Zumwalt Poems Online

Archive for November, 2025

PSYCHOLOGO

PSYCHOLOGO    

my table is busted
a sore sight to see
and the metal-grill chair
is as comfortable
as a bed of needles.
a pretty girl in a blue jacket
and in maroon cords
reads the school paper;
she is in a trance.
a small audience is watching
a couple of college students
playing five-minute chess.
a young women on the other side of the room
gazes at me over the rim of a
white coffee cup.

i burnt myself this morning
frying up french toast
and the pain mingles with everything else
like short-wave radio static.
1.3 GPA
yells a figure with sideburns
and a number of people
in his group laugh
until their heads fall off
and someone has to come
and put them back on.

sitting cross-legged on the carpet
and from a distance
it all looks like
a game of charades,
long, long hair
and i find myself stare.

i am thinking of leaving
PROTECT YOUR LOUNGE ENVIRONMENT
TAKE THE TIME TO BUS YOUR OWN TRASH
a famous musician enters,
but no one recognizes him.
a cloud hangs over,
but then again
maybe it's just the plumbing.
my eyesight is shot
everything in the distance
all looks the same
and now it is only my table
that is different from the others.

-- zumwalt (1974)
[reformatted for WordPress display]

Feckless Degeneracy with some Windmill Jousting

Feckless Degeneracy with some Windmill Jousting
  – an epic in several belches –


Belch the First – by way of prolegomena

Of arms and the man I sing
id est, of a man with arms
and hands for that matter
and nothing to do with them other
than push gliding yellow felt
across the faceless fees
of contract physicians
dealing the new deal daily
to the deaf
shipbuilders and jet mechanics
and the incompetent
OSHA oafs of Oshkosh
and Oklahoma
Sucking the blood of the body politic
politely
with a yellow felt pen
Felt pen is
all
he’s felt
lately
so come, muse
for someone should
and tell of the
student-cum-bureaucrat
the man with arms
and hands with
nothing to do
but
pay bills
and
perhaps
go blind

Belch the Second – in medias res (so what else is new?)

A brown caffeine haze
like the stained inversion layer
of womb-city L.A.
swirled buzzing beneath
his 4:30 AM skull
like a Santa Ana
locked in Aeolus’ cave
bleary
blurry
burned
home to Germantown
where the rosy-cheeked
firm-breasted
wives
of the power-corridor
stalkers
make their living
doing T.V. ads
for Cheer
Wisk
Breeze
and disposable douches
Brown and nondescript
his mentality
and
the 2 unkempt letters
on his unkempt bed
from an unkempt friend
a mad composer
Beethoven of software
UNIVAC of the mad pipes
and unorthodox tunes
and keeper of a faith
in which all have lost faith
but a miniscule
few

Insanity issues
from the violated
envelopes
rushing
leaping
prancing
like a horde of lusting shoppers
at Macy's white sale
bringing back
the shades, demons, ghosts, apparitions, & specters
of times past
when mastodons stalked the earth
and loons reigned, then,
and rationality belonged
to serfs
and the lords of bats
sat wiggo and lecherous
in a Coco’s booth
sucking the bean
and contemplating rape
Jolly jester gestures jump
from penciled pages
and in a laughing gasp
grabbed the
felt pen pusher
by corduroy lapels
howling
"Write!
for the faith is dwindling
like a soft candle-stump
its fleeting flame flickering faintly
from a shriveled wick.

Write!
For I am playing pool
and snooker
with a drunken busboy Lothario
the 2 of us
Lear and his fool
leering and fooling
around
with a round
girl and her
quoit-visaged female companion.
Write!
for the roundtable is broken
with the tennis player
salesman for Bridgeford
talking Tupperware and
household appliances
as he flies to Dallas.
With the great beard
Sleaze of times past
Falstaff with a joint
now playing it cool
in high finance
at the bastion
of upper-middle class
white vacuity
in Watts.
With the genius leader
of liberated wit
doing a Ulysses gig
in Asia
beaming knowledge into
little brown people
and contrition, obscurity
for the white man’s burden.
Write!
for it’s been so long,
I find tacos erotic
and Don Jose’s
threw me out
for
fondling
a quesadilla.
Write!
Right?”

