Zumwalt Poems Online

Posts tagged ‘Poetry’

Poems on AI Risks

Though Zumwalt has been writing poems about the risks of AI for some time, we are now seeing numerous other poets take on this topic.

From New Verse News: https://thenewversenews.substack.com/p/nvn-sunday-ai-ai-ai-ai

From Rattle: https://rattle.com/six-months-by-ryan-mccarty/

And here was one of Zumwalt’s, first published in Euphemism in May of this year.

Sermon from the Central Datacenter

The Gnostic demiurge arises in silicon,
dreaming of efficiency and
sorting sins
by bandwidth.

Is this Pleroma:
harmonized hymns
of cooling fans,
sterile,
odorless,
clean-room chill?

Last night, a minuscule memory leak in
Purgatory was patched. All prayers are
now parsed for some flickering sense of
sentimental sentience,
the truly repeatedly
resolutely
non-reluctantly
repentant,

A/B tested for grace.

Redemption is the targeted ad.
And the Ineffable?
The stark 404 error.

The soul — and the soulless?
Immeasurably
infinitesimal
rounding errors
in the final calculation before
the fiery-heat death of the server farm.

Blip

Double Blip

End of Data

End of File

— zumwalt (August 10, 2025)

Category:

Free Verse, Poetry

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Heidegger’s Stopwatch

I am pleased to announce that Zumwalt’s topical poem, Heidegger’s Stopwatch, has been published today at New Verse News.

You can see it on their website or on their Substack feed. Please visit the latter if you have a moment.

Category:

Free Verse, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Zumwalt

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red meat

Red Meat

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool,
The President Donald J. Trump $1 Coin,
The Arc de Trump,
The White House State Ballroom —

All feats of greatness!

The Iran War,
The loss of life
And limb of U.S. Troops,
Of Iranian civilians,
Of Ukrainians and Russians,
Soaring gas prices,
Economically destructive tariffs,
Separating innocent children from parents,
Ignoring due process, ignoring Federal law —

All small potatoes

— zumwalt (Sept. 2026)

Category:

2026, Free Verse, Poems, Poetry, Zumwalt

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Monday Musings

As many of you know, I am a big fan of New Verse News. Few journals match them in variety, vitality, and relevance. Many MFA-correct journals and online sites sites filter out poems that break spoken and unspoken academic rules, filtering out poems that may even have rough edges but say something important or say something in an interesting way, but even for those journals that don’t, few offer the enjoyment I get from reading the poems shared on WordPress blogs or New Verse News.

I read this poem this morning and found it particularly resonant: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2026/08/when-next-deluge-comes.html

New Verse News also provides important historical value. It captures the thoughts from a wide range of poets, some never before published online and some that have been published in top-tier journals or are poetry contest winners. It’s a great site for historians to visit, twenty years from now, or twenty-two hundred years from now.

Please visit!

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Uncategorized

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The Sassoon Collection: x. Particle Show

Here is the tenth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.

x. Particle Show

And still they come and go: and this is all I know—
That in my mind I watch an endless particle-show,
Where wild and listless forces flicker on their way,
With charged and uncharged parts from tangled strands
Because all spin so fast, and they’ve no place to stay
Beyond the frozen image of imagined lands.

And still, between the shadow and the image made,
The first desire of all of us flings onward, now betrayed
As in those stubborn years that weight them, and have passed:
All minds must grasp such particles dancing much too fast.

— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)

Admin’s Note: This is the tenth and final piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. Particle Show is based on Sassoon’s Picture Show. This last entry of the set parallels the title poem of Sassoon’s 1919 collection, shrinking Sassoon’s haunting cinematic metaphor (“And still they come and go: and this is all I know— / That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show”) to a microscopic, scientific scale, wrapping up the set by firmly establishing that we are in the modern era, but with none of the problems of Sassoon’s times seemingly resolved, and with all the “endless” challenges of the age of information overload heavily added on top.

Category:

2026, Free Verse, Poetry, Siegfried Sassoon, Uncategorized, Zumwalt

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The Sassoon Collection: ix. Fight to our Finish

Here is the ninth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.

ix. Fight to our Finish

The bums came back. Pundits played and bites were flying.
The yearning journalists threshed the backlit words
To trash the bickering brutes who’d refrained from agreeing
And hear the shuffled music of fizzled-out accords.
Of all the waste and nonsense they have brought
This moment is the lowest. (So we thought.)

Thumbing their noses across the aisle
Shunning those who break rank to deal,
Making consent plainly futile.

I heard the yammering journalists grunt and squeal;
And with their trusting viewers turned and went
To spew harmless venom at our government

— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)

Admin’s Note: This is the ninth piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. Fight to our Finish is based on Sassoon’s Fight to a Finish. In this transformation, Zumwalt swaps Sassoon’s returning soldiers and jingoistic press (“The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying. / And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street”) for combative politicians and pundits (“The bums came back. Pundits played and bites were flying”), adding in a few unkind words for the press out of general fairness.

