Tear of night in the blue sky
Noisemaker yowling all of its own
Glossy black omnipresence
Where the wind blows,
Corvus follows
Outside the realm of possibility
Or right outside your window.
Jeweled bleak mountain,
C r u m b l i n g drenched seashore
Baked desert of sand or of concrete
Always there, unheralded, uninvited
Croaking over the croaked.
Defeating - by not trying - best efforts
To dissuade, persecute, discourage, control
Biggest non-non-passerine
World's smartest dinosaur.
Far beyond adaptation
Cleave to me
From sea to spree
And you may quoth the Raven
Evermore.
This blog fazes fascists
Corax Rex
Minus World
Without clutter, crowds, noise...
Overload
Without people
There is but emptiness, nothingness
An undwelt house,
A play missing its lead,
A universe minus focus
-So humanocentrists say.
Yet in tranquil stillness, bereft
Of destructive creation
And regressive progress
The question compels:
When does negative space
Become a positive?
Bull Market
You are what you consume.
That's what the ads all say!
Possession of status is obsessive
Don't own the Moon?
Better get there soon!
And the new improved You
Is just a few payments (plus interest) away!
Don't be a bore, always buy more
And tell all how it feels
To be a mass-produced trinket
Obsolete before it reaches the door!
Quiet Please
For all this talk, louder and louder
The world only ever gets worse.
This cherished "communication" is now
Like a madman bellowing in an empty stadium
Trying to dominate a level playing field
For a game long since ended.
Cathartes - An Aura
I cling to the sky with silver fingers
Bending in the wind, swinging side to side
Precariously, with the confidence of the thought-irrelevant.
As it swirls and rises, stale air wafts scents to me
Death, decay, stilled breath, rotting flesh - the delights of life!
I fall upon them, sky to earth, stoic to epicurean
Devour what others cannot, will not, should not
And with cutting beak sever the Gordian knot tying mortality down.
A few foiled thrusts return I to the blue
Black on crimson, sunlight on a tilting mirror
Reflecting one side, then the other
Of the inadequacies
Of the poor ground-bound.
Thistle Down
Tufts of invasion borne on hot wind
Scatter like an ivory dream, innocuous and pure
Over broken, degraded, eroded ground.
Unseen, unheeded, I spread, take hold anywhere
Hanging on for dear strife;
Where I plunge my roots
Is Home.
Sprouts recall a dimly held cradle
Rocked by Eurasian breezes, where I was one among many
Sharper than most.
No rounded petals or soft tones, I,
But angular slivers and garish violent violet
Quick to grow, all to fall
No greater or lesser than any
Who fell to ovine teeth or farmer's scythe
In the continental cauldron
Where ingredients mixed immemorial.
Freed from all that, I am free to oppress
As the grass wilts, I grow strong.
As the trees rot, I thrive and propagate.
Waysiders drown in my shadow
Once-soft hills now echo with infinite spikes
Shimmering in odes of deep green and purple, so sharp they sting-
I am unstoppable.
Try pulling me up by the roots;
As millions more put down roots unnoticed
Before you can pull the pricks from your reddened skin.
Air cools, ivory falls again,
In wet flakes, not so innocuous this time
Respite! You think; not so.
Though all that you see of me
Is colorless, withered leaves
And dry husks loosed from life; dead, broken, but still seeding
Silently marking winter with pale shadows cast upon the snow
Incorporeal fenceposts, demarcating my land.
Here I stood, here I will stand again
From here I will spread
And here your efforts fail.
My existence is your loss
When you've already lost the fight -
How silly it is to declare war...
Put away the weed-killer.
A thoughtful tally
When a person dies wrongfully
There are inquests, prosecutions, imprisonments
Someone takes the fall.
But who takes responsibility
When an idea dies?
"Not all ideas are good,"
You might say.
"Not all people are good,"
I return.
(In fact, most aren't.)
Pity, then, that mostly-bad people continue to swell
Bursting the seams of this shoddily-stitched world
Whilst ideas, thinly spread on the ground, perish
From the pervasive and sinister causes
Of tradition and indifference.
Newsflash
And now, the news:
Everyone hates everyone.
