit-makers crow.
Ever since we dug up coal and oil
we’ve all been making profits off our planet,
using up the animals and soil
until there’s nothing left of it but granite.
It doesn’t have to be this way, you know.
Zero doesn’t have to be the sum.
There’s plenty if the fruits of labor go
to every one and thing, not just to some.
Cockroaches
In Florida “palmetto bugs” are in your face.
Hawaii’s giant flying roaches land on you.
Cockroaches are everywhere but out in space;
the German ones ubiquitous, and never few.
They seem to bounce right back from being stomped and squished.
They laugh at radiation levels that should kill.
They taste your gourmet meal before it’s even dished,
right after wallowing in steaming septic swill.
They’ve lots in common with us apex predators,
devouring everything, our hunger never fed,
or with the agents of our commerce: creditors.
They will be here long after other life is dead.
They can survive ordeals that reason says they couldn’t,
or that, I sometimes feel, like Homo sap., they shouldn’t.
A Good War
War we know. We are comfortable with it:
kill or be killed, what could be simpler?
Relax into thoughtless endocrine storm
and enjoy the absence of choice.
Politics are harder. Choosing between contradictions
and accepting heartbreaking compromises
is too stressful. We’d rather make it like war,
demonize the Other and win at all costs.
Now we must face the cruelest test of all:
dealing with the physical consequences
of our addiction to comfort, convenience and profit.
Nature cannot be bought off by lobbyists.
We could easily save ourselves
if we could only make climate change a war,
identify The Enemy and plan its annihilation…
but wait, we’ve done that already!
How can we make war on destruction?
How can cooperation satisfy our bloodlust?
How can we all be on the same side?
How can we be what we’ve never been?
Arlo
Here lived Arlo, a good dog and true.
I’m sorry I sometimes yelled at you.
I wish I had hugged you and flopped your ears
more often before today’s sad tears.
Barking at neighbors on the street,
you yelped and fell near to my feet.
You shook and twitched, I came to you,
but there was nothing I could do.
The vet said probably heart attack.
I just wish I could get you back
to chase the rabbits and catch the ball
that now sits lonely upon the wall.
We ran together the river trail.
I would plod while you would sail.
Your grace was ever my inspiration
And I wish I could match your dedication.
(15 June 2022)
Objective Love
Baby, I love you.
This all began two billion years ago
when our profligate prokaryote ancestors
played messy gene-swapping games of
conjugation, transformation and transduction.
That works great, especially if you need to
quickly evolve resistance to antibiotics,
but it doesn’t lend itself to stability,
so those ephemeral unicells never had time
to grow differentiated colonies.
That required also a little cell wall strength,
so eukaryotes grabbed that niche right away
and 1.2 billion years ago it was a eukaryote
who invented true sex.
Baby, I love you.
(10 June 2020)