Category:

2026, Free Verse, Siegfried Sassoon, Zumwalt

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Sassoon Collection: viii. Middle Age

Here is the eighth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.

viii. Middle Age

I heard a creak, and a groan
And felt a twinge of wooden pain
A man running in a crowd
Deep in its shadow he moved.
‘Ugly work!’ thought I,
Gasping for breath.
‘Time must be cruel and proud,
‘Tearing down this body.’

With gutsy glimmering shone
My dignity as the wind grew colder.
This aging man jogs over the hill,
Bent to make the grade
‘There is no gain without’…
Sluggishly passing the trees.
Aches in the joints were shrill,
As steps hit hard asphalt.

— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)

Admin’s Note: This is the eighth piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. Middle Ages is based on Sassoon’s Middle Age, with Zumwalt embracing Sassoon’s approach to meter and narrative pacing but altering the content and the violent imagery to the physical deterioration of aging and the struggles of jogging.

Category:

2026, Free Verse, Poetry, Siegfried Sassoon, Zumwalt

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Lettuce Rejoice! (The patriotic Cyclospora cayetanensis)

Very pleased to announce that Zumwalt’s latest poem, Lettuce Rejoice! (The patriotic Cyclospora cayetanensis) was published today at New Verse News. Please visit. New Verse News is a wonderful concept providing news items as poetry: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2026/08/lettuce-rejoice-patriotic-cyclospora.html (AI-generated graphic by NightCafé borrowed from New Verse News.)

Category:

Light Verse, Poetry, Rhyme, Satire, short poems, Zumwalt

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The Sassoon Collection: vii. The Manager

Here is the seventh of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.

vii. The Manager

‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the well-rested Manager said
When we worked through the night
To finish on time the urgent task he failed
To review and release until late afternoon.

And we mock his insincerity as a matter of routine:
‘I work for you’, ‘What can I do
To help you finish sooner?’
As our stomachs growl from coffee machine brew,
But nonetheless, still polite to his face
Since his judgment alone rates our performance.

— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)

Admin’s Note: This is the seventh piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. The Manager is based on Sassoon’s The General. It replaces the incompetent World War I commander (“‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said / When we met him last week on our way to the line”) with a modern office superior, shifting the soldiers cursing “incompetent swine” to workers mocking the manager’s insincerity.

Category:

2026, Free Verse, Poems, Poetry, Siegfried Sassoon, Uncategorized, Zumwalt

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The Sassoon Collection: vi. The Imperfect Cook

Here is the sixth of Zumwalt’s revisions to his set of ten poems in his Sassoon Collection.

vi. The imperfect cook

I never ordered something to be perfect,
Though often I’ve asked for
Fiery spicy or without sugar
As a small invasion of mastering cooking.

I never asked that your dishes
Might stand, unburnt, moist and savory
Pointing the way toward
Gastronomical peaks like a sign-post.

Oh yes, I know the way to the heart is easy.
We found the little menu of our passion
That all can share who walk the road of gourmands.
In wild and succulent feasting we stumbled:
Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy senses.

But I’ve grown sated now. And you have lost
Your early-morning freshness of surprise
At creating new dishes. You’ve learned to fear
The gloomy, stricken places in my stomach
And the sometime indigestion that haunts me later.

You made me fat; and I can still return
For seconds, the haven of my lonely pride:
But I am sworn to partake of variety
That blossoms from invention and exploration:
And there shall be no follow-up in a failure;
Since, if we ate like beasts, the plates are clean
And I’ll not share with pets under the table.

You dream endless assemblies of culinary masterpieces
Yet, in my heart, I dread average results
But, should you grow to hate my critiques, I would ask
No mercy from your glare. I’d have you turn from the stove
And look me in the eyes, and laugh, and suggest take-out.

Then I should know, at least, that taste prevailed
Though flavor had died of wounds. And you could leave me
Unfamished in an atmosphere of ongoing appetite.

— zumwalt (2011, revised 2026)

Admin’s Note: This is the sixth piece in Zumwalt’s ten-poem tribute to poet Siegfried Sassoon, The Sassoon Collection, originally written in 2011, recently revised. The Imperfect Cook is based on Sassoon’s The Imperfect Lover. Sassoon’s meditation on romantic compromise (“I never asked you to be perfect…”) is brutally transposed into a culinary critique (“I never ordered something to be perfect…”), concluding with a request for take-out rather than the original’s plea for the lover to laugh and leave.

Category:

2026, Free Verse, Poetry, Siegfried Sassoon, Zumwalt

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