POEM: A Poet’s Currency

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Top Pun

Poet versus economist:

A Poet’s Currency

ARE YOU A CAPITALIST?
no
i am more
a kin
to that econ amissed
e e cummings

In case you didn’t know, E. E. Cummings was a poet who often broke the rules of capitalization.

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POEM: Love Birds

Posted on October 6, 2024 by Top Pun

Back to nature. Forward to nature.

Love Birds

His life peered
As an empty field
Soully a tree
Stray flowers
A pair of birds
Blades of grasses
Up on closer inspection
Colonies of bugs
A myriad of life
On the down low
In the dirt and dust
From whence wee come
A grain of sand
To see the world!
And every now and agin
Two legged wons
Scurry buy
Reflecting too themselves
Mirrorly a vacant lot
To sum
Still
Fore me
This lot
Is heaven unearth
Welling up
With awe that is doubly yearned
Out standing in my feeled
Holy culpable
Of telling the deference
Between life and death

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POEM: Needle-less to Say, ESC Late

Posted on October 5, 2024 by Top Pun

Israel has embraced 1984 doublespeak with it’s “de-escalation through escalation.” Our addiction to violence as the only response to violence spawns absurd levels of destruction. We need to inject nonviolence into confrontations, or be drug to war.

Needle-less to Say: ESC Late

We are tempting “de-escalation through escalation.” –Israeli officials

Our culture of violence
Is deeply vein
A main lyin’
Drug through our body politic
Instant solutions
Pressing a lone button
Plunging us into oblivion
Saying high to new problems
For every won wrought
Endlessly strung out
Soully wading
Fore what is
Overdo
War anon
Powerless to compute any amor
Terminally tardy
That singular key
ESC late
Countlessly hitting
And no return

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POEM: Oddly, Never Out of Whack

Posted on October 4, 2024 by Top Pun

The warring mob bosses speak with murderous necessity about “my enemy made me do it.” A ledged human freedom is disappeared. An even more assure bet is that the mob bosses are, oddly, never out of whack. So, if you are feeling an excess of whacked…

Oddly, Never Out of Whack

Dead enemies in your wake
Dead enemies in your sleep
You might just
Think to celebrate
As laud as you want
Your supplicated preys
Your decimate
Your faux
Lies dead
On a rival
All the same
The lyin’ roars
All that is human
Shield

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POEM: Brand Knew

Posted on October 3, 2024 by Top Pun

Every war starts with something to the effect of: “This is a new kind of war, a new kind of enemy that we have never seen before.” Spoiler alert: war is the same owed shit recycled. Anew kind, of war, as some kind of possible.

Brand Knew

They loosed the dogs of war
Fresh meet
Unlike anything weave
Scene before

 

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POEM: Fort Knox Elementary

Posted on October 2, 2024 by Top Pun

JD Vance at the Vice Presidential debate became the latest exemplar of the hollow response to school shootings, offering thoughts and preyers, and fortresses, and nothing else in between — except offering up our children to gun terror. This poem is the latest of my gun writes on the last bastion of free dumb.

Fort Knox Elementary

Under lock and key
Beyond broke in mettle detectors
Behind that which is bullet proof
Could our hearts lie
Where our treasure is helled
Those hapless minors of school daze
Undertaking
Alarming drills
Shut up in
The last bastion
Of free dumb
A moment of silence
Reloading
School preyer
Fervent please
That only thoughts
Are passing
Through and through
Our kids’ aheads
Soully choiring what is taut
That might he fortress is
Hour God
No longer culpable
Of being schooled
In the deference
Between bunk and bunker
In sticking to our guns

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POEM: Unfrock The World

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Top Pun

With this poem, I inaugurate won of my many titles: “The most write irreverend.”

Unfrock The World

I slammed it
Hearty har hard
In fool reveres
Being soully in titled
The most write irreverend
Fore awe
Who will hear
The world is frocked
And the king has no clothes

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POEM: De-construction Jobs

Posted on September 29, 2024 by Top Pun

This poem goes out to those lives and communities where climate disasters wreak havoc, especially those suffering in the chasm between those who have the wherewithal to recover and those who don’t. May we be good neighbors to each other and Mother Earth.

De-construction Jobs

Climate chaos rains supreme
Yielding fateful knews
Of coming grave whether
The hows still standing
Those that have
Assurance
Have brought a bout
A boom
In construction
And those that have not
What just
Remains
Fore sail
An other kind
Of Jōb
Re-manned to the pauper authorities
Re: construct
Or bust
A small chide unherd
If soully a village razing
Their after
Wrests in piece
Some wear ails
Whither work to be undone

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POEM: A Bit Touched

Posted on September 28, 2024 by Top Pun

Some people claim that people who are a bit disturbed are more creative. This may be true. Surly, I am a bit touched…as this poem would have it.