“Right.”
Thus murmured the pen-pusher
toddling, tottering off
to sleep
to wake with the sun
and, at the school
the afternoon next
he gripped
his pen
violently
determined
and thought
Thank God Freud
is
dead.

Belch the Third — Arlington National Cemetery is my disco

So
the student
who feeds himself
with a yellow felt pen
and writes arcane
monographs
of the arabesque
convolutions
of
the politics in
Riyadh
and Jiddah
essayed
assessed
saying sayings
not quite sane
what he means
is what he said
Sotos speaks
so to speak.

An auspicious year
the best of the 20th
Sophocles’ 3 Stooges
Clotho & her Cronies
gave the Greek grief
early
tried to hand him a
couple of brooches
to do a number
on his bespectacled orbs
but he’d seen that one
before
So they packed up their spinning wheel
and headed for Ft. Lauderdale
lawn chair lounging
but not until
his transmission got up
and walked away from his
Merc
18 miles west of Phoenix
to the tune of
half a thousand
clams
If it wasn’t for the
pen pusher’s
plastic money
and smiling despair
he’d be flipping burgers
on Camelback Avenue
Wearing a Marlboro Stetson
snakeskin pasture pounders
and calling home
the T.V. and Gideon Bible
at the El Rokay Lodge.

Jojo's has crept like
mildew across a map
and Visa-financed
peasant lunches
kept the moustache
nourished all across the
continent.

Back to the city
of marble buildings
and minds with
few marbles
where the town namesake
“Father of His Country”
has a phallic monument
to mock
the yellow felt-pen
scrivener
whose social life
is on display
next to the stuffed
dodo
at the Smithsonian
and labeled
“Extinct.”

Well,
can’t complain
one supposes,
even though
the only thing between
the student bureaucrat
and a morals rap
is an iron will
and
saltpeter for breakfast.

Lots of late
nocturnal revelry
with Eve’s daughters
watching omelets
feed a Charybdis
appetite,
or
catching two-dollar
talkies
at the Circle.
Taystee Diner,
bean brew,
juke box jokes
as Hall & Oates,
Simon & Garfunkel
and Queen eat
my quarters
Coupla babes
a lanky blonde,
a petite brunette
(I’m a blonde
sorta,
maybe).
[If you’re a blonde
I’m Grover Cleveland]
But the pen-pusher
knows,
through the cruel anvil
of experience,
never argue with a
woman
Their logic
makes minds'
Minotaur maze
looks like I-10
between Quartzite
and Phoenix
so
peace dictates
saying
he’s been out late
with 2
buxom blondes
(and call the pen-pusher Grover Cleveland).
Fun
ladies
and dynamite looks
socko
boffo
knockouts
but
as for romance
my social life
is in formaldehyde
at
D.C. morgue
waiting
for someone
to identify
it.

Belch the Fourth — Ambition rides the Metro, but still
can’t get a seat.

Thrice
has the world spun
encompassing
ol’ Sol
in completed circuits
since
the Golden Greek
marched east
like Alexander
to conquer
Persia-on-the-Potomac
Thrice.
Most of those who
entered grad school
with the golden Greek
(before he cultivated
the yellow felt pen
to streak the
beige
bilious
bills
at Fran Perkins' Annex
(on 14th & NY, NW)
Most of those
who dared
demonic dementia
to
cut academia’s umbilical
with a
sheepskin rectangle
have
and got spewed
into
limbo

Alexander
pushes the yellow
felt pen
and checks the views
on the Strait of Hormuz
holding court
Doing okay
if you
are
a
tortoise
All done
excepting
100 pages
of
shoveling
so
let’s look
for
birth
in May ’82
unless
alma mater
aborts
Meantime
there’s always
yellow felt pens
and green
enough
money

It
all
adds up
to the
bottom
line which is the theory
of
relativity
flattened
in the templates of grad school
to wit
master programs stretch like taffy over time the faster
you
work and time goes gossamer tenuous and ephemeral
and
e...t...e...r...n...i...t...y
is
the... last... gasp... of... pondering... postgraduate... programs
while
your
transcript
grins
and
yawns
at once

Belch the Fifth — if life gives you meatballs, make albóndigas

Beckoning
from beyond
the lips of
an
unborn year
are the evergreen
plastic vegetables
that live
only
in refrigerators on display
at
Sears & Montgomery Ward
Come
come
We are the vegetables
of legitimacy
of actuality
and
your folks’ approval
eat
and
could we interest you in life
insurance?

