I am choked by an anchorless, predatory rage.
I desperately crave a single throat to wring -
a solitary architect of this misery to tear apart while screaming 'Why?' into the dirt.
But there is no culprit to summon.
So, the violence turns inward.
I smash things, I bleed, I shatter my own reflection,
only to watch the dust settle and realize the most sickening truth of all:
I have become the flawless mirror image of the very cruel,
wrathful,
angry monsters who broke me.
Life strolls in without knocking,
drops its bags on the floor,
and says, “Right, let’s see what you’re made of.”
It gives you sunrise after sunrise,
some that lift you,
some that blind you,
and a few that punch you in the ribs
just to keep things interesting.
It teaches you how to love with both hands,
how to break without shattering,
how to hold memories like warm stones
in pockets you didn’t know you had.
It throws laughter at you in waves,
and grief in storms,
and somehow expects you to surf both.
Death, though,
waits in the corner like an old friend
who doesn’t rush,
doesn’t push,
just knows the timing better than we ever will.
It’s the quiet punctuation at the end of the wild sentence,
the door that only opens once,
the moment every heart eventually returns home.
And between those two forces
the spark and the shadow
we learn to dance.
Sometimes graceful, sometimes a mess,
but always moving,
always reaching,
always trying to wring meaning
out of the time we’re given.
Because life is fire,
death is the ember,
and we are the glow in between.
He was on the path, walking toward me at dusk
at first, I thought it was a man, but my senses began twitching
danger, danger, danger, danger, whispered my internal save machines
It was a sasquatch, and he smelled horrible.
I was too close to him to hide, so I slid off the path
Letting him have the whole path, expecting the worst.
He had not slowed down, his stride was amazingly long.
I watched him get closer and closer.
Would he eat me? Bite my arms? Wring my neck?
He grunted something and kept going.
It sounded a lot like good day.
For Palestine
I refuse to read the news.
More dead children in Palestine.
Why did we give people who had suffered
and died in Europe, in a country where
People lived in freedom
To see other people taking their land
and cattle, throwing people of their own
The property is not sensing how wrong
by people who had suffered
Yet, they had no empathy for those they
replaced
I refuse to read the news and listen to
our silence
Nothing we can do, our leaders say
and go on trading with Israel, selling
weapons that kill children without
the slightest hesitation as we wring
our hands and say there is nothing
We can do
How shameful we are, headlines about
The saving of a few amputees learning
to walk with artificial legs
We brag of our kind hearts while
a thousand children are dead under
ruins, dropped by the people who had
Have once been victims themselves.
How insignificant we are, made to look
I will no longer bear witness to our
disgrace,
I will close my mind like everyone else
and talk about the price of tomatoes
Can one ever have too much of a good thing?
Can I squeeze out an answer, my brain to wring?
Some folks will tell you I think too much,
with little to show, 'cuz I'm out of touch.
Good food and drink should be taken in moderation.
So, I'll stop trying to eat everything in creation.
Can one have too much sex? Should it be my goal
to find out, or should I not touch that with a pole?
Can there be too much love? Who'd be so hard-boiled
to say that? My grandma, who says I'm spoiled.
Can one laugh too much or go over the top?
If you're laughing at someone else, you should stop.
I can't say what's too much! Who am I to judge?
Time for my tenth piece of chocolate fudge.
I've yammered on and said "too much" too much.
So, I'll shut my mouth, but let's keep in touch.
I’ve grown a mouth that’s so,
sharp.
Cruel.
When anyone gets near,
I bite with my quick words.
Leaving nothing but a scar.
It’s all I can give you.
And when you come,
And steal a kiss,
My teeth,
will only cut your lips.
And I wanted to so bad,
But it seems,
I only break pretty things.
I know you meant well,
but I’m not a vessel for your good intent.
I will only wring you dry.
Leaving you with nothing.
but your bones,
Brittle and cold.
I’m sorry,
I’m not what you’ve asked for.
But you need abandon.
All your stupid dreams,
Of what you wanted me to be.
You gotta know,
that this won’t last.
But if you’re blind to that,
I am fine with that.
Streets are filling with needles, disease, and narcissists.
The airways are rimmed with demands for respect.
If you don't agree 100 %, they'll wring your neck
People U-turn to the outhouse to retrieve souls.
Not realizing until it's too late.
That they've flushed it all down the toilet bowl...
Grasping blindly through turds of madness...
Directionless.
They turn from Love and God into the blowhole
of influencers, YouTubers and TikTokers.
Pods of dolphin people flipping for clicks...
Looking to make a name for themselves.
Not through talent, class and hard work.
but through shock and crassness.
They fancy to blame boomers for failures and madness.
I once had a teacher (frustrated by our terminal self-centeredness)
who once told a bunch of giggling know-it-all kids...
" One day the world is going to scare the living hell out of you".
How right you were, Mr. Adams.
How right you were.
Blue on blue
a sandwich
of the sky and sea
clutching on
jealously
to the distant horizon.
They both join hands,
laugh,
and emit their
features,
creatures and apparitions.
