Zumwalt Poems Online

Posts tagged ‘Zumwalt’

Stop the chop, chop, chop.

We
see
a tree!  A tree!
Since it’s the last one living free
We will grab it quickly for our family.
A Tree!!!

Crop the lower middle to the
Top off!
Chop!!! Chop!!!
Don’t yet Stop!
Hear the Plop!
Chop! Chop!! Chop!!! Chop!!! Chop! Chop! Chop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

— Zumwalt (2011)

(see related poem https://zumpoems.com/2011/07/10/theyve-stripped-the-forest-for-babble/)

Zumwalt’s response to http://dversepoets.com/2011/11/17/form-for-all-beth-winter-hosts-staccato-form/#comment-5757  This is, in Zumwalt’s words, “a crime against this staccato form that pales in comparison to crimes against nature.”)

Admin Note: Zumwalt wrote this for another poetry blog’s prompt, and I posted it here the same day. This is a disarmingly simple yet effective eco poem that liberally employs rhymes, staccato rhythms and onomatopoeia to mock human greed and the destruction of the natural world. Note how the enjambment and overall use of rhythm emphasize the lack of constraint and discipline of those who think of nature’s bounty as items for personal decoration. Please note that the other poems created for this prompt are still accessible in the “Mister Linky” URL above. I encourage all to browse these other entries and also note how Zumwalt adheres to the rules of the prompt, while subverting their intent.

Note the shifts between rolling ternary and staccato binary groupings.

Note some of the rhythmic sculpting deployed as shown in this example: “We will grab it quickly for our family” (This rapid grouping mimics the hurried rush of grabbing the tree as well as creating a sense of displacement or disruption via displaced meter.)

Category:

2011, S, Zumwalt

Tagged with:

The ball is in our courts

The ball is in our courts

The shirts press the skins
looking for the turnover.

The skins set screens to break the press
and force overtime.

The two teams play
without arena staff,
relying on unknown referees,
the crowd locked out of the building.

It is a territorial sport
that knows no season
and cares little about the ticking of the clock.

It is a rich person’s sport
like shooting barasingha
or showering with Krug champagne.

Would my boss keep me from working
if I refuse a multi-million dollar contract
and fifty-fifty revenue sharing?

Would I be laughed at
if I asked for vacation from May
through September
with October for retraining?

It’s not so much that I worry
about the players or the owners
it’s more about the lost life-risking excavating opportunities
for the mal-nourished children of Sierra Leone and Angola
as demand for diamonds by the NBA elite precipitously declines.

It’s not so much that I worry
about lost revenue for TNT and ESPN —
it’s whether this ultimately means
that Superbowl pregame coverage starts around St. Patrick’s Day.

Nonetheless, I am patient:
I can do without annoying puppet commercials
and twenty-seven-attempts slam dunk contests,

but I have one question
is it much of a game
when it’s not the players,
not the owners
that lose their shirts
but only the arena employees and nearby small business blue-collar workers?

— Zumwalt 2011

Category:

2011, B, T, Zumwalt

Tagged with:

The Handcuff King

The Handcuff King

Escape pays for now:
suspend me upside down;
lock glass and steel;
fill fully;
water flowing over.

But if my escapes entertains,
understand that it is my existence.
I can handle building-size milk cans, Chinese water torture cells,
underwater crates and being buried alive.

Faced with flight or forced-fight,
the choice is easy
but understand I must force fight to flee:
no escape is without struggle.

But without escape or the opportunity of one,
I must hang on
and for how long?

Until I burst?

Or until I meet the next world:
the destiny of all that depart?

Explain to me the retreat available:
the extrication that sidesteps;
the evasion that slips the lock,
that springs a liberation.

No,  you know no more than I about withdrawal.
You just know more about staying the course
and that won’t help much
when I need to leave, not the visage of death,
but death itself
and its closely shrouded, tightly bound design.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Admin Note:

This poem was published in 2026 at The Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/faceoff-on-facebook/ along with Zumwalt’s “Faceoff on Facebook.”

“The Handcuff King” is a dark, existential poem drawing on Houdini-style escape artistry to reflect on human struggle, entrapment, and the inevitability of mortality.

Escapology is the practice of freeing oneself from physical restraints like handcuffs or water tanks, which “The Handcuff King” uses as a motif to explore the ultimate impossibility of fleeing mortality. The poem moves from the spectacle of physical escape to a somber meditation on life’s unavoidable traps, contrasting the urge to retreat with the necessity of facing death itself.

“Faceoff on Facebook” is an aggressive, openly ironic poem using violent hockey imagery as an extended metaphor for social media comment-section warfare and digital narcissistic egocentrism. An extended metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things that unfolds across multiple lines of a text, and Zumwalt employs it in “Faceoff on Facebook” to frame oppositional digital comments as a brutal hockey match. The poem scoffingly exposes how online outrage is often driven less by truth or facts than by raw ego, personal boredom, and the side effects of physical isolation.