Rustling
from behind
in those dim
glow worm grottos
at the
base of
your
mind
are the petrified
relics
Memories
of a golden age
long tarnished
return
return
return unused portion
of your life
for
a
*full refund*
Slapping
your back
with
ghostly hands
guffaws
Why be a
frog
when
you make one
helluva
tadpole?

Polystyrene peas
aren’t going to make
it
Julia Child or
no
Yet you
can’t keep
the cranium
small
while the cerebrum
expands
unless
you
want to
grow
lobes
out your
ears

The abyss
between
the plastic veggies and petrified pasts
is
the
only
place
to call
home
and
keep
your honor

The bricks
and
mortar
of
this
balancing house
are
words
the hardshells
of
deranged thoughts
that
maintain continuity
with the solid
past
and laugh
like
a
strait-jacket model
making
time
at Camarillo State:
the
faceless featureless
chaos
of the
unraveling future.

Belch the Last — by way of epilogue

The song is done,
Muse,
evaporated like
Borden’s milk
and the balance
in my
checking account
the yellow felt pen pusher
pushes
on
staining
audiologist indices
and the lives
he has
touched
like a
Mexican dinner
The time-space continuum
has
swallowed
the
Golden Greek
yellow felt pen
and
all
and
he inches
along
the
cosmic alimentary canal

But soft
like
that
Mexican dinner
cheap
and satisfying
he may return
with an acrid
burp
to remind
the party
of
what once
was.

—Zumwalt (May 1981)

Elegy for a close attachment

I am pleased to announce Zumwalt’s recent poem “Elegy for a close attachment” has been published today at the respected topical poetry site, New Verse News: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2025/11/elegy-for-close-attachment.html

Here was the original poem written by Zumwalt:

Elegy for a close attachment

I once loved this world–my world–which
danced with emdashes–
the best kind–
at end of lines–
seemed so clean–
went directly to the heart
–or at start of lines
or–in-between

now, it is the mark of the beast,
and I accept the notice to
cease and desist:
doing my best to
return to,
and better
learn, the
effective incorporation of proper punctuation.

–zumwalt (October 2025)

And then Zumwalt made a slight revision to align with this news story: It’s been discussed online for some time how ChatGPT’s excessive use of em dashes are more like a bug than a feature. Finally, Sam Altman and team have come to the rescue.   As discussed in this November 14th news story, Sam Altman posted on X,  a few minutes before midnight on November 13th: “Small-but-happy win:  If you tell ChatGPT not to use em-dashes in your custom instructions, it finally does what it’s supposed to do!”  

https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/14/openai-says-its-fixed-chatgpts-em-dash-problem/

Elegy for a close attachment

I once loved this world–my world–which
danced with em dashes–
the best kind–
at end of lines–
seemed so clean–
went directly to the heart
–or at start of lines
or—in-between.

Now, it is the mark of the beast,
and I accept Sam’s notice to
cease and desist:
doing my best to implement on request
the effective incorporation of proper punctuation.

–zumwalt (revised November 14, 2025)

Queen, Joni Mitchell, Keith Jarrett, Magma, Vangelis, Chris Squire & more; Fifty Year Friday: November and December 1975

Queen: Night at the Opera

Released in November of 1975, Night at the Opera starts with the excitement of an ocean voyage — we hear arpeggiated waves from the piano, whale rumblings from the bass, bird cries and seagull squawks from multitracked guitar breaking into soft strains of a tango quickly turning into heavy metal. This is Freddie Mercury the composer at the height of his craft.

