Sweet silence!
late in life
I discover earplugs
my wife’s pastel plugs
that fill the ear canal
by compressing for insertion
and expanding once in place
One mauve one sepia
no lawnmowers, no leafblowers
wood chippers or persistent phoebes
water to the thirsty traveler
morphine to the cancer
better than knee surgery
or a negotiated end to the war
Such silence is so sweet
I might try blindness too
like Homer, Borges, Milton
just kidding, should there be a god listening
the veil of life is thin
if one doesn’t believe in mystery
or accepts the rules entirely
One green one brown
two leaves sleep-touching
then a breeze!
the day I left life behind
hitchhiking as the sun descends
morning air cold and clear
I cannot hear what I cannot see
The freedom of summer gone
one more season (and one more after that)
he lived with one eye after that
in a mind there is apocalypse
no one can hear it
but one day you die
and this is the ideal silence you sought
Silence of winter
one elk in aspen
mountains of dark sound
and a stream’s breath song
cities make a silent distant din
with simple joy men may give up desiring to be heard
how much tinnitus can you handle
Graceful as silence
sailing through the ferns and understory
why make a sound or noise or do anything to the page
the national debate
garrulous, querulous
the sound of shoulders shrugging
speech, none, you can’t sum it up in one more metaphor
Censor crop shorten and silence
no tv!, no self-pity
first light, green tea
no sound but wind
yet the sound still comes out of the flowers
smoke the cigarette, sound the subwoofer
and prepare for a powerful anesthesia
May 5
May 5, 2026 at 6:15 AM UTC
I watch the television evangelist Joel Osteen with Josephine from
Ghana.
God wants you to succeed, he says. I think God died or lied,
same difference. When everyone holds up their Bibles and thumps
them
I make my nervous laugh.
Joel’s favorite story is David and Goliath,
how the little guy slays the big guy by throwing rocks. There’s no
singing
in this church, singing’s for funerals and death is for losers. I say to
Josephine
What kind of day was it for Goliath?
Josephine and Joel’s congregation
hold no sympathy for Goliath. Just as I can’t picture God
they can’t visualize Goliath with a wife and kids. I watch Shrek with
my wife and kids,
one of our favorite movies.
Is this done in every American town and the world over
so there is no need to feel lost or lonely ever?
Apr 7
Apr 7, 2026 at 6:27 AM UTC
Always doing something
plus I have opinions
Winning the war in Ukraine
pain I can’t explain
Saving for retirement
kayaking to the huckleberries across the River Styx
Kisses sweet or smell of ****
don’t pretend you don’t care
If you just watch the sky an hour each day you’ll never be ill
without plenty to say about everything you’ll get better right away
Disrobing and bathing, how big and dark the universe is
not that I accept their god
You get what you believe, a truly scary thought
man sees man in his mirror that is self-doubt
Contraceptives in place and pleasures today
drifting toward perpetual armageddon
Suffering and struggling toward vague goals
keeping your past functioning as a factor in the present
That irritating constant need to survive
prepare for a powerful anesthesia, irresistible chemical processes
Life goes on without a hiccup
you pays you money and you takes you chances
Some people go dancing in fishnet stockings
you’ll soon lose interest in wearing the cap of a fool
Your friends are the men you’ll want in your foxhole
the wound that never heals in the end is all you’ll feel
You’ll remove all your clothes, naked before the ladies
and if it comes to that, you’ll **** on orders from whom?
Basic science and ancient arts
that must be what faith means
If, as they say, the cells of the body are replaced every seven years
fire makes earth into air, air makes earth into dust, water makes earth
into mud
Mar 3
Mar 3, 2026 at 6:33 AM UTC
Have you ever considered
how your shoes will look
without your feet?
I should call Dr. Killeen this afternoon,
find out if I have cancer
but I’m enjoying the extra weekend of not knowing.
Strong oscillations
gather rhythm
and expel me or accept me.
It’s annoying
being the center of attention,
the dead man walking.
Things often work out better than you expect
and this probably will too.
In the transition to non-existence,
Ken said, you get what you believe.
Now that is a truly scary thought,
even scarier than Life is but a dream.
Pain serves the purpose of preparing
one to die.
Other methods have been tried but this works best.
You tie up your affairs
or maintain the discipline you possessed
when feeling well. Eschew
certainty about the afterlife.
All will be given
that must be what faith means.
Don’t forget to breathe.
Rain happens. We supply the reasons.
Leave no footprint in eternity. No smell.
Feb 3
Feb 3, 2026 at 7:24 AM UTC
To hear the mermaids singing. Not quite.
To make sense of life. No experience, no nonsense.
To make life better for future generations.
Why care about the future? The dead don’t live to see it.
To save people or nations.
Poets just wanna have fun.
To exceed one’s limits, derivatives with limits.
The one power that a man can have is in the perfection of himself.
Clear commentary from which many people will derive meaning.
Having nothing to teach I tell a joke. The snail joke.
To produce knowledge, nuance and pleasure.
Whatever you do to one side of the equation you gotta do to the other.
There are a few mirrors in which I imagine myself.
The dream mirror in which I’m killin the villains.
The public school in which I teach, energy incubator awesome biomass
collector innovation inhibitor introduction to classical mathematics
memory organizer promotion celebration teen lovefest testosterone
uncontrolled substance.
