Friday, November 13, 2020

The Loser's Creed

 

All of life is a vast conspiracy,

from birth to death,

liked a rigged spin

on a roulette wheel

where nothing ever lands

on black

and no deed or debt

is ever done.


Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Your Brain Is Broke

 

Your brain is broke

like a wounded bird
with broken wings 
crying in a field. 

 Your brain is broke

from that TV show 
that reduced the world 
to a mad house row.

Your brain is broke

from reason's slumber
while hidden monsters 
riot loose.

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Bunker Boy

History
is overflowing
like a closet
bursting at it seams.
Creaking loudly
like a wind tossed
ship floundering
against
the waves.

Where are you
bunker boy?
In which bunker
do you play?
Did your Tonka tank
just roll away?
Is your cap gun
out of pops?

Madam Defarge is
knocking at the door.
Focused on her knitting,
fueled with her rage.
The tumbril wheels
are moving
from the bunker
to the blade.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

March 3, 2003

It was in the
sunny chill of late winter
along the washed out
shores of Virginia Beach where,
after our brother's funeral,
we took a walk in silence
from the math negating
the sibling equation
with a fixed finality resembling
the half-surreal reality of
the streets that were lined
by palm trees wrapped
in plastic sleeves.

We watched the ships
leaving port for Iraq
while fighter jets roared low
as they continuously looped,
as one endless war
flowed senselessly into
another endless war
like the shrapnel our brother
still had from 'Nam.

A tangled ball of yarn
is the crazy strand
of a history
filled with a sorrow
and an emptiness,
a graceless epiphany.
So much like any death
in every family.
That evening in the parking lot
of a convenience store, I saw
a weathered hooker
abandoned in the darkness,
blankly staring at
the night's vacancy
like a renegade from
a Hopper painting.
Another spirit of our times.

Friday, September 27, 2019

The Straight Wind

Black clouds
erased the sky
as the straight wind
blew like
a rumble
from the west
and the poles
fell and power
snapped
with lines
jumbled
like snakes
in a pit
and days went
dark
like an end-time
scene
and silence
reigned
for many nights
till power returned
and the trees
were lit
like small candles
burning bright,
crackles through
the night.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Pensée

Writing is like weaving,
woven words like strings.
A dense tapestry of meaning,
immensely rich and strange.

Sunday, June 02, 2019

Disquiet Fills the Void

We need a new metaphor.
We desire a new dream.
Something more
than the dark primeval forest
Something more
than the vast deep sea.
We have become the Other
and the Other has left the room.
Like Moby quick descending,
never to be seen again.

A barren land burnt golden
beneath the Dialectic's gaze.
We’re running looser than
a free wheeling tire on a
long stretch of Texas road,
rolling wild and lazy like
a meandering tumbleweed
across flat plains.

We need a new dream.
Something to wake us
from our sleep.
The slumbering giant
tosses and turns.
Disquiet fills the void.