Eartheia
Contented, and taking the path I think less traveled,
And you, unannounced, hit with full force, head on:
Contact unlike anything anywhere in my neighborhood;
And here we are, seemingly billions of years later,
Still intertwined and yet separated:
You out there in the distance,
Sometimes fully seen, sometimes dark, sometimes missing
but always reoccurring,
and, as I view you, I automatically, and of necessity, reflect on your view of me.
-Zumwalt (2016)
The Grand Panjandram
In dark draped light, they set the stage with positively pessimistic preposterous pronouncements:
open-ended, close-minded —
an onslaught of oozing, slimy, backbiting, backstabbing, bamboozling, bath-bubble babble.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers but where the heck is the peck that Peter Piper picked?
Blame the government! Blame the moderators! Blame the other politicians!
Blame the prosperous! Blame the lazy, liberal-influenced, moral-obliterating, freeloading nameless discontents! Blame blame, but oh, so blamelessly….
Our media plays politics, shamelessly positioned cross-legged on the tracks of the central station throwing rocks at the podiums of the office seekers and office sitters who madly craft the nightly news peering over the simmering cauldron as they add tortoise ears and bat eyes to their brew.
They know nothing is knowable; the perception of reality is reality: reality is only what is perceived.
I had a little nut-tree, nothing it would bear, but nuts are scattered everywhere along with rampant fear. Predictably, my mind wanders until there is no more silliness to hear while my unsuspecting stomach growls as the choruses of the shameless masses cheer.
I know reality.
It is that thinner-than-thread string that connects one thought to another and one moment to the next.
I know consequences. These are things that happen in direct proportion to lack of diligence.
The end follows the beginning; but also sets up every new beginning. Each possibility is the result of each result.
I will set aside my expectations — of what reality should be — to go along with the ride. It will ultimately lead to the next ride and at some point there will be a chance to get off, walk away and look back at the vast, almost infinite, devastation.
— Zumwalt (2016)
Punctured Porcupine
Banished from Amami Oshima
Along with the pit viper and mongoose
Unclear on underlying circumstances and unspoken utterances
Tentatively testing the brackish toasty waters
Toe after toe
Eyelid after eyelid:
Refigerated, now red-hot, resisting the resolute resilience of
embarrassingly intertwined migrating icebreakers
discreetly disbanding, disentangling devoutly, slow dancing out to sea.
-Zumwalt (2012)
call center conversations
reciting written scripts
chattering cattle, chewing and spieling
windward whirling, wheeling and dealing
nouns, adjectives, action verbs
headers, disclaimers, inertia verbs
in this tornado of tomato and avocado
of spineless bombast and spiritless bravado
words take slushy, slippery substance
ringing, plinking, plunking, plucking
abrasively invasive: pocket knives and poison ivy
sarah stays the course, naturally
jessie talks her to the ledge, persuasively
It is a bleak, dark, ever-dimming landscape
Pulling all light in and letting out nothing in return
It is a empty, hollow, endlessly winding corridor
Leading ontologically onward with no chance of finality or redemption
one day, the dentist’s drill locks in and won’t let go
one hour, the need to know triumphs over the need to be known
she, sarah, held her course, intentionally
he, jessie, led with talk, aggressively
invasively
inexorably
knowing that enough noise numbs the nerves effectively
permanently
closing the sale
closing the call
but most significantly
closing the office
— Zumwalt (2015)
Steel ballerina
Under golden dome
On ornate, jewelled throne
Sur le cou-de-pied pirouette
Arythmically composing frozen, forlorn silhouettes
Upon my irregular recall
Lost opportunities overshadowed by lost capabilities
Lost love obscured by lost loved ones
Left alone for a moment, she sees him getting into the last of the county’s ‘eighty-five Impalas.
He turns the key: ignites, grinds, reverses and is gone from the driveway with questionable hearing, eyesight and purpose.
I ride the road; I hide in the highway; I engage the interstate and soon catch the journey on display:
….. Silver Alert, Gray Chevy Impala, 3AUY86G …..
G is for gone. I am gone. I have always targeted gone. Gone has always targeted me.
She speaks, but so softly. I get the idea. Her words are hers alone — always have been: they never will be mine.
I cry inside, tears wreaking havoc on my kidneys, gall bladder, and parts of the spleen. There are other useful internal parts, but I dare not now look: the eyes and hands are positioned ten, two; the right side desperately stealing towards four.
I wait. I wait in motion. I cannot do otherwise. In a moment is all the truth of a bruised, bubbling, underwater universe: one of many, many of one.
She, or her likeness, somehow, is there, hanging from the mirror.
It’s just a symbol:
An item with mass,
An item of meaning,
And, now, an item of mobility.
— zumwalt (2015)
If the world was full of only reporters, seems that there would be little to report on; but, if the world was full of only legislators, laws would be needed more than ever. Unfortunately, there would be no one around to enforce them.
— Zumwalt (From “The Very Words of the Works of Zumwalt”)
I have utter disdain for the arrogant. The only purpose of their existence is to remind me of my superiority over each and every one of them.
— Zumwalt (From “The Very Words of the Works of Zumwalt”)
Voortrek
Twisting and deforming
Raging daemonic forces
Scream across the veldt.
Corkscrew clouds
Peeling off our thin, Formica-top civilization.
No Oz awaits;
Dorothy and Toto have headed for the shelters.
The only Munchkins, mutants.
Your fault
My fault
No fault.
We pulled the cork,
The Jinn gave their notice;
And History’s in its familiar whirlpool
With vertigo the fashion of today.
Like hunkered hedgehogs
Curled in spherical,
Lance-backed laagers,
We have one option:
Shut our eyes
And wait for the dust to settle.
— Zumwalt (1981)
mental block
spiraling parapet spinning passages
sweeping the bleakness
clouds sail skimming the
gravy scum of lifetimes of labor.
I know
of what you go
and where you want
but pretense
the avenger of moonglow
cries out against all that is anguished
and taps on the counter
like the frozen ballerina
on the shoulders of your shoelace.
— Zumwalt (1980s)
Hands Off, Bob Avakian!
Shuffling
— In dark and dank
Howling
— A dialectic chant.
Genuflect to the rotund Mongol
Take, eat
This is my body
Of confusing, Confucian
Union by laws.
“Forgive me, Dad:
I did a Tenzing Norgay
On the north gate of the White House.”
“Ego te absolvo –
You did it for the proles.”
— Zumwalt (1981)
