Written After Viewing Another Evening of Armageddon on the History Channel

We’re adrift upon a frail craft on a flat earth,

Listening to the thundering roar of cataracts

That cascade over the rim into a fearful void.

Tis said that a dragon lurks there to feast upon

Crews of ships that plummet over the edge.

We need to cast our grapples toward the stars

Before we turn in a frenzy of madness

Like caged rats to lunge and claw at our neighbors,

But we’re powerless, as our ship

Drifts perilously closer to the rim.

We’re attempting to balance barefoot

On a razorblade edge of disaster,

Fearfully peering up at the rumbling volcano

That intimidates us with its imminent threat

Of engulfing us in fiery immolation.

Mired in impotent frustration,

Insanely groveling to blood-crazed visions

Even our best minds snap under the stress.

Goaded by his God of Chaos, a rooftop sniper

Has a pregnant Mary squarely in his sight.

We’re standing vigil at a death-watch

In a lunatic asylum’s intensive-care unit.

Labored breathing- - -erratic heartbeat- - -

Our life-line monitor is Cable Network News.

We listen, like lemmings, for the siren that signals

The start of our mad dash to outdistance our doom.

We’ve divined our fate from the entrails of vapor

That coil across the sky their message

Of irrevocable nuclear devastation..

Fields of mushroom flowers bloom over our cities.

Swarms of angry missiles sting the shuddering flanks

Of a frightened, fire-scorched earth

That quakes in convulsions of pain.

Splattered upon what few walls still remain

Are only enigmatic figures, shadows of life

That have been extinguished in a fury of fission.

New York- -Moscow- -Beijing- - -obliterated.

“Look on your works, ye mighty, and despair!”

But wait!  From beneath the ash and radioactive soil

From which man once coaxed his gardens,

A loathsome creature wriggles its way out of the death

To face the eerie loneliness of the radium green night.

What evolutionary process does this monster herald?

What cruel gods will it choose to fashion in its own image?

Will this foul beast reign in a world any more brutal

Than the end-times conjured forth by power-mad men?

     *    *    *    *   *   *   *

Cruel Devourer, let me post this poem

On our front door like a mark of Passover crimson,

That my family might be spared the horrors

Of this looming holocaust of annihilation.

Nature Does Not Succumb to Despair

Ensnared in a net of despair,
One looks for comfort anywhere
But finds no solace anywhere,
No reason to care.

A delicate snow rose
Bares its beauty to the frost.
Its perfume wafts fragrantly
Through the frigid winter air.

Mired in a slough of despair,
Shivering branches are bare,
Landscapes loom bleak and bare,
One sees no beauty anywhere.

The first green shoots of spring
Begin their slow ascent to the light.
Despite the storm that's left us more snow,
They've faith in the warmth that will come.

Drowning in a pool of despair,
You may feel that you've nothing to give,
You may feel that you've no reason to live.
You've nothing to share.

A week after that late March snowstorm,
Daffodils poke their diffident leaves
Resolutely out of the still chill soil,
Coaxed upward by the promise of spring.

Life perserveres through half-frozen earth,
Certain that summer and warmth will come.
Love can be the light that leads to our rebirth
As well, allowing us to flower, if we ascend to it.

Nature does not succumb to despair.

Ida Toilwueri

I leafed for my last time through the yellowed envelopes
Adorned by postage stamp visages of dead statesmen.
Familiar faces that now mock me, impudent rebukes
To my once so vivid dreams of immortality.

Seeds of ideas would drift onto the soil of my mind,
Putting down roots into my fertile imagination.
Transplanted into words though, they'd wilt and die.
Images that bloomed in my soul droop lifeless on the page.

My pile of rejection slips grew larger than I'd ever dreamed
My reputation would.  This trunkful of manuscripts remains;
Brittle pressed flowers of visons that seemed to me beautiful,
That I'd nurtured and pruned in my mind until I plucked them.

A bouquet once picked, quickly dies.  Petals fall from stems
And are caught by the wind, fluttering onto the frozen ground,
Or an icy editor's desk.  From there they'll be swept aside,
Often unread, into neat little piles of leaves to be burned.

The grey walls of my mundane existance slowly pressed in
Upon me like the remorseless grip of a tightening vise.
All I'd gleaned from my existance was grey hair, aching bones;
The potter's field beckoning me like a hooded spectre.

The Horatio Alger creed that avers that failure
Can be overcome by dogged persistance is a lie.
Each rejection slip confirmed my worthlessness;
Another manuscript of mine had crawled home to die.

A soul bereft of pride is as ready to be toppled
As a statue of the leader whose regime's been overthrown,
As the fragile house of cards when its base is lightly nudged,
As a castle of sand at the onslaught of high tide.

