Zumwalt Poems Online

Archive for the ‘Free Verse’ Category

SHOW OF FORCE

SHOW OF FORCE

Black Rain

Night is Morning.
Morning is Night.

Oil showering down.
Smoke invading lungs.

Back Home

Truths are lies.
Lies are truths.

Kurds should attack.
Kurds should step aside.

We must pick the leader
to lead Iran into the future.
Who the hell is he?
I couldn’t care less.

We had to attack before Israel attacked:
this forced Israel’s hand.
We have to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities
that we have already totally obliterated.

A sitcom streams
at uncertain times:
plot twists reveal
a psychopathic killer.

The war is short:
ending in a few days;
this war can last forever:
we have the will and the resources.

We are liberating the people
until there is no one left.

— zumwalt (03/2026)

Category:

2026, Free Verse, News, Zumwalt

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Zumwalt Poems published today at The Good Men Project

Two Zumwalt poems, including “What Am I?” published at The Good Men Project as featured content: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/over-the-counter/

Category:

Free Verse, Poem, Poems, Poetry

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Interstate Nocturne

Proud to announce that Commuter Lit has published Zumwalt’s recent poem, Interstate Nocturne:
Please visit: https://commuterlit.com/2026/02/tuesday-interstate-nocturne/!

Category:

2025, Free Verse, Poetry, Zumwalt

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Zumwalt Poem at Ink Sweat and Tears: Candidate for Pick of the Month

I am honored to announce that Zumwalt’s recent poem, “take this,” has been selected by the editors of Ink Sweat and Tears as one of their six nominees for pick of the month.

You can read all six selections here:
https://inksweatandtears.co.uk/january-2026-pick-of-the-month/

After reading, if you wish to vote just click on the Vote Here URL that is shown before the text of the six entries.

Category:

Free Verse, Poems, Poetry, Zumwalt

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Gibbon and Toynbee bump into Spengler at Starbucks

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

—Zumwalt (around 1978?)

Category:

2026, Free Verse, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Zumwalt

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Three poems published today at The Good Men Project

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.

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.

Category:

2025, Free Verse, humor, Poetry, Published Zumwalt Poems, Social Media, Zumwalt

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White Russians with White Vodka

White Russians with White Vodka

The sky peers out over
its trailing cape, wide and pallid,
obscuring the meridian,
erasing the horizontal arguments
of Kamchatka avenues.

Don’t check your map:
it will look much the same as in summer;
it won’t show flurries,
blizzards, cyclones,
meter upon meter
of accumulated snowbanks—

You will not see the swallowed
Lada Grantas, Kia Rios,
Toyota Prados, Cherry Tiggos.

Once one could have turned on a TV
late at night
and seen snow—

now politicians,
talking heads,
social media
whitewash and whitenoise us
non-stop:

ultimately,
we will be head deep,
unable to plow out,
and even Kamchatka
will seem like
a tropical paradise.

–zumwalt (January 2026)

Based on today’s news https://asianmail.in/2026/01/19/record-breaking-snowfall-in-russia-extreme-snow-buries-towns-in-kamchatka/ and this dVerse post’s call to action: https://dversepoets.com/2026/01/20/poetics-new-year-snow/

Category:

2026, Free Verse, Headlines, humor, Mass Media, News, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Politics, Zumwalt

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Grēnland unfæst (Greenland off-balance)

The Greenland saga continues to intensify, and this Zumwalt poem addresses the latest escalation of targeted tariffs, contrasting the gravity of the situation with a bit of humor. Given the history of Greenland with its European associations going back to the 10th century, Zumwalt chose a poetic style common to English speakers of that era: Anglo-Saxon alliterative meter.

“Grēnland unfæst” is the latest published Zumwalt poem, published today at New Verse News: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2026/01/grenland -unfst-greenland-off-balance.html

This is the third consecutive month that Zumwalt has had a work published at New Verse News and the second day in a row a Zumwalt poem has been published in a literary journal.

Category:

2026, Free Verse, Headlines, humor, News, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Zumwalt

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No More Cornborers

No More Cornborers

My steel-wool scrubbed & Comet-clean spuds
   grate with injurious gusto
Protect the enamel at all costs!
And a sheen is added to our distended
   esophagus.
Wintry blasts of fluoride and chlorophyll
   attack the waste
But only further pollute the abused
   frame.
Death enters the corridors, stalking stealthily
   in the Ajax-whiteness.
All is blinding! There is no more gray!
Josephine is become a slaughter-baron.
Ammonia chokes us all


 —Zumwalt
     [1981?]

Category:

1980s, 1981, Free Verse, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Zumwalt

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Von Bock Was A Pansy

Von Bock Was A Pansy

Those iron plates that churned the mud and gravel
Impress me not.
The rifled bore was, and is a crashing bore,
I shut my eyes to the breechblock and
Do not care for thermite.
I recoil from venturi.
I have only cutting remarks for the bayonet;
C.B.W. stinks.
Give me Gandhi & Walden, with a little pickle
On the side, and I am content.
Blood-red waiters make me yawn.

—Zumwalt
[Early 1980s?]

Category:

1980s, 1981, Contemporary Poetry, Free Verse, Modern Poetry, Poem, Poems, Poetry

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