Category Archives: Poetry

Friday limerick and flock update

Posted on October 21, 2011 by | 2 comments

The head-count of chickens and truants
Considering sub-plot and nuance
Suggests there’s a vixen
Requiring a fixing
Or else a coyote’s influence.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in Chickens, Creative Writing, Current Issues, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Poetry, Solitude, Writing

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lost Victories

Posted on October 18, 2011 by | 4 comments

She loved bridge
He loved mostly poker;
Never understood
How his sevens-high full house
Betted to the limit
Looking at her pair
Of Aces
Turned out to be
Disaster
Crushed beneath
An Ace high full
Every time he let her
Cut the deck

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Unrequited Hate

Posted on October 16, 2011 by | 37 comments

So you hate him.
Wish him ill.
You have a problem.
If he could only feel
The fear, the doubt, the horror;
If he could only satisfy your
Yearning
For him to feel those things
He might do it.
He might.
If he could only understand
How much it means to you
To cause him pain;
With what a flood of anguish
And venom you despise
Hunger his agony
And want to be responsible;
Want him to know,
He certainly might try.
But, he can’t.
Despair’s no longer sexy
To those who’ve seen it naked.
Fear cowers under a straight,
Steady gaze.
You’ll have to offer something
More frightful
Than your silly rage;
Your idealized terror;
Something more dismal
Than your impotent concept of
Emptiness;
Something with more substance
Than your scorn;
Something more somber than you
Think death is
To make him care.
Life will hand him defeats
His days will serve up
A ration of pain
He’ll deal with them as he must
And always know those blows
Aren’t yours.
They’re just life.

Old Jules

37 Comments

Posted in Poetry

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Occupy Your Local Appliance Repair Shop [Limericks]

Posted on October 11, 2011 by | 3 comments

It’s the only job left.

Being on top was such fun!
The products were cheap, and the gun
Assured they’d keep coming
Velocities numbing
Til ammo we’d spang out of run.

Those multi-national boys
Didn’t make you buy all of those toys.
You bought them not thinking
From China, though shrinking
Your dollars without so much noise.

It’s jobs that you want, and you’re right
But you’ve got to be part of the fight.
Throw out all your plastic
incumbents and spastic
Buying and crying and spite.

The CEOs bankers and pols
Helped you do it but aren’t Commie moles
It’s true they’re just like you
Their coppers will strike you
While your coppers strike at the doles.

Stopping a train just ain’t easy
The methods are bloody and sleazy
But changing direction
Requires a correction
More solid than whiney and breezy.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Human Behavior, Poetry, Politics, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tumescence and Tentpole Torque

Posted on October 11, 2011 by | 8 comments

3 am I wake
Find you atop me
Kneading
I savor
The soft purr
Of you
The gentle scratch
Of nail on flesh
Tiny pleasure pain
I hold
I hold
I hold
Until I can wait
No more
Lift you
Lovingly aside
And rise

You follow watching
My grimaced
Downward
Push
Muscle pressure
Pain
Release

Your tail
Lashes S and Z
In empty air
Green eyes fixed
I search absently
For  a synonym
For piss hard
And ponder how
Like the useless
Appendix
This serves no function.

No.  No.
It reminds
Remembers
Other uses
Other times.

Old Jules

Copyright 2011 NineLives Press

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Poetry, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Shadowcats and Sugar Pills

Posted on October 2, 2011 by | 10 comments

I glanced out the window and saw this:

Niaid was curled up on the bed, [I double-checked] so whatever else that critter was, it was an outsider.  The chickens were ranging free and I couldn’t hear any alarm from them, but this guy just looked too big to have roaming around without interruption.

As I came around the cabin where I could see him better:

It was obvious the feline was operating out of a different reality.  Which didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t need to be the focus of protective measures.  But how does a person protect his chickens from a shadow-cat?  I’ve done some websearching on the various news sites and checked out the methods incorporated by the US Government into programs to avoid having shadow-cats disrupting citizen-like critters such as these:

The consensus seems to be you have to get one of these:

No matter what the cost.

I’m not certain I want to have one of those running around here loose, even when I have dangerous shadowcats skulking around peeking at my holdings.

