Zumwalt Poems Online

Posts tagged ‘Zumwalt’

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)

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

Admin’s note: In this ninth of a series of poems based on Siegfried Sassoon’s works, “Fight to our Finish,” maps the senselessness of trench warfare onto modern partisan politics. The poem explicitly critiques political gridlock (“warring brutes”), tribalism (“spite the other aisle”), runaway pork barrel spending, and the complicity of media pundits who exploit the division. As is often the case with Zumwalt, the poem ends ambiguously — is the simple solution of voting incumbents out of office the optimal one? And does this even occur?

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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Congratulations, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess

Three Americans Share 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics

Poems on the runaway universe:

The Runaway Universe by C.W. Johnson

Runaway Universe

The Expanding Universe

Time

And from Zumwalt:

Runiverse

(Due to a few long lines, I was challenged with properly formatting this in the original post. Below is an unformatted version, still different from the original but more aligned with the website layout, perhaps.)

Runiverse

She radiates brilliance based on fine features, good form and skillfully applied cosmetics.
He balances confidence and accessibility with an unerring certainty of success.
The universe is expanding,
Inflation rampant,
Stretching everything more than any yoga instructor would allow.

Our planet is stuck in motion at hundreds of thousands kilometers per second.
I stock up on Dramamine and Ginger Ale.

She worries that she will never see him again.
He is lost in the business of the day.
These galaxies race away from us faster than the speed of light
And are accelerating more each trillionth of a second.

Some Alien out there has calculated that this is the last week to DVR an episode of the Game of Thrones before losing all contact.
Some Star Watcher is now stuck with a static picture of this faraway galaxy from here on out.

She is not simply a set of particles: she is moving very fast.
In relation to her changing position in space, he is moving even faster.

This universe is not stable;
It strays too far from itself
Running away from a past that was too small.

This universe is accelerating
As if it has immunity from moving violations
Or has appropriately mounted a very good radar detector.

One day her particles and his
Will dance tumultuously in the debris encircling some infant sun
Or get pulled into a black hole.

She radiates,
He balances,
The universe inflates,
Stretching everything way beyond belief
And ultimately, slightly out of reach.

— Zumwalt (2011)

Admin’s Note: This is an older version of this poem, and lacks the proper line breaks — as far as I know here is the current version, revised in 2025 or 2026.

Runiverse

She radiates brilliance based on fine features,
good form and skillfully applied cosmetics.
He balances confidence and accessibility
with an unerring certainty of success.
The universe is expanding,
Inflation rampant,
Stretching everything more than any yoga instructor would
allow.

Our planet is stuck in motion
at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second.
I stock up on Dramamine and Ginger Ale.

She worries that she will never see him again.
He is lost in the business of the day.
These galaxies race away from us faster than
the speed of light
And are accelerating more each trillionth of a second.

Some Alien out there has calculated that
this is the last week to
stream a redshifted episode of Stranger Things
before losing
all contact;
Some Star Watcher is now
stuck with a static picture
of this faraway galaxy from here
on out.

She is not simply a set of particles:
she is moving very fast.
In relation to her changing position in space,
he is moving even faster.

This universe is not stable;
It strays too far from itself,
Running away from a past that was too small.

This universe is accelerating
As if it has immunity from moving violations
Or has appropriately mounted a very good radar detector.

One day her particles and his
Will dance tumultuously in the debris encircling some
infant sun
Or get pulled into a
black hole.

She radiates,
He balances,
The universe inflates,
Stretching everything way beyond belief,
And ultimately, slightly out of reach.

Category:

Zumwalt

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seeds

seeds

broken imagery scattering pumpkin seeds upon the ground
rhythm shifting, implicating, wildly gesticulating
thoughts bounce over fading ideas which trample upon speculative reflections

give me a word
a simple single word
not an action
not a person, place or thing
not a conjunction, exclamation, article or
worn down, over-taxed modifier

give me a word that creates its own reality

that establishes an impossible set of events

that engages the energy of thoughtful scholars for ages upon ages
creating a library of discussion
and ignites an endless tangle of wars over interpretation

and with that word once given
give me its counterpart

that word
which, so totally complete
and unrelated to anything else,
will dissolve every other word

and then
without apology
dissolve itself.

— Zumwalt 2011

Category:

2011, S, Zumwalt

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a single word

a single word

words, words, words
static over static
drilling deeply thru the dentine
scraping invasively against skull and skin

your line of supply is inexhaustible
arguments, propositions, explanations
predications, exclamations, excuses
all unecessary barking and bow-wowing
at hidden celestial objects

I am here
don’t chase me away
unless you want me
to be chased away

I am yours
don’t bombard
your own firmly secured posessions with
ammo best saved for those territories still unconquered

give me short compact sentences
phrases and single words
ideas as consumable as quarter pounders

don’t shove a hose down my throat
filling me with mashed escargot and foie gras

words, words, words
I can’t sustain a relationship with them
pelting me from every angle at every moment that
we’re together

take your finger off the trigger
I surrender
make me a prisoner
not a confirmed casualty

words, words, words
they all sound the same
they don’t mean anything
they just demean, meander
and make me end up thinking
that when all is said
I haven’t heard
a single word.

— Zumwalt (1990)

Category:

1990, 1990s, A, Index, S, 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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The last party (Trivial Pursuit)

The last party (Trivial Pursuit)

She was in the room glowing
a smile on her face
she should have talked to me
or looked at me

Her boyfriend sat across from her
like a cardboard cutout
he should have been alive
or at least awake

another room awaits
autonomous
bordered by sounds
of new wave existence

friends reach out
alcohol people
a swirl of support
a backdrop of goodness

yellow light flickers
orange perfume clusters about
purple music masks the crowded voices

the little dog scurries
moves with short stubby legs
strawberries sit too long
a phantom plays monotonous precipitations

the game continues
to begin anew
the dice is the leader
the cards are finite

time wanders in a trivial pursuit
following the strewn clothes of lovers in transit
drinks stir, soaking the carpets
choices are made to apologize for chance

time beckons in a trivial pursuit
bubbles of memory
pockets of pain
seasons stacked up, circling to land

time chases in a trivial pursuit
paths are lost forever
relationships crumble from the motion
happiness dies countless deaths

time hates itself in its trivial pursuit
it shoulders the consequences of the fear and grief it spreads
it loses its identity
and is crushed by its existence

colors darken into empty shapes
taste and smell congeal
sounds form into thickening twisted knots

a dog scurries
apparitionally
alone in sympathy
it cannot understand

arms of activity
limitless ferment
dancing in madness
fleeing from feelings

this room is silent
solid and isolated
occupied at times
by present and past

Her boyfriend sat across from her
and he once had been me
He should have been happy
He should have stayed

She was in his life glowing
a blessing of emotion
He should have understood her
or at least communicated

the game never finishes
its motion won’t subside
but its pretense fools the wise
and traps all
forever

the morning rises
timidly, reluctantly
its features are grey
from the last party

— Zumwalt (1985)

Category:

1985, L, T, Zumwalt

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