dark poetry

Monday’s Rune: Hank’s Wine Whine

Bukowski had six cats,
a horrific history,
(eventually) a (2nd) wife, a daughter,
and hated his father,
maybe mother too.
he smoked cigarettes
and drank wine
while writing poems
until the wee hours
while
listening
to classical music.

He drove an old VW bug
and was attractively
unattractive.

Playing the horses
was more than
a gambling vice,
it was an avocation.

You say so what?
I say, you don’t know?

Look both ways when you need a poem to post on a Monday.
Mind the gaps cuz yer on yer own dude.

Henry Charles Bukowski: a “laureate of American lowlife.” Time (magazine).

Monday’s Rune: Independence Day

On This July Day

Born a year after
the last big war,
for decades,
I said the pledge
with hand over heart and sang
patriotic songs.

I took cover under my desk,
was a Boy Scout of America
who could properly fold the flag
and post the colors at twelve.
I prayed every day. I trusted God.

I played at war and we
always won. We were
always right, better,
and stronger. Powerful,
but merciful.

I enlisted before
graduating from high school,
I saluted. I knew, followed,
and respected flag etiquette —
still do. I swore
to protect our Constitution.

I spent two careers in the service of
(willing to, but not wanting to,
die for) my country—my people.
I thought I taught my children well.

Now,
examining my conscience
I find I am a man of a different mind,
No longer as certain of our goodness,
of our unitedness, of our honest
democracy. I feel fooled and
deceived. I feel hated by my own.

It’s not the date, it is the old spirit
where I question my allegiance,
to what or whom?

It is still in me. I still care.
But nothing is the same.
Confidence is dead. For our
freedoms, I worry with dread.

I feel conflicted. Lost.
Our enemies are close.
How patriotic am I?
I should be. I want to be.

In truth, I feel this way
not because I no longer love
my country,
but because I still do.

Happy 4th, anyway.
Be careful out there.

Look both way as we try to understand.
But deeply mind the gaps.
Even the Nazis thought they were right.

According to THIS Gallup poll, it’s a thing.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #264 (Picturesque)

Click on the graphic for more 54-word wonders and Sammi’s blog page.

Damn Reality

Here I go again reading
Bukowski’s clear vision voice
poems lacking picturesque pastoral principles,
with plainly different aesthetic dispositions
of attitude nobody loves.

We know that deep inside,
his way is part of us;
part of him, hides in us.
How many ways
can we paint the same picture,
or tell the same story.

Look both ways reading anyone’s poems.
Mind the gaps hiding deep within when writing your own.

Monday’s Rune: A Metamorphosis

When does it happen, if it happens at all?
The innocent child becomes a troubled teen,
Then a vicious young man with an M-sixteen,
Or a rivetted young woman focused on his fall.

Is this the formula of a coming dystopia?
Is the excitement of the fight so much greater
Than desire for tranquility and gods’ opium?
Is power over people the dark masturbator?

Some change. Many don’t. Over time
We all morph and grow to some degree
For better or worse, but will I ever be free?
Human life’s permanent paradox of paradigm.

Look both ways with conscious contemplation of then and now.
Mind the gaps for lessons of fortitude,
not the comfort of fear.
You can only die once, Bukowski notwithstanding.

Sammi’s Weekender #257 (luminous)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s page and more 30-word wonders.

 

Ominous luminosity

Nearby outside, a dark
electricity filled night
jarred us with
thunderous raging lightning.

Saint Elmo’s fire
danced and filled our cockpit
with ominous luminosity
from Palpatine,
to our fearless distress.

Look both ways for distress travels any direction.
Mind the gaps as you let the force be with you.

Note: Palpatine (Darth Sidious) was the name of the Emperor in the Star Wars movies.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 28)

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Today’s prompt was to write a concrete poem. I wanted to do all 30 prompts.

What I did instead was intended to be a black out poem in lieu of the prompt, I’ve done concretes before. Not today.

I decided that rather than black out unused text to create the poem, I would extract the lines from the first few paragraphs of a longer story. If I had more time, I might have attempted some art to overlay the blacked-out area.

If I included the entire narrative, it would have been too long with entire paragraphs blacked out. So, I extracted the parts/words/sections that made up the poem.

I selected the first few paragraphs from the titled section, “On the Rainy River” from the book, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien © (published in 1990 by Houghton Mifflin).

Drafted

one story I’ve never told,
it would only cause embarrassment,
a confession…
makes me squirm,
I’ve had to live with it, feeling the shame,
it’s a hard story to tell.

if evil were evil enough, if good were good enough
I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage…
Courage, comes in finite quantities,
it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward.

I was drafted to fight a war I hated.
(You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead.)
…I assumed that the problems of killing and dying did not fall within my special province…

The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968.
I was too good for this war.
Too smart, too compassionate, too everything.
I was above it. A mistake, maybe…I was no soldier.

Look both ways for reasons why and why not.
Mind the gaps. That’s where the booby traps hide.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 26)

Click the NaPo button above to open today’s prompt page with links to more poems.

