New Poems

Why isn't self-love the very highest value?-- I mean, love of one's own physical self? My self is my dream come true. Don't know if I can perform in this venue. There's a black list and my self is on it: viz. VERY HIGHEST VALUE! My chance to taste my own ragout and learn for myself that self-love's the highest value. But I'm afraid my mountain dew evaporated before my dewy self could float to its highest value-- but better than being a chimp in a zoo, licking the meal tube to feed yourself. A zoo chimp's life's no dream come true. So, I'll just say I love you into my own self's ear to court myself. My own self-love's my highest value. Being my elf's a dream come true.

I'm told I should love myself. But what if I don't deserve to be loved? So, how filthy am I, then? Me and who[m] else? So, should I put on rubber gloves before I love myself? Can I share my grief when my soles' life's to be proved! Maybe I'm too filthy to even laugh at, too inattentive to be moved by your poetry. That's myself in an unlovely nutshell. All these wounds to be salved! All these filthy Yokel books on my shelf! All these DHS ghouls threatening to devour me!Their abuse requires me to love myself!

So much time spent counting steps or minutes, while the entire time my fear is mounting of these DHS thugs who are hounding us! Why won't the Senate atop them? Like the time counting the minutes as I'm standing with a sign on Cleveland and Ford Parkway, trying to mount protest and communicate urgency--almost like the minutes I spend in Yoga class counting my breaths, or like the fifteen minutes till my COVID test is ready, exhaustion mounting because the New York Times is reporting Don Lemon arrested in LA, and the DHS is counting how we spend our minutes using our own phone data. How could my terror not be mounting since the NY Times is counting its profits from letting itself be used as a tool for setting fears  mounting

    lift up your hearts, Emmanuels's friends     And taste the pleasure Jesus sends, The FBI seized the Georgia voter rolls today. How can I be confident in the face of that? So, I'm trying to march in the good old way. ACLU card in my in-tray-- they help me understand my rights, should I encounter ICE today. What can I do but sing well-a-day (plus mop the floor and feed the cat), as I'm trying to march in the in good old way? The fines might cost more than I can pay, I still get my Social Security payments, but since the FBI seized the Georgia voter rolls today I have almost more confidence in doomsday than that they won't be stopped. But it's my non-CIS friends especially for whom I march on in this good old way, chanting for the Republicans to go away-- Fuck MAGA! Fuck ICE! I shout. The FBI seized the Georgia voter rolls today, so I'll keep on whistling in the good old way.

Maybe I'll do completely naked yoga today. Thank you! I'll take my shoes and socks off anyway, so I can do my completely naked Adho Mukha Savasana today. Thank you! So who'll I be dancing this yoga drag for anyway? Why, I'll do  it entirely for the Yours Truly Yokel themselves today. Thank you! Yup, here I am dancing for you-- you with such pretty pretty legs! They'll do! Thank you!

Loved ones whom I cannot help as I'd like-- daughters, sisters, wife, and friends. Is Love like riding a bike?-- Well, in some ways like, in some unlike-- automatic-- Look, ma, no hands!-- said when I didn't help you as I'd like. Love an unsparing task-maker? The answer depends naught on what kind of bike you're riding (maybe one of those recliner trikes?)-- all powered by a pedaled chain trying the help as I'd like. But all the pedal pushers are on strike-- I don't know what complaint they have with their employers who provided them with their bikes in the first place. And it's discouraging to think of what our lives will be like, trying to raise the Mary Ellen Carter, if we get the bends-- just trying to help as we'd like. Our love and concern for one another must bear full price. No exoneration may we demand when we fail to provide the help that we'd like because mud is surrounding the spokes of our bike.

When what you love the most feels most forbidden, do you take your socks off anyway? Your socks keep your feet hidden. Well, I'm wearing my red-and-gray cotton jobbers today. Taking them off right now feels deliciously  forbidden—just look at these toes a-poppin’! But I don't think my socks can stay off for long because it's cold. So, I'm hiding my sexy toes in foot mittens. Not confined to what I can publishably say, I sing my forbidden Songs unbidden. Hay- rolling with my unhidden self, striding like a rodeo bronc: OK, watch my forbidden drag! I keep nothing hidden!