Once something of that sort gets a foothold there’s no predicting where it will end:

Sugar pills in toy jars
Candy counter cures
For the sensory deprived
For the spirit that yearns hardship
Facade struggle for the
Stagely frightened
Sedentary soul

Living a reality
Where gangster boss of fantasy
Celluloid deeds and words
Are worth repeating;
Gladiator wars in plastic armor
Oaken clubs and pigskin missiles
Pudding danger jello struggles
Hard and real inside the mind
Inside the molded plastic
Toy of the mind

Man who cleans the windshield
At the signal is an actor
In the show last night
On MTV or HBO
Sexy girls dancing
In the background
As he postures
Rag and bucket
On the glass

Toy hero pushes button
In the Kevlar coated dragon
Of the field
Sees the enemy extinguished
In a prophylactic
Box of evening news
Before and after
Old war movies
All the same

Any loss is accidental
Cost of war’s
In higher taxes
Salaries for heroes
Fuel bullets
Not in blood
Not in blood
Sterile sealed
In plastic baggies
Plastic baggies
Hold the artificial
Flavor
Of the life
When life was real

Yet the sickness
Needs a remedy and cure

Sugar pills in toy bottles;
New candy counter pudding
For the soul.

Old Jules
Copyright NineLives Press, 2004

10 Comments

Posted in America, Chickens, Country Life, Creative Writing, Poetry, Solitude, Survival, Wildlife, Writing

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Choose Something Like a Star

Posted on September 11, 2011 by | 4 comments

Choose Something Like a Star

by Robert Frost – 1947

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud —
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says “I burn.”
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

4 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Astronomy, Creative Writing, Music, Poetry

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Four Limericks on Life

Posted on August 21, 2011 by | 18 comments

He goes by the surname of Fauna;
From platypus to the iguana:
He hunts and he stalks
And he ceaselessly talks
Of death and the killing he want’ta.

She goes by the surname of Flora.
She’s plankton; she’s trees, a plethora,
But lives in a dread
Avoiding his tread;
He’s Sodom; he’s death; he’s Gomorrah!

He eats, he digests, he excretes her;
She’s worried each time that he meets her.
It’s not so dismaying
To find him decaying:
His syrup of nitrogen treats her.

Submerged in a hostile reality
Humanity flirts with finality.
He yearns to transcend
But his carnal self wins
And he wastes all his life in banality.

Old Jules

Copyright © NineLives Press, 2004

—————

Interesting aside:

“The midnight sun is a sore trial for amateur astronomers in the high North,” says Fredrik Broms of Kvaløya, Norway. “But now, after a long summer without stars (save one), darkness is falling again. Last night when I was watching the beautiful conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon, the first auroras of the season suddenly appeared!”

“I am looking forward to a great season with lots of activity on the sun!” says Broms

http://spaceweather.com/

———————

GEK, the friend who owns this place is going into high gear preparing for the Hatch Chili Festival coming up soon in Hatch, New Mexico.  Last night he sent me a pic of his latest creation involving Siberian wolf fangs:

—————————————

Upcoming White Trash Repairs Project – Soon to be a nesting box

Getting the guts out of there without destroying the aesthetics is the challenge A layer of dead leaves or horse bedding chips in there and the Great Speckled Bird explaining the operation, they'll be right at home.

“Life after death will take care of itself howsomeever it plays out.  Finding something useful to do with yourself when the future passes you up without volunteering yourself for the burn pile is a this-lifetime matter worthy of concern.”  Josephus Minimus

“I am a Long Tall Texan” – Bob Luman

http://youtu.be/Uo-LZDy_Oxs

18 Comments

Posted in Animals, Nature, Poetry

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Catatonic Doggerel

Posted on August 14, 2011 by | 5 comments

Explanatory note:  I used to spend a lot of time on the Zuni Rez with a lady-friend who was school librarian there for 20+ years.  The animals described and named here were all hers.  I post this as a hat-tipping to Ernie, Princess, Spot, Boy Toy and the rest.

A schoolmarmish lady in Zuni
had canines subversive and loony;
her communist felines
made neighborhood beelines
with doctrines both outworn and puny.

