ham hocks
the dogs love them
sure. they are costly
but they satisfy
and our dogs are our people
I cringe as I hear their teeth crunching up bone and gristle
My teeth hurt thinking about it
The 49er arrives with the virgin sunrise.
but the golden veins have long ago dried.
Pick axe in hand Dynomite in his good eye.
He's the only one left of the callused kind.
Back in spring Blackjack the burro broke free
bolting for the last watering hole
licking the salt from his reigns.
Deeper and deeper the miner burrows in.
It's all about double blind commitment now.
The poison of pride over the succulence of time-
Willowy faith over the slag of good reason-
The gristle of isolation over nectar of companionship.
At the very edge of the dimming lamp light
the black snake has tapped the vein dry.
A dusty angel sips the last of the moonshine.
The 49er rolls two stones over two black holes
that once were hazel stars on the rise.
They call it a profession.
Selling your skin is not the same
as selling your skill.
They call it a bad habit.
Nose picking is not the same
as digging dignity.
They call it empowerment.
Selling a product is different
from being the product.
They call it freedom,
Walking naked in a cage is
not the same as walking free.
They call it a choice
But selecting whose hunger to feed is
not the same as selecting your outfit.
It is what it is-
a meat market, where bodies hang in cuts of desire,
priced by the pound.
a silent auction, where the highest price
buys nothing but shame.
It's a landfill, where discarded intimacy rots
beneath the glitter of screens.
It's a plague, spreading through wires,
infecting touch, until love itself coughs blood.
It's a parasite, gnawing through the bones of society,
spitting out empathy like gristle.
It is a wound which bleeds on both ends.
the watcher and watched are both
drowning in the sea of pus.
Behind the curtains, hands grow fat,
minting coins from pain and spat.
Walls breathe insistent hunger,
red as the inside of a split pomegranate,
richer still where the tallow has melted,
slick as the fat from a burnt offering.
Scarpia does not eat.
He savors—sounds of gristle
snapping in the next room—
—low, wet gasps—
body writhing beneath unseen hands,
a melody of muscle breaking.
Tosca stands, spine locked,
as he drinks from a goblet brimming with the color
of a mouth left too long in the sun.
He watches her throat move,
slow, careful, like a deer
scenting iron in the air.
A scream glissandos through the walls.
Scarpia wipes his lips.
His fingers, thick as butcher’s twine,
gesture toward the door—
an invitation, a demand—
a sermon delivered without breath.
Tosca does not kneel.
Not yet.
But the feast has begun,
and the host holds the fermata.
(note: this poem was inspired by a scene from the opera Tosca by Giacomo Puccini)
A feathered crowd of crows
jostle together over roadkill.
They peck and tear,
lift a little in the air
allowing other beaks
to stab at a morsel.
Iridescent black wings
flap in the cram and bustle.
Above them a hawk hovers.
The raptor waits,
the crows will eventually
fall to squabbling,
some will fly away cawing,
others will strut the highway
seeking other scraps.
Then the hawk will descend
to rummage the remains
only to fly off quickly
with a piece of gristle,
it often being content to be
the prince of the sky
and the servant of the mob.
The crows are a feathered crowd,
a dark cloud
jostled together as they are
over the roadkill.
They peck and tear
lift a little in the air
allowing another beak
to stab at a morsel.
Black wings
iridescent in the morning light
flutter in the cram and bustle of
their feeding.
Above them a lone hawk
watches from a high perch.
If it swooped to steal a crumb
form the crows table
it would be instantly mobbed
made to flee
swerve and dodge
the anger of the many.
The raptor waits,
for the crows will eventually
fall to bickering and dissent,
some will fly away cawing
others will strut the highway
seeking more edible scraps.
Then the hawk will descend
rummage the remains
and fly off
with a hard won piece of gristle
content to be
the king of its invisible castle
that is
until the riotous corvids return again
to claim its throne.
Lots of time
to stretch into my body today.
Shake some fog and gristle
out of moribund muscle.
Bluebirds are flying somewhere,
the Blue Jays cackle the good news.
The fox kits are dancing on the thin frost
kicking up flakes of blue lightning.
I guess it's Spring,
daffodil bulbs are warming up
just beneath the awakening earth,
when they arrive
they will dance in the wind
just like the young fox pups.
I might try a few steps also
bust out of my funk
with a jiggery flick of an ankle
snap at the sun
and cackle
along with the Blue jays.
