Gibbon and Toynbee bump into Spengler at Starbucks
Steel glass shafts Glint skyward Glittering silver deceptively erect Yet reality is whispered With salient impotence In sequins, basking They are ripe for a gaudy technicolor cave-in To a Muzak score Rotten props, rotten struts, rotten foundations
Polished pillars once We’ve lost the varnish And revel in the grease-spots And ember-burns While concealing our leprous nudity in faded Purple Thus we pursue Byzantium At a break-neck stagger into the nitre trough To be the feast of Seljuk flies Humming 4-chord progressions Rotten rags, rotten flesh, rotten sensibilities
No phoenix pyre The red of flame metamorphosed to rust And blue-bright iron Decays to dust Rubble spawning weeds And housing ravenous mandible-clapping insects Living but to shun the day And suck the husk Of desiccated brains
He eyed up the ice for the steal, Which he claimed he would do with much zeal, But now he’s retreating From his warlike chest beating— He calls this the art of the deal.
“President Donald Trump, on Wednesday, January 21, 2026, scrapped the tariffs that he threatened to impose on eight European nations to press for U.S. control over Greenland, pulling a dramatic reversal shortly after insisting he wanted to get the island ‘including right, title and ownership.’”
He eyed up the ice for a deal, Which he swore he could buy or would steal, But now he’s retreating From his warlike chest beating, as if it had all been surreal.
With the start of 1926, the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the Fox Trot rage continued.
Jazz records were often given the default label of “Fox Trot.” I had the good fortune to be able to listen to several of my grandfather’s jazz 78s, with the majority of them labelled “Fox Trot” — a catch-all label for popular music that de-emphasized the more scurrilous connotations some associated with “hot jazz.”
Two such “Fox Trot” recordings of merit were of the popular song “Dinah,” written in 1925, and recorded a few times in late 1925.
This first Jan. 1926 recording, is by one of my favorite jazz ensembles, The Fletcher Henderson Orchestra:
Another notable recording of “Dinah” features the first recording of the slap bass technique (bassist Steve Brown) at around the 2:20 mark:
And here are some visuals of Fox Trot dancing captured on film — spanning the 1920s and possibly early 1930s:
And speaking of films, The Sea Beast, starring John Barrymore, had its New York City premiere on January 15, 1926. This was the first film adaptation of one of the great American novels, Moby Dick, with the additional modification to the plot to, of course, include a love interest for Captain Ahab! Enough said.
And since we are on films, we have to mention that John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of a true television system in London. It wasn’t just shadows; it was a greyscale image with moving details.
Also in January 1926, physicist Erwin Schrödinger published his famous paper (Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem) containing the foundation of the Schrödinger equation: iℏ (∂Ψ/∂t) = ĤΨ. This birth of wave mechanics replaced the idea that particles revolve around the atom like sub-microscopic planets. Instead, it revealed that they behave as waves — what we now understand as clouds of probability. No one can say where an electron is; we can only calculate the likelihood of finding it at some given location as alluded to in Zumwalt’s 2011 poem, Particle Show.
Of course, I need to mention progressive rock whenever I can: George Martin, the so-called fifth Beatle, and a pivotal contributor to the Beatles’ progressive sound, and by extension, to progressive rock in general, was born on January 3, 1926.
This is quite an honor to have three lengthy poems of this level of density and abstraction published on a high-traffic site like The Good Men Project. Please visit if you have a minute.
This is a highly visited online publication per Gemini AI: “The Good Men Project:~2 – 3 Millionmonthly visitors (varies by source, sometimes listed as 1.9M unique visitors)“
FYI -- the formatting for "roads closed" was lost when posted on their site.
UPDATE: Roads closed was removed from their website, requested by me, due to formatting issues. I will post an update when Roads closed is published again.
Here is “The Great Healthcare Plan,” The finest concept known to man. No need to think of how this works Or who this helps and who this hurts.
This policy is the greatest, most wonderful healthcare dream, The biggest savings anyone has ever known or seen. We’ll slash the drugs, making deals with forced consent, By three hundred, four hundred — five hundred percent!
We can’t pay off the middle men, That’s up to you to do, my friend. If you need more to make you well, Then just follow our plan, straight to… well… straight to where I might one day dwell.
The pick and roll is part of play, And catch what coach has got to say. But there’s a more important task: Collecting bags of major cash.
You miss the shot, you miss the rim, While placing bets outside the gym. We take the bribe to slip and fall, No cap, it’s part of basketball.
We fill the jerseys up with green, The wildest flex you’ve ever seen. We pray the Feds don’t watch the game, Or we’ll get cooked and take the blame.
It’s great to hang with looks that slay, To drive the whips and soak the rays. To hit the clubs and play the field, To party hard and never yield.
But danger lurks in losing games, Not from the fans or public shame: Don’t leave behind some mid-wit tell, That turns your set-up into some cringey, grungy, hoopless cell.
zumpoems 