Jail’s the alternative, alternate noosphere, foreseeable force,
intemperate penance, meditational penitentiary, prayer cellblock,
library laundry, aborted love life, deflating genes, judges’ chambers,
movie night.
Bad movies in which the logic switch is turned off.
The end of faith in which acts of war are mistaken for religious acts.
Photographs in which the name and face don’t match.
Measurements in which the last significant digit is the Other.
Might as well go to market.
Might as well believe in that higher power.
Dec 30, 2025
Dec 30, 2025 at 8:34 AM UTC
I searched upstairs and downstairs, mask of fright,
repositioned machinery, turned on lights,
called my doctor and the operator,
tried passion and dispassion, meditation
and my morning crap, sang out of tune,
passed a school bus on the double yellow line.
A clock, a calendar, a ruler,
a minute and an inch. The kind of day
I never have, opens with orisons,
ends with an amen, ardor offsets humor.
I cannot locate the source of the hum
atoms alternating charges, e, i,
sharing and unsharing electrons, π.
I reck I hear *** my god.
Dec 2, 2025
Dec 2, 2025 at 7:10 AM UTC
And complain about sentience. Tell a joke. Make—
Us sad or depressed, less afraid
Earth into homes, earth into mud
Their peace
Me a fossil of society
Our own decisions, the universe having reversed its decision on us
A sound or noise
Echo make
The body healthy I do
The feelings in the mind play music
A space in a line of people climbing a trail in the mountains
Us brothers and sisters with the animals
Death more noble for us all
A mosque of the rocks
You cry out for the genius occurring now and in our past
The tools and do the math to colonize the planets
Things worse by guessing
Others want to live
Plans
The man weep for himself
A difference in their communities
Music, mindful of our extreme limits
1/10 inch of annual topsoil
The atmosphere as seen from outer space
Of it more than it is
The bed
This formulation useful
The technology possible to live long and well, with personality
Grandma’s sauce
This observation: the purpose of sitting’s not to be satisfied
War on Iraqis
Pharisees grovel
Black holes whole
Prediction and intuition fortunately hopeless
A list of prospective donors
A moral and rational adjustment of life to life
Dying people cry
Nothing happen, which is something, magic
Improvements
Eagle scout
History interesting for Johnny
The subject separate from the substrate
The sun stand still, yet run
Consciousness persevere
Informed medical decisions going forward
It so
Sense on the trumpet
Correct mistakes
Jack ill
A repertoire for dealing with the challenges we’ll confront as a species
in millennia to come
Every day a good day to die
Millions
The present immutable as the past
Up, perfume, soap
Him **** you right there in the street
Way for a future that’s irresistible
Poetry from losing the argument with themselves
Oct 17, 2025
Oct 17, 2025 at 10:04 PM UTC
It’s 2022, we’re in the final battle for the soul of the world.
There is no Indo-European root for soul,
the Greek and Germanic roots mean quick-moving, fleeting, mercurial.
I’d add evanescent, impermanent, ephemeral
disappearing, diminishing, dwindling
tenuous, brief, short-lived.
Whatever forever—that’s where we’ll be after WWIII.
World, home, think, breathe: man,
woman the vital force in man, the Anthropocene, men together
violence, virtue, virility. Also, werewolf.
War: to confuse, mix up, make worse.
The old are paying close attention but my sons ignore the thunder,
plate tectonics, gamma ray bursters and mortars on the Eurasian front.
Peace out—the end, limit, boundary, never to have been. So long,
sayonara, shalom, salaam. Take into eternity my hail and farewell.
Aug 29, 2025
Aug 29, 2025 at 7:31 AM UTC
In the debate between dubbing and subbing
I side with subs to savor the original
mellifluous French, Tamil, Korean, Italian...
Reading the subtitles assists the deaf
and hard of hearing although voiceovers
benefit the blind and vision impaired.
Historically dubbing was employed
by fascist governments to advance
the nationalist agenda. In our own time
the tendency to consider dubbers dumb
implies reading’s the indispensable skill.
My wife reads her mail while watching movies
so she prefers dubs. I admire her mastery
of two idioms simultaneously
but my limited bandwidth favors subs.
Jun 5, 2025
Jun 5, 2025 at 6:57 AM UTC
Thanks for another day
Others curse their luck, stale breath
Eventually our enemy becomes our brother
Cancer checkup, another swinging **** who fears his death
To not necessarily sacrifice each and every day for another day
I’m going to go to my grave unsung like almost everyone
Numerous number systems beyond the real
Look one way, from another come the heart’s missed beats
One way out of the mind’s limitations is through another mind’s
contemplations
Another autumn, another election, so aimless and sublime
The white egret ate fish after fish, one then another then another...
You get a limited number of long walks, so take your time
One gives up body and soul but that’s not what I came to talk about
Slug the world and the world slugs back
It was amusing in my youth that God’s finger could move me to another
square
Another duality, a day in the woods, jet passing overhead
I am in favor of kindness and you prefer concentration camps
The slow death of one sometimes makes the sudden ****** of another
To survive only as many more years as there are petals on a randomly
picked (ox-eye) daisy
Another winter passing its calling card in at the window
One day follows another until the last day and on that day there will be
weather
May 7, 2025
May 7, 2025 at 5:58 AM UTC