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/!
Posts tagged ‘musings’
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?]
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?]
Slice-of-life, Microwaved
Slice-o-life, Microwaved
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]
The human touch
Based on this recent news event: https://www.npr.org/2025/12/25/g-s1-103683/powerball-player-arkansas-won-jackpot
The human touch
On Christmas Eve, many just like me
stopped at the station where I get my gas
and bought slips of paper
as thin as my patience
waiting its reward.
A mile or so away in Cabot
I closed my own store,
shut down the register,
reminded by the radio of
the size of the jackpot
while I drove home
in my rusty 2003 Tacoma.
Maddie set out some sandwiches—
our light Christmas Eve meal;
two months of watching costs
earned tomorrow’s fortune of presents
paired with roasted prime rib.
That morning came, and our two children
visited us in bed to tug at us—
too small to pull us out
and not old enough to realize they hadn’t.
A delight of flung wrapping paper and
unchecked squeals energized our living room
as, with some guilt, I looked at my phone
to glimpse the weekly Powerball snub.
No ordinary loss:
promised paradise, this time,
came from the station where I staked my three bucks.
But this small defeat brought reassurance:
in a world of algorithms,
predictive apps, and AI advisers
that steal away jobs and raise energy prices
there was still one thing technology couldn’t do:
choose the right numbers.
JOUSTING WINDMILLS
Just published in New Verse News — Zumwalt’s new news poem, Jousting Windmills.
Click on the following URL to read poem: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2025/12/jousting-windmills.html
I will post the text here later on, but for now, let’s drive some traffic to New Verse News!
With apologies to Emily and the DOJ
With apologies to Emily and the DOJ
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 —
–zumwalt (2025)
Updated Dump
News event: “At least 15 files that were released by the Justice Department Friday were no longer available on the department’s website on Saturday.”
Reference: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/at-least-15-newly-released-epstein-files-have-disappeared-from-justice-departments-website/
Updated Dump
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.
— zumwalt (2025)
formaldehydration
formaldehydration
flickering, fluttering inauspicious celestial butterfly
recklessly spatters dribbling drips of darkened burgundy
over underwhelmed over-conscientious Cal Poly Pomona Green.
diamanté dimensions collide with an autumn-autumn whisper
merging the flap-flap-flap fanlight florescence with a soft gentle tap
shamefully simmering shimmy-round-sizzling shake-down capabilities.
this high-speed, high-tech, high-result diet
has made me high-strung;
it streams passing indentations of over-charged electrons and phantom fairy-tales
faster than the past registers future impressions of near-miss impacts.
I know
time
is slow.
starting off
when I
begin
finishing long after I am done.
and
truth
the crippled fugitive hiding
in
shadows of possibilities
cannot resist darting
out
for
a quick encore before the opening curtain.
Accessory Imagination
unable to ensure an icy trail
weds speed-dating,
timed-release capsules
to produce a solid business case
for planetary intimidation
but
when references are required
habitually-blinking,
surreptitiously-slinking imagination
sneaks away
like an exhausted waiter
forced to serve final meals
to a negligently unchained
food-critiquing population
desperately devouring
the final bounty of resources
one deja-vu moment
before
the impending
never-ever-ever-ending
bright-light-headlight-headache supernova drought.
— zumwalt (2011, revised 2025)
Elegy for a close attachment
I am pleased to announce Zumwalt’s recent poem “Elegy for a close attachment” has been published today at the respected topical poetry site, New Verse News: https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2025/11/elegy-for-close-attachment.html
Here was the original poem written by Zumwalt:
Elegy for a close attachment
I once loved this world–my world–which
danced with emdashes–
the best kind–
at end of lines–
seemed so clean–
went directly to the heart
–or at start of lines
or–in-between
now, it is the mark of the beast,
and I accept the notice to
cease and desist:
doing my best to
return to,
and better
learn, the
effective incorporation of proper punctuation.
–zumwalt (October 2025)
And then Zumwalt made a slight revision to align with this news story: It’s been discussed online for some time how ChatGPT’s excessive use of em dashes are more like a bug than a feature. Finally, Sam Altman and team have come to the rescue. As discussed in this November 14th news story, Sam Altman posted on X, a few minutes before midnight on November 13th: “Small-but-happy win: If you tell ChatGPT not to use em-dashes in your custom instructions, it finally does what it’s supposed to do!”
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/14/openai-says-its-fixed-chatgpts-em-dash-problem/
Elegy for a close attachment
I once loved this world–my world–which
danced with em dashes–
the best kind–
at end of lines–
seemed so clean–
went directly to the heart
–or at start of lines
or—in-between.
Now, it is the mark of the beast,
and I accept Sam’s notice to
cease and desist:
doing my best to implement on request
the effective incorporation of proper punctuation.
–zumwalt (revised November 14, 2025)