"It's all about love!" says demagogue as followers commit massacre.
Protect yourself with perpetual panic.
Not getting enough sleep? Try new iLid Screens!
People are ignorant, selfish, short-sighted, and violent.
"Put your faith in us," order people all of the above, and then some.
THE SKY IS FALLING!
Fall prices are sky-high!
Economic growth means everyone gets richer by the day!
(Except you.)
Click NOW for sexy retouched photos of nonexistent archetypes!
"The Earth is dying, and it's all your fault," say jet-setting plutocrats.
Billionaire donates .0001% of monthly income; hailed as philanthropist.
Clickbait scams on the rampage - click HERE to protect yourself!
Charity revealed as money-laundering scheme; billionaire claims ignorance, flies to tropical resort to pout.
Solve all of your life's problems in a split second - click HERE and NOW!
Whatever you're doing right now causes cancer.
Whatever you did yesterday cures cancer.
Your country is collapsing.
Apocalypse-ready? You will be with your own salt cave - leasing NOW!
"We live in the greatest country in the world," declares native mediocrity.
War starts in some other country, verifying less-greatness.
Someone briefly famous 40 years ago died ...andsodidmanyotherpeoplewhoareirrelevant.
Celebrity revealed as merely human - FOR SHAME!
Pseudo-celebrity disses para-celebrity - internet EXPLODES!
Cute photos of animals...whose homes were razed to build server farms!
Global warming is a hoax.
Scuba gear prices up 500%.
Global warming will ruin everything.
Beachside cottages with optional salt caves leasing NOW!
Deadly new virus emerges!...In Africa, so who cares.
Loony new cult worships deceased insane person.
Which church is the right one for YOU?
New $300 million movie bombs in North America.
New $300 million bomber bombs in Middle East.
Anti-terrorism coordinator: "We must terrorize for freedom."
Billions in foreign aid provided to future enemies.
Billions in domestic aid provided to current oppressors.
United Nations debates acknowledging bitter irony of own name.
Elections are no cause for alarm.
The next election will decide the COURSE OF YOUR LIFE!
"You'll have some rights left," says the left.
"You'll be left with no rights," says the right.
Democracy is dying.
"Good," say minorities voted into poverty by majority.
Democracy is stronger than EVER!
"And we'll keep it that way!" say oligarchs hiding behind layered security.
Should migrants be killed and flown back, or flown back to be killed?
Tech gurus declare sexism, misogyny unacceptable.
Serial Rapist Sim 7: Now in VR!
Overpopulation is dangerous and unsustainable.
SEX! SEX! SEX!
You're beautiful just the way you are!
You're HIDEOUS without this pricey new ensemble!
Cowardly, childish shut-ins are major social problem.
OPINION: If she didn't want to get shot, then she shouldn't have answered the door!
We're probably living in a simulation.
"But we shouldn't assume that it's Serial Rapist Sim 7," states visibly nervous scientist.
Appreciate the finer things to live longer!
Study: Appreciating the finer things causes cancer.
Stressed? Try the new EarScreamer!
Extinct pigeon voted new state bird.
"We won't die as quickly or thoroughly as it did!" declares governor.
Streamer hikes prices.
Hiker prices stream; "I need money to buy a more telegenic walking stick."
Parents panic as toddler briefly hides from monitor drones in playground.
Conglomerate acquires agglomeration; laid-off employees struggle to discover which one they worked for.
"Ours is a religion of peace," claim beheaders.
Embarrassing bloodstains? Try the new SpinScrub - it spins until you're clean as a holy book!
Invasion defended as self-defense.
Invasion of privacy defended as self-fulfillment.
Where they ban books, they will also ban people.
OPINION: Now that we're banned people, we should start banning bans on bans!
Fascist calls other fascist "communist."
Communist calls other communist "fascist."
Anarchist calls fascist, communist "dickheads," flings pamphlets in air, runs away.
Capitalist hires fascist, communist, anarchist for new reality show: "Ruin That Century!"
Internet use kills brain cells.
Your IQ is over 140 if you can solve this 92-page online quiz!
POINT: Ideas are dangerous. It's time to stop having them.