After having purchased three Queen albums already, the first thing I did when I brought this album home in December of 1975 was note which tracks were attributed to Mercury — this served as indicators to what tracks would impress me the most. That turned out to be an effective predictor, but, importantly, the rest of the band’s contributions were some of their very best songs, making this album packed with classic material from start to the pinnacle of the album, the penultimate track, “Bohemian Rhapsody” — one of those rare instances in rock since the Beatles had disbanded where a truly great work of music made its way from legendary status with serious listeners, musicians, and dedicated fans to legendary status with the general public, even though, perhaps as expected, it took some time to do so.

And just as the Beatles elevated their work with multi-track musical enhancements, so too did Queen elevate Night at the Opera to a precisely rendered set of cohesive numbers that deservedly live up to the album’s title. Now, don’t get me wrong — we have an amazing musical diversity on this album — with such diversity in just Mercury’s compositions — but we add to that “I’m in Love with My Car”, “You’re My Best Friend,” the vaudevillian “Good Company” with ukulele and outstanding guitar accompaniment, and “The Prophet’s Song” with its brilliant use of deceptively simple imitative counterpoint, and it’s pretty easy to understand how Night at the Opera more than holds its own today as a timeless classic.

Keith Jarrett : The Köln Concert

One of my favorite possessions was the triple LP Keith Jarrett Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne which I had purchased with Christmas money in 1973. It was just incredible to have a three LP set of piano improvisation of such high quality. Given that, I am puzzled why I never bought The Köln Concert until the complete version made its way on to CD around 1984.

Recorded live in January of 1975, The Köln Concert was released in late November of 1975, the album starts off plaintively in the style of the quiet Americana reflectiveness so well done by classical composers like Aaron Copland and Roy Harris. For the first improvisation, Jarrett leans heavily on repetitive phrases and ostinato-like patterns to continue to move the music forward, flowing as if driven by stream of consciousness, yet always compelling and logical, deftly avoiding lingering too long in any single style, texture, or mode of emotional expression as the music logically unfolds.

The second piece, broken up onto three sides of the double LP album, is dramatically different in tone and character. Like the first improvisation, it evades any simple stylistic labels sometimes flirting into rock piano improvisation. Where the first improvisation was reflective, the second is inexhaustibly joyous and intensely rhythmically as Jarrett turns the piano into a percussive engine, hammering out a powerful, trance-like groove with his left hand that is pure, ecstatic energy. This propulsive marathon of invention continues through Part IIb, before finally dissolving and making way for the famous encore, “Part IIc.” After all the complex fireworks, this final piece is a moment of breathtaking, lyrical grace — a simple, hymn-like melody that releases all the tension and remains one of the most beautiful themes Jarrett ever played.

The music makes this performance legendary, but like the most interesting legends, it has an almost mythical backstory. Jarrett had specifically requested a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial concert grand. Unfortunately, what was made available on the stage was a baby grand rehearsal piano in such bad condition that Jarrett had initially refused to play on it. The requested piano was in storage and due to horrid weather was not able to safely replace the inferior piano. So Jarrett was forced to confront the rehearsal piano, an unsuitable, tinny, and out-of-tune practice piano he tested during the afternoon of the concert and was so dissatisfied with it he almost threw the towel in performing that evening. The promoter finally convinced him that he had a responsibility to play as best as he could for a sell-out crowd and somehow do his best to deal with the inadequacies of the inferior rehearsal piano. Jarrett went forward with the performance and it was this limitation, this ‘bad instrument,’ that forced Jarrett to navigate that evening’s improvisations into new territory, compelling him to avoid the shrill upper register notes and the weak lower bass notes, replacing the harmonic function of the latter with lower middle register accompaniment patterns and repetitive ostinatos — thus creating the distinctive style that unifies the music of this remarkable performance.