For my twenty-sixth daily, prompted, voluntary assignment, today I was challenged to write a poem that contains at least one epic simile. These (Homeric) similes extend and develop over multiple lines with decorative elements that emphasize the dramatic nature of the subject. As suggested, I chose to write a complete poem as one long epic simile theme (salted with some metaphor) to carry the poem.

Flying Like Dragons

Like unleashed frightening awesomeness,
like giant thundering flying dragons with
massive wings lifting us skyward, roaring, breathing fire;
my brain blends with this pestilent machine, as if I’m guiding
an iron plague with deafening noise to wreak death,
to pour vengeance down upon their wrongs, a bane
to my enemies, a scourge of fire-for-fire. Flying
at invisible heights, with a sharp stinging tail, breathing
radiation into electrons, as my stealthy flying monster
seeks annihilation of the unjust.

Like a beast, it sees over great distances,
it smells its enemies in total darkness; then skillfully, silently
we approach as offensive defenders with hidden talons;
without emotion or fear, as if by kismet we destroy our prey
with automatic, irreversible, unmerciful curses.

Look both ways to see what is nearby but accept the limits of sensory perception.
Mind the gaps and trust your dragon’s instruments.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 24)

Just click on this button for the prompt page and more poems.

For the final Sunday and to begin the last week of National Poetry Month, I’ve been egged on to the sunny task of writing a poem that describes using hard-boiled simile. The prompt suggested similes such as those used in detective stories featuring a tough unsentimental protagonist with a matter-of-fact attitude towards violence. I slipped in some horror genre.

The moon that night reflected light outlining everything and everyone with tarnished silver lines and a grayish tint covering, like the lining of an old vampire’s coffin. Our faces were puffed and molted like poisoned mushrooms on stems growing out of our jackets. The tree we hung him from looked like a dragon’s skull with dead, dried bones — fingers and hands protruding in all directions. It was as bleak and hopeless as a baby’s funeral. The smell was as if standing in an old open crypt exuding the musty odors of long dead flesh. Gravediggers’ shovels made rhythmic sounds cutting earth like piercing chunks of lead striking burned ashes of dead bodies. No one made another sound. Each wondered if we had killed him dead enough, or would he rise again like the devil’s undead corruption? It was our common thought, a fear that united our cause but shadowed our minds like a haunting nightmare’s gloom. We were men, but that night we were like the evil undead lamenting a hopeless mantle of some human hell.

Look both ways when identifying good and evil.
Each defines the other by its absence, yet the absence of one makes the other incomparable.
Mind the gaps when laying blame. Nothing is perfect.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 22)

Click this image to open today’s prompt page with links to more poems.

Today’s one-thirtieth of NaPo prompts challenged me to write a poem that uses repetition. I may repeat a sound, word, phrase, image, or any combination. I chose a name. (Note: published one day late because someone forgot to click on publish.)

When Nothing Else Can

Maybe Bukowski was right.
We are strange, we of the people.
Is someone’s world better
when we’re not in it?
Bukowski’s is gone.

Bukowski had a point
about hate’s self-sufficiency,
better to not care at all if love
needs so much help. Gratuitous
masturbation of the psyche
is all about Bukowski.

Bukowski was right when he said,
the world is full of boring, identical,
mindless people. They run from the
rain but revel in tubs of bubbles and water.
Where’s the glory here? said Bukowski.

Bukowski didn’t tell me to find what I love
and let it kill me, but I blame it on Bukowski anyway.
There is a loneliness in this world, wrote Bukowski.
Just drink more beer, more and more beer, now
that’s really Bukowski!

I think Bukowski was right when Hank said that
sissies have hard lives. And most important for me,
Bukowski said, nothing can save you except writing,
and equally important, a poem knows when to stop.
I think what Bukowski said is nuts, but also too true,
so it stops, but this is not the end of this Bukowski bit.

Look both ways when sampling the sweet and the sour.
Mind the gaps for clues of generations.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 Day 13

Click the graphic for the NaPo prompt page and more poems.

Today, in honor of the “potential luckiness of the number 13”, I was to write a poem that joyfully states that “Everything is Going to Be Amazing.” If I couldn’t find the enthusiasm to write myself a riotous pep-talk, I was to muse on good things coming down the track. This world offers us the persistent possibility of surprise. Right. Reminds me of people who say “happy memorial day.”

I grudgingly wrote to this prompt today with a contrarian pall over my heart. When I feel something is wrong, but no one will tell me what, fear of the unknown weighs heavy.

Nope. It Ain’t.

I don’t mean nothin’, Man.
We jus’ gotta get out of this place.

Look up at the stars, forget the mud
and reality. Live the dream, Baby.

It ain’t easy being green, or stupid,
or a timid runt. But love conquers all,

What lives it don’t flat out ruin.
Up against the wall. The man gotcha.

It’s a meaningless number, three
little birds just told me, freedom,

It’s just another word. We can check out
anytime we like, but we can never leave.

Every little thing gunna be all right,
if it’s the last thing we ever do.

Look both ways at the pluses and minuses.
Mind the gaps for ways to escape.