deleterious habitat
hot southern heat
baking your alaska
the smog fills your
lungs like sand
in a dersadrop humidifier
breathing is a function
and we are approaching an asymptote
three toed sloths trek through the treptremanian soil
burning air and burning phylum
cough…
cough…
cough…
It is time to let me out.
— Zumwalt (1974)
Decline and Fall
Chilled and solitary
I feel the Fall
A season flickering
A time cooling
Summer’s dissolute heat and aureate fury
Quenched
In long shadows
Darkly déjà vu
Gibbon scents the dusk
Crisp disquiet
Suddenly
October has pierced the city
Like Alaric’s Goths
Rude and barbarous
Yet
In its gusty fury
Lustral
— Zumwalt (15 October 1979)
deconbunktionalism
I tear at it apart
abrasively
picking at the pieces like an overfed child
making up messages from the steam of alphabet soup cooking in the other
room
my intentions were theirs
every one
separated
my reactions were initial cause
differences exploded
similarities scattered
in dispersement is the focal point
the key to understanding
this author was a bum
that culture was irrelevant
in imposed confusion is serenity
to get at the gestalt you must first exhaustively examine each particle
even
as you fling it further away.
I am not sure why this writer hated sonic booms so in the 19th century
and why he was disgruntled about gas mileage and the FBI
it seems silly that he was constantly wondering about mercury fillings
and that soap operas influenced his characterizations.
I chop it so finely it is dust
and blow it at a hand held mirror
I take the mirror and smash it on the table
and notice how my reflection has been expanded —
absent mindedly
picking at the pieces
unaware that I am making up for meaning that I didn’t have
the common sense to read.
-zumwalt (1988)
zumpoems 