dark poetry

Lay Down, Lady – NaPo 2025 Day Nineteen

Today I was to write a poem that tells a story in the style of a blues song or ballad.

Green Eyed Blues

Loved you as they taught me to do.
Loved it all, as they taught me to do.
Duty, honor, country; I was there — to die for you.

Then, on that day came the blues, as it all withered and died.
One day what I loved just rolled over and dammed-well died.
Shit! Face down in my pillow I lay there and I cried.

I was the fool whose faith and flag I saw with pride.
I was the fool whose heart broke with a deathblow to pride.
No, I am no longer in love with you, such loss I cannot abide.

Good morning, America, how are you?
I’m true to the blue, mornin’ Murica, how are you?
Ima eating my shit sandwich with a hateful red-piss stew.

I’ve lost my world to white-hot green-eyed blues.
Nothing to die or to live for, I got me some green-eyed blues.
Sing me a song of freedom; I can’t eat, sleep, or find love in the news.

Look both ways to face the hopeless world we live in.
Mind the gaps but face the reality of nightmares on the day democracy died.

 

Dream On – NaPo 2025 Day Seventeen

Today I was challenged to write a poem themed around friendship, with imagery or other ideas taken from two paintings (my choice from many). One by Leonora Carrington, and another by Remedios Varo, two surrealistic artists and friends. A surrealistically inspired, friendly poem?

The irony of this day is this prompt juxtaposed with the definition of surrealism: “the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature (poetry), film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations.” (Webster, on line) Where does one draw the line?

“One good friendship will outlive forty average loves.”

Faces

On purpose.
Told no one. Told everyone and nobody.
Formless as seen on tv ritual
ceremoniously entwined
with green crabapple branches.
Cuts. Touch. Mix blood brothers.
That smell. You! What? Stink-love.

Feel that? Smell. Yell. Scream.
Lie. Beatings from bullies.
Shinny-up. Run. Escape. Drown. Cross.
Crimeless criminality.

Friends first. Not. But.
Family was a lie.
Roy Rogers was naked.
All naked. Sing. Pray. Sting like a bee.

Share hair. Cardboard shoe soles
over shew holes and altar boys.
Smoke sticks. Tangents. Guilt.

Together every day. Share loot.
Flat nose. Black eye. Blood everywhere.
Swing. Fall. Break things.
Climb. Cry. Evil father.
Saintly mother. Naked sister.

Uncle Joe. G. I. what da ya know?
Cold is not coal, or pea.
Melds wrapped in love and shame.
Masturbating demons defiled hosts.
Do it. Now dare to do-do, pee higher.
Lie to be loved. Play all day.

Ugly beauty deep forever.
Melting madness of happiness.
Wanting what color of love?
Damn.
Help.
Hurry.
Hide.
It’ll never die.

Then it died.
Then you died.
Then I cried.

Back.
Then.
When.
Me.
We.

Look both ways or every way at the same time
because art is in what part of a dream when nothing is real and there is no god?
Imagine. Mind the gaps and slaps in genital naps.
If it makes sense, it cannot be art.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 25, Beaucoup de Sade

I made it to Day 25, only to find this prompt prodding me to write a poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire.” WTF is that? We were given a wiki link and 35 questions, then set loose to sow whatever poetic damage we could. Proust? Really?

Beaucoup de Sade

What do you consider the perfect murder?
Do you want to kill anyone?
Or some group; like atheists,
gymnasts, or Sociologists? If so—
who, which, when, how, and why?
And where do you live?

Do you like to scare the shit out of people?
Do you point and laugh after they
wet themselves or die of a heart attack?
What is your favorite form of torture?
Do you reminisce about the Spanish Inquisition?

Of all the people you know, what proportion
do you hate the most and wish they were dead?
(Former spouses, Mormons, and JWs don’t count.)
And why? It’s always why, right? I wonder too.

Do you hate any professional or amateur
sports teams, clubs, individuals, musicians, or poets?

Do you consider prohibition of libel and slander
an impingement on your freedom of speech?
Did you make crank calls as a child?
How many times a week do you defecate?
Masturbate?

What smells get you sexually excited?
Do you fantasize doing naughty things
with people you know, like your best friend’s
current or previous spouse or partner?

Who are your favorite villains? Are you
ever good on the bad guys and gals?
What are you addicted to?
Do you think pizza is overrated?
Do you hang out at cemeteries
just to find peeps with shared
hopes and dreams?

Did you enjoy this prompt
as much as I did?