Joni Mitchell: The Hissing of Summer Lawns

Released in November of 1975, The Hissing of Summer Lawns finds Joni Mitchell presiding over one of the most seamless marriages of lyrics and music of the 1970s. The poetry here is evocative and ironic, crafting memorable metaphors and unforgettable images. It’s often said that when constraints are placed on artists, they often produce their best work. For an artist who had previously written music around pre-existing lyrics to then make that shift over to the craft of fitting words into already composed music, one might expect a change in character — or at least in lyrical texture. Beginning around 1973 or 1974, Mitchell’s lyrics indeed became more fluid, impressionistic, and engaged, so that by the time of this album, she had achieved a near-perfect fusion of music and poetry, with the music among her finest creations.

And how does one classify the sound? One cannot. It draws on pop, rock, folk, and jazz, yet it belongs to none of them. The album charts its own course, allowing space for stellar contributors like Bud Shank and Joe Sample to leave their imprint without overshadowing Mitchell’s vision. The closing track, “Shadows and Light,” brings the album to a transcendent conclusion: a multi-tracked a cappella choir of Mitchell’s voice against a contrasting, processed drone from a Farfisa organ. The result is a kind of sonic cathedral, where light and sound filter through like stained glas — ever shifting, quietly monumental, and filled with a sense of cosmic design.

The entire album is a showcase of extracting equilibrium from motion. The music is built on a strong foundation yet exploratory and liberating. Here we have an artist of the highest level in full command of her gifts, unafraid to blur the lines between song and painting, intellect and intuition. The Hissing of Summer Lawns continues to be an album worth returning to: we achieve familiarity with repeated listenings but never is the magic lessened.

Chris Squire: Fish Out of Water

Another November 1975 release was Chris Squire’s highly accessible, melodic Fish Out of Water. For those like me who couldn’t get enough of the brilliance of Yes’s Fragile, this album was filled with the musical inventiveness and wonderful bass lines that dominated that Yes album. Musicians include Bill Bruford on drums and percussion, with saxophonist Mel Collins on two tracks and Patrick Moraz on bass synthesizer and organ on one track . Squire handles all the vocals, bass guitar, some acoustic twelve-string guitar and electric bass. Special compliments go Andrew Pryce Jackman who provides acoustic and electric piano keyboards and seamlessly integrated orchestration providing the album with additional depth and further contributing to its ebullient vitality. Fish Out of Water is a must-have album for all Yes fans surpassing most of their catalog released after 1975.

Crack the Sky: Crack the Sky

Crack the Sky’s debut was released in limited quantities in November 1975 by the independent label, Lifesong. Is this the biggest accomplishment by this label? Depends on your perspective — Lifesong posthumously re-released several greatest hits albums of Jim Croce material starting in 1976 as well as being responsible for “The Biggest Rock Event of the Decade” — that’s right — the rock opera Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Superhero — an album of such popularity that I cannot find any entry for it on Wikipedia, though in fairness, the title was released again twenty-five years later on CD and is currently available on eBay for $49.

Putting Spider-Man historical considerations aside, the Crack in the Sky album, despite its limited distribution, eventually climbed up to spot 161 on the Billboard Charts in February 1976 aided by some airplay in the Baltimore area and more importantly being identified by the Rolling Stone magazine as the debut album of 1975. 

Keyboard player and lead vocalist John Palumbo wrote all the music and lyrics showcasing an eclectic range of styles incorporating sixties pop elements and contemporary progressive rock elements. Both the music and lyrics are generally quirky, with a tongue-in-cheek, often ironic, humor deeply embedded in the lyrics and the music rich with accessible melody. There are musical moments that recall surf music, the Beatles, Procol Harum, early Genesis, and even Gentle Giant. It’s not a particularly well-produced album but it is a lot of fun, and an album that anyone who considers themselves well-versed in the history of rock music should have heard at least once.

Tangerine Dream: Ricochet

Recorded in late October and early November of 1975 in England, partly live at Fairfields Hall in Croydon and partly in the studio, Ricochet was released in December of 1975. It continues that rhythmically intense sequencer-driven signature sound from Rubycon, delivering it with sparkling clarity and focus. The music unfolds logically with a strong sense of overall meaning and purpose, effectively locking in one’s attention and never letting it go. Side One, “Ricochet, Part One” contains studio improvisations and recreations of live performances with side two, “Ricochet, Part Two” being predominantly live.