Each slip hissed its message of failure, as age and despair
Hovered about me like winged demons extending their claws;
Sent by the Prince of Darkness to pull me into his pit,
I'd become ripe fruit for his minions to harvest.

This frail old woman had to finally let go of her dreams.
They've fled the grasp of my arthritic fingers, as do needles now
That I used to thread with such ease.  I guess an old clothesline
Will suffice now to finish the novel that nature had begun.

That bulky trunk, with its Flying Dutchman cargo of ghost
Of penned passion that has blotted stillborn onto paper,
Squats like Satan's black dog at the foot of my bed,
A mute reminder of the failure that has hounded my life.

That trunk could perform a service for me now, though.
I pulled it over to a spot beneath a rafter,
Stepped atop it, slipped a noose around my neck
And leaped
                  To meet whom I hope will be a merciful God.

Rage of Troubadors

In the days of the Lion Richard, of tournaments,
And honor, in the days of faith and innocence,
Troubadors, those minstrels with the velvet voices
Would roam through the realm cloaked in silken raiment.
In the pastoral splendor of Antiquity
They could touch the hearts of their listeners
With wands of song charged with melodious magic.
They'd weave their reveries into a tapestry
Of wonderous images and romantic rhapsody
That would leave their audiences rapt with emotion.

Chivalry and romance have hardened to asphalt and steel;
Savage, soulless structures that house their inmates
In the bleak grey harshness of urban despair.
We need Revolutionaries now, not sonnets.
We need poets who mirror the rebelliousness of our age.
They ravage their voices with shouts of angry defiance
Punctuated with chords of electric violence.
They claw at their instruments with a frenzied passion,
As though raw brutality could wrest wisdom from them
And translate it into waves of charged pandemonium.

Those screams that you hear are the rage of troubadors
Doomed to live in their grey hell of concrete and steel.

What if Wile E. Coyote had Caught the Road-Runner

He seemingly was able to stretch
Beyond himself with a sudden lunge
To grab that smart-aleck bird's throat.
Its terrified eyes bulged outward
As he twisted its neck.

"Snap!"

And it was over.
No longer would he ever have to listen to
That annoying "beep-beep, beep-beep."

He strutted proudly home
With the carcass slung over his shoulder,
Flopping it onto the kitchen counter
For his wife to pluck and prepare.
The dinner was a disappointment;
The meat tendon and muscle,
Tough as the pads of feet
That have run on asphalt all their life.
Yip and Yap, their two pups
Complained so loudly
That his wife made a phone call
To have a pepperoni pizza delivered.

That evening his old lady gave him "that look."
He glanced up as if he could sense
An anvil plummeting down toward his head.
"That look," was always a preamble to her
Next suggestion.  "Let's sit down and talk."
Such talks always presaged some serious matter
Such as another pregnancy
Or bills that were past due.

"I've been patient while you pursued your goal,"
She began, "I've worked full-time,
Basically raised the pups by myself
While you were out somewhere doing your own thing,
Wasting your life chasing that damned bird.
Don't you think it's time you took a job that pays,
That puts better meat on our table
Than that gristly carcass you dragged home today.
You know, I have my own dreams too.
Oprah says that a woman shouldn't let marraige
And family obligations
Stand in her way of realizing them.

Here," she said, handing him a folded newspaper.
He got that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach,
A feeling similar to the time when he'd just run off the edge
Of a cliff, his momentum still keeping him aloft
For an instant before gravity pulls him down.
She'd circled an ad in the Help Wanted section.
"Look," she pointed.  "Acme is hiring.
Third shift, but the job pays well.
You've got a lot of experience
Working with Acme products."

*    *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  *  *   *   *

He's been with Acme for seven years now.
"Lucky seven," he muses sardonically.
He started on the loading dock.
He's worked his way up to lead man
On the line that cranks out
Acme's boxing glove in a jack-in-the-box.
A couple of years ago management called him in
And told him, politely but firmly
That he'd related his stories
About his pursuit of the Road-Runner
Far too often, and that nobody cared anymore.
His wife gave junior college a try,
But just couldn't handle the course load.
She's back working at the "Stop & Sniff" again.

His life has become a coyote-ugly existance
That he can't escape by gnawing his leg off.
Now, when he steps out onto the loading dock
For a smoke, and to gaze wistfully up at the moon
That he used to sit on the hill and howl at,
He again hears that faint echo of a "beep-beep."
Feelings of despair suddenly overwhelm him.
He knows now that it's happiness that's eluded him,
And he'll never get another chance to pursue it.