Well Bottom Blues

Yesterday I posted here a poem titled Moloch which was basically me riffing on part two of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl out of my own and more contemporary experiences.Shortly after I took it down and replaced it with Quiet Fireworks.I then posted a video on the socials of a small upside down American flag burning over Jefferson Airplanes’ Volunteers.If this seems confusing, yesterday was a confusing…

MolochMoloch whose soul is electricity and banks…— Allen Ginsburg, Howl Part IIMoloch the hallowed in temples of glass,acolytes cowering behind counters of mechanical granitebeneath all-seeing cameras of obedience.Moloch counting the dollars of children seekingwisdom enslaved by debt, building the MBA privateequity Wall Street pyramids stone by stolen stone.Moloch whose infant furnace is fueled…

The misappropriated mermaid lords itover poorly paid women told to smile while taking orders. We all are thoroughlytrickled on again. I no longer own a house to leave to my children to bicker overor perhaps to share because who can afford one on their own anymore? It’s toast, hold the avocadoes, from now onin this Grand Canyon stratified Americawith its orange cretined majestyfrom private beach…

Three times must the wheel of blindness turn,  before I look without fear at the powersleeping in my own hand…— Czeslaw Milosz, “Slow River”I am not only writing and revising furiously as I look at the hour glass and see the bottom half mostly filled, I just finished all of Glück, a hefty and intoxicating draft. And now Czeslaw Mikosz’ New and Colletected, all 700 and some pages. I hope at my age…

“I went out to the hazel wood,Because a fire was in my head”— “Song of Wandering Aengus,” W.B.Yeats So I went out to the forest and forgot to change my shoes and decided just to walk in my slides wearing these open-toed bamboo brace things for my Achilles, trying not to catch anything between my toes. I also forgot to change out of my pajamas, my beloved polyester stripey Dollar store Gangsta…

I have an incorporeal compass insidewhich, when the trail splitsor crosses, knows which way to goas if the life inside chooses fromamong the countless greenshow to visit the feathered cousins&I visited green heron andsaw the egret atop the piling anhinga just a flash of wingshis sharp call across the lagoon &Soon City Golf Park will send the menin a green duck boat filled with poison to kill the…

I think the poem I wrote to bring and read last night’s Howl Loud, the monthly meet up on the blue bridge at Bayou St John to howl at the full moon was too political, a buzz kill, even though current events were the inspiration for this event. I’ve already written the poem for next moon. The Moon does not judgethe empires they have witnessed which rise and fall like the tides The Moon did not…

For a forest friendGoing quiet in the forest is exhilarant living.Leave your sugar frosted lattespeaker phone in airplane mode.Choose wild cherries and passion flowers.There are thrills in trills in the trees,the slow dance of coasting birds,frog song conga lines at dusk.Go quietly and with someonewho stoops to toad stools; stops, looksand listens with hawk-sharp senseswhen birds swoop and sing…

You were never meant to hold that much without breaking, the ad for some tincture promising happiness said. Don’t buy it.There are flowers and leaves and mushroomsenough in the forest. The only bottle you needis one for cool water so you can remain quietly with the unmolested medicine still rooted in the earth, both you and theyrooted to the Earth. That’s the natural healingyou need. Distillation…

I’ve done something to my achilles, possibly pushing way too hard into barefoot shoes, although at 69 it could be any number of things. I have, for example, somehow developed duck-footedness and often sit with my feet balanced on their ball, an anxiety thing that probably doesn’t do my achilles any good either.I was pushing towards 2 miles every day walking in the forest arboretum or the wilder…

I’m reading straight through Louise Glück, wondering how I missed her decades ago, why she didn’t leap out at me from some anthology,  before I settled into reading the same dozen books over and over for half a life. There are a raft of poems in the middle of the Poems (1962_2012) in which I hear sn echo of someone I know. I’m reading it on Kindle but bought two copies just now online, one like…

El Nopal (The Cactus) is card number 39 in the traditional Lotería deck, featuring a prickly pear cactus that symbolizes Mexican heritage, adaptability, and survival. The card’s traditional riddle is “Al que todos van a ver cuando tiene que comer” (To which all go to see when they have to eat), referring to the edible fruit, or tunas, of the cactus. The inescapable AI result up top says: in…

photo by the author, a bit blurry because surreptitiously taken in the no photography zone of this church Fuck whoever is behind the crossbar.This is not about who was crucified and why. This is introduction to Western Civilization. Read the syllabus, do the work or you'll nevermake it out of the auditoriums.This is not  a safe space. This is the world you aspire to inherit in all its glorious…

A post prompted by the editor’s note to the November 2025 Poetry I had left unopened. Poetry resembles photography from the age of the film camera.  There was no phone in your hand. You had to fetch the thing, load it with film carefully and advance it to the ready, wait for the flash to recycle while you frame something in the tiny eyepiece; then, that mechanical click and waiting for the film…