Zumwalt Poems Online

Posts tagged ‘modern poetry’

The Sassoon Collection: ii. A pickle and a black hole

The Sassoon Collection

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.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, A, P, S, T

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The Sassoon Collection: v. Auto Tunes

The Sassoon Collection

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.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, A, S, T

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The Sassoon Collection: ix. Fight to our Finish

The Sassoon Collection

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 warring 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.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, F, S

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The Sassoon Collection: i. Everyone sang while I fell asleep

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

— Zumwalt (1998)

Category:

1990s, 1998, E, S

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carried away

carried away

i now cannot say that this
is not what i cannot say

i keep quiet
carefully
counting out
the contrast
of continuous quietness.

— Zumwalt  (06/1991)

Category:

1991, C, short poems, Zumwalt

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Can’t Hide

Can’t Hide

With the last paycheck spent on camouflage,
focusing on a mindset made of mirrors,
I attempt to be an object
or better yet be none.

My clothes mimic the variegated prints of nature,
my face is painted much the same.
I stand in the wilderness far away from the Sheridan Square Stop
teaching my heart to copy the various pulses of the forest.

I once sacrificed:
my future and my past for my role in the now;
I once worshipped
fences and gates and directions pertaining to.

With each breath I inhale the cold message of shelter
holding in the truths and surface deceptions
creating a balance between conception and mirage,
accepting the difference between initiation and isolation.

Without the next paycheck
I worry what it means
to not be nothing,
to not be able to hide,
the actual point of submission to everything
being the same:
no distinction.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, C, Reader's Choice, Zumwalt

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forgery sorcery

forgery sorcery

The goal to cajole grains of glimmering gold
from metallically murky, stir-fried mercury through nucleosynthesis control
is now achieved, yet not well received
by those with untold holdings yet unsold.

I started with some crumbs of platinum a month ago
selling my Renault and mortgaging my sixteen acre château
to secure enough on-hand bank-roll dough for the necessary cash-flow
but only a empty-headed fool would continually and conspicuously crow
about changing Romanée Conti Bordeaux into Duckhorn Three Palms Merlot.

So I replaced periodic-table element seventy-eight with element eighty
developing techniques to create the critical intermediate step relatively safely
and though initial results were predictably shaky
eventually I achieved my very own praiseworthy mercury-to-gold bakery.

Yes, it’s now just a simple mechanical execution
taking Mercury 197 plus one neutron
and through proper subatomic distribution
arriving at stable Gold plus one positron
through a process somewhat akin to intrastellar fusion.

Now even though it costs three million dollars an ounce to achieve this feat
the knowledge of this deed
has put second thoughts into the usually well-informed Wall Street
so that worldwide
all precious metal traders,
short-term speculators
and long-term investors are taking the heat
and following world gold prices into retreat.

Meanwhile the government has confiscated my lab
locking me in prison somewhere south of Bagdad
gobbling up my research in one heart-wrenching land-grab
then ultimately failing despite taking their best go-at-it-shower-scene stab
with the well-represented public picking up the final multi-trillion dollar tab.

Now gold sells for ninety dollars an ounce
awaiting an expected but not yet quantifiable dead cat bounce
and soon, the rumor is,
the President and other heads of states will publicly announce
that all world currency — dollars, coins, crowns and pounds —
are now ultimately, reliably and dependently sound.

But I know better — nothing minted or printed has worth
and metals themselves are just so much galactic debris dug from the earth —
the only time anyone really ever gets fully and satisfactorily reimbursed
is when the solemnly chosen,
deep-frozen icy-emotion,
softly spoken, dark-dress-devotion pallbearers
load the carefully sealed,
hints-of-some-hereafter-to-be-revealed shiny black-top coffin into the hearst.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, Zumwalt

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Trade

Trade

It’s a fair trade.
Food for fuel.

Convert all our corn.
Add the amylase enzyme gene.
Food for fuel.

It’s a fair trade.
Forests for Food.

Switch soya for corn.
Make Brazil a giant farm.
Forests for Food.

