Zumwalt Poems Online

Archive for the ‘2011’ Category

The Sassoon Collection: vii. The Manager

The 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 assignment 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 this sooner?’
As our stomachs growl from the coffee machine brew
But nonetheless still polite to his face
since by his judgment alone is our performance scored.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, M, S, T

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On an afternoon

On an afternoon

On a breezy summer afternoon
two universes, once far apart,
approached each other
and drawn by forces
not easily understood,
collided
and created the beginnings
of a universe
with different rules and circumstances
than the previous two.

Dense and hot,
close and furious,
with energy beyond any expectation
this new universe started,
expanded,
establishing first an identity
and then a history.

Heat gave way to growth
and sometimes we gave way to each other.

Attraction resulted in collisions
and each left their own marks on the other.

I once knew another universe
so different
but not so long ago.
Now there is only this one
with its own rules
and strange little quarks.

I once grew in another universe
with not such clear boundaries.
It was less predictable
and less complicated
without any out-of-equilibrium decay scenarios
or unexpected violations of time inversion symmetry.

This universe
gave us the nursery:
each star more important
than the universe itself
but adding to and altering its very fabric.

Yet, how could I not notice
that each star had its very own universe
and paid little attention to the grander scheme.
Envious, I was, like the biker who sold his Harley
and had to watch it be driven off the lot.

This universe gave us grandchildren:
each one more precious than any law of physics.

Yet, how could I not note that this
was the measurement of time.

I cannot escape this universe,
I cannot go back to the one I had.
I do not know the difference between you and I
or the underlying nature of this universe itself.

I do not know where your universe went
or what part it played in the one we share.
I cannot see how this universe ends
or if it still depends on you and I.

On a breathtaking, brilliant summer afternoon
two independent universes, each with its own part,
appropriated each other
and created new forces
not easily withstood,
coincided,
and then guided the beginnings
of a universe
with different composition and consequences
than the previously predominant two.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, O, Zumwalt

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The Sassoon Collection: ii. A pickle and a black hole

The Sassoon Collection

ii. A pickle and a black hole

Mass and form had the pickle, sweet, sour, tall and straight;
The round black hole collapsing still further then it knew
Made its longest shadow with gravity
A ghostly bridge ’twixt the pickle and space.
But stars, with their continuous day, must pass;
And blustering winds will stretch all gherkins
to which I’ve no measurements to express
the moment of conjunction,
a singularity with no exit
for stars and pickled cucumbers alike.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, A, P, S, T

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The Sassoon Collection: v. Auto Tunes

The Sassoon Collection

v. Auto Tunes

I keep such music in my car
No din this side of death can quell;
Deep bass booming over tar,
And excess forged in death-metal hell.

My dreaming demons will not hear
The roar of guns that would destroy
My life that no gleeful gloom can fear
Proud-surging passages of painful joy.

To the world’s end I drove, and found
Death in his carnival of hidden stash;
But in this torrent I was drowned,
And music screeched above
the fiendishly beatific
headlight-lit
fiber-glass,
glittering, splintering,
metalliferous crash.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, A, S, T

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Response to Poetry Challenge #2

In the Course of the Course 
(response to Poetry Challenge #2)

We
grabbingly
latch on
like whining cheesy-cracker-stuffed stubby, chunky children at Legoland
to
these truths,
to
be, been and be self-evident:

All are created equal,
not less, not more,
not borrowed,
not bored,
not bad,
not good,
not misunderstood;

Like Superman from Krypton
well-endowed are we must be
but with unalien rights —

Earth-rights,
rights of life
rights of liberty
rights to pursue our pursuits —

But we cannot fly,
run faster than bullets,
produce more power than locomotives —

So we need,
to secure, protect and enforce,
not some outer-space, displaced, lost-race, straight-laced, de-spectacled face
but our own composite, not so pretty, face
with warts, keloids, pimples, moles, freckles and cysts

termed, short or long, government;
empowered not by one, two octillion ton, yellow sun
but consent of the those that
celebrate, lament, agree, dissent
admire, resent,
are dissatisfied, content,
weak-willed and hell-bent.

And
whenever
any form,
mutant, imprudent, pollutant,
full of self-centered-amusement,
unbalancedly affluent, inimically disputant,
eats more than it should,
swallows the plates and the silverware with the food,
feuds with the stew,
acts crude, rude and so lewdly, nudely intrudes
it is more than okay to open the door
and say
don’t stay,
pray go,
for what are you good for?

And then find a replacement,
build-it-yourself kit,
fit,
more than just a little bit,
to protect
and effect
our best-dressed (with suit, tie and vest)
north, south, east and west,
sometimes blessed, sometimes unblessed,
possibly own-interest stressed and contested,
quite often protested,
unelitist and not easily defeated,
meanest, baddest, sickest, but self-inflicted,
unrepressed, more-is-definitely-not-less,
not too overly stretched something-better-must-always-come-next happiness.

— Zumwalt (2011)

=======================================================

Original Passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Formatted Passage:

We hold
these truths
to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights, that among these are
life,
liberty and
the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever
any form
of government becomes
destructive to these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,

and to institute new government,
laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Category:

2011, I

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The Sassoon Collection: ix. Fight to our Finish

The 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 warring 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 to spite the other aisle
Shunning those that broke ranks with thoughts of a deal,
Making all attempts at representing utterly futile.