Look both ways and only read Proust if your name is Duane (Moore)
and doing your psychiatrist is your lifelong fantasy.
Mind the gaps for punji traps because some wars never end.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 24, Baby Bomber

To meet today’s prompt; after much wondering, looking, rabbit-hole tripping-into, and unsuccessful Google hunts, I landed on a line (two, actually) to bogart from the poem “Weatherman” by Emily XYZ (from the book, Verses That Hurt: Pleasure and Pain from the Poemfone Poets, (eds.: Jordan and Amy Trachtenberg).

The prompt was to write a poem that begins with a line from another (person’s) poem. The line(s) I chose begin Emily’s poem and mine: “Had I been a bomb builder then instead of a baby // boomer which I was which I am still”….

Baby Bomber

Had I been a bomb builder then instead of a baby
boomer which I was and which I am still,
I could have been either famously infamous,
or just plain old famous.
For my cause I could have maimed and murdered
my way into a second life as a Jeff Dunham puppet.

Born after, I missed the big WW-two, was virtually clueless
about a Korean War which ended on my 7th birthday,
but the big boom-boom, GI-numbah ten, at 17,
that dirty old Southeast Asian War for which I was almost eligible for the draft,
so I joined up. Git ‘er done, ya know?

But ten years later, as that buff bomber guy, I learned how nukes were made (Top Secret with critical nuclear weapon design information/CNWDI).
I coulda kilt many a monkey (literally) in Nam, disabled shit factories and fried females that the Chinese didn’t kill for crowd control, or pounded the Rooskys so hard I might have sterilized Putin’s daddy. Coulda but didn’t.

Never built a bomb or John Wayned
some commie pinko fascist and there are days when my ambivalence
flips my lifeless wig. Today, I wonder.
Left, right, left, and now your right;
what side am I on? And who cares?

If I’d been born a bomber instead of a boomer; things would be
exactly as they are. Except for this poem. And except for the spelling of this cause or that; how much difference is there between them and me?

Look both ways down the tunnel searching for which religion or cause is worth dying for.
Mind the gaps that may suck you in, or pay you well, because killing for a cause is killing still.

Emily XYZ

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 20, Who Won?

It’s Day Twenty at NaPo where the prompt challenged me to write a poem that recounts a historical event.

Who Won?

Some people think we,
the USA,
won every battle during
the war in Viet Nam.

When attrition
and body count mean more
than maneuver and tactic,

When pawns are used as bait,
it’s chess, not real life.
Has the Army ever
told the truth
at the first chance given?

Classmate Tom, only 20 when drafted
and forced to war
died in the battle Xa Cam My,
near Saigon, Viet Nam,
on the 11th day of April 1966.

In-country only three weeks,
along with nearly 40 of his mates,
many others butchered and maimed
for life—they now can barely tell the story.

Was it the short artillery fire,
the cleverness of the Vietcong,
the foolishness of the USA officers?

Attack after attack by the VC brought more
American blood to earth and more death, until—
not so mercifully, Charley decided
to move on and to fight another day.

Nine years later Saigon fell
and Viet Nam became
one country and America’s
government found other things
to lie about.

Like in 1966 when Private Tom
and 35 virtual strangers died
in a forbidden foreign place
fighting for his Purple Heart
and Combat Infantry Badge.

Twenty years—where did they go?
Twenty years, and for what?
The tag on my shirt says
“Made in the Socialist
Republic of Viet Nam.”

Look both ways and wonder, will it ever be over?
Ignore the gaps at your own peril
so you can go back home in a metal box and declare victory,
or at least the promised “honorable peace.”

Note: While the reference in the poem to 20 years is the full duration of the US involvement in the Viet Nam conflict, it is also the age of my classmate when he was killed. The Battle of Xa Cam My was 58 years ago.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 19, The Burden of Truth

My poem today was to be about something that “haunts” me. Fair enough.

But the prompt also required that I change the word haunt to hunt. Since my nineteenth poem uses neither word, it is not (technically) written to prompt. But almost.

“You better stop, look around — Here it comes
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown”
(From the song, “19th Nervous Breakdown” by The Rolling Stones)

The Burden of Truth

There is a profound sadness in me—
One retained by conscience and nourished by guilt.

More than thirty years of unhealthy, but honest regret
and self-disgust padded with insufficient amends
has not mitigated my permanent tattoo of rue.

Done cannot be undone.
But a foolish deed,
words written or said, cannot be overturned
by going back in time —
back in time to fix, to heal, or to recover.

No amount of positive can reverse it.
Neutralizing is impossible.

Repression of memory is pathetic denial—
defense mechanisms to palliate my purgatory.

Even the permanence of death
leaves lasting damage to unrepairable hearts,
minds without memories,
which may be just as well. I know and I do not know.