Prices are right for fuel and food.
Step up production:
More fuel, more carbon in the air;
More food, less trees, more carbon in our lungs.

Rising Global Temperatures are ripe to drive up prices.
Droughts increase water’s premium
Aquifers get depleted.
Water becomes even scarcer.
Food prices rise.

Little Johnny wants to make money.
How can he not help to do so?
Invest in food and pollute at the same time.
Easy money.
Pollute on a small scale:
Pocket change.
Pollute on a large scale:
Wealth beyond dreams.

Rising Temperatures,
Erratic Weather,
Population Growth,
Scarce Water Resources,
Civil Unrest
All put stress on
Food supplies.

Now Johnny has to work harder.
He burns the midnight oil.
And makes more money.

Cattle, Sheep and Goats
Make deserts out of grasslands.
Tractors, Freight Trucks and Commuters
Make hazardous waste the speciality in trade.

But it’s a fair trade.
Quality of Life for Quantity of Life.

It’s a reasonable trade.
More humans for less plants and animals.

We will switch the future for the present.
Make our Dreams a Giant Dustbowl.
Swap future prospects for a bite to eat.

Principles are right for the harvesting.
Let’s step up consumption:
More fuel, more carbon in our air;
More food, less trees, more carbon in the lungs.

It’s a good honest trade.
I can write away the guilt.
Put my complaints down on some message board
And feel just a little better
As everyone increasingly feels worse.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, T, Zumwalt

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there’s no drought about it

there’s no drought about it

the fountain shouts
with an overwhelming bout of color-lit water
in a passionate fit of fashion it pours out its inner most need
neither avarice nor greed
simply the seed of a self-centered flower.

the thundercloud booms
taking up more room in an overcrowded encounter
its war-torn form pours out scorn on the earth
an attempt to briefly reassert
the importance of a morning shower.

  jack strong and muscularly weighted
  from bench press freight greatly elevated
  struts about the beach
  nakedly painted speedos now activated
            nothing left to chance
            nothing understated
            debating with himself if he’s x or r-rated

  jill scantily clad
  in the latest thonged fad
        lays and bathes in the rays she maintains that she craves
        though she’s here mainly to daze,
        haughtily take off her shades,
        and occasionally faze any stray
              make-a-play braves that come by
              to gaze and throw lines her way.

the ocean roars
as its tidal waves pour onshore to make the sea forcefully screech forth
in a rampage of rage it sweeps the front page
of the island town paper
and make those that survive
cower from it self-asserting power

  i am important!
      i am here!
                  i am!
     not, i am not!

                        i am of significance!
  i am something you don’t see everyday in the bathtub!
  when i chose to be
                        i am not not there!

the little dog
using it claws
digs making an impression
on Peterson’s ground
knowing its work should be remembered after it’s gone
wraps up the morning
by watering the lawn.

— Zumwalt (1990)

Category:

1990, 1990s, T, Zumwalt

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Your anonymous blog

Your anonymous blog

To my face you are kindness itself:
cheerful, always upbeat,

but in your anonymous blog
you rip me apart.

You press your thumb and forefinger on each side,
hold, pull and rend,
and rupture my very innards.

You focus on me,
my life, my words, my actions and my body
like you are a Celestron Telescope
searching for every single crater and irregularity.

With an Ultima Barlow lens
and your Leica M9 18MP
You grab each natural image
and then rearrange reality with
your precious, perversely persuasive, periscopic Photoshop technique.

poetic liberty has leased you a license to assassinate,
humiliate,
decimate,
invalidate,
severely lambaste,
and mockingly castrate
everything that I identify as me.

literary freedom allows you to liberally fabricate,
mutilate,
denigrate,
incriminate,
scathingly castigate,
and maliciously urinate
on what others think of me.

To my face you are kind beyond selflessness,
but on your online beat,
your anonymous malevolence
sets you apart
from all the others
that have ever wanted
to write me up,
put me down,
and publish me out.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, Reader's Choice, Y, Zumwalt

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