A Bit Touched

I was a bit down
Taking me
To the dark of night
I was a bit broke
A loan with the riffraff of my mine
I had a dream
That was a bit disturbing
I was wearing nothing
Abut a throng
When from the heart of the rabble
The oldest of friends
Plays their hand
Upon my shoulder
Of a thorough fare warn
Whispering in my ear
Unveiling some poetry
From a place unherd
Giving me
Awe I need
To be
A bit touched

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POEM: That’s Rich

Posted on September 27, 2024 by Top Pun

Most rich people consider themselves just, comfortable. My favorite dialogue from the movie, Crazy Rich Asians:

Rachel Chu: “So your family is, like, rich?”
Nick Young: “We’re comfortable.”
Rachel Chu: “That is exactly what a super-rich person would say.”

That’s Rich

It is just
Money
The rich proffer
Effacing oblivion
I am just
Comfortable
The rich prey
What does it
Profit amen
To game the whirled
And loose your sole
Travailing the globe
Till kingdom come

The only specific behavior of the rich that this poem alludes to is travelling around the globe, presumably made possible by jet-setting. I suspect that flying on a plane countless times is a good proxy for being rich. Flying by plane is increasing worldwide; but, most of this is a small portion of people who fly many, many times. Estimates are that 80-90% of people in the world have never flown in a plane. If you cannot guess how many times you have flown, say within ten times, with the confidence that you would bet someone else’s life on, then you are rich. If you would bet someone else’s life on it, then you are rich as well, oil well.

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POEM: Jackson Pollack Heart Work

Posted on September 26, 2024 by Top Pun

Jackson Pollack Heart Work

This poem was inspired by the image of my heart exploding and the splatter creating an unfathomable work of heart on any walls closing in on me.

Jackson Pollack Heart Work

I was cornered
Awe round me
I temped too
God be holed
In a four chamber homme
A work of heart
Life beaten
Threw me
Exploding on
Too the seeing
Every wall
Canvas squared
A wreck tangle
Of some kind
No’ing the impassable
A cure rate unknown
That winnow
To my soul
To my whole body
Of work
Without brushes
With death
Compelling soully
To but a few

This poem can be considered a companion poem to an earlier work of heart:

My Heart Breaks Daily

My heart breaks daily
Spilling out into the streets
And other public places.
The authorities instruct me
To clean it up.

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POEM: A Man of Promise

Posted on September 14, 2024 by Top Pun

A poem of what is owed, what is the present, and what is yet to come…

A Man of Promise

“What is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”
–Micah 6:8

“Jesus promised his disciples three things — that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.”
–William Barclay, commentary on The Gospel of Luke

Awe that God
Axis too due
Justice
Loving mercy
And walking humbly
As a man of promise
I am
The free-est
Man I know
Wear joy abides
In that beautiful pain the accost
Of keeping won’s eye on the price
Mitigated only by
Not getting out that much
Accept to be
Completely
Fearless
Inexplicably happy
And in constant trouble

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POEM: A Salt & Battery

Posted on September 13, 2024 by Top Pun

This poem is a meditation on that sense of being positively negative. There is something electric between positivity and negativity. I am a salt of the earth kind of guy, a dude abiding, and yet some people don’t take kindly from my posed battery.

In this poem, the “dude abiding” is a reference in the iconic film, The Big Lebowski. Also, I make a Harry Potter reference to the mysterious archenemy, Voldemort. As a muggle of sorts, I fact-checked the appropriateness of this reference, and I learned that young Harry Potter got a lightning bolt scar on his forehead in his first encounter with Voldemort. Bizarrely, I have had a lightning bolt scar on my forehead for years and I never knew this Harry Potter connection. I even looked scarily like Harry Potter when I was his age. Truth is stranger than fiction! Enjoy.