Category:

2011, H, T, Zumwalt

Tagged with:

what soul is not besieged

what soul is not besieged

what soul is not besieged by rotten eggs and soft tomatoes
by answers unreturned and questions unsent
by minutes that make up hours and hours
           that tear down the day

what mind is not put upon and
           once put upon
                           cast off into a corner
what body is not battered and
                   beaten by the blows it shields
itself from

what soul is not bombarded
         by twenty-two gauge shot and mortar fire
by unresolved cadential patterns
         that whine around the head

by invalidation of beliefs and
         of what one has seen and sensed

there is reason to suspect that one can grow
if only the rainy season didn’t last
                                                       the entire year.

—  Zumwalt (1991)

Category:

1991, Reader's Choice, W, Zumwalt

Tagged with:

There is no “i” in Phalanx

There is no “i” in Phalanx

Across calescent karstic plains,
attentive, observant, at walking pace,
searching
for a more than suitable place
to play these noble and momentous games,

purposely, resolutely stopping at this very ground
we converge and then assemble in formation
deliberately
aligning and establishing our corresponding location
shields brought up and eyes directed all around.

There is no certified start to victory.
There is no established end to self-defeat.
There is no single push that doesn’t come down to shove,
after which we hold, advance or consider our retreat.

The battle starts and shields meet shields
as outer layer on outer layer peels off and drops;
advancing
forward with counter-jabs and counter-blocks,
the winning forces shed more blood as the losing army yields.

There is no I in Phalanx.
There is no me in attack.
There is no volition in my ammunition
but there is no heading back.

As victor forces scatter defeated ranks
fallen bodies insist on being active players
incidentally
tripping up their remaining slayers
prolonging this conflict with mutilated arms, twisted torsos and lifeless shanks.

There may be stop but there is no end
and some sense of quiet but never peace.
There is some faint attempt to circumvent
but there is no means to cease.

And two thousand years later
archeologists dig for artifacts
and scour the settled ground
in which is conceivably found
the trace of the last impact.

This is what was left behind
and not much more
but then, what will be left again
when two thousand more years occur
and someone else digs around
excavating some hint of a sign
of those that previously searched these dusty mounds?

At some future moment this is all totally untraceable,
the conclusion of which is particularly inescapable:
no matter the plan or materiel,
all efforts are unavoidably replaceable
but much more to the point,
everything,
chalked up or not,
is ultimately and permanently erasable.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Category:

2011, T, Zumwalt

Tagged with:

The Sassoon Collection: vii. The Manager

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)

For the entire set, please visit: https://zumpoems.com/2012/02/29/the-sassoon-collection/

Admins Note: “The Manager” is one of those apparently transparent poems until one reflects on what the metaphor represents, as hinted at by the final line.

Category:

2011, M, S, T

Tagged with:

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

Tagged with:

when winning is not enough

when winning is not enough

he like a stunned animal
holds the fragrant unclothed stranger
this remnant of the victory of last night.

she is half asleep
tenderly young
sweet
and so totally a stranger.

he feels like another empty episode has escaped into the ozone layer.
There is not even anything to gnaw on.

he wonders how to wake her up
half asleep
himself.

— Zumwalt (June 1991)

Category:

1991, W, Zumwalt

Tagged with:

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

Tagged with:

Response to Poetry Challenge #2

In the Course of the Course 
(response to Poetry Challenge #2)

We
grabbingly
latch on
like whining cheesy-cracker-stuffed stubby, chunky children at Legoland
to
these truths,
to
be, been and be self-evident:

All are created equal,
not less, not more,
not borrowed,
not bored,
not bad,
not good,
not misunderstood;

Like Superman from Krypton
well-endowed are we must be
but with unalien rights —

Earth-rights,
rights of life
rights of liberty
rights to pursue our pursuits —

But we cannot fly,
run faster than bullets,
produce more power than locomotives —

So we need,
to secure, protect and enforce,
not some outer-space, displaced, lost-race, straight-laced, de-spectacled face
but our own composite, not so pretty, face
with warts, keloids, pimples, moles, freckles and cysts

termed, short or long, government;
empowered not by one, two octillion ton, yellow sun
but consent of the those that
celebrate, lament, agree, dissent
admire, resent,
are dissatisfied, content,
weak-willed and hell-bent.

And
whenever
any form,
mutant, imprudent, pollutant,
full of self-centered-amusement,
unbalancedly affluent, inimically disputant,
eats more than it should,
swallows the plates and the silverware with the food,
feuds with the stew,
acts crude, rude and so lewdly, nudely intrudes
it is more than okay to open the door
and say
don’t stay,
pray go,
for what are you good for?

And then find a replacement,
build-it-yourself kit,
fit,
more than just a little bit,
to protect
and effect
our best-dressed (with suit, tie and vest)
north, south, east and west,
sometimes blessed, sometimes unblessed,
possibly own-interest stressed and contested,
quite often protested,
unelitist and not easily defeated,
meanest, baddest, sickest, but self-inflicted,
unrepressed, more-is-definitely-not-less,
not too overly stretched something-better-must-always-come-next happiness.

— Zumwalt (2011)

=======================================================

Original Passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Formatted Passage:

We hold
these truths
to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights, that among these are
life,
liberty and
the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever
any form
of government becomes
destructive to these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,

and to institute new government,
laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Category:

2011, I

Tagged with: