Wednesday, November 20, 2024

undone

I write my little poems on my phone
And hope that somewhere somebody is reading.
My heart pumps blood, but feels like it is bleeding
Into my chest; my mind is overthrown 
By worries that, like monsters never shown,
Cannot be overcome. I am succeeding
At one thing only: stubbornly impeding
My own sense of connection. I'm alone.
I stare into the phone, and wish to see
Something I have not ever seen in there.
This is definable insanity:
Repeating action (stare and stare and stare)
While hoping it will end up differently.
But where else should I look? I know nowhere.

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

done

My fucking god, I'm just so fucking done.
What is the point? What is the goddamn point?
What can I do or say to anyone
That matters? We're going to anoint
A senile, angry madman as our priest
And while he gets his vengeance, we get hosed.
Can nobody out here see past their nose?
Hey, "Christians," "what you do unto the least"
Should mean something, and if it doesn't, then
What is the point of calling yourself that?
And worst of all, my gender: fucking men.
I wish we weren't. The gas was two bucks flat
When everyone was dying, and now we
Are going back. Fuck this. Fuck history.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Philosophical Musings

The morals of philosophy 
Are not too hard to comprehend 
Until you try to certainly 
Assert it to some certain end.
All of a sudden there arise
A thousand little arguments
Each full of tiny hows and whys
For you to pen, each in its fence.
It's like a coastline, and its length:
So easy on a map to see
But measured closely, past the strength 
Of any true cartography.
The moment that you try to claim
A certainty, you lose your aim.

Monday, September 23, 2024

Barton

The cold equations lie to you. They lie
Not in themselves (the math is right, of course)
But in their will to power. Asking why
The cold equation rules -- is it by force? --
Reveals, or can reveal, a deep design
That someone's interest calculates and sets
To make the cold equation seem a sign
Of universal meaning. But who lets
The cold equation go on being cold?
If we all know the cold equation's flaws
Who benefits from our failing to fold
Our own protections round its jagged laws?
The cold equations are still true, still cool
But people chose to let equations rule.

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

fishes

I wish I were not scavenging my time 
Robbing Peter to pay Paul, and making
Each little word and every single rhyme 
A muscle torn, reused and ever-aching.
Imagine that the time ahead of me
Were smooth and open, free to fill at leisure:
Impossible the possibility
And endless the end-stopped, creative pleasure.
But it has not been so, will not be either;
I cannot count on time to while away.
I am a child teething without teether
Gnawing my knuckle bloody to allay
The pain of what is rising from below
And has no patience as it strives to grow.

Monday, May 6, 2024

test

My heels dig in so much the ground is broken
Beneath my shoes. I hate to lose. I will,
If asked for an opinion when awoken
Defend 'til I sleep, and even still
Grumble in dreams about how I am right.
My knee, once jerked, will not concede its place
To any; I am my opinion's knight
And fight for it 'gainst all foes I might face.
Yet even I, who hate to say I'm wrong,
Who close my ears and la la la along
When anyone corrects what I have said 
Will tell these presidents the way they've acted
Requires that their statements be retracted
Before some student protester lies dead.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

bubble

I hear you in the other room
Your voice reminds me of your smile
It chases off my after-gloom
As I remember in a while
You will come out and sit with me
As we companionably read
Beside the dog, and drink our tea.
I think of this with utter greed.
There is no joy I wish for more
No comfort higher, greater grace
Than listening to our dog snore
While looking at your smiling face
Nose deep inside an open book
All unaware each time I look.

Monday, January 8, 2024

O Beautiful

I never understood the waves before;
It always seemed a silly little song.
To speak of waves of grain? It must be wrong.
The water always seemed to me much more
Than any field could be. How could it store
The slightest sense of surge, to bear along
A boat, and break? A farm is strong,
But like a wall, not like a wave, I swore.
Yet here, as night casts shadows on the snow
The wheat (unwaving yet, as it must grow)
Reminds me of the ocean rippling free
No waves as yet, but still an energy
That my sea-sense already seems to know
And recognizes past solidity.

Friday, December 8, 2023

Chanukah

Flicker little flame
Build a little light
In God's holy name
Last throughout the night.
Help us to remember
Long and far away
How once in December
Light for but one day
Stretched itself to eight
'Til more oil was found
To re-dedicate
Holy, sacred ground.
Let us not now be
Those from whom we're free 

Sunday, July 23, 2023

Mire

I do not have the brain to be myself.
I grope towards me, but cannot seem to reach.
My soul sometimes seems put up on a shelf
Where from the box my insides slowly leach.
I want to think, but when I try I grind
Like gears too long un-oiled or unused.
There is an awful jamming in my mind
Where what was understanding is confused.
I used to leap from thought to thought with ease
Where now to say I plod would be too much;
A keyboard doesn't work with sticky keys
Nor do I think. I can't release the clutch
Enough to even settle in a gear.
Even reverse would be relief from here.