The New Puritans * On the Road to Blythe * Haiku * Higher-ku * Don’t Bury Me in a Bra * Ode to Dark Matter * Ode to Inertia
The New Puritans
A funny thing happened on the way
to social progress: the pillory came back.
Any passer-by could take a whack
at sinners, on display for hateful speech,
who flinched and squirmed, re-thinking what to say,
their hands imploring heads they couldn’t reach.
A scarlet letter R decried the sin
that lay beneath a wrong-ish choice of word.
In the hands of an angry god the guilty heard
the clap of doom — while pale Judgment sat
arrayed in the black they saw their peer group in,
lacking but the tall, brass-buckled hat.
The Dionysian Sixties, breaking free,
never dreamed that this is where we’d be.
[posted July 21, 2023]
On the Road to Blythe
The desert mountains lie in state like kings,
their skylit faces void of feeling now,
enduring time, and unconcerned with how
their history’s told. Utterly done with things.
The pilgrim semitrailers, crammed with things,
advance in somber lines, all going Somewhere.
Load, unload, repeat. In arid air,
as wheels drum round and round — a madness sings.
In withered towns beside a strangled stream,
as unwashed children wander on the street,
a wind brings in the rising tide of sand
that will in time submerge this cruel land.
Your kiss, so vivid, tells me life is sweet.
Your kiss, my love, where prophets go to dream.
(posted January 23, 2022)
Haiku
We’re DNA mules
smuggling tested lifeways
to strangers, somewhere.
(posted August 28, 2022)
Time is matter in
motion. From then to now is
you from there to here.
[posted 8/29/2022]
Seven between fives,
a prime number sandwich is:
haiku, Math Deli.
[posted 8/31/2022]
Higher ku
(5-7-11-7-5)
My rising sun smiles
from overhead where you are,
seeing you are too intent to stop for lunch,
hunting a saddened chord for
your song about us.
[posted 9/6/2022]
Last year I breathed air
so cold it made curls of fog.
The air we breathe today is warmer than blood,
and the fog forms in my lungs.
Cold air, just last year.
[posted 9/7/2022]
A pretty nice girl,
born to wear the heavy hat
and shoulder nationality like a cape,
steadfast for seventy years —
gone, Her Majesty.
[posted 9/8/2022]
You cannot unbreak
your horse, cowboy, nor regret
the dusty days of saddle-work together.
Cool and brush him with your thanks,
and let the rest run.
[posted 9/9/2022]
You are the comet
in my sky, explaining why
there should be an infinity of shot stars,
grand enough almost for your
wondrousness, my love.
[posted 9/10/2022]
Every soul has worth:
it’s Christianity’s gift
to western thought, the least of us endowed with
inalienable rights,
created equal.
[posted 9/11/2022]
Don’t Bury Me in a Bra
The pants, you think, or ruffled skirt,
which would our sister say?
Dear Madeline was one who always
dressed for a special day.
The pants for weekdays, well and good,
but not her going away.
The skirt in black or ocean blue?
We’ve shoes to match for each.
Black’s for mourners left behind
when souls fly out of reach.
She won’t need shoes to walk in clouds
above this stormy beach.
Don’t bury me in a bra, I pray,
the freest of us three.
If you go first, I’ll not forget.
We’re tied as family —
like braids we were until that day
you took my James from me.
O sister dear, those times are mist.
Can’t you let them go?
Past as those times surely are
they’re what we have to show
for choices made along the way,
for years of yes and no.
[posted October 3, 2022]
Ode to Dark Matter
In gossamer sleeves
o’erflowing languid arms of galaxies
a-twirl the ebony floor of glittered night,
astronomers found a slight…
discrepancy, They checked the calculations,
repeated independent observations,
concluding at last
galactic ballerinas spin too fast.
To reconcile excess velocity,
they said, there must be mass we cannot see.
Proposing Dark Matter fixed the flaw
and so kept distant stars within our law.
• • •
I believe in air —
which I can’t see, and yet it’s everywhere —
in germs, electrons, DNA as well,
though not in heaven or hell.
If mathematics says it must be so,
how can I say no?
By equals signs each fact to fact is pent,
kept honest by experiment.
With galaxies, as icebergs: peak in view,
an unseen mass below we must construe.
Behold how spidery legs of digital code
support this very ode!
• • •
And yet how pre-Copernican to suppose
our view of things from Earth encircles those,
and much-footnoted laws that we disburse
constrain the breaking wave of a Universe.
Irrational pi, its trillion digits spooling,
the circle’s self-devouring serpent, fueling
numbers ever-bending;
leaks in laws of nature, never ending.
Swirl, Andromeda, never chained —
phenomenon explained,
though not yet understood — swirl home,
whipping mystic sprays of starry foam.
Ode to Inertia
O sluggard goddess, elbow on the bar,
thy cheek a-slab thy propping heel of hand,
it’s closing time, and hope must hustle far
if we’re to have a chance encounter, as planned.
Thy squinting, gauging eyes!
The liquor holds its level in thy glass,
a sodden cherry ever semi-sunk,
eternal floater, bob of incompletion,
a metaphor that lets the moment pass.
Yet “om” has neither grown nor has it shrunk,
thy store of lukewarm smiles beyond depletion.
When Night was young, the evening, still surmise,
a drink there must have been that got you going,
that coursed from cerebellum to your thighs
and led to further rounds, your aura glowing.
Pursuit of Happiness!
Poor mortals think of bliss as a plateau,
but it’s a peak that puke runs down, in swift
o’erspreading flows on unsuspecting laps.
Abide, O deity of status quo,
thy mojo disinclined to droop or lift.
You’ve got Temptation hooked on sly “Perhaps.”
Come on, unravished bride of quietness!
The jukebox wails “can’t get no satisfaction.”
Your knees askew, in that little black dress,
a cape magicians whoosh, sublime distraction.
Who’s in the pickled jar?
Barkeep, keep ’em coming. Hurrying near
are steps deciding what’s to be or not.
A change of scene could jump-start this endeavor.
Come on, baby, let’s, get outta here.
A winsome smile, thy whisper sweet. “I’ve got
a thought. You and me. Right here. Forever.”
Karl Stull - Creative 