In my small kitchen she sits
Simple and plain
My mechanical maid
Who never complains
Who takes cups and plates laid
On her long arms with ease
And returns every one
Scrubbed clean of grease
Because I am NOT at the sink, wrists plunged in grime
I have precious time - and peace of mind -
To fashion and design these meandering lines
This is the gift she grants -so humble, so grand
Yet after decades of duty, she's become tired
Sputtering and leaking from weakening wires
Like all teachers and nurses, she deserves to retire
When I told him it was time to buy
A new dishwasher, he said the price was too high
I say, the value of my sanity
Is worth more than his 200 channels of cable TV
(of which he watches only three)
Or his mountains of Lego, or toys for his truck
For those, he'll happily spend a buck!
So dear, after next Saturday's barbeque
I'll let you scrape off all the gristle and goo
Then maybe you'll appreciate what a dishwasher can do~
3/01/23
Motion
Suggests
A story of
Change..
A dance of
Separation..
The drama of
Wins and losses..
This beauty
And gristle
Of boundless
Life
Seems to be
Inherent in
Motion...
sentimental
pent up mental
scented rental
experiential
cinnamon and pumpkin spice
aroman therapy candles suffice
to crucify the nasal passage
upwards to the brain to savage
gushing syrup like a maple
use a hammer on a staple
utter lack of self control
dug a hole and down he fell
deep in an emotive well
id run wild, the cry me emo
needs a toxic dose of chemo
cling to misremebered past
nauseous, maudlin scenes recast
not sure which of these is worse:
blubberous folk, or sappy verse
caustic, hostile's where it's at
bone and gristle, it's all that
————-
for the Sentimentality Poetry Contest
sponsored by Julia Ward
written on 05/26/22
lol
on a roll
didn't you know
that in the new age America
court cases are decided
by rioters and intimidators
congressional race baiters
getting their rocks off on division and skin tone
the juror's box has turned into
a carton off quaking eggs..
the media(those harlots of hype and hate)
spreading their corporate sponsored legs
for the sake of ratings,
tenderizing the meat of facts
force feeding the nation, the fat and gristle of
irrational emotion
didn't you know that this new age America has
"woken" straight into the whirling eye of chaos-
an anti-white and new age blindness
flavor of rage
Carry it gingerly to the backyard,
it is a nursling yet ancient,
as stiff as chard gristle, as soft as lead,
as hard as a gallstone.
Open your hand.
see how it glows coal black.
This is your inner work,
this amorphous bone eating fire,
it smolders now in your hand.
Somewhere in the night
it grew stubby moth wings,
spans singed by the suns shadow.
Carry it now to the respiring air,
see how it breathes;
its elongated lung heaving
inside a flickering sac
of nebulous conception.
Hold the hand
with its seared burden palm upward,
whisper to the raptors of wind and sky,
let ravening talons tear it apart,
the hand also
let it be torn to the glistening cartilage
until there is nothing but ash.
When these metaphors fly away
as the baleful caws of crows,
when wraithy harbingers
cool into waymarks
a poem shorn of your gravity
will come to you.
Now growl or grin, grind even ash
into newborn light.
I am cutting ties
that I knotted to a faraway soil.
Exiled no longer at the tiller
of a long beached fishing boat
that bobs only on the legends
of ancient waves.
Those fluent in soul-breathing,
the Celtic poets,
those wind-chiming lyricists,
are pulling me
to the bottom of Lake Erie
where drowned sea-captains still quote
what the Irish once wrote.
And here’s me, even today
caught by the mouth
from their linguistic fishhooks
yet cutting myself away.
I am a handmade citizen of a land
that is my own meat and gristle,
a subsoil am I
and my father and mother
the grubbing worm and the turtle dove.
Still Irish, but rootless
with no anchor in Galway Bay.
I have cut the trap lines
become a jobbing teller
of tall tales,
not a keeper of any traditions
planted by hands not of my own.
And if once in a while
I lapse into the sod and bog-speak
of my unlearned brethren
it is no literary affectation
of a better education,
for I remain this common creature
determined to be tied to a smaller rock
of my own choosing.
chewing the fat with a ghostlike gristle,
a likeness lampoon on cell
5/9/2020
From the brain that named itself
To the heart that only feels the blood it pumps
our lives so full of subterfuge
What if there is no soul
Convincing ourselves
of something hidden in these
packets of bone and gristle
What if the soul is external
not trapped within this skeletal prison
The body just a magnifying glass
that amplifies and pinpoints emotion
and with the sweetest death
the vision loses merit
and the soul is lost to ether
My grasp is lost
The surface lifeless
Flotsam bodies lost in time filled seas
and souls that ride the breeze
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