Streaming towards you
like they're on
washing machine wringer rollers,
one spinning out and up
the other,
spinning out and down,
painting the scene
blue on blue,
silk-screened.
Seagulls soar.
Flying fish leap.
Dolphins hobby-horse.
Fishes flip, flop and swim.
Clouds billow and wallow along.
Waves rush onward with crests
on their chests.
All this and more, is rolled out at dawn,
then gets rolled away at dusk,
to wring another day.
MY DORMANT PAST
MEMORIES OF THE PAST MAY COME AND GO,
BUT ONE NEEDS TO BE IN CONTINOUS FLOW.
SMELL OF CRUMPLED DREAMS IS IN MY MIND,
ANALOGY OF BOTH ALWAYS KEEP US BIND.
DREAMS TURNED INTO SMOKE AND SPREAD WINGS,
COMING BACK TO ME GASP AND UNIFY IN WRING.
MAY BE ANOTHER DAY SOMEONE BRING TO FRUITION,
THAT DAY MY SOUL WILL BE IN EXUBERATION.
SEEING DREAMS IN EYE OF SOMEONE, AWAKE MY FANTASY,
DIVINE HAS SENT SOMEONE TO RUN MY LEGACY.
a Danish imbroglio
The Danish prime minister is appealing to Europe to stop Trump’s idea of taking Greenland and making it an American state
What he wants not that he is overly interested
is to be sure that no other country places
bases on Greenland’s still-cold soil like Russia
or China
the Vikings when Greenland had a period of thawing had farms there, which tells us the brave Vikings were mostly farmers, their fierceness is a national lie
As for Europe helping look another way they
write the declaration of good intent and should
Say, Trump, post troops on the Island, the EU
will wring their hands and do nothing
We know this when Gaza suffered a mini holocaust it lamented, but otherwise, did nothing, even Germany in her misguided sense
of guilt lasting for generations sent weapons to Israel
So, we tell Denmark you are on your own to deal
with this new situation, but to give more money for the defense of Greenland is futile
Perhaps the Danish “hygge” might help
The soft clouds of cotton white
Wipe away the tears of the earth
Absorbing the pain poured and puddled below
Swarms of pestilence incubated in muddy melancholic pools of despair
From clean, fresh, white fluff, these clouds absorb the real us
Aging each one to the salt and pepper gray and musky stench of filth
Mop it up
Wring it Out
Over mountain, valley, and field
The dirty emotion and sordid feelings like mop water rain down
Yet at the dawn a clean shining light
The sorrow of the night
Washed away with clear, blue skies and
The crisp wind snap of clothes line white clouds.
Young man, sit down, a poem to write.
I can't. I've been thinking day and night.
Go forth, then, to old man Palmer's field.
That spooky place, ideas will yield.
Inspiration from my brain to wring,
what about the Addams family Thing?
That gentleman was only one hand.
I found the other on Palmer's land.
Yes, ma'am, there it was, lying face up.
This kind of thing, you just can't make up.
At home, I put it by my rusty nails
with my collection of lizard tails.
I soon forgot it and went to sleep,
and that hand wrote this poem, so deep.
So, if you happen on a severed hand,
he only hopes you will understand.
To call you a pansy insults the flower.
It seems you cried for nearly an hour;
your mother called to say she’d lost.
So ‘space to process’ at a cost
of fifty six thousand for the year
to cancel class and sip craft beer…
‘Buck up’ is what my mum would say,
but then of course she’d never pay
so I could breakfast with the dean
and wring my hands about well-being.
I guess I’m old; my youth is gone.
I’d likely say, Get off my lawn!
But hun, you life is going to hurt
when you discover things like dirt
and sweat and toil and grit and grime.
I hope that in some future time,
you’ll look back on Trump’s second win,
say, Man, I was a pansy then.
A tear of cloud,
Blew away because of the wind.
Care to explain their relationship?
Did someone tell it to do?
Each era taught us these to end
Fights between us and to
Greet each other so that,
Humble nature will be grown.
Roads long squandered,
Routes trained to memory.
a crack in the long unyielding concrete
unremarkable.
Then, a wildflower
A peculiar pink.
Leather, nostalgia.
Cinnamon, mellow.
Stop dead in my tracks,
Wistful, yearn.
Many a while did I dream of creation
After all, what does it take?
Soil, water, an undefeated soul.
Many a while did I long for something that called me God.
Many a while did I pick up a pen,
Dropped it back down.
Afraid of laughter no one laughed,
Fearing fingers yet unpointed.
What does it mean to begin?
What does it take to begin?
Paper, ink, a sliver of hope.
Do I have what it takes to begin?
Now every new page,
A breath of awakening
In a book awaiting it's soul.
A step, far from empty pages.
Albeit one, this stride
holds strength of lifetimes far spent.
And as I sit, winds of change,
Of beginning, blowing through my hair finally let down.
A start.
Breaking apart the shackle that is anticipation.
Everything goes, and so will this fear.
And as my soul, my blood, my sweat, my tears, I wring into form,
Perhaps,
I have what it takes to begin.
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