there is madness in the iodine
buttercup mystery
an enigma of grayish-white
entrails or slice brains
without the blood
So I gave it a different name.
A protrusion,
an inconvenience,
a trifling, stifling,
terrible turn of events.
I will not force any words.
I will not use the word allocate,
too late. I have no image,
no brand, no reason to be
someone I am not.
Ravenous appetites on crushed boulders
In depths, immersed hues
Some oceans
Topaz in bloodied hands.
The computer-poets stand hushed
except for the faint hum
of their efficient fans,
waiting for inspiration.
Asylum seekers, will you recognize me among the mountain passes’ frozen corpses?
Can you identify me here among our Exodus’s exiled brothers?
We begged for shelter but they lashed us bare; consider our naked corpses.
When they compel us to accept their massacres, do you know that I am with you?
Ancient beasts come again to prove
We are not civilized
We are not advanced
We hungrily tear apart
That which we built
No Donald, Israel, Hamas, no protests,
genocide, no slaughter in Ukraine.
No poetry, emails from friends, texts,
calls from the kids.
This, they’ve decided, will be a lot of nos.
I think of Joseph Campbell saying:
"That’s what people are doing
all over the place, dying
for metaphors."
The orthodontist gets off on the torture
Provides wheelchairs to the victimized
Plus a lollipop but only lemon flavored.
He’s an old man, so old he just might’ve
Escaped that notorious scorched-earth regime
I licked a stripe down my own skin, savoring the saltiness of
being human. We are creatures of the sea; my hands once
hauled me out of inky black water. I am not a creation myth.
Remember no one's watching
everyone at once.
All this past and present is yours
if you do without
saying you are here
When the page is the sum total of my nerve
Only then, I’ll feel great in my bones
By night’s arrival, which would eavesdrop on starlings
If I let it count to zero
Shake your father's pistol with its bump stock,
shake your old lady's purse at three a.m.,
shake a voodoo doll over your unwanted
daughter's crib. Shake your slurs and shake
sent to chastise them for raping our Earth
and to either disabuse them of their ways
or to overthrow them all
before one tyrannical species is allowed
to completely annihilate the third planet from the sun.
I am not a vampire, but I endlessly sleep in a coffin
Bloodless. I scare little girls
without even speaking. Stale swaths
of dirty hair are stuck inside my mouth
I choose a rigid self-denial
from bourbon and curbside service.
Walking out for a drinks,
my doctor confessed to a taste for
chain mail fetish and other men’s wives.
We no longer need the Bill of Rights -
that was for the short guys,
we need a Patriot’s Act, and the fear of
terrorists who hate us for our superior characteristics, immigrants looking for a home.
just another voice
in Plato’s head
screaming from the rafters
while the rest
of the mad choir
screws around in the cheap seats
Where they are used, misused and abused,
Evan as they never fail
To kindle pleasures
And satiate base desires
Of their lords and masters
Like a bomb hit it. Controlled destruction
For want of a better word, for choice information
Raised above censure, published at will
Blurring boundaries between now and otherwise.
the name of the beast
or the number of his name
what’s at the center
but a big hole
Polyps spawn on the lawns of
the State Capitol in Sacramento.
An annual event; but nobody
bothers to count. Lots of guesses,
each man given a sequence
that must be followed
until the meaning
becomes obvious
and the light is found
Wouldn’t it be awful were you to chance upon a fishbowl
in which your only daughter morphs into some mermaid?
How would you go about rescuing her? Would rescue be
worth the pursuit? She would swim there freely in denial
But those were empty meanderings, the
Solace of ruined moments and
Beatific outcomes, captured in thoriated
Aluminum cages, bound to the page with cheap tape
under a bridge, under cardboard, or here at the limit exposed at one of the crossings around Hastings & Main, on pavement never ceded
As if his wounds are
family members, he’s become
kinder since his accident. Sun’s
heat against her back, she gazes
down into that curtain
praying hands
deploy hidden marigolds in the air
for the finches singing
the death of plastic
outside my skull
I wish to meet my son, who was unborn when I decided to
openly condemn the dictator and consequently
missed the chance to witness his birth and growth
I had thought, naively, that my action was for a better future of his life
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