Your regalia creaks and groans A panoply of rust and whining joints Moira’s chess game begins And already you’ve been rooked
Charge full-tilt at windmills Or Settle for an electric fan Just keep moving Or God’s heating element Will fry your soul And scorch rationality Maintain that effervescent personality And disco on the Teflon of life
As the sun browns out And your Zippo’s flint disintegrates Grope along the nitred steps And nestle in your excelsior storage crate
Relax and let the Sony vomit Search for a bebop sax (The opiate of the cool) Kicked back, you realize You might just slit your Jugular while shaving tomorrow Fate won’t have you to kick around anymore.
They chose the best one to publish, I think. Here is the original submission:
Two Limericks to Help Forget the War
There once was a gal called Noem Who booted folks out of their home— With her dumb ads misplay, Swore Trump gave the okay— Now she’s the butt of my limerick poem.
* * *
With a face like a serial killer, He belongs in a cheap horror thriller; Some call him a bum Or the worst of the scum, But to me he’s just Stephen Miller.
— zumwalt (03/2026)
This brings Zumwalt’s streak at New Verse News to five consecutive months. Per Gemini AI (which is even less trustworthy than your average politician) this is a record.
Oh, yes, we have a third limerick in the photo above! (Not by Zumwalt.)
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.
My country with the hair of inlaid fiber-optic cable With the thoughts of a backed up four-lane freeway at dusk With the waist of a redwood in the center of a scenic bypass My country with the lips of blinking Christmas lights With lips of teabags of silt from the Great Lakes With the teeth of a picket fence on a shifting, slumping shoreline With the tongue of a ticker tape parade on celluloid stock My country with the tongue of a televised courtroom With the tongue of a satellite that spies in dark silence With the tongue of a cracked bell that just rings and rings on command With the eyelashes of high-tension wires With brows of the edge of a sold-out stadium My country with the brow of a blue light under the sheets And of the steam rising from an executive sauna fifty stories high My country with shoulders of interstate concrete And of a hydroelectric dam holding back the stars My country with fingers of a ballot box—contested, sticky, messy Of a strewn deck of plastic cards My country with armpits of coal dust and scented bubble tea Of suburban sprawl and the nest of a bald eagle in a cell tower With arms of Mississippi tributaries and of a thousand assembly lines And of a mingling of the cornfield and ambushed migrant workers My country with legs of elusive wildfires With the movements of a swing state and a jazz festival My country with calves of sequoia bark My country with feet of broken treaties and numbered amendments With feet of subway tracks and tourists flicking coins into canyons My country with a neck of unharvested wheat My country with a throat of pulsing fiber and high-powered cooling fans Of a protest stage-shrieking in the bed of a dry river With breasts of the Appalachian night My country with breasts of a multi-story shopping mall Of a ghost town shadowed by the noonday sun My country with the belly of a thumb-scrolled digital map With a back of an abandoned silver screen My country with the back of a cruise ship climbing into the stratosphere With a nape of red clay and cooling asphalt And of the threads of a smudged napkin on a diner counter at 3:00 AM My country with hips of a barreling NextGen Acela With hips of a county rodeo and of Friday night tossed penalty flags Of a pendulum swinging between fairground stand food and Michelin starred dining My country with buttocks of Civil War reenactments Of a buttocks of uncirculated library books Of a buffalo nickel gifted to a grandchild My country with the loins of an offshore drill and of grocery store pharmacy Of prairie grass and vintage baseball cards My country with loins of theme park hydraulic launch coasters My country with ears full of rotating sirens Of ears of the Great Prairies and fast food in the car Of eyes of parabolic, steerable radio telescopes My country with eyes of a flatscreen TV left on at night With eyes of a forest gasping for breath…
The eyes of my country turned toward we, the people Hands held out for an answer, cuffed and arrested for expediency.
Askew in a vinyl cosmos life’s beading up on a cold tumbler And Juan Valdez has repossessed my mind for the glory of Brazil or Colombia Some squalid country at any rate Leaving my 33 grooves scarred by needles at 78 several rich hits off of Mrs. Olsen And Muzak sounds like steam jets and dark mutterings over eggs become berserk natterings of rabid chipmunks Gee Zus ! Only 12:00? Existence is deformed in a time-warp —Zumwalt [Night of 30 Sep-1 Oct 1981, Washington, DC]
Release the files but just in part — Deception’s Pathway lies Too raw for Headline’s hungry Spark The whole would scandalize As Cards dealt from some hidden Deck With watching eyes confined The Truth must flame out gradually To hide the Guilt entwined —
They loaded files on Friday night, Though not the total lot; The press was vexed by partial truths But that is what we got.
On Saturday fifteen were gone — One noticed from before: A president in gilded frame — A photo in a drawer.
What this all means to common folk Escapes my simple mind When wealth can build a mighty wall That shields them from their crime —
And if a few are put in jail That does us little good For those that still control the wealth Will raise the price of food.
The message here is pretty clear And one that fits my rhyme That money spent judiciously Protects — even the damnedest — most despicable — devils of our time.
Quadroset
i. dawn
the hillstrings lace the pale garden
shadows are lifted
teasing the ground
beak your piece says the mother bird
for worms are precious food
a tranquil birth
and yet no clue
of the chaos yet to come.
ii. rush hour
screeching skidding
piercing ears
no art could match this pace
crying howling
curses threats
bodies pushed around
smoking burning
greedily fuming
factories wait in ambush
oh no can't stop must be off
my time is much too dear
look around this ghastly ground
motion is the coming price
the virus that will spread throughout
gain begets a further need for gain
and soon nothing will gain to stand.
iii. salad bar
radishes
cucumbers tomatoes
garbanzos bacon
vinegar and oil onions roquefort
croutons almonds greenbeans
more and more and more and more
oh yes I have to try the lettuce
iv. the evening
the culminations of aggravations
the see-saw city glare
mixing masses of migraine messes
must this mottle meet the mind
old sayings still limp around
and appetizers drop on the ground
the news is needed if it's not misreaded
everything remains and continues
like an out of control hoover vacuum cleaner
sucking everything up
count the days forget old ways it's all a daze
and deeply dives the disordered ditch digger.
-- zumwalt (1973)
Soft gentle beauty leaning against the window Fostering a belief that loneliness is loveliness what is good must start with pain A perfect state of perfect mind.
Cool pleasant sand Lies in a land unknown play and fun is wasted time and idle are the satisfied. A self-constructed sterilized cell for working days And nights towards a goal that cannot be achieved. the rain and sun are both the same. Is this a way of life?
