Pandemonium

Hortus, a suburban devil of Pandemonium,
Is lonely tonight for want of a loyal friend:
Anyone, sick or foul, human or fiend,
Even a specter enriched with plutonium.
The lights glare like angry souls at the palace,
And the burning rivers between here and there
Drown out the sweet, anguished tintamarre
Of endless victims of his own so-called malice.
Cold comfort for Hortus, who once boasted
The brightest shield and the longest spear,
Who stalked the palace halls without fear,
Now to stand out here, alone and untoasted.
"Curse you all!" he cries, "I don't deserve this!"
But knows there's no leaving Satan's service.

Unbridled Folly

He liked to ride bare-assed on a stallion,

Which he left unbridled and unsaddled.

(Some said his mind was idled and addled.)

He thought he commanded a battalion

Of shiny battleships and rugged tanks,

Would tolerate no genius in the ranks.

He commanded the firing of blanks

To force the surrender of cash-stuffed banks.

Clutching golden mane he charged the fray,

Screaming “Follow me, suckers!” at his troops,

Spanking with his crop his poor mount’s sore croup,

Reducing that proud steed’s neighs to a bray.

The exhausted beast reared, bit the golf shirt

Off our hero and tossed him in his dirt.

The Age of Aggravation

I can handle anxiety today

With a pill and a sip of water.

It comes from nowhere

And has little reason to exist.

Yea, I worry about this and that,

The bomb and global warming,

Without thinking, concentrating,

Like a deer in summer hiding

Its does though hunting season

Is an unrealizable future.

I like to think that all is well —

I mean the essential things,

From family to home and work —

I could explain why I’m right.

Then why is everyone so angry?

I refuse to recite the reasons.

They are invisible chimeras 

Of fear, corpses of inconsequence.

A few mad apples, rolling, legless,

Without sense or innocence,

Which won’t die before they rot.

What we used to call ideas

Are now ravenous ouroboros.

Oh, such satiety in aggravation! 

Opposition

At the point of the intersection

between the theoretical line

and point, there’s a dimension,

not of space, nor of time

(those have been imagined

more thoroughly than I’m

imagined by myself), but of sin.

Not the brand to trouble God,

this sin is words that begin

without being misunderstood

(because the speaker winks!)

and conclude that bad is good.

I think the pine trees think

in theorems, plane geometry;

their sap is magnetic ink,

and the splash of red I see

in rose, cardinal and Mars,

is blood escaped from my body --

as if I had come from a star

to civilize this wilderness.

The beach is the registrar

of every grain of sand. Mass

is energy’s conscience

and confessor. The soul is a gas.

Yet, right angles, in defiance

of the circle’s perfection,

assume the world, and science

escapes reality’s detection.

GOON

“The voice of the people” can’t leave too soon.

The fun was almost all he could endure,

Especially making game of the poor,

Though he didn’t like being called a goon.

Oh, how he’d made the great all look the same,

Throwing merde on every “leader’s” name.

They laughed at his japes without knowing why,

And threw gold at his head with insane glee.

He’d peeked up their wives’ dresses for a fee.

He’d danced on toes defying all to cry.

The best was the toy gun pulled from his hump

(Not a deformity — a holster’s bump),

And waved around the world with bulging eyes.

“See this?” he crooned, “No one who loves me dies.”

CROWS

My daughter says crows have a special caw

When they want others to come out and play.

She says they are nothing but beak and claw

Stuck to flapping smudges like to black clay.

Tonight they are a thousand cries, raucous

And shrill like legislative caucuses.

When the sun is gone, the crows, like all birds,

Will vanish and become silent as words

Pressed between the pages of a closed book,

As present as a European rook.

They huddle all night in their rookery

And at dawn explode in all directions

To escape each other, make mockery

Of murther. There’ll be just a few defections.

A Nation of One

His own minion in that nation,

He eats like a king, thinks like a stool.

All of his words are defecation.

His actions insipidly cruel,

He pounds his fist on the able,

Whips his army like a mule.

Hacksaw and hammer and Babel

Bang on the running heads

Of corpses on the embalming table.

He dreams of flowing Red,

Of flags and blood, this revelation:

The disappearance of the dead

And his vacuous exaltation. 

The Thief

The Capitol, a home of belief —

It doesn’t matter which — slowly decays.

The roof beams go first, nothing wooden stays.

Moss paints the stone arches in bas-relief, 

Images of dead and forgotten grief.

We live in roofless rooms with a sly thief,

Who steals, first our parents and eldest friends,

Then our useless youth, which he quickly spends.

Our music and books are replaced with fakes,

Our mirrors with odd faces, double takes.

Though I would not kill the thief if I could,

I defy him — plant flowers, kiss the wind.

I have children I hug; I’ve seldom sinned.

He can’t have my memories, bad or good.

Fall of Rebel Angels, detail (Pieter Bruegel The Elder), Sonnet #428

My book of the first 200 of these sonnets is now available for purchase. Click here:
My Human Disguise.

Did each cease to be an angel

The moment he or she rebelled?

What creatures were they when they fell,

Who spewed and farted, bled and yelled?

A kind of dead, not devils yet,

Before the rest of time in Hell,

They must endure a monster’s spell

In payment of their Master’s debt.

So men today learn to betray

Themselves and all they ever knew

As truth. They haven’t lost their way,

They’ll say. “We’re just making things new.”

The air is full of monsters’ lies

Falling like newly wingless flies.

Army Men Attack, Sonnet #336

The military objective: to knock the chip
Off the mysterious stone's shoulder, then tip
The whole evil mass over and bury its white
And gaping, bespittled gob out of human sight.
The soldiers, rigid with fear and umbrageous rage,
Are all innocent, young, exactly the same age.
Their memories are identical, none recalls
How his father fought the same war with the same balls.
Though they are many (the stone is ageless and numb,
Impervious to thought, its nervous system dumb),
They're dry sticks waved over dry soil by a dowser,
When what's needed is a six inch field howitzer.
They break against the stone, bounce back, and charge --
Small men to prevail over what is merely large.

The High Council (Mabuse), Sonnet #335

The high council deliberates in me,
Thirty-one wise morons who can't agree
Without a nod from their presiding lord,
Who's typically obliviously bored.
The peasantry shout in at the windows,
The scholars and lawyers from the cheap seats.
The aides are soft and unprincipled cheats,
And women left the chambers long ago.
I think never has indecision been
So richly rewarded, as conscious sin
Is rationalized in the name of change.
A vote is taken, the benches arranged
Again to reflect the switch of leaders,
Which elevates sixteen bottom-feeders.