Albertus Astrophel
Posted on August 11, 2016 in Poems
This strange, ecstatic man
ponders the journey of the stars,
mathematically minding
the debris of the Universe
that crashes coughing into the planets
and mars the stripes of Jupiter.
He contemplates comets
with the intensity of a cat
lapping up gravy.
A Quick Update
Posted on August 5, 2016 in Bipolar Disorder Body Language Daily Life
Though I have had shingles, a gastrointestinal virus of some kind, pulled muscles, a fatty liver, and a basal cell carcinoma — a minor form of skin cancer –, I have not had an episode. My blood sugar was too high — in the two to three hundred range — and I had some visual hallucinations because of it, but these shadows in the corner of my eyes have vanished as my numbers came down. So I am well and caring for myself.
Floating like a Butterfly, Stinging like a Bee
Posted on June 5, 2016 in Prose Arcana Silicon Valley
Back in 1992, I visited Serbia and had an audience with the local leader of the Serbian Nationalist Party. I brought up the subject of conscientious objectors. The chief smirked and said in a knife twist of ad hominem tu quoque “I am a great admirer of Muhammad Ali.” I think he expected me to go all Sonny Liston on him, but I looked him in the eye with the steel gaze of The Greatest and said “So do I. And wherever my brothers in conscience shall be, I am there in spirit with them. I am with them here in Serbia and everywhere. ” It was a knockout punch. The party apparachnik changed the subject in a hurry. He was Sonny Liston, not me. I know Ali would have stretched his arm to touch me fist to fist, glove to glove.
.
Shingles: A Cinquain
Posted on May 12, 2016 in Body Language Poems
19
Red sores
a belt stretching
from nipple to spine.
A road of pain, ooze, scabs, and scars.
Shingles.
I have little else on my mind than the pain.
Neurology
Posted on April 27, 2016 in Poems
In this strange, grim cave
buttressed by bone,
I am boatman
upon a phosphorescent lake.
An invisibility of touch
overlays the imaginative vision
where a thousand songs
cannot describe
the ridges and convolutions of
that wet, pink flesh.
All that is me
is centered on this parasite
suckling from the teats of a hollow bone.
I am not sure about this one. Another rewrite might be in order, but it does have some powerful images. Thoughts?
Cthulhu: A Found Poem
Posted on April 19, 2016 in Poems
A found poem is created when you take a piece of literature — in this case Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu” — and find your poem by linking nearly words.
To get the line spacing right, I had to do a screen capture.
Ray Bradbury and the Future
Posted on April 14, 2016 in Poems
You are not the future, Ray Bradbury told me, because you are not a scientist.
I was 19 years old, a liberal arts freshman at a small California college hidden on lists of the best colleges in the nation.
Which by definition made him not part either.
He wrote about the future with few clues about math or chemistry or physics
Just dreams about dinosaurs, spaceships, and Martian canals.
But the joke’s on you, Ray.
I am the future that was.
I’ve outlasted you.
And I don’t see time machines or rockets harvesting fusion material from the Sun.
The Martian canals proved to be capillaries in Percival Lowell’s eyes.
I am what became of the world that I helped make.
Too bad you aren’t here to see it.
Fragments and Short Poems
Posted on April 12, 2016 in Poems
I
The iceberg
rams a Titanic of flame.
This is not the expected story.
II
The snowball
bends until it meets itself.
The center holds.
Frozen thought is loosed upon the mind.
Behold the blankness and the blindspot.
III
I am where two walls come together,
the light and the dark;
the line that fears
a crack that confuses the two.
IV
Skunk
The black and white
regimentation of its tail
following its vacuuming snout.
V
The mackerel swims
suspended in a wave
above the low troughs of the bay.
VI
A hard year began
when the orange rain fell
Less than 140 characters
Posted on April 10, 2016 in Poems Social Media
The trouble with being a poet
is that no one reads your stuff
except other poets.
You sing at the silence
and there is no answer.
Butterfly
Posted on April 8, 2016 in Poems
Geisha,
chalk love-death mask,
silk wings pinned to a hope.
Only Sharpless can see Lust’s doom
Wedding.
Now the man in white and gold screws
the delicate bug and leaves.
Sorrow, blossoms,
a knife.
The title of this cinquain refers to two things: the opera Madama Butterfly and to the style of cinquain that I employed, a butterfly.
Sharpless is the compassionate American consul who tries to talk the oversexed Pinkerton out of his plan of marrying — seducing — Butterfly
Goodwill Slavery
Posted on April 7, 2016 in Campaign 2016 Class Stigma
We’ve heard a lot about the dismal minimum wage of $7.25 in this country. Sanders has called for a $15 federal minimum wage and Clinton for a $12 wage with the call for local communities and states to set it at $15 or higher on their own. Only Ms. Clinton, however, has noticed a segment of our population who makes less than the minimum wage thanks to an act purported to “help” them: the disabled.
If you have a mental illness or a physical disability, you are screwed under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. That is when the minimum wage for the disabled was set at $0.00. That is right, there is no minimum wage for people like me and you. Fortune Magazine describes the reasoning:
Congress passed the original legislation 76 years ago because it “rightfully felt that these individuals had the desire to be part of the fabric of America,” says Anil Lewis, director of advocacy and policy for the National Federation of the Blind. But that was a different time; when “discrimination was inevitable because service systems were based on a charity model, rather than empowerment and self-determination and when societal low expectations for people with disabilities colored policy making,” the National Council on Disability says.
This is what allows organizations such as Goodwill to give its workers subminimum pay. Hillary Clinton has noticed the problem (Senator Sanders seems to be ignorant of it) and promises to do something about it. We deserve the right to be able to support ourselves whether we are blind or deaf or mentally ill. Currently, we don’t get the same $7.25 that everyone else gets. The message becomes we are not able. This is nonsense.
If we can do the work, then we deserve the fair wage. No more should we be an underpaid slave class for nonprofits. It is time to join Hillary Clinton in her call for fairness for all. We have the right to be self-sufficient.
Scout Law
Posted on April 4, 2016 in Childhood Poems
A Scout is…
Trustworthy
as Steve Casmus who chopped
a hole in the ice with an ax,
dropped it in,
and blamed it on me.
Loyal
to my peers
who swore in secret
and smoked behind the outhouse.
Helpful
to the Girl Scouts.
Friendly
except
to the bullied,
the lonesome,
and boys who cry.
Courteous
when talking to adults
rude when mocking each other
or the Scoutmaster
when he was asleep in his tent.
Kind
as the guy
who ridiculed me
for the way I didn’t part my hair
Obedient
when others were
and when it suited me.
Cheerful
when I climbed steep hills
listening
my heart pounding
from a defect unseen.
Thrifty
for no other reason
than my parents paid me
fifty cents a week
Brave
as the guys who attacked me
because they knew I was strong
as a manatee,
taking their blows quietly,
without resistance.
Clean
as the dust that spotted me
through my khaki pants.
Reverent
until my faith died
in a tent, telling dirty jokes
at a Catholic retreat.