The KGB cat was a lean
and speckled-nosed beauty serene
appearance alone
for her countenance shown
multi-faceted plots as she preened.

Her Weathercat history was tops.
She’d sprayed on dozens of cops
with a Commie aroma
ere she joined  Sertoma
cavorting with phonies and fops.

The ringleader hound was a red
and curly haired rascal it’s said
whose Trotskyish leanings
and Maoish gleanings
were pondered curled up on the bed.

Princess Redfeather, they tells
of this curly red bitch of the cells,
forsook her fine lineage
to sip of the vintage
of Lenin, and Gulags and hells.

The worst of the felines, Bearboy:
striped and cross-eyed and coy;
Politically weak,
but claws that could tweak
bourgeoise carpet, and bedspread, with joy.

The Uncle-Tom dog of the hut
was Ernie, the gray-bearded mutt;
dog-tired, and dogmatic,
he thought, ”Problematic:
dog-eared dialectic and glut.”

A calico hound lying dormant,
most likely a police informant:
a capitalist clown
took his food lying down
resisting the commie allurement.

The Uncle-Tom dog she called Ernie
began as a dog-pound attorney
commuted from gassing
he pondered in passing
discretion’s demands for a journey.

The Stalinish kittenish spies
spread foment and torment and lies
to the Indian curs
and mutts that were hers
and war-gods high up on the rise.

Princess and Ernie and, Spot,
and Chester , the narc-dog; the lot:
for half a piaster
would bring the disaster
to Zuni, once called. Camelot.

Old Jules
Copyright 2004, NineLives Press

The Communist Internationale (Original, with English Lyrics)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suVB3YGIUk0
http://youtu.be/suVB3YGIUk0

Gloria Jean’s CATS – “You Better Come Home” – CAT SONG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw475QLrqdk
http://youtu.be/Lw475QLrqdk

5 Comments

Posted in Animals, Poetry

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Old Man, Young Man, on a Mountain Top

Posted on August 11, 2011 by | 5 comments

I got an email from a young man who’d been reading my blog and was astute enough to notice I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life and didn’t appear to have a corresponding level of grief and regret. He asked me a number of personal questions regarding all that. I answered most of his questions, but the email reminded me of the following, which I wrote a few years ago.
Old Man and Young Man
On a Mountain-top

Old man and young man
Sit, gaze at far reaches
Of valley and desert
Spanning to horizon

“How’d I get to be this old?”
Old man smiles, serene
“I wonder sometimes myself”

Young man: “I’m serious”
Old man sighs and leans
Against a rock.

“You’ve already
Heard the parts about
Cheating, lying, and
Stealing all your life.
Those can shorten things
Considerable.
Could have mine.

Those are things you need to
Keep in moderation.”

Young man frowns.
“You’re joking.”

“No. Just being
Completely honest
For once.
But those are more
Likely just to ruin
Your life than
To end it.”

Tosses a flat rock
Into the void
Eyes follow
The long descent
“I never killed myself
When I wanted to.
Never threw myself
On my sword over
Defeats I can’t recall now.
Never flang myself
Off a cliff over scores of women
I no longer remember.”

Old man digs his pocket
Pats his other pockets
Looking for his pipe.
“I never gloated sufficiently
On my amazing successes
Over the efforts of others
(Those escape my mind
These days)
To make anyone want
To kill me enough to
Actually do it.”

Tamps the pipe
Frets with a match

“I was astute enough
To recognize early
When you bed
Another man’s woman
She’ll eventually tell him.
She mightn’t say who,
But she’ll always say what
And if he’s smart
He’ll puzzle out who.
That’s a worthy thing
To keep in mind.”

Pipe bowl sparked
Glowed, smoke
Curled around him

“I’ve always lived hard
Pushed the envelope
Hung it out over the edge.
I’d rather have died early
Than not done that

“But I always kept good tires
On whatever mechanical
Critter I was depending on
To get me back
Always kept the brakes
In good shape.  And
I was damned lucky.”

They sit silent
Watch the shadows
Crawl into arroyos
Far below.

Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence 1966 live
http://youtu.be/FaSFzp6IDgw

5 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Creative Writing, Human Behavior, Poetry, Senior Citizens, Youth

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,