Sewers Poems

Campo Alegre

Campo Alegre re-printed

Under the houses on stilt
That has no sewers
And built for whores
To service sailors in Curacao
A barren island
In the Caribbean Sea
Pigs live under houses
Grew big and ugly
When one is slaughtered 
The meat tastes of a drunk
Seamen’s vomit
And cheap perfume
That hides
The grotesque sex
In the name of need

Lamb To The Slaughter

Gentle tributary
of a hill-born river
suburban lake caressed
acres of fertile land -
paddy rich, growing fields

Schools of fish raced at depths
water-birds, herons, egrets,
warblers, mynas, pipits,
swallows, shikra, barbets, owls
Bowl that held varied lives

The surrounding city
rapidly scales cloud- heights, as
skilled strategists, land grabbers,
investors, policymakers,
now take her on a ride

The silenced birds, once family
to the lively-living lake,
their provider, now watch
from a mile, her being led
like a lamb to the slaughter

chemical sewers, toxic algae
rotting froth, foam, fumes engulf
volatile, fire-prone, wasted,
water body stands scrapped
A stilled lake, beyond repair

Mayday, Mayday!

(“The Big Wave”, 2023, original encaustic)

Mayday, Mayday!

Mayday, mayday, Captain, 
The ship is sinking
The ship has capsized
While everyone was sleeping.

As governments around the world are falling
A lack of confidence swells the tide
Those in power, corrupt and scheming 
In panic stick their fingers in the dyke.

While on the streets the crazies crawling
The good and brave are tried for trying
To stem the swamp and sewers rising
As everyone just prays for rain

What was, can’t hold 
On a ground that’s shifting
Once bitten, twice shy
The people learning

Awake, awake, the captain’s calling
As I roll in my bunk still dreaming,
Beam me up Scotty,
Quickly mate, I fear I'm drowning…

(12/8/24) 

Rumors of War

("Creation Myth - Anthropomorphic Nebula Merit Badge” #65, 2016, original oil)

Rumors of War

War, war, rumors of war,
Whispered on the winds
Screamed from the rooftops.

Who does it benefit,
What is it good for?

I can tell you this as someone
Who has known it in a million lifetimes
Hand to hand, across trenches,
Behind ramparts and within
Tanks and Hellfire missiles,
It’s not the soldiers, or generals
Nor even their countries 
Who ever come out on top.
It is simply humanity
Willing to sacrifice one band for another
So the germ can spread,
Steeled in conflict, hardened by fire
Purified in the sacrifice 
Like a virgin on the crest 
Of a mighty pyramid.

And when it comes to us
Where will we be?
Cheering in the crowd 
Or running for the hills,
Or perhaps hiding in the sewers
Laying low 
Waiting for the perfect shot.

(11/27/24)

the unforgiven

The Unforgiven 

In a town where even the law rests
and thieves do not break out of prison
Oh, this bonny night washing my feet
in the pool in the square where
fish die for lack of oxygen
This is the moment when the unseen
the population appears,
banished as they are to the sewers
eternal darkness.
Ah, the plaza bathed in white moonlight
and they dance so tender, fur to fur
noses to noses.
Inhaling the perfumed air of their existence
The sacrifice of living underground
makes sense when,
on a night like this, nature greets them
in their heroic effort
to keep lessening the waste humans
have left behind.

Sewage Breath’s Birthday Wish, from THE WOMAN WHO COULD EAT WOOD

Sewage Breath’s Birthday Wish


On his 21st birthday,
Sewage Breath made a wish.
And to his great shock it came true in the depths of the sewers that smelt like  and piss and fish.
In there he bumped into an abandoned Sewage Woman named Trish. 

In love they fell. They really did. 
Enjoyed each other’s ugly, worrying, strong sewage breaths they did.
One year late they wed
and had a kid.

The kid they loved.
They named him Tad.
He’d worse sewage breath
than they had.   

from the morning paper

From the morning papers


We read the woman, a former actress
who stole a prince and was hated by the kingdom
is a duchess selling jam and pottery
Her husband, the prince, looks bewildered 
We also notice the woman who was 
prime minister, for a very short time found 
crawling things on the carpet, given
its former occupant, this was not surprising
The woman with her short reign has 
written a book, in the hope of being regarded 
as something more than a misses Bean
laying her awkward talent bare in The USA
My view 




is that homegrown failures 
should not be exported or bought up like
water, to foreign investors
as rivers and lakes belong to the people 
to swim and drown without
interference from speculatants who 
muddy the water and turn it into sewers

Hatred

You skulked down the hidden backstreets of rationality, 
peering through the keyholes of human decency, 
and crawled in through the sewers of thought, 
to whisper your name to the unsuspecting innocent, 
filling them with the fear of discontented oppression.

