Five Recent Poems

Well, well, I've been remiss at re-posting poems of late, here's a recap of work from late November until now, oldest to newest.

Destination Tomah

A POWem per Marilyn Basel's lead

Blinking LEDs a semi-permanent landscape enhancement
"Tomah Road 14 miles" POW
For the love of God, why?
New dimensions in goal-oriented behavior
One KOA campground
The only emergency phone Monument to Castle Rock POW
Any pulloff becomes destination
"Congratulations drivers you have conquered Upper Lake Gulch"
My signs were never elaborate POW
No NY LA DC two-fers
Crossville Grand Ledge Tucson Palmer Divide POW
But each change in compass called home
its own Trail of POW Tears
Allie Hyperbole claims pets survive any move
with their very own squeaky toys.

I followed Upper Lake Gulch long ago POW
An 88 Oldsmobile ready for hospice
Scrub oak and mudbath POW
A forest of parabolic dishes behind hidden mountain.
"On-demand for the home.
We leveled the ponderosas,
but your new Ku-band forest
provides its own feast, POW, locally grown."
I turned tail for Tomah.

Four semi trailers and 29 cars obliterated Monday
in the suburbs of Tomah.
Not a one passing Upper Lake Gulch POW.
No home destinations of Denver, Cheyenne, North Platte, Salt Lake City POW
Tip the tow trucks, dear, for a KOA side trip,
your photo in Tomah POW POW
Again POW
Sudden POW run of squeaky toys, hot destination.


Loring Wirbel
Nov. 18, 2010


Initial Denial Authority

(My friend Bill filed a Freedom of Information request which was passed to a Pentagon office called "Initial Denial Authority". This explains a lot - and not just in terms of the federal government.)

The rigged Magic 8-Ball
calls home the negated universe
wrapped in icosahedral die.
Furies of abundance affirmation fertility
have stoppered the djinn in the orb of always no.
Shake for a sign.

A worthy conceit of favor returned
You, the one we were waiting for
Watch the facet of luscious,
Surely this pear can be plucked
But for a panel of Simons and a textbook committee of no.
Very doubtful.
Shake again.

A false-memory childhood abduction
Legos left behind, half-whispered "daddy".
When is joint custody sign of a tesseract tear,
When a promise of future food for giraffes?
Reply hazy, try again.

Tongue mango moist by sting of epoxy
Labia perma-seal a known docking station
Watch every sunrise from inside her eyelids
Surely fluids, minds merge
Nice try, my sources say no.

Then call upon fury for a splendor of gratitude!
Each day another measured victory step, minute source of joy.
See it? Absorb it? Engage or engorge
Infinitely, truly in love with each cell.
Very doubtful.

Call upon fury for perpetual ecstasy!
You may tremble, still loving,
Of the father's love begotten,
World without end amen.

Call upon fury to acknowledge, be fearless!
This day won over
This monster vanquished
This terror, cartoon
Following thread through the thousand-step labyrinth
Getting to yes.
Icosahedron tips in dense milk.
Let's not and say we did.

Loring Wirbel
Dec. 2, 2010




















Pestilence of Dark

Taste me
Gale winds pummel the triple solstice bloodmoon virgin birth
Windows hum
One harmonic short of shatter
Yum

Smear your eyelids
Cross-stitch the lashes
Not one of 72 silent red diodes
is left to pierce a catastrophic retinal pixelslip of nought.

O holy light enough on a clattering lawn,
but none in your four-wall artifice,
silent box of black.
We let dreams leak this way -
The dark smudges any linear reference,
leaving the passage on a sea of chocolate,
dancing shadish with kindergarten blanket pals and TV celebrities,
as real as the tumble over sleeping dog that scars the forehead.

Taste the 72 percent cacao dark,
where fear is the nougat at a random wrapper's center.
Name your playground bully Dada,
anoint him proudly incoherent.
We know better.

Daybreak casts sequential shadows,
prettified intermittently in directional time,
but presented as offering in a stronger wind.
Red-tailed hawk plays Red Queen,
stationary hover, stay-in-one-place in a maelstrom of dazzle.
Rabbit stares intently, malevolently
from the downed ponderosa branch
mere hostel, never home.

"Her name was never La Niña.
Only one cage was left open.
She returns when the zookeepers abandon this place.
Our dance of liberation scarcely begins
when the layer of dark asperges blesses and condemns us.
Zookeeper remedies are nostrums elixirs placebos false flashlights.
You have done enough damage for this side of night."

Loring Wirbel
Dec. 21, 2010



Eugenics

Storage space exhales hantavirus dust
Through portholes of a beached container ship
Forgotten relics of that final millenium year
Where cash bled from each orifice,
Where failure to defraud was a sinful act.

These days I take tenor in a vast choir of Iron Chef ramen modifiers
Hantavirus dust spreads across a nation short of work, hope
We shut a locker to gain another $100,
Recovering evidence of credit-default swaps in an archaeological dig.
A winter breeze snatches the premiere issue of Darwin magazine.
Quadruple return on investment with non-existent web applications.
Imagine that.
This cough brings blood.

Loring Wirbel
Dec. 29, 2010


K-Day in the Trading Pits

A funny song spun from falling asleep watching CNBC commodity traders praise Freeport-McMoRan

Tantric buzz CNBC
Squawk Box copper commodity
Fast Money, rare earths,
Finding rare money in a fast, fast earth,
If we dig, K?

Freeport-McMoRan, all-time share high
Freeport, wasn't he -
JimBob Moffett, didn't he -
Time's a-wastin', polar cap meltin'
Explore is expand is exponential extraction
If we dig precious things, K?

Rio Tinto your target today
Who needs a Zuckerberg IPO?
Natural gas, coltan, gold in them hills
Open-pit silver, coal, heavier oil
Stripping another benzene ring
Is coming is coming is fracking the earth
If we dig precious things from the land, K?

Open sea lanes, Alert Bay to Petropavlovsk!
Full fathom five, bye bye to icebreakers!
A free Arctic sea for swapping the hydros
No rare earth as rare as a range war deferred
And the stock price ballistic, your hands never cleaner
We hide the dirt better than standoff-war blood
And her skin is stripped layer by carbon-ring layer
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
Koyannisqatsi.

Loring Wirbel
Jan. 4, 2011