After a Long Hiatus

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything in the blog. I suppose that real life takes me away from the computer more often now, and what time I -DO- spend online is mostly wrapped up in the Poetry Tag group or other such matters. It's been a relief to get back to the stimulus of PTG and Rage, after a dry spell where I didn't write for a couple of weeks.
you
just
walk down the block like you belong there,
half scared to death in your
tattered jeans,
and the wise shadows
are clustered under the trees.
their whispers
are cigarette smoke and cannabis,
and their eyes show only
as chips of starlight
in the gloom.
_____________
More on that later, maybe.
I've written several new poems, but I'm currently wrangling/wrestling over some of the word-choices, trying to decide if i can hew closer to the bone by changing a few. Anyway, here's a couple of recent writes.


Bronx Fires
***
under a steely sky, the sun not so much seen
as felt . . . the trees themselves seem exhausted, there's no
hint of a breeze, and in this motionless torpor, the Bronx
is broiling.
the souls of those who repose on the streets
have taken the burn, and scorched by summer and by
torrid corporate greed, rising prices going up
like the temperature . . . how much hotter
can things get?
i hear the murmur in the streets, the voices beginning to stir
and speak things that haven't been suggested aloud
before . . .
there's something here, a fire that's burned
underneath our very feet
as we walk the streets unawares.
i'm cooking my brains in this oven
so that all the people who think i'm only half-baked
will have to shut down . . .
the dogs in this neighborhood howl
in solidarity
at the tarnished copper coin of a moon
rising from the polluted haze in the East
like a brazen beacon for nightmares.
suddenly, we're all strangers up here again,
where the heat can drive men mad
and create a thirst for blood
that's never slaked, and oh God,
i fear the bloodshed's very near,
hidden behind the haze of heat-shimmer rising
from the broiling Bronx streets . . . .

------------------------------------------------------


Collateral Consequences
***
oh, the initial blast and hard radiation's
quite enough in and of itself, but
it's the FALLOUT that gets ya.
i mean, i know enough about that
from 3-way fights between my mom, sis, and myself
where i always ended uplosing . . .and, that had its own collateral damage,because if i'd stayed around the house more
i might not have gone out in the forest
and gone mad from drinking strange water.
i'm a victim of my own collateral damage, mostly
side-effects of things that, had i known there WERE side-effects,
i doubt i'd have done . . .but that's ink in the water under the bridge, now
making little ideogram-like squiggles in the flow
as i pour out what's been keeping me up nights
and making me lose weight no matter what i eat
and, see, somehow this makes me "other-directed"
which means the system didn't quite like the taste
and i got spit out . . .hey, look at me, America!
i'm your end result,
your collateral consequence,
a grim visage of your future wherein
EVERYBODY will look this scrawny, underfed, and strung-out,
because
we will be.

------------------------------------------------------------------

More later. This screwball blog template apparently doesn't like line spacing, so it takes it away. Woohoo! Ain't modern technology great? We invent New & Improved ways to Seriously Fuck Things Up. Artificial intelligence, my ass. How can we create artificial intelligence when we don't even have the real thing going on?