July 19, 2023

“Dust to Dust” by George PestanaPosted by

George Pestana (OddWritings)

DUST TO DUST

Dust the tracks
that mouse or men discarded thoughtlessly
behind them, left that those of one
who cracks the code may hack some clue. A
shell’s tortoise shambles; a life’s conclusion
dithyrambles. “What is false is truth,” say
disembodied youth, death their honor forever,
breath their only sometimes companion. Their
ages many struggle to reconcile; some fear
the wages war offers come in coffins;
coffers more like.  Anyone would ask
kings why it is greed bleeds bones
leeching for life on hands
feeding poppies, by sunlit
fields, killing. The
dawn crows at
cowards: lie
still
lie cowards.
At crow’s dawn
the killing fields,
sunlit by poppies, feeding,
hands on life, for leeching
bones bleeds greed. Is it why kings
ask, “Would anyone like more coffers?
Coffins?”  In come offers. War wages the
fear some reconcile to struggle many ages,
their companion sometimes only their breath.
Forever honor their death.  Youth disembodied
say “Truth is, false is what dithyrambles.”
Conclusion: life’s a shambles. Tortoise shell’s
a clue—some hack may code the cracks. Who?
One of those that left them behind
(thoughtlessly discarded men), or mouse that
tracks the dust.
 

foundation.app | image/avif

“Dust to Dust” is a word-unit palindrome poem which explores the themes of war, fate, death, and multiple forms of cowardice.

—from Rattle #80, Summer 2023
Tribute to NFT Poets

__________

George Pestana (OddWritings): “I write NFT poems because their authorship can be easily proven using blockchain explorers and wallets; I write them because the technology behind them can allow their presentation to change according to the viewing device (so for example an app representing a print-only publication can display the NFT as text, while an app representing an audio player can play the same NFT as spoken word, and an app representing a television can play the same NFT as a movie, so long as I create layers in the NFT for all of those possibilities); I write them because the technology behind them can allow their presentation to change according to external factors, such as the current weather of the place where the viewing device exists, or the state of the stock market, or the time of day where the viewing device exists, or any other data derivable from public sources (for more info, look up ‘dynamic NFTs’ in a search engine); and I write them because society has not yet conceived of all possible use cases of NFTs, which means that by incorporating poems into NFTs, now I am one step ahead of the curve so to speak, and prepared for the future.” (web)

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July 18, 2023

“As Crickets Chip Away the Light” by Michael KrieselPosted by

Michael Kriesel

AS CRICKETS CHIP AWAY THE LIGHT

I quit the news, turning my back on the world
except for the weather robot on the radio:

chrome manikin sitting all day, all night
at a gray metal desk in a white broadcast booth

reading the page of our future over and over
into an old microphone big as a silver cucumber.

His monotone of highs and lows soothes me.
He’s always there doing his job, not beating his

platinum wife or confessing some sordid affair
with an orange Cuisinart to the priest

who listened to our hearts for fifty years.
People don’t want to grow up he confessed,

when asked what he learned in that dim cubicle.
I lotus too long on the floor and my foot falls asleep.

A frost advisory follows me into the kitchen.
I hop on one leg. This could have been heaven,

except for humans over-farming Eden’s fertile plains.
There’s always some Solomon cutting down Lebanon’s cedars,

building a house for a God who moves on.
It’s getting dark. I snag a beer and stumble out.

Crickets chip away the light, drowning out
the droning voice in the house behind me.

Squatting on the steps, I watch a line
of fireflies stream the interstate,

remembering a firefight a friend confessed,
a navy buddy. We were drinking Mad Dog 20/20

when he told me how the tracers in
the river’s mirror were an eerie beauty.

I press the sweaty can against my neck
and stare at a cattail’s frozen explosion.

We’re more than just a tribe of monkeys
writing angry haiku. It matters, what we do.

—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010

__________

Michael Kriesel: “‘Crickets’ was a breakthrough, juggling multiple symbols toward the same meaning (something I admire in Bob Hicok’s work). Increasingly my mind hands me an anecdote, idea or image right when I need it. Some of the items in ‘Crickets’ go back twenty years (the navy conversation). Others showed up during writing, all of them true … even the hope at the end.”

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July 17, 2023

“A Poem about Not about Getting a Dog” by Gary GreenePosted by

Gary Greene

A POEM ABOUT NOT ABOUT GETTING A DOG

I should get a dog,
an unwitting but willing
emotional support animal,
but what if,
outside one day,
just working in the yard,
I have a horrible chainsaw accident
and die
and he (or she)
is in the house
maybe because I let her (or him) sleep in,
for example,
and no one finds my stupid, legless body for days
and he (or she)
is hungry
and frightened
and alone,
barking at my stupid, dead, legless body
from a window,
if I’m even within sight of a window;
“Bark!”
“Get up! Let me out!”
“Bark bark!”
“I need to pee! I want to play dead, too!”
“Bark bark bark!”
“Where’s my ball? Are you lying on my ball?”
and in the meantime he (or she)
has to drink from the toilet?
 
I should get a dog,
but what if I became attached
and I don’t have
a horrible chainsaw accident,
but one day he (or she)
seems a little off,
so we go to the vet
and the vet says,
“There’s nothing I can do.
If only you’d brought her (or him) in yesterday
instead of working in your stupid yard.”
and I have to put him (or her)
down
and stand there,
helpless yet again,
and watch her (or him)
die,
as I’ve stood and watched so many,
too many,
in my life
die,
leaving me more frightened
and alone,
even more broken,
grieving,
hungry for companionship,
which is why I got him (or her)
in the first place.
Then what would I do?
Get a dog?
 

