Monday Poem

5 White cops fatally shot in Dallas: 7/7/2016 Philando Castile fatally shot in Falcon Heights: 7/6/16 Alston Sterling fatally shot in Baton Rouge: 7/5/16, David Duke’s back: 2016 … and more. ………………………………………… —US News. Jittering on a Rim with all this shooting going on it’s hard to tell who’s good and who’s bad. it must…

Monday Poem

At The Milken Conference: “Attendees want to know about … politicsand global military campaigns only insofar as (they) produce newopportunities to make money. A panel called “Value in Turmoil” waspacked (and) ‘Opportunities in distress’ was a recurring theme.”…………………………………………. —David Dayen in The Intercept Das Kapital In a conference of elites the distress of others is…

Monday Poem

Pakistan is digging trenches —graves for people who have not yet died as the country prepares for another record-breaking heat wave. Scientists place the blame for rising temperatures squarely on climate change. ……………………………………………………. —IndiaTimes, May 23, 2016 Diggers Dig …diggers dig.spades trace dolorous arcs in dry airmaking long scars for many corpses. diggers dig. sharp…

Monday Poem

Twilight You waken with Uneasewho’d slept quietly beside you until the moment you had stirred Perhaps a tree had brushed a windowmaybe an attic squirrel had been perturbed,just as shadows begin moving when darkness is disturbed Unease upsets your mindwheelthe moment eyelids partwhich sets your mindwheel turning,working, opening the harbor gates of daylightto the terrifying…

Monday Poem

Only in myth is death an illusion,but there’s beauty in hopeand hope in mythand myth in true profusion…………….. —Angela DiSperanza.Grief to Myth When they came to the tomb’s stoneit was set aside as if the occupant they’d loved had gone to breakfast with friendsleaving a folded sheet for them and some linen strips or notand,…

Monday Poem

Scientists are claiming a stunning discovery in their quest to fully understand gravity.They have observed (gravitational waves) the warping of space-time generated by the collision of two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth. —BBC, 2/11/16 Gravitational Waves when I entered your orbitand you swept into mineI gave a gravitational wavewhich you returned…

Monday Poem

A Revolution of Tenderness The pope suggests love in his“Revolution of Tenderness and Love,”and though popes have been on the wrong side of love,this one, this Francis, is right But a revolution of tendernesswhich goes against the zeitgeist grainto be rapacious is the Marianas Trenchof dashed hopes and, therefore,the drowning place of dreams.This is what…

Monday Poem

The Milky Way, is destined someday to collide with the next-nearest spiral galaxy, in the direction of the constellation Andromeda. When they collide, our sun will likely be flung into a new region of galactic space. But when is that someday? ……………………………………………………………….. —EarthSky.org. When Andromeda and the Milky Way Collide. the night sky now is…

Monday Poem

… Solar Filaments the sun's intense but placidteasing this morning’s fog from the river,at least from this vantage, sitting as we areat a perfect distance from its orange fireboxsafe from its arcing solar filaments,the eruptions which suddenly uncoil like snakesand would reduce me to cinderswith their dragon breath if not forcertain equations like those that…

Monday Poem

How could something so beautiful not be right —Margaret Wertheim, on Einstein’s equations……………….. for his General Theory of Relativity The elegance of the simplest things makes them right. The shape of a smooth stone cannot be argued against —one touch is testimony of its rightness. Its small heft says, I'm here. Its mass, snapped by…

Monday Poem

Aging Face With mirrors the aging face became personal.It hung before only on the heads of others,but with realization that the still surfaceof a pond returned the image of the seer,when polished metals revealed a clear and troubling truth,when a silver-backed square of glassserved up serial images of hard fact so precisely denial was impossible,…

Monday Poem

..Fundamental Misunderstanding — thoughts on Charlie Hebdo, and Kenya and Beirut …and Paris everything ever written or saideverything drawn or played or sungevery headline that cried or bledevery fresco, every poemeverything wrung from our cranial spongeevery inky insult flungevery instrument ever madeevery expletive blasted from lungsevery face on a canvas hungevery righteous canto prayed…. that…