A Salt & Battery

Could you be more positive?
Could you BE more negative
I was charged
In my battery of attests
Watts power got
Too due with it
Could you be volt amor?
Know
A salt of the earth kind
Of guy
The deference between
Amp or sand
A special kind
Of mettle
A rare alloy to awe
Galvanizing
A preternatural potentiality
To not be taken
Lightly
As knews of eclecticity
Beware he
As miss under stood
As shrewed as a wake
As lightening scarred
To be powerless
As if weather
Killing apparent
Or a small chide
I am
Just
A dude
Abiding
Fully groan
As a word winning wizard
Harnessing magic
Between positive and negative

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POEM: Phone Smarts

Posted on September 12, 2024 by Top Pun

Cell phones, so-called “smart” phones, seem to have wraith-like abilities, sucking the life out of us. I yearn for peace and quiet, and these beeping devices grab hour, a tension. This poem is owed, to such a diction…

Phone Smarts

Wee are captive
Stuck in our cell
Phone homme!
The more bars the better reception
And when that umbilical chord wrings
As anybody who no’s anybody
Everything is big in text us
Given the finger
Tapping away our lives
Sow reflexively spell bound
Our most be loved possession
And hand helled
The yoke is on us
As everyone udderly grasps
It’s a given
A bad rapt

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PROTEST –NO DEFENSE OF GENOCIDE — Ohio Air National Guard base

Posted on September 11, 2024 by Top Pun

On Tuesday, September 10, 2024, Veterans for Peace and the Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition held a protest against U.S. support and complicity in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. We stopped entrance to the gate of the 180th Fighter Wing of the Ohio Air National Guard base near Swanton, Ohio. Some of us were prepared to get arrested, but the sheriffs showed unusual restraint. We will be back soon with similar protests in NW Ohio.

For background info on this protest, check out the letter to the base commander here, and the powerful legal brief on the illegality of U.S. actions in the genocide here.

Anti-genocide Protest at Air National Guard

Anti-genocide Protest at Air National Guard

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POEM: A Posit of Treasured

Posted on September 7, 2024 by Top Pun

A poem to our penchant for extractive industries despoiling Mother Earth.

A Posit of Treasured

In our lust
For lustrous alchemy
And unsatiable technowizardry
We dug with such graveness
Nothing could scar us out of our mine
We combed over the balding earth
In a slavish gambit of shiny meddles
The barbarous glittering of the whirled
The imperial reign of such roamin’
Mother Earth cries
Out
Caesarean sections
Disgorging
This ore
That
What
A litter
From the bowels of earth
Bought a bout
By shitty bastards
Picking and shoveling their way threw life
Criminal fuckers
Without a clue
Lost in their own
Effluence
Humanity spent
On the heist consolation price possible
Mother Earth despoiled
In a posit of treasured

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Talk of Freedom

Posted on September 6, 2024 by Top Pun

A lot of talk about freedom — less walking the walk. A lot of talk about grievance — less sacrificial action.

Talk of Freedom

Freedom
Freedom
Awe the talk today
And the lessen of walk
I am
Not free
And talk of just us
You are not free
And others’ will
Pay for your freedom
Unlike unfrayed justice
Pain the price
Mine
To give
Freedom for awe
A worthy garment
To where
Each and every won
Two gather

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POEM: “Kids these daze” – Mother Earth

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Top Pun

A bit of wisdom: listen to your momma.

“Kids these daze” – Mother Earth

Pardon
Dying
Too ax
How due
You
No
Your mama
Accept as
A consume her
Living as if theirs
No tomorrow

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POEM: Unschooled Shootings

Posted on September 4, 2024 by Top Pun

Georgia on my mind.

Unschooled Shootings

As law abiding sits in trouble
An other
School shooting
A nation whys
The soul thing
That stops
A bad man
With a gun
More often then not
Is a body politic
Riddled with bull
Its quest for free dumb
Holy unschooled
In a republic free
Of violins
Played
Simp-ly as an overture
To amor of the same
Pining for something beyond
Thoughts and preyers

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POEM: Canary in a Coal Mine

Posted on August 31, 2024 by Top Pun

Canaries were used in coal mines as an early detection system for toxic gasses. Canaries are particularly susceptible to methane and carbon monoxide. Canaries will get sick or die before it affects humans, miners. Still, the miners have to respect the vulnerability of the canaries, or they will suffer a similar fate.

This poem plays with the notion that the most vulnerable among us serve as early warning signs of our common, shared fate. I mourn the fact that even when we possess such knowledge, we often only take the time and effort to be glad that we aren’t the vulnerable one at that given moment. This poem also includes a tip of the hat to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Canary in a Coal Mine

Don’t flip
The bird
Singing that cagey song
Living afar
Deeper than just
Six feet under
A mist
That not sow
Gentle rock
Of ages
From seeing
The sun
Burning nigh
And wading for what
Life is
A gas
In visibility
No smell attest
As time in memorial
The bird flips off
And still
However unschooled
A miner gratitude
That he’s not
A canary
In what is
Mine

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