ed piskor

if words now are as deeds
deserved of analogous retribution
then his DMs were indeed criminal
but his accusers’ words were as a lynching
and so their acts likewise contemptible
and their guise of virtue forfeit

new year’s eve sonnet

(for MKI, as always)

Hey Omicron: the letter of the hour!
You’ve brought another covid Christmas: who’d
have thought lightning could strike again so soon?
but never mind, we’ve foiled your plot to sour
our Stollen — hopped the last of the outbound flights
to paradise, where naked hugs and sweaty
dancing are de rigueur, the restaurants ready
for parties of ten plus, no rez required!

’course we’re not all so lucky: lockdown wounds
are here to stay; while absent friends on screens
remain; let’s hope tonight to drown our blues
in toasts to family lost, who flock our dreams
like larks at dusk, ’til waking see anew
the chance for change in twenty-twenty two.

if we can keep it

new year’s eve sonnet

All my brothers locked down, the sound of lighters,
of bottle openers, bottles popped alone
that foam and spill across the empty wide
expanse of kitchen floors unmopped. A home
in name but not in deed, indeed a jail
that native sons know well, a reservation
held in reserve, revisiting the names
inscribed on birth certificates, a nation
of orphans stumbling in twilight. Is hope
obscene to our imagination, or can
we dream a fiery green without dull smoke
and scour clean our hearts, as we have our hands,
’til double twenty penitence is done,
emerge absolved in twenty twenty one?

boris johnson, are you aware, you may have pushed this nation to the brink . . . ?

see, e.g. here.

bhh on shakespeare garden / end of world

the entertainment system