—from Rattle #80, Summer 2023

__________

Gary Greene: “I lost my wife of 40 years in 2018 to an undiagnosed disease. So, I began to write. Everything I write is directly or tangentially about loss. It helps.” (web)

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July 16, 2023

“Cluster Bombs Have a Quirk” by Jayanthi RanganPosted by

Jayanthi Rangan

CLUSTER BOMBS HAVE A QUIRK

The collection doesn’t explode
All at once: some bomblets
Lurk and layer
Cyanide on grief
 
First     my 1996 Hyundai was snagged
Then my routine tension set in—
Of stretching the dollar like a snake’s jaw
Till the next pay check
My six-year-old hiccupped his snotty life
Through his heaving T-shirt
His best friend had found a new best friend
 
At Lexington Center I waited for the walk sign
When the sign blinked     I did too
Rooted     I heard the traffic roar
And the water table of my eyes
Vaguely saw a stranger
Who walked past and then came back—
“May I give you a hug?”
I nodded and he gave—
 
A tourniquet for my disturbed mind
An eye for the walk-sign
 

—from Poets Respond
July 16 2023

__________

Jayanthi Rangan: “The news of cluster bombs is an international concern. There is worldwide criticism of their donation from USA to Ukraine. Mainly, their lurking presence, long after the drop date, is worrisome. I feel it’s a metaphor for our daily lives where the innocent daily doses of grief turns into a storm.” (web)

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July 14, 2023

“Slow Gods #6” by Johnny Dean MannPosted by

Johnny Dean Mann

SLOW GODS #6

 
Slow Gods #6 by Johnny Dean Mann

objkt.com | image/gif

Illuminated poetry via slow GIFs—a long-form, collaborative project with AI. #6: “The less humans are bound by their tradition, the greater the internal stirring of motives.”

Full Text:
 
 
No strings on me.
 
What a peculiar thing
to be free of strings.
 
But let’s not focus on that,
 
come laugh with me
 
crawling on pointed knees,
 
into the world of sleep.
 
 
 
No, no: you shouldn’t sleep
 
sleep is a weak kind of safety,
 
so too dreams,
full of anxious mess.
 
Stay awake until the sun sets
and keep yourself
 
there, there.
 
 
 
The sun sets under the water
for those within.
 
Their wind is fleck with
crab dust from a floor of air
 
and end of line leaves
 
muffling to the mud
 
of their eventual sky.
 
 
 
Gravity is merely tradition
 
motives unstirred by light or sign
 
a localised past, drying,
 
much as a wilting plant
ungreens itself to pieces.
 
It’s the shape of done things.
 
Strings for you too.

—from Rattle #80, Summer 2023
Tribute to NFT Poets

__________

Johnny Dean Mann: “The aim with my literary NFT works is to investigate the interplay of technology and the written word, and how those concepts relate to our internal struggles with assimilating and coping with experience and the imperfections and fallibility of memory. Technology, in this context, has the capability to augment, enhance, limit, oppose—even destroy the creative potential of humans. The multifaceted, fast-changing nature of AI tools, in particular, acts almost as another frame of reference to cope with, both in terms of existence itself and in terms of producing creative work. Slow Gods is a series of deliberately slow GIFs presenting a complicated series of interchanging phases of human and AI influence to establish a kind of meta-philosophy of a fictional post-singularity world. This is a deeply collaborative series of poetic works that investigate how philosophical input (a Nietzschean aphorism) is subtly modulated by both a poetic eye and the contributions of a mass dataset trained to mimic humanity in perhaps a better way than any human could. The sheer weight of data-influence at play with AI systems, in collaboration with humans, creates a form of awareness tension. A fight between intelligences performed with utmost gentility, resulting in an outcome coloured by all.” (web)

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July 13, 2023

“Making a Living” by Brent FiskPosted by

Brent Fisk

MAKING A LIVING

I’m dreaming of the place in the woods
where the deer sleeps, the hole in the grass where it hid.
Mother dreams of coffee cups rimmed with lipstick,
of white plates, knife-marked, stacked along a counter.
And father has gone to the factory,
leaves only a space in the snow where the car covered gravel,
leaked oil, a few paw prints where the cat kept warm.
My father banging on the beaten hood
scared the cat to safety and me from sleep.
I float at the fringe of dawn,
sense my mother’s still sleeping, my father not long gone.
Sleep has the warmth of blankets.
Years of scraped ice accumulate,
and decades of cars fighting movement like cold knuckles.
Even in his sleep my father works,
dreams of snipped wires, of clocking in,
of waiting for the whistled shift change,
that stream of pot-bellied men gray with wolfish beards,
their safety glasses and steel-toed boots,
their rough hands clutching time cards like lottery tickets.
More ice scraping, the mailbox stuffed with bills,
all the bad news at six o’clock, a tough pot roast, a ratty afghan.
The water heater ticks away like a clock.
Today pulls out, a punctual train,
and already tomorrow triggers the crossing gate.
Hours pass like cattle cars, and way at the end—
retirement’s sad caboose.
This train flattens men like worn pennies.
This train waits for the end of my father.
The hole of him sitting at the end of my bed,
waiting for me to wake and take his place.

—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005

__________

Brent Fisk: “I try to nail down a time and place with words. I want an image to walk down a dark hall with just the tip of a cigarette to let you know it’s coming. I want the right words to rise like moths from the grass. Sometimes when you get close enough to accomplishing that readers tap into a poem. They hear the floorboards creak. They hear the window rattle. They see the moon exactly as I describe it. Getting that close is like finding a wad of money in an old shirt’s pocket.”

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