ASHAMED TO NAME HIM, SO I WON'T
The big-thumb ump bumpbumps like his golf dump's empty sump pump. That extra-plump lump of lamb chump hums and thumps his grumpy drum and crumps the trumpet of our democracy.
He grumps us chumps again and again, jumps us full of mumps, and humps his frowzy strumpet's rump on live TV.
GHOST AND XEROX
I'm Karma Ka Kismet Id.
(Who are you?
Law and water
charity machine
Frankenstein in Happy Face, angel in jail.
(And you?)
A PATHOLOGY OF MY APATHY; OR. THE ANATOMY OF INACTION
Take care, fellow citizens:
Don't bewail other denizens.
Those politicians' policies,
or reporters and their stories,
penetrate the state of my zen.
Your world's deterioration
intrudes on cool meditation.
I take the side of the undecideds.
FACING THE SEA WITH SPRING BLOSSOMS
--after Hai Zi
Starting tomorrow, I'll be a happy man,
grooming my horses, chopping my wood, traveling anywhere.
Starting tomorrow, I'll raise my grains and veggies
and live in a house facing the sea with spring blossoms.
Starting tomorrow, I'll write all my dear ones
to report my happiness.
I'll tell everyone I'm struck — by blessed lightning.
I'll give every river — every mountain — a loving name.
Strangers all, I wish you every bliss.
May you have an incandescent future.
May you spend your life with the one you love.
May you enjoy every happiness in the world.
I only want to face the sea with the spring blossoms.
MEANS
The fire leads to the fear
and the blade to the blood....
In an evolution
of egg to age:
Ferry is to wayfarer
as sperm is to gene
as soldier is to order.
On Sun, Sep 6, 2026 at 12:53 AM duane vorhees <duanev@hotmail.com> wrote:
Cristina
I hope you are feeling better and that your Labor Day is gloriously unlaborious!
Meanwhile, here's my next batch--
Duane
ISMS' END: THE PROMISE OF PROGENY
We are all here, nerves and graves,
we, the todays and yesterdays.
The path of song runs through everyone.
The Olympic pool doubles the sun
while the winter moon halves it.
Humanity lives in its huts
with its gods and with its isms
(and every belief system is an ism--
but why are there no isms of innocence?).
Humanity divides its world with walls and fences.
How permanent! yet how delicate!
are these stews in our kettles' bellies!
Today's chefs, prepare your tools and kitchens,
lay out your dynastic friction.
Those urns, those ferns, those burns
— those tomorrows—those blurs--
they still await their turn.
And they hope to mature.
And they hope to endure.
But we hope they can sing us to better futures.
Lacking the doneness of death,
living has a possibility yet.
ST. GEORGE'S DILEMMA
I am a knight,
a man in tin
upon a mission.
I have a dragon
Inside,
and there's a maiden
Within,
and I must decide
which I should save
and which must slay.
SHEET MUSIC
When we concerto alone
you hum pianissimo
until my baton is down.
ANGELS' ALLIES
Chicago exorcists of the curse of Hue,
the children's choice seemed so simple and so clear:
To purge and burn the stench of their parents' sins
as voyeurs in Johnson/Nixon's daisy chain.
Even as torrents of TV blood and horror
entombed the country's slumbering shame and guilt
beneath accumulations of mud and silt,
they nurtured the nations' worst hotel murders.
"So, whose side are you on?" A binary pick --
The side of the assassins or the martyrs.
And which will you be, the muck or the water?
Heedless moral passion or cowardly check?
Dump the Hump! Make Love Not War! Get Clean For Gene!
Tune In, Drop Out! Trust No One Over 30!
New! Improved! Eliminate Parental Dirt!
Alas. We knew not the problem's in our genes.
I ASK US
At which When did we become our parents,
self-convinced once more of our own invincibility's
blood, bones, and blues?
There's a border, we thought, between those anxious
actions of the bulls on the street
and the bulls of the freight;
so at what Then did the line get crossed?
On some cryptic boiling point
our former arrogant innocence transmuted to ignorant inerrancy.
And, unappalled, we applaud our Light's sad
transformation into Lightning Bolts.
So to Fate's position we default.
But, in our prescient prehistoric youth, were'nt we
Already angels' allies?
