All writing

bullets as ballots
plows into swords
our coarsened palates
weaponized words
nothing is grey
and yet everything dark
sure, hope and pray,
cause the choices are stark

Author notes: image generated by GPT

No more enamored of the future
than disillusioned with the past:
immutable, all scar and suture,
collage of memories that last,
a sewed up quilt of sad and happy,
and rarer still, so sweet and sappy,
the future might burst into tears --
but swallowed up by rusty gears,
it soon transitions to the present.
Before too long, it's left behind,
the years too pitiless, unkind,
one cannot dare to call them pleasant.
And soon enough, the story ends.
A happy ending? It depends.

there was a time I would rhyme crime
with time, a callous, heartless thief
that steals your memories, leaves grief
though there are times you'd find a dime
discarded, dropped onto the floor
to never pay for evermore
and resurrect it, use it well
to buy back time, if just a spell
now in my pocket, out of naughts
so here's a penny for your thoughts

Author notes: image from Midjourney

splash of color, perfect face
eyes that freeze you in your place
and that mouth -- all attitude
says how dare you to intrude
on this goddess' domain...

the cat's owner, just as vain

Author notes: image from Facebook

Forever and a day, is that too long,
if I am both your sentence and your ward?
When challenging the meaning of belong,
to share -- is that the best we can afford?

However tall the wall, however thick,
is it designed to keep the inside out,
or outside in, fenced in by mud and brick?
Or maybe it is just a roundabout

and we can't figure out how to get off,
entrapped, two planets in a common orbit
around a deep, black hole: we've reached the trough,
now all that's left is let the hole absorb it,

the remnants of forever and a day.
Blame gravity, it always finds a way.

Author notes: image generated by Midjourney

day will come, the stars will tire, fireflies will lose their spark
dressed in velvety attire, night will reign, its purpose dark
plasma swirling, coalescing, pushes inward and ignites
and god, granting us his blessing, smiles while turning on the lights

Author notes: image of Van Gosh starry night from Facebook

firefly orgies
the scent of deer musk on wood
enter cicada

Perfection hovers, subtly out of reach,
adjacent to unmet, as yet, potential,
the one that mom evoked in every speech,
in tones both resolute and reverential:
Remember, you can do it, yes you can!
If only moms could bottle that belief,
and you could take a sip of it, and then,
transformed into the best of you, as if
mere words could mold, infuse that kind of power.
Life soon betrays the mantra, a false hope.
You will not save a princess from her tower,
nor do you have the courage to elope
and live the life she told you that you should.
If mom is always right, it's Hollywood.

This Otto keeps me on my game
and mostly does me well
except when "lines begin the same"
deducts from villanelle

What's left in reimagining our Hamlets,
repurposing our Henrys and Macbeths?
Pose existential questions over omelets?
Recounting much ado's with bated breaths?
Shall we attempt a tragedy of errors?
Leer, merciless, while driving by a wreck?
Rely on ne'er-do-wells and oversharers
to get the word out, use the latest tech?
The classics, reimagined as you like it,
performed by a menagerie of clowns,
and if a word offends, well then, you strike it,
it's not as if they're wearing real crowns,
these thespians, too modern for the Bard.
To be or not to be. It's not that hard.

Author notes: image by GPT

Two sailboats, anchors raised, will drift apart.
Is that what love demands then, ties that bind?
Can it sustain a separated heart,
or must it seek, unreasoning and blind,

entanglement with its committed twin,
and absent such entanglement, collapse,
before it's had occasion to begin,
to feed then on the remnants and the scraps,

the embers of a tepid, dormant fire,
while others burn to cinders on a flame
consuming them from head to toe, entire,
and happily, with but themselves to blame.

They seek it, for what's life if not this burn?
Two sailboats start to drift apart. Return.

Author notes: image from contest

Perfection, though just narrowly achieved,
Aunt Mabel ceases gazing at her navel.
Her face now nearly permanently peeved,
Ozempic face -- she's getting it off-label --
but losing those pernicious last few pounds,
the hips regaining youthful definition...
The pleasure she should take should know no bounds:
is there a crucial task, a higher mission,
then winning in this battle of the bulge?
And yet she cannot help it, something's wanting.
Gone too is her desire to indulge,
a shadow of a ghost that's barely haunting
this newmade version of her perfect self.
Next week's Ozempic safely on the shelf.

Author notes: image from MidJourney