zumpoems

Three Zumwalt poems were published as featured content today at The Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/faceoff-on-facebook/

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 Million monthly visitors (varies by source, sometimes listed as 1.9M unique visitors)“

FYI -- the formatting for "roads closed" was lost when posted on their site.

Here is the original formatting for this one poem of the three that couldn't be presented as intended:

Roads closed

Initiating Wednesday's walk,
forecasted clear skies invitingly promise 
an encouraging outing

past the open door 
into childhood,
a muddy playground of grimy, tarnished trinkets,
hand-me-down souvenirs,
and overexposed negatives,

then the path
leading 
           to the 
                    classroom  
                                    and its subjects: 
Karen,
Gordon,
Bruce,
Janet,
Jane,
and that guy that got into trouble now and then.
Oh, yeah, that was me.

There are uncountable, unaccountable potholes
taunting my feet,
one of which, always, unexpectedly,
gets caught in their hidden recesses:
forward momentum
turned into
brutal falls.

There are alley ways:
 

narrow, some unpaved,
that once entered,
and
encountering 
                 an
                     un-
                          navigable 
                           dead end
                          , are 
                       a 
                bear 
             to 
          back 
       out
      —
simply 
un-ne-go-ti-a-ble

I visited the city of our first year 
—together—
as I often do...
but now 
            vanished 
            is much of 
            the interior 
            of that corner café 
where we first met:
                          its outside signage  
                          rusted and illegible.

Gone are one, two places where we together 
—arms locked—
                   stretched 
                               our budget 
                                            to buy groceries.

Only that first store remains 
the other 
now 
missing
now
vague mysteries


the apartment is still there
but not the stairs

were there elevators
in our wing?

ever?

There had to be
but they are just 
walls now...

Moving on to our 
second city
I find much less:
gone are most roads
not sure who the 
president was
of the HOA, 
the White House.

Don't ask me of the cities in-between
I am lucky to know this one
but yet —
who called to see us yesterday?
I can remember my first kiss at six
but not who last rang the doorbell.

Echoes 
scurry about
sniffing the decay,
                   detritus,
and their own 
                   droppings,
quickly 
down
gutter 
holes
and cellar   openings:    

now but an uninvited, unwanted
tourist in the ruins
clutching the few remaining pages
of a guidebook 
with print
too small.

The clouds have gathered.
Flashes and flashbacks peek out,
fearful of the shadows their own light casts.

They can't craft an outline,
a paragraph, a complete sentence.                                        

I don't know what I don't know,
I never have —
but I do remember what I don't
remember

and no amount of 
careful 
remodeling
will ever set that right.

— zumwalt (2025)