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)
Bull Market
The gardeners have hit the pavement,
Bulldozed by smiling engineers
Optimists—peddling bromides.
Take your pick:
Withdraw your last fiver
For a philosophic Wheel-O;
or,
Hands in your pockets, sardonic
Watch Babel climb.
“On this spot will be erected utopia”
Yeah, sure.
But, the wise man knows Penelope
Has taken on Ithaca
And counsels Odysseus to put his
Money in Krugerrands.
— Zumwalt (late 1980’s)
The Sassoon Collection
i. Everyone sang while I fell asleep
voices wailing around the house
thud of feet and slam of doors
everyone singing
only the clocks wind down
around this small room
no sense of the hour
crowded with lemonade breath
high-pitched voices like hounds in pain
as clouds hover over my eyes
fighting sleep with the fork from my dessert plate
not yet ready to go where the dreams are built
where you take reality with you so as not to be alone
dragging it by its rough cotton shirt collar
the sweet faces become sweet voices
despite the liberty with so many of the notes
the lights descend and take colors
whirling into a vortex that kicks out dimensions
like KTEL reissuing fragments from the past
falling asleep
the hounds now cooing like herons drugged by too many Hershey bars
the darkness becoming home (but without any furnishings)
everything fading into peace
except for one small lingering concern
for everything unfinished
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.
iii. Blonde
Her head-weak thoughts that once eagerly gave way
to looks that leapt sure from eye to brain and into heart,
Weaving unconscious promises of love,
Are now thrust outward, dangerously heard from lips to air.
And he who has watched one world and loved it all,
Star-struck with blindness, an ensnared example for pity,
With feeble hopes of attracting a returning glance,
now listens with his ear to the rambling noise.
iv. Butter and eggs
Robust diners, deftly forking in the fat.
O no longer living triglycerides against the heedless tongue
Of buffet and banquet days, what sends them gliding through
This set of dancing teeth?
Theirs are the hungry cadences between
The enraptured chewing of hefty humans that make
Heaven in the booth while second helpings simmer;
And theirs the faintest whispers that hush the desire.
And they are as a released soul that wings its way
Out of the starlit dimness above the moon
And they are the largest beings — born
To know but this, the phantom glare of fullness.
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.
vi. The imperfect cook
I never ordered something to be perfect,
Though often I’ve asked for fiery spicy or without sugar as a small invasion
Of mastering cooking.
I never asked that your dishes
Might stand, unburnt, moist and savory
Pointing the way toward gastronomical peaks like a sign-post.
Oh yes, I know the way to the heart is easy.
We found the little menu of our passion
That all can share who walk the road of gourmands.
In wild and succulent feasting we stumbled;
And sweet, sour, bitter, salty and spicy senses.
But I’ve grown sated now. And you have lost
Your early-morning freshness of surprise
At creating new dishes. You’ve learned to fear
The gloomy, stricken places in my stomach
And the occasional indigestion that haunts me later.
You made me fat; and I can still return
for seconds, the haven of my lonely pride:
But I am sworn to partake of variety
the blossom from invention and disparate exploration
And there shall be no follow-up in a failure;
Since, if we ate like beasts, the plates are clean
And I’ll not redirect portions of portions to pets under the table.
You dream endless assemblies of culinary masterpieces
Yet, in my heart, I dread average results
But, should you grow to hate my critiques, I would ask
No mercy from your feelings. I’d have you turn from the stove
And look me in the eyes, and laugh, and suggest take-out.
Then I should know, at least, that taste prevailed
Though flavor had died of wounds. And you could leave me
unfamished in an atmosphere of ongoing appetite.
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.
viii. Middle Age
I heard a creak, and a groan
And felt a twinge of wooden pain
A man running in a crowd
Deep in its shadow he moved.
‘Ugly work!’ thought I,
Gasping for breath.
‘Time must be cruel and proud,
‘Tearing down this body.’
With gutsy glimmering shone
my dignity as the wind grew colder.
This aging man jogs over the hill,
Bent to make the grade
‘There is no gain without further pain’…
Sluggishly passing the trees.
Aches in the joints were shrill,
As unmeasured steps sank into the hard asphalt.
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 bickering 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.
x. Particle Show
AND still they come and go: and this is all I know—
That from the mind I watch an endless particle-show,
Where wild and listless forces flicker on their way,
With charged and uncharged parts from small stringy strands
Because all spin so fast, and they’ve no place to stay
Beyond the frozen image of imagined lands.
And still, between the shadow and the image made,
The first desire of all of us flings onward, ever betrayed
As in those stimulant years that weight them, and have passed:
All minds must grasp these particles dancing much too fast.
Copyright © 2011
The Sassoon Collection
x. Particle Show
AND still they come and go: and this is all I know—
That from the mind I watch an endless particle-show,
Where wild and listless forces flicker on their way,
With charged and uncharged parts from small stringy strands
Because all spin so fast, and they’ve no place to stay
Beyond the frozen image of imagined lands.
And still, between the shadow and the image made,
The first desire of all of us flings onward, ever betrayed
As in those stimulant years that weight them, and have passed:
All minds must grasp these particles dancing much too fast.
– Zumwalt (2011)
Copyright © 2011
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)
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 predominate two.
— Zumwalt (2011)
zumpoems 