Pennsylvania Twilight

Buckling into the multiple

Blue arms of the guards

Moments unspool across

The rusted coils of his mind

Unhappy father grimace

Through a real estate mustache

A millipede climbing the side

Of a construction site shack

Apartment towers reflected

In a moonlit puddle

And the moment of the first lie

"I didn't take the fiver!"

Shouted across the kitchen

Toward mom by the blender

Suddenly there were two worlds

This one & the one he made up

And if they didn't believe him

It didn't matter

He would believe it

Or pretend to

And this would cause some of them

To change their minds

"To stop wildfires

Vacuum the forests"

Do they really believe

This shit

"The source of your pain

Is the workers toiling

In sun seized fields

And boiling kitchens"

The world is what I say it is

He thought

It's the grand gestures I do

He thought

Accordion move arms

In a boxy blue suit

Red tie like the tongue

Of a panting dog

A maudlin fist pumped to the air

In the Pennsylvania twilight

A Friend

 

She said all she did in Santa Cruz

Was smoke pot and watch birds

MICHAEL MANN FORREST PALMER

 

Los Angeles twilight

Long roads curve into haze

Faces seen through car windows

A chopper distantly above

Planes gliding down into the city

Cameras recordings two-way mirrors

Overpasses convenience stores scrapyards

Forrest talked about Neil McCauley

Like he was a spy in the realms

Of a fallen world

A quiet man who could blend in

Anonymous but familiar

Solving problems

On missions pointed toward

Eventual freedom

READ A POEM BY WILL ALEXANDER

 

Read a poem

By Will Alexander

("you understand this

to be in the infinity

of your heart")

And imagine someone

Reading it in 500 years

When all this is gone

Gone the concrete

cloverleafs

Gone on the asphalt

rivers

Gone the blinking metal

towers

Gone the bombs exploding

homes

A hot & fertile peace

Wraps the land

Someone maybe human

Finds Will's book

Still caked

With the calcified chocolate

And caramel traces

From when it stood on my shelves

Next to melted candy

And can't believe

He lived side-by-side

With necrotic crazed

Men & women

Racing toward oblivion

What a strange & sad place

The world must have been

-- dh, summer solstice 2024

Gen Gaza

 

Generation trauma

Generation amputee

Generation rage

Generation scar

Generation orphan

Generation dust grave

Generation targeted

Generation sacrificed

Generation dehydration

Generation sun-wasted

Generation without anesthesia

Generation without home

Generation trapped

Generation tent city bombed

Generation scream

Generation tremors

Generation nightmare engine

Generation poison container

Generation terror eyes

Generation explosive resin

Generation toxic powder

Generation scorched bricks

Generation melted plastic

Generation obliterated school

Generation unlivable days

Generation hunger

Generation starve

Generation soul light persists

Won't die

THE INDIVIDUAL INFINITE

 

the loss of one soul

a 27-year-old suicide from Cairo

her novel unpublished

a migrating butterfly dying of thirst

contains all the meaning in the world

the scale of sadness

over the death of one

the individual infinite

in peace

and in war

A Palestinian Mother Watches the Debates

 

"If You See Something, Say Something"

 

I see smoke rising, women running toward a river and horses mounted by blue coated riders winding through huts and stone circles, delivering rifle blows and shots…

I see a man holding a whip leave a large white plantation house and enter broad fields where men, women and children are stooped over, picking from rows of low bushes...

I see a building rising out of barren lands, inside are women in baggy orange clothes walking along painted narrow lanes, waiting, and obeying large men speaking bland orders...

I see men in the top conference room of a mirrored glass tower discussing plans: detonating bedrock and mountaintops, navigating melted ice passageways in the dark North, puncturing the ocean beds with great steel drills...

Yesterday, I saw an odd silver-gray bird. It rose up unnaturally and I saw it has five legs. It is a metallic thing with one roving eye which scans and records. It sees me and sends vague retina images of me to someone who also views me and who says something about me I cannot hear.

Not This One

Francis Fukuyama

Lost in a heat wave

Looking for an insect:

When I said it was

The end of history,

I didn't mean this.

Poetry

 

Chubby kid doing silent

karate film moves

into bright air

at a desolate bus stop

JEFF AT WENDY'S

 

And Jeff was working at a Wendy's

Only he wasn't eating any of the food there

Because he'd been reading about caveman

How they consumed 3000 times

The USRDA recommendations

Of vitamins and minerals

And Jeff had to work overtime

That night at the drive-through

Beneath the werewolf moon

And the greasy air dripping

The sex of Coke and fries and backseat love

And Jeff would only eat radishes

And crustaceans and leafy green things

And his body became strong

Like a caveman who could battle

A woolly mammoth

And then go home

And have mammoth sex

With his mate

And Jeff got off at 11

And couldn't help noticing

That you can move quicker

With more animal drive

If you hunch over

And work your legs

Like a saloon fan

And Jeff did this

And ran with great velocity

Beneath the streetlights

Yelling out shrill hominid

Cries and grunts

And the sky

Looked like a mighty sea

From the Pleistocene Era

(From the one-person show, Sermon of the Mouth, 1992. Audio).

Too Late for Drugs or Alcohol

 

The pleasure of outliving the wicked

A bitter hateful senator from Oklahoma

Died yesterday

I've remained alive

But too often dwell

In low hum zones

Lacking the movement

That ignites stardust

Too late for drugs or alcohol

I want to surge up

From underneath the sidewalks

And throw off the concrete slabs

And stride into the night

DECATHOLICIZATION CHRONICLES - SPIRIT LAKE

 

The journey of one's individual decatholicization is also the journey across thousands of years of world history. When Roman Emperor Constantine converted to the Church in 312 CE, ninety percent of the Roman Empire was pagan. As is detailed in the outstanding 2018 book by British journalist Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, what followed the emperor's conversion was the largest scale destruction of art in human history. Christian converts went on a prolonged, crazed and zealous rampage, destroying the exquisite statues and other art found in hundreds of temples across three continents of the Mediterranean classical world I recall this this morning as I look into the story behind the name Devil's Lake in Sauk County, Wisconsin. As the quote from the site's Wikipedia page details below, to the Ho-Chunk people who inhabited the area before the arrival of European Christians, the somewhat mysterious body of water was more properly known as Sacred Lake or Spirit Lake. Nothing diabolical about it!

"Devil's Lake was so named because it is situated in a deep chasm that was thought to have no visible inlet or outlet.[3] However, the Koshawago Spring, originating from the Koshawago Creek, provides an inlet to the lake on the southwest side.[4] The term Devil's Lake is a misinterpretation of the Ho-Chunk name Te Wakącąk or Te Wakącągara.[5] Day-wa-kahn-chunk-gera, which better translates to "Sacred Lake" or "Spirit Lake."[6][7] Spirit Lake is highly significant in Ho-Chunk oral history, and voices of spirits were often claimed to be heard during the celebrations."