Seven or eight songs Right Now from the two-year silent Yokel. Why are they choosing Right Now to raise their crooning Yokel voice? No time like Now-- I mean, Right Now! -- sings the high-baritonic Yokel, shrilly choosing now as the best Yokel- Song time-- Right Now! So how loud can I crow 'em? asks the racketing Yokel, refusing Right Now to hesitate one iota. Sing Right Now! is what they're choosing!

The ethnic and gender purity executions have begun. Saying so implies there will be more. Actually, they're a rerun. Non-conformers have always had to be on the run in the Land of the Free, Home of the Sick Sore- Heads. More ethnic and gender purity executions are probably coming, so let me flee the gore by turning off all my electronic devices so that these disgraceful White Power reruns won't be in my feed. There's still lots of fun to be had from learning songs to sing with my adored friends, never mind these executions being rerun in realtime, while I hide the gun I never had in the glove slot in my car door. Well, now that the ethnic and gender purity executions have again begun, I'm just doing what I can-- I hear there's a sing tonight at 7:00 at 1400 Cedar Ave. S. to resist this occupation, this disgraceful White Power rerun.

      You don't understand. I mean, I want to be a great poet ! W.H. Auden       Grazie, Robert Zimmerman. When you're a poet and you know it, nothing will do but to be a great poet . Don't you hope you don't blow it? But that doesn't mean you have to show it to anyone, you ghastly poet! You're a poet and you know it, but you really feel you'd better hide it because being a poet is not for the stout-hearted. You'll probably blow it out your ass, so you'd better revise it over and over again as only the most fastidious poet can (especially when they know it). But you happily forego it-- all the praise and adulation due to a great poet . That's how you'll blow it, you know. by remaining inchoate-- just a nascent, embryonic, shapeless poet (even though you know it). OK then, get your show on the road, you geriatric poet! You were a poet, and you knew it. So blow it, baby, blow it!

It seems they're deliberately executing non-binary people. Well, I'm non-binary myself, you can see-- one of the queer people whom they're deliberately executing. There are billions of people in the world, and some or all are non-binary. The problem is, if you're one of those possibly-non-binary people you might need to deliberate exterminate all those fairy people who remind you of your non-binary self. Can't you be more friendly to yourselves, you people? Just go ahead and be deliberately non-binary.

     January 24, 2026. I'm tired and my neck hurts. I slept past 10:30 this morning. I joined two small protests against the brown shirts yesterday. Now I hear someone got their unjust deserts in Minneapolis this morning. I'm tired and my feet hurt too much for me to want to be out on the street yet again this morning, so I guess the brown shirts will have their way with me. I've turned off the alerts on my phone this morning. I'm tired and my mind hurts. OK, there's a candle-light vigil protest just four blocks away at 7:00 this evening. Not expecting we'll be hassled by the brown shirts, but I'm bringing my whistle anyway. If I had a whistle, I'd whistle in the morning, I'd whistle till my soul stops hurting and we're all wearing rainbow shirts.

Could it be that I need to take a break from my books? But I enjoy them so much! I'm all shook  up! I'm abandoned and forsook, but I got a hit in the clutch. Still, it might be that I need to take a break from my books. Well, let's have a look! But first let me take off my socks! I'm all shook up! I know I'm a freak, but my delight is such that I may never ever take a break from my books. It'll be books redux for me--rabbits back in the bunny-hutch. I'm all shook up! And it's practically a heart attack!-- so I'll eat an entire batch of hemp brownies by myself by working on my books! I'm all shook

Working on poems is so delicious! But nothing ever needs to come of it. I'm not ambitious. My poems may well be considered vicious-- songs of a self-loving idiot-- why working on them is so delicious! OK, what if all my wishes came true and I was up to my ears in it-- rhyme, I mean--I'm that ambitious! But I'm not getting all litigious, supposing my songs get stolen by some witless (artificial) bot, to whom everything is delicious. And I'm done explaining that I'm not religious. I'll die, but I already live in Paradise ! How ambitious would it be to believe myself indigenous, and pan-sexual to boot? Working on poems is so delicious! I'm superstitious!