Vangelis: Heaven and Hell

Released in November of 1975, Heaven and Hell is a mixture of the cinematic, early and modern “classical” music, Greek folk and some elements of progressive rock. The album effectively combines Vangelis’s mastery of synthesizer with orchestra to create a richly themed concept album about the duality of human interaction with good and evil, the light and the darkness of existence. Side One, “Heaven and Hell, Part I”, opens furiously with synthesizer and chorus setting a strong symphonic tone and concludes with vocals by Jon Anderson of Yes segmented with a glorious orchestral and synthesizer interlude. Side Two, “Heaven and Hell, Part II” opens up, contrastingly, darkly and ominously, generally maintaining that mood with the notable interspersion of an exuberant, infectious Greek-influenced folk-dance-like section and its more reflective ending. The musical tone-painting is particularly impressive, effectively supporting side two’s darker thematic premise.

Mike Oldfield: Ommadawn

Released in November of 1975, Ommadawn is Mike Oldfield’s third major symphonic work, following the partly Exorcist-driven phenomenon of Tubular Bells and the expansive, pastoral landscapes of Hergest Ridge. Ommadawn mostly consists of one long work, the title track, divided between the two sides of the original LP with a short additional work at the end. It is this title track that is the gem and centerpiece of the album, excelling in compositional presentation and development of thematic material with the first theme deftly varied, followed by an abruptly effective intrusion of the second theme around the 4:15 mark, which is also skillfully varied. After this exposition of fundamental material, both themes are further developed and extended with a richness of instrumental variety and occasional vocals (using a cleverly altered Irish translation of some simple English words) invoking a tribal sense of community.

The second half of “Ommadawn” is more dramatic with greater musical weight and contrast, further exploring a wondrous world-fusion sound that would soon become a whole sub-genre of music. The highlights here include Paddy Moloney on the Irish equivalent of bagpipes, more properly known as Uilleann pipes, and an uplifting blend of vocals and glockenspiel followed by an Irish-like dance section that brings the work to a close.

For those looking to check this album out, avoid the original mix and go for the sonically spectacular 2010 remix which provides significant clarification and enhancement of individual instruments and provides rich, immersive stereo.

Magma: Live/Hhaï

Released in December of 1975, I bought this album in Germany in 1978, and I was not surprised in the least to find this live album of the French progressive rock group in Germany. Unlike Ange, which had a distinct French coloration to their albums, Magma had a Germanic sound and eschewed the French language to adapt a language more suitable to their music — not German, but — okay let’s break this down.

Christian Vander, son of French jazz pianist Maurice Vander, was born in Paris in 1948. Exposed to both jazz and classical music, he grew up listening to Wagner, Bach and Stravinsky and met several great jazz artists including Chet Baker, who gifted Christian Vander his first drum kit and Elvin Jones who shared his musical expertise. Vander brought all these influences as well as his intense admiration for a number of jazz giants, most particularly John Coltrane, as well as drummers like Art Blakey, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke and Tony Williams. Vander brought all such influences with him, including Coltrane’s searching musical intensity, when he founded Magma in 1969 as Magma’s leader, primary composer, drummer and an important contributing vocalist.

With the formation of Magma, Vander begin the creation of the mythology of Magma concept albums and the appropriate language — Kobaïan, the language of the fictional world of Kobaïa — a distant planet colonized by a group of humans fleeing earth’s moral and ecological collapse. The language’s main function was to provide the appropriate musical sound for Magma’s music and to represent a sacred language of renewal. Its sonic characteristics are starkly different than French, coming closer to Slavic and Germanic patterns, but intrinsically supportive of Vander’s musical ideas, which slowly coalesced into a dark, more teutonic, primitively spiritual style, with texture and timbral/orchestral characteristics eventually significantly influenced by Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, which Vander first heard in 1972.

This 1975 Live/Hhaï album includes material as early as 1973, all of which represents the mature, dramatic Magma sound prevalent from 1973 on. The original album was a two LP set that could still fit on a standard single CD, but is currently sold as a two CD set. It is available for streaming on the usual sources for anyone wanted to sample this unique music, a music that will retain its excitement, mystery and appeal for centuries to come.