* * * * * *

I heard the yammering journalists grunt and squeal;
And with their trusting viewers turned and went
To rid us all of those who brazenly overspent.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, F, S

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Can’t Hide

Can’t Hide

With the last paycheck spent on camouflage,
focusing on a mindset made of mirrors,
I attempt to be an object
or better yet be none.

My clothes mimic the variegated prints of nature,
my face is painted much the same.
I stand in the wilderness far away from the Sheridan Square Stop
teaching my heart to copy the various pulses of the forest.

I once sacrificed:
my future and my past for my role in the now;
I once worshipped
fences and gates and directions pertaining to.

With each breath I inhale the cold message of shelter
holding in the truths and surface deceptions
creating a balance between conception and mirage,
accepting the difference between initiation and isolation.

Without the next paycheck
I worry what it means
to not be nothing,
to not be able to hide,
the actual point of submission to everything
being the same:
no distinction.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, C, Reader's Choice, Zumwalt

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seeds

seeds

broken imagery scattering pumpkin seeds upon the ground
rhythm shifting, implicating, wildly gesticulating
thoughts bounce over fading ideas which trample upon speculative reflections

give me a word
a simple single word
not an action
not a person, place or thing
not a conjunction, exclamation, article or
worn down, over-taxed modifier

give me a word that creates its own reality

that establishes an impossible set of events

that engages the energy of thoughtful scholars for ages upon ages
creating a library of discussion
and ignites an endless tangle of wars over interpretation

and with that word once given
give me its counterpart

that word
which, so totally complete
and unrelated to anything else,
will dissolve every other word

and then
without apology
dissolve itself.

— Zumwalt 2011

Category:

2011, S, Zumwalt

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forgery sorcery

forgery sorcery

The goal to cajole grains of glimmering gold
from metallically murky, stir-fried mercury through nucleosynthesis control
is now achieved, yet not well received
by those with untold holdings yet unsold.

I started with some crumbs of platinum a month ago
selling my Renault and mortgaging my sixteen acre château
to secure enough on-hand bank-roll dough for the necessary cash-flow
but only a empty-headed fool would continually and conspicuously crow
about changing Romanée Conti Bordeaux into Duckhorn Three Palms Merlot.

So I replaced periodic-table element seventy-eight with element eighty
developing techniques to create the critical intermediate step relatively safely
and though initial results were predictably shaky
eventually I achieved my very own praiseworthy mercury-to-gold bakery.

Yes, it’s now just a simple mechanical execution
taking Mercury 197 plus one neutron
and through proper subatomic distribution
arriving at stable Gold plus one positron
through a process somewhat akin to intrastellar fusion.

Now even though it costs three million dollars an ounce to achieve this feat
the knowledge of this deed
has put second thoughts into the usually well-informed Wall Street
so that worldwide
all precious metal traders,
short-term speculators
and long-term investors are taking the heat
and following world gold prices into retreat.

Meanwhile the government has confiscated my lab
locking me in prison somewhere south of Bagdad
gobbling up my research in one heart-wrenching land-grab
then ultimately failing despite taking their best go-at-it-shower-scene stab
with the well-represented public picking up the final multi-trillion dollar tab.

Now gold sells for ninety dollars an ounce
awaiting an expected but not yet quantifiable dead cat bounce
and soon, the rumor is,
the President and other heads of states will publicly announce
that all world currency — dollars, coins, crowns and pounds —
are now ultimately, reliably and dependently sound.

But I know better — nothing minted or printed has worth
and metals themselves are just so much galactic debris dug from the earth —
the only time anyone really ever gets fully and satisfactorily reimbursed
is when the solemnly chosen,
deep-frozen icy-emotion,
softly spoken, dark-dress-devotion pallbearers
load the carefully sealed,
hints-of-some-hereafter-to-be-revealed shiny black-top coffin into the hearst.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, Zumwalt

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Trade

Trade

It’s a fair trade.
Food for fuel.

Convert all our corn.
Add the amylase enzyme gene.
Food for fuel.

It’s a fair trade.
Forests for Food.

Switch soya for corn.
Make Brazil a giant farm.
Forests for Food.

Prices are right for fuel and food.
Step up production:
More fuel, more carbon in the air;
More food, less trees, more carbon in our lungs.

Rising Global Temperatures are ripe to drive up prices.
Droughts increase water’s premium
Aquifers get depleted.
Water becomes even scarcer.
Food prices rise.

Little Johnny wants to make money.
How can he not help to do so?
Invest in food and pollute at the same time.
Easy money.
Pollute on a small scale:
Pocket change.
Pollute on a large scale:
Wealth beyond dreams.

Rising Temperatures,
Erratic Weather,
Population Growth,
Scarce Water Resources,
Civil Unrest
All put stress on
Food supplies.

Now Johnny has to work harder.
He burns the midnight oil.
And makes more money.

Cattle, Sheep and Goats
Make deserts out of grasslands.
Tractors, Freight Trucks and Commuters
Make hazardous waste the speciality in trade.

But it’s a fair trade.
Quality of Life for Quantity of Life.

It’s a reasonable trade.
More humans for less plants and animals.

We will switch the future for the present.
Make our Dreams a Giant Dustbowl.
Swap future prospects for a bite to eat.

Principles are right for the harvesting.
Let’s step up consumption:
More fuel, more carbon in our air;
More food, less trees, more carbon in the lungs.

It’s a good honest trade.
I can write away the guilt.
Put my complaints down on some message board
And feel just a little better
As everyone increasingly feels worse.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, T, Zumwalt

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