Category: Personal/Political

While I don’t necessarily agree with the old feminist notion that the personal is inescapably political, I do try and write about politics mainly through a personal or literary lens. For the rare exceptions, see Rants.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

War News

One of those crystal-clear days in early spring when you can fool yourself into thinking it’s warm because the sun is so bright. I hike up to a favorite spot for a thermos of tea. I’m reading War News II: 12/9/2023 to 6/3/2024, an excellent and searing collection by Beau Beausoleil.

war news
the cold boulder
at my back

Walking home, I have a terrible thought: in a time of great lies, words are losing their power to change hearts, including our own, and therefore those of us who are religious, however obscurely so, ought to consider switching from prayer to sacrifice. Something more than performative gestures must be at stake.

killdeerkilldeer
the smell of cow manure
somehow sweet

Posted on by Dave Bonta

What About the Children

empty playground
snow on all the swings

the missing children on phones
or under rubble

the missing photographer
replaced by AI

it’s as perfect as the snow
at an indoor ski resort in Dubai

a vision of bleakness from some
mind of summer

where childhood ends
in a bully’s empty pledge

***

in response to this photo, used as a recent writing prompt by tiny words

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Ritual of Capitulation

This entry is part 11 of 11 in the series Rituals

 

first a festival of gestures
and some time to genuflect
to a higher hierophant

as if anyone still puts stock
in stick figures
unlikely ever to leaf out

unlikeable to lichen
too glossy for moss
untender as tinder

but sticks in the mud are needed
to feed the smoke machine
and please a little siezer

some might be ham-
fingered fecklusters
while others must be utter
butter-fisted tooltips

but all stick to their figures
and abandon their posts
on highway signage
and warning lables
who will coddle the muddle-
headed now

their everyman act puts actual
everypeople to shame
the deep state’s
deepest fakes

their winter of discontent
comes with the best
most luxurious fireplaces

till ashes ashes
and an insurgent May

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Ritual of Crying Wolf

iron storm grate with a pattern like a Medieval shield and the word STORM at the center
This entry is part 9 of 11 in the series Rituals

 

iron storm grate with a pattern like a Medieval shield and the word STORM at the center

wolf down a dog’s
breakfast of hype

cry in unison
use every lost key

feed the feedback
pierce some eardrums

that’s how unutterable
this wolf is

hold haters in contempt
be holocaustic

inspire fear
freeze in the headlights

disbelieve that anyone might choose
the actual wolf

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The Lost Circus

The circus comes to town because it’s lost. When the raven croaks my name—Dov, Dov—I have just drunk the last drop from my thermos and am staring at my reflection in the mug’s glossy black plastic. I can make out the sunlit tip of my nose like a shark’s fin rising from the murk. Strike any key and continue, I tell the oaks playing percussion with their acorns. Blood blossoms on my arm when I crush a mosquito. The circus comes to town because we’ve all seen too much blood: in headlines and classrooms, in AI-generated images and looped videos. The circus tent keeps growing like a tumor. Political parties party in it. Who are the freaks and geeks now? The sun circles its tree like a chained dog and the tree in turn circles the sun, along with the rest of us, who are not privy to whatever might be happening underground. Especially since bulldozers invaded the cemeteries to dislodge all the names of the occupants. Which must be where the raven picked them up—shiny things. Dā’ūd, Dā’ūd, it calls. I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me. Like a lily among thorns.

Public-domain image by Linnea Mallette.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Downward Mobility

This entry is part 47 of 51 in the series Une Semaine de Bonté

 

Page 50 from Max Ernst’s Une Semaine de Bonté

All winter in your garden the tea rose went on blooming even with the sun so cold and distant. I didn’t realize I was on a pilgrimage until I arrived, still dripping and possibly drowned from crossing the river/channel/sea. You slept like an officiant, giving yourself up to dreams you knew you’d forget the moment you awoke. From time to time your mouthparts moved as if in speech. I eventually relocated to the garden and became its folly. When the sun appeared, I tried to trace my shadow’s outline on the flagstones with chalk, but it wouldn’t stay still. This is what it means to live on nothing.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Mothers’ Day Psalm

river in November light between bare woods and mountain
This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Psalms

 

yours is the thorn that suckles us
the marsupial pouch in which we play king of the hill

yours is the rare orchid appointed
to a moth no one has ever seen

yours the corals whose cities shone
like nothing from a planning committee

and yours the epidemics the cancers the blights
a creativity as limitless as time and space

oh Nature soften the hearts
of all your little pharoahs
so we don’t have to overthrow them

and let those who insist you must be male
give birth through their penises

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Harrowing

an empty coal train
is rolling past a hobo camp

so many vacancies
like christ’s tomb

while the emergency room at the hospital
has no beds to spare

no windows of any kind
only an addict’s hallucinations

and a skinny old man
yelling help without the p

hell hell hell for hours
until the hospitalist snaps

out here it’s nearly easter
another winter’s worth of fossil fuels

have risen indeed
on wings of mercury

a gray fox ravaged by rabies
leaves her pelt beside the burrow

as the first hepaticas
raise their blue cups

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Eschatology Ritual

river in November light between bare woods and mountain
This entry is part 8 of 11 in the series Rituals

 

the end is far
fetched and fletched

with the iridescent darkness
of starling feathers

an aftermath of statistics
warring stories and desecrated graves

this year in Gaza
or next year in Jerusalem

the end is far
from everything we think

when we wish
upon a starvation

drop two bunker-buster
bombs before bed

side-effects may include
nausea guilt mass carnage

the end is foreign
to the 24-hour news cycle

spinning new gossamer clothes
from faith alone

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Supremacy Ritual

river in November light between bare woods and mountain
This entry is part 7 of 11 in the series Rituals

 

nine knuckles are gathering
in a room appointed for sleep

theirs are the only shadows
not checked at the door

nine claws are judging
the entrails of a suit

flies have been eliminated
but still there’s a hum

nine knives are carving
a number into a bare back

even under the eyelids
it’s white as a cloud