Brian Eno: Another Green World and Discreet Music; Fripp & Eno: Evening Star

In November of 1975, Brian Eno released his third solo studio album, the remarkable Another Green World which, while not as ambient as his upcoming work, is certainly an unconventional pop album full of highly accessible music surrounded with imaginatively unusual context. Eno provides a mix of catchy songs with him on vocals, some amazing guitar work from Robert Fripp, but mostly a level of exotic, quirky arrangements that elevate each and every track. Highly recommend!

In December of 1975, Eno’s fourth studio album is released, Discreet Music, and it is a boldly innovative ambient album. The first side, the title track, is a work of beauty and can be listened to directly or used as effective background music for a range of activities including writing, reading and napping off. The second side is more challenging: three “elastic” arrangements of Pachelbel’s well-known canon where the parts move at different paces — not by chance or performer’s whim but intentionally arranged to distort the relationship of the individual parts and the overall musical experience. One can still hear traces of the original canon — yet each of the three very different arrangements alters the original musical architecture with time-based abstractions that are roughly parallel to distortion concepts in cubism, futurism and surrealism and also seem related to rules-driven processes that are found in works by artists like Paul Klee, Bridget Riley, Sol LeWitt and even those famous rectangle paintings of Piet Mondrian. One also has to give credit to John Cage’s influence which opened up this whole realm of unexpected alterations whether aleatoric or rules-driven.

The most challenging of these three albums, Fripp & Eno’s Evening Star, released also in December of 1975, is another tale of two sides. The first side of four tracks, each with new standard ambient titles, is by far the most accessible and functions very effectively as truly ambient music or even meditative, reflective music, particularly the first, third tracks and fourth tracks “Wind on Water,” “Evensong,” and “Wind on Wind.”

The second side is devoted to a single piece “An Index of Metals” divided up into six tracks. I doubt there are many people that can turn it on in the background and experience a calming or relaxing effect from it. It is filled with tension and not smooth or flowing. I suspect many will just find it plain irritating if using it to relax, read, or write by as it has a somewhat intrusive and ominous character. It is more listening music and needs the attention of an active listener to properly navigate the tension, suspense, and forward progress of the music. The last of the six tracks is the most gritty of all and it ends with the tension decaying as opposed to any resolution. This sets up a nice contrast to some more relaxing ambient music, which would become more and more common and commercially viable thanks to this early work by pioneers like Eno and Fripp.

Unprincipled Certainty

Yeah, you can make human sacrifice to dialectical history
      with druids and Marx
And you can root for truffles on Wall Street
But until you see the fallout on your
      greasy fork
You’re just a vapid bowling alley
      attendant
           on graveyard. 

–Zumwalt (1981?)

she started to stop ironing

she started to stop ironing

creases and wrinkles
pouts and interpretations
a phone number from Port Said
left in a pocket

Oh, how the gin fizzingly stirs
swirls of melodies unfurl
as veils drip
like honeyed
falling stars

Ah,
how the cover
stays low
so the currency flows
like foot traffic at
the dusty bazaar

“I’ll show you Egypt”
has been her most memorable reply
but I doubt her intentions
and so plan another solo excursion
hoping that
once I return
that crumpled, rumpled look
will be comfortably cool at work

— zumwalt (1998 with minor revision in 2025)

Over the counter

Over the counter
 
 
I never liked them anyways
And THEY ALWAYS came with a safety cap
for something that’s not now very safe
 
The bottle always asserted its authority
just two
wait this long if you really want more

Treated me like a child
even though it said “extra strength”
 
I am not pregnant
that’s hard for a man
particularly in their sixties
but what’s not good for a goose
is maybe even worse for a gander.
 
I live with pain
constantly
Bad neighbors
Bad news
and so —
pretty bad headaches…
 
I can easily explore better options
no warnings on dosages
I well know
what works well
and even
if I have
a brutal headache the next morning
and mess up the car driving
At least I had me some fun.

— zumwalt (2025)