Posts for June 2, 2025 (page 9)

Hubris is a pair of shiny boots stuck forever on a holy mountainside
Littered with chip bags, water bottles, and scraps of plastic.
In the boots are a pair of crepe paper feet, attached are legs in
A pair of 90s windbreaker pants, bright and orange, 
Still swish-swishing in the wind, that match the jacket whose collar
Flaps around a half-decayed head, the flesh eroded around the snow white
Teeth that grin like someone just yelled “Say cheese!” even though
That corpse never reached the peak for a celebratory photo.

Hubris is thinking you can play a god, you can be a god at the top 
Of the world, hand-held the entire way by peasantry who should
Just be grateful you were there to hand them big wads of money.

Bugs

be

fucking in your walls and fucking in the air
and fucking on your bed and fucking in your chair
and fucking in your clothes and fucking in the shadows
fucking in your garbage, fucking right beneath your nose

and before you know there’s a problem,
you’re surrounded
by eggs, eggs, eggs.

But do they not have some right to be?
Is it not a dirty home
that first invites them in?
They come thirsting for your blood
and you know
they’d drink you dry if they were big enough.

Because unfortunately,
some of them are…

the ones fucking with our laws and fucking with your rights
and fucking with our money and ignoring all your plights
and stripping ‘way your freedoms, and denying dignity
as they consume every power with reckless impunity.

You think no one could vote for this, but you’ll be surprised
when they mobilize the tired and the disenfranchised,
people who might have only one contentious view
doubling down when crossing swords with your own hateful few.

Then an impossible November unfolds:
you’re outnumbered
seventy-five million to seventy.

But how did they get so strong?
A lot of them are good people
grown weary of broadstroke insults.
If we could find a way
to meet needs in the middle
the real infestation could then be exposed.

It won’t be by pointing fingers.
Nothing’s gained by being a dick,
but for the sake of this nation
that still has so much to offer,
someone’s got to take the lead
and start cleaning this goddamn house.

textbooks called them “Lost”
border after border crossed
before being labeled “Expatriates”  

the search for Art, Music, Words,
even just a decent damned conversation
at a café in the Monmartre­—  

over hill over dale hitting the dusty trail
for something to believe in
after the war to end all wars that  

let loose the dogs of racism fear
and party money frenzy
for another century or so
in the land of the greed
home of the wage slaves

II.

I woke late today— at 5 a.m.     
     The house already echoes
with birdsong, the sun already     
     begun her rise. I step out
onto dew-tipped grass,     
     to scents of fresh cut hay,
arch back, meet a mass of cumulus     
     puffs— heavy Marengo grey.
We wait together for sun to strike     
     them stronger, and with delight,
she does. Then they glow, glow,     
     glow bubblegum pink.

When clouds dissipate, dawn
whispers, All is clear, and I retreat
to fill pages. But before I end,
I set an alarm for 4 a.m.

Dont let the pain of your past
disable your dream of a new future.

Dont let someone elses opinion
make you doubt who you know you are.

Always make time to smell the flowers, 
blow on dandelions and dance in the rain.

Perfection is an unattainable goal
where as simplicity wont cost you your sanity.

Always have access to bubbles. No one can be
angry blowing bubbles.

My aging apple tree, which never has given me
more than a few green sour apples, is turning
into something
that looks like
a Portuguese Cork tree, its gnarled
bark peeling
out from its core, a festering yellowish
gumming oozing
from under its layering.

I tree-whisper: you need attention.
I should climb up
its crumbling bark and saw off a few appendages.
But climbing up means
climbing down, and I’m not sure of that.
The tree isn’t the only aging plant.  
It’s never been properly pruned. A dead limb
here and there. Never properly parented by me.
Put in the wrong ground with the wrong soil. And not
nursed. Husbanded.
Nurtured.
It knows more about being an apple tree
than I do, I rationalized my neglect.

By their fruits you shall know them.  

I spotted a few blossoms this year,  but
can’t find
a solitary apple. Maybe the squirrels
got them, they usually do, or maybe the tree’s
just old and giving up.

“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Yogi and I lecture
the aging sapling, but it’s a
one-way conversation,
the yellow sap
still leaching. Even Yogi
can’t brace it back to its
youthful promise, can’t get
it to envision the one-tree-orchard
I imagined at its planting,
branches sagging under
the weight
of luscious reds
and bracing
greens.

Once, after school on a late Friday afternoon,
my mom took me to a liquor store, 
near downtown Chicago.
Red-faced men shuffled out front, 
near a big silver door with a round window,
smoking unfiltered cigarettes.
Still in my St. Pete’s green, yellow and blue 
plaid uniform, eyes were on me
and my mom
in her dark cat-eye sunglasses.
She hoisted 2 big jugs of Carlo Rossi Chablis,
a bottle of Gallo burgandy onto the counter,
let go of my hand to carry the white.
I carried the smaller brown bag of red.

The bottles jiggled in the back seat,
almost fell to the floor
when she came to a complete stop
in front of the convent–
where the nuns lived.
This year I had tall Sister Rita Mary.
The large wooden rosary beads
hanging from her waist clanked
as as she wiggled down
the narrow aisles of desks, collecting
homework and the spelling words
we neatly wrote five times in vertical rows.

Mom said:
squat down in the front seat,
don’t get up until I tell you.
She got one jug up the narrow steps, 
came back for the second.  On the third trip,
she got the bottle of red,
opened the glove compartment,
above my head
grabbed a pack of Marlboro’s–
they were for Sister Geraldine.

Hisses of justice, whispers of peace,

A silver tongue spun in privileged pleas.

It slithers through circles where truth takes a stand,

Extending a cautious and calculated hand.

It speaks of the righteous, it weeps for the lost,

Yet measures its words by what they might cost.

It bends with the breeze, it sways with the tide,

Never too far from either side.

It feigns revolution but whispers retreat,

Plays martyr and savior, but stays on its feet.

It feeds the fire yet quenches the flame,

With crocodile tears, denying the blame.

When cries for justice shake the land,

It offers a smile, a hollow hand.

A friend to the voiceless—until power calls,

Then it slinks to the shadows behind fortress walls.

Beware the serpent with honeyed breath,

That trades in half-truths and deals in death.

For nothing is crueler, nothing more crass,

Than a snake in the garden, a snake in the grass.

Love to me is no longer confessions of longing, 
or testimonies of attraction. 
Love to me is laughing together all shift, 
and you taking out my trash before I notice it’s full. 
I want to take care of you when you’re overwhelmed, 
and hangout with you after it’s time to go home.
You took time to think about what I said
and you, who’s never been sure about anything in your life, came back and said
despite all the confusion, you were always sure you could never love me.

A thousand of us unemployed,
did ya think about that, WCTU woman?
I walked away from Pepper’s
leavin’ 2600 barrels of whiskey behind. 
My buddies and me trudged up Manchester Street,
last pay in our pockets. 

Some headed uptown
to revel in the last legal night.
Not me, no,
I gotta get on home
to six kids and a sick wife. 

Last day on the North Broadway trolley
I feel guilty payin’ that nickel;
jingle will be scarce soon.

All them stuck up ladies outside the Christian Church
wear white dresses and broad-brimmed hats,
serve up ice cream and lemonade,
celebrate like it’s The Second Coming. 
A Lexington Herald photographer records the fête.

Hey, ladies!
I don’t care who spends the rent 
in Main Street’s saloons. 
Don’t point at me. 
While them others have hangovers
        tomorrow
I’ll be out findin’ me a job.