“We are America, So up Yours!” was your battle cry 
and the naive jump aboard your pretentious parade. 
Fake news… 
Fake hair… 
FAKE TRUTH! 
Maybe we should have ‘read HIS lips’.

Wall them out, or wall us in…that is the question.
Oh yes, my dear friend William,
we are truly suffering the slings and arrows,
of outrageous buffoonery. 
Do we now take up arms and light the battle fires of resistance?

Or do we sleep… 
Perchance to dream.
Be careful what you dream for.

Written 3/10/2017
 

A Night Like No Other

A night like no other...

Oh, for the holy night alone in a town where even
the law rests, and thieves do not break out of prison
Oh, this bonny night washing my feet in the pool
in the square where fish die for lack of oxygen
This is the moment when the unseen population appears, banished as they are to the sewers' eternal darkness
Ah, the plaza bathed in white moonlight, and they
dance so tender, fur to fur, noses to noses inhaling, the perfumed air of their existence.
The sacrifice of living underground makes sense
when on a night like this, nature greets them in a heroic effort to keep lessening the waste the humans have left behind.

The Pottawattamie Beaver

In the sylvan sewers of Fritchy's tombie
    the Pottawattamie beavers play
  deep beneath the verdant pastures
    where dead skunks and possum lay

  Circling skyward glowing wierdly
    jackal-birds sharpen their nails
  those brainless fowl still don't get it
    Pottawattamie leave no trail  

  The point, my friends, is whoever writes
    such utter trash compounds our misery
  Would that he fire up his rotisserie 
    and fry the buzzards in sympathy

  Anon I hear supplicants, lost their compass again
    Pity that out-of-water, they won't get deap-sea bends

200 Cattle Egrets

I
If I could share this picture with you
I would, my dear writers, Beloveds -
Because Earth births us again & again
Long after burial, giving back, post-death
Nature in majesty: birds at play in scores

II
I see egrets commute to & from, my abused lake,
Here where plastic is king, adorning flora
Even fauna, sewers overflow, trash at waters edge
But egrets, & soon the comorants return, & declare:
We overcome, can't complain, we still have fun. Be!

Calamity

He slept in the bath when he was drunk
Slept so long he went and shrunk
Down down down to such a size
He couldn’t be seen by human eyes
His wife saw the bath and with a shrug
Slipped in one arm and pulled the plug
She didn’t do it with any intent
But down the drain he silently went
He’d never ever learned to swim
So that was the last she saw of him
Gone for ever that unhappy soul
Swept out to sea down a plug hole
After a while she married his friend
So for her his story had a happy end
There’s a moral to his end if you think
Be careful when and where you drink
Or you could meet such a bad end
Down the plug and round the bend
Through the sewers on a bumpy ride
Then out to sea on the rising tide
Maybe to provide a succulent dish
For a shoal of hungry hunting fish
Perhaps the the irony of such a lost life
Served with peas and chips to your ex-wife.

Pooped Putin

In Moscow’s sewers earlier today
An urgent plot was hatched without delay
On his porcelain throne
Up Vlad’s rear flew a drone
And blew poor Putin’s butt far away

12/2/22

Campo Alegre Reprint

Campo Alegre re-printed

Under the houses on stilt
That has no sewers
And built for whores
To service sailors in Curacao
A dry barren island
In the Caribbean Sea
Pigs live under the houses
Grew big and ugly
When one is slaughtered 
The meat tastes of drunk
Seamen’s vomit
And cheap perfume
That hides
The grotesque sex
In the name of need

Big Rats In Cobenhagen

Big rats in Copenhagen 

The biggest supermarket in the world tons of wasted food
rats grew so big they couldn’t live in sewers but nestled
in the tall grass or built tunnels.
Something had to be done, rats didn’t hesitate to attack 
toddlers in a pram; cats stayed at home sleeping 
on the sofa, knowing they were no match against this enemy.
In this world of spoilt consumers, a banana had to be bright yellow
not a speck of marks on the fruit, lettuces had to look harvested
an hour ago, and the onion had to look new.
What to do with this new plague?
A bright person suggested giving excess food to the poor 
and to the old on low pension.
After some economic indecision, the poor also to buy food
the supermarket relented and gave the wasted food away.
It was successful rats shrunk in size went back to the sewers cats came out.
People didn’t realize poverty were the poor as usual
was not seen.

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