COUNTERPOINT: Agreed, but we need more franchise ideas first. You can only reboot something so many times!
Conspiracy theorist arrested for sending self death threats: "That sum-bitch is lying to me!"
Jury acquits gunman; victims "didn't beg for their lives hard enough" says foreman.
Pristine new moon discovered; jealous Earthlings vow to messily crash spacecraft into it "at any cost."
Female objectification is wrong.
You won't BELIEVE these plunging necklines (number 8 will cause spontaneous comBUSTion)!
Our prices are so low, you'd think we use slave labor!
(But you'd have to go lower in our supply chain to find it!)
If a tree falls and no one vlogs it, does it make a hashtag?
That was the news.
...But it ain't news to me.
Emergence
Chattering cicadas
Glorying in their numbers
Overwhelming everything
Til even the most voracious predators
Can't eat another crunchy bite.
Still they come, crashing like buzzing cascades
Over the tired, beaten land.
Their compound eyes looking forward, never back
At the desolation they've left behind.
Secure in their majority, never knowing
That glory is fleeting, and huge numbers divide.
Soon their lifeless husks will fall
Amply fertilizing the next generation
Of what they tried to consume.
Counter-revolution
"Freedom!" cries the willing slave.
"Truth!" yells the pathological liar.
"Greatness!" groans the pasty nazi,
Whose only claim to greatness
Is in the competitive fields
Of gullibility and mediocrity.
Turn down your noise, and listen for one moment:
I am the other
That your politicians warned you about.
I am not your sympathizer, fellow-traveler, or comrade
And I am not on your side.
Re: Tro
Once was,
Now isn't.
Miss it?
Nostalgia cripples,
Memory hinders.
And yet,
Present slithers;
Future withers.
What's gone
For which
You long?
Scarabs
One can't be tough and beautiful...
Though one must be both
To be anyone at all.
The powers declare,
"You can be a dung beetle, or a butterfly.
"There is no in-between."
But I've seen the most exquisite lepidoptera
Drinking salt like nectar
From a puddle of piss.
And have you ever see the afternoon sun
Glint like a beacon from the unfurled wings
Of a dung beetle, taking flight
After a hard day of rolling up bullshit?
Beckoning twilight
The beckoning twilight
Entices you beyond these walls
To the open sky, variegated and dynamic
Shifting shades like the leaves
Not green to yellow, but blue to black
Where holistic hues mingle
Melt together, fade away
Lost in the in-between
Only to find themselves among the stars.
Magats
This land still crawls with magats
Gorging on the entrails of a rotten fox
Inching here and there, vomiting poison
As they die from the inside
And the decay sets in.
Dripping venom onto the parched earth
As if to supplicate its desiccation
Then slouching away, too careless to see
That it evaporates so quickly
Under the white-hot sun
Whose increasing fury cannot be denied.
Spineless, brainless, heartless
Operating upon the worst of instinct:
Hate, fear, greed, ignorance; relics of atavism
Evolution has passed them by.
Soon, the wretched creatures will be endangered
A refuge must be found - X marks the spot
Gather them up with begloved hands
(As one might whilst handling waste)
And deposit them in their natural state:
Beneath the bottom
Of the garbage dump
Of history.
Chinook
Gales blow down the mountains
Bringing the scent of pinecones, dry needles, and lichen
And flinging dust into the valley
That it may someday level out
And come plain
About the climb
No more.
Epitaph for a glass
Let it fall
Watch it break
Shatter, crack and burst
Into shards tinkling their delicate music
Whilst dancing cross the stern hardness
That broke their progenitor
And granted sharp-edged freedom
To particulate into lethality.
Space
An endless circle
A flattened line
In dimensional measure
There will never be too much
And yet there is never enough
Space.
Velocity
Away
Further and farther
Where the only constant is ever-greater speed
And acknowledging or even noticing
Is madness: A break of focus.
And everything swept by without a glance
Corrodes into stasis
With its time-blemished stare.
Walls
The sturdy walls of society
Are built with lies
Baked into bricks, sized by decree or committee
When falsities no longer fit one another, the walls crumble
And the hideous unbound truth is free to uncoil
Across the barren land.