Perhaps there is a time for every purpose.
Maybe this stone will be cast away.
Hope so
because I don’t know how to turn
guilt into innocence with only time.

Look both ways at the story of life for forgiveness and regret.
To kiss and to touch. To be right and to be wrong. To climb and to fall.
Mind the gap to fit the story but we may never know the truth.
Even eyewitnesses are wrong seventy-plus percent of the time.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 12, Metaphor for Murder

The prompt for day 12, a Friday, gives me the option to write a poem that plays with the idea of a tall tale. This could have been a mythical character, one I made up, or I could add to a real person’s biography.

My dictionary says play with means “to handle, change, or deal with (something) in a careless way.” It is a serious topic: crime, specifically murder. While I used mythical American comic book superheroes in place of real-life investigators/detectives during the reign of terror of serial killer Gary Ridgway, and the 20-year chase by said law enforcement, I hope my poem is not so careless as to upset or offend anyone.

Metaphor for Murder

Superman came, leaping, flying,
x-ray visioning. Batman came kung foo fighting,
as Wonder Woman and journalists
(Clark Kent?) did their thing.

The Green Lantern watched
at the green river shores as Aquaman,
and the whole damned Justice
Society (or League) of America
formed up
as the Green River Task Force.

Add J-Edgar’s FBI gang, and all
the cops—superheroes were
chasing a serial killer: one death,
then twenty-one, then forty-something
raped and strangled: all women
and girls. Forty-eight, then 49,
some say 71, maybe as many
as 90. No one knows.
Not even the magical
Justice Society of America
or any such task force.

Nineteen years later before some
non-superhero, a Danny DeVito-like
lab-rat scientist used DNA
to convict Ridgway (alive today)!

The limelight shined on, and
the superheroes garnered cred,
and confessions from
the second-most prolific
serial killer in United States history
(standing accorded by “confirmed” murders).

Look both ways at the merging of fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, truth and lies.
Mind the gaps for what magic science has yet to discover and journalism to uncover.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 11, Utterly Foolish

Howdy, Y’all.

A one-line poem is called a monostich. It’s a new form to me. For the 11th day of National Poetry Month, NaPoWriMo.net challenged me to write one (or more).

Utterly Foolish

Insanity: not exclusive to the mentally ill.

Look both ways because real saints cannot canonize themselves.
Mind the gaps for folly and error and always beware.

NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 3, Boom Boom

On the third day of April, I was given, via prompt, the task of writing a surreal prose poem (whatever that is). Since on Day One I chose to poetically recount the plot of Going After Cacciato (Tim O’Brien), and since it is somewhat psychedelically surreal, I decided to pop a prose poem based on that, with sadly surreal over-and-undertones, metaphors, allusions, suggestions, and damn lies.

Taking this poem literally can lead to a bad trip, man. If you ask, “What does that mean?” I ask, “What do you mean by mean?”

Boom Boom

In the Nam, the tunnel was the cuckoo’s nest of tightly squeezed death. It all went down that way because the blind leading the blind works better than the blind leading the sightful spiteful since the can-sees commonly also perceive gospel. At the observation post, Big Rifle, Jungle Doc, and Ready Mix watched as Stink Harris got blowed up, floating away, leaving only his face inside his helmet: undead—with a smile. So, they slithered off on a hunt to hook Cacciato. After floating down a cliff, they caught the next train to Delhi where he had jumped one to Kabul! Afghanistan, man. Flashbacks were set to the green alternate timeline when they wigged out because of the oppressed wartime dullness of sightings in Iran or Izmir, Turkey. They hear Sarkin say, “the way in” and she whispers, “is the way out.” Shell Shocked sings it, “Billy Boy, Billy Boy, Billy Boy lived but he was too afraid to die.” He was then a dead head. The smoke clears in Paris. In The World, man. Because being in the war is such a magical and wonderful thing, dead or alive. Boom-boom!

Look both ways for the real never is,
and in every lie, there is truth.
Mind gaps and try, try, try to understand being universally lost.

Sammi’s Weekender #336 (search)

Ease your search for Sammi’s page and more excellent 52, pickup pieces by clicking on this graphic.

The Maelstrom of Combat

Hunt and kill missions,
search and destroy—S&D,
sick and disgusting.

If it’s them and dead, it’s VC.
Body counts win wars.
Ask GM-azon.
Euphemistic defense profits for all,
but not the warrior, the solder,
dead and maimed
they suffer, kid-killers—all,
they hate and love battle.

Combat. Killing.
I die. Why?

Look both ways, toward the light and the dark.
Mind the gaps for hints of denial.
It is yours to reason why.