Zumwalt Poems Online

Posts tagged ‘Poem’

A sure bet

A sure bet

The pick and roll is part of play,
And catch what coach has got to say.
But there’s a more important task:
Collecting bags of major cash.

You miss the shot, you miss the rim,
While placing bets outside the gym.
We take the bribe to slip and fall,
No cap, it’s part of basketball.

We fill the jerseys up with green,
The wildest flex you’ve ever seen.
We pray the Feds don’t watch the game,
Or we’ll get cooked and take the blame.

It’s great to hang with looks that slay,
To drive the whips and soak the rays.
To hit the clubs and play the field,
To party hard and never yield.

But danger lurks in losing games,
Not from the fans or public shame:
Don’t leave behind some mid-wit tell,
That turns your set-up into some
cringey,
grungy,
hoopless cell.

— zumwalt (January 2026)

New Story:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/15/sport/basketball-charges-gambling-scheme


Speaking Facetiously

Speaking Facetiously

Look at all the things I’m doing,
Stopping trouble while it’s brewing.
Midterms bring my party danger,
Turning winners into traitors.

I have made the country stronger:
Let me stay a little longer.
Keep elections out of reach,
For if we lose, who gets impeached?

— zumwalt (Jan. 2026)

take this

“take this” is the latest published Zumwalt poem, published today at Ink Sweat & Tears: https://inksweatandtears.co.uk/zumwalt/

Large Language Model Limerick

Large Language Model Limerick

This poet has run out of drink,
With no further incentive to think,
So a prompt-driven app
Now spits out my crap,
Spewing poems as I watch my brain shrink.

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?]

Donroe Doctrine

Donroe Doctrine

He lied about what was in store,
To launch a swift, two-hour war.
But our boss won’t explain,
Now we’re in for more pain
in a far away place,
In a very messy state
with a lengthy, complicated, intricate case
of having much, much more on our plate
than we ever should have ever,
ever, 
ever 
asked for.

— zumwait (Jan. 2026)

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!