Archive - Imperial Melodies

The real Griselda Has a hair trigger And a perfect figure. She burns like a shaped charge Through your armor, Your universal human Inevitable falsity…

Dec 25, 2023 •

Poetry, December 6, Palo Alto

I will be reading my own verse as well as assorted 20th-century material. This is a private event. Please do not share or publicize. Email…

Dec 6, 2023 •

November 2023

The hummingbird—her Bright lance is a straw, Slight as living lace, Made of drunken light. Her eggs are pearls, Pulsing M&Ms, Morning’s eyelids…

Nov 17, 2023 •

August 2023

Malibu! God Made you for the few— Nature’s God, wild, Dry and lovely—Jesus Never met these shores, The “great death-continent,” This Aztec place, taxed…

Aug 5, 2023 •

March 2023

I spend too much time On Twitter, following The war—probably On the wrong side— Nothing is in me to care. The helmetcam clips, First-person shooters…

Mar 2, 2023 •

January 2023

Here the palm and lawn, Under the hard order Of corporate hand, Flourish in the crisp, Enclaved behind a wall: “Putting the Rico back In Puerto Rico…

Jan 1, 2023 •

November 2022

The highest art is propaganda. Virgil and Shakespeare: propaganda. Eisenstein: propaganda. Leonardo: propaganda. We only think of bad propaganda— Or…

Nov 18, 2022 •

September 2022

I “Power, like a ball of fire,” Wrote Solzhenitsyn Of the Revolution, “Bounced from hand to hand Till it found a hand Hard enough to hold it.” The…

Sep 1, 2022 •

In Portugal, with a plate And a rubber-tree leaf, I saved a mouse from the pool. He was drowning like a person, Like I would if the pool Had…

Sep 1, 2022 •

June 2022

The Seuss stone-pines; The pattern sidewalks Of rock-print chips, Quarried black and white, Laid as work-relief; The cork-oaks, ripped Black to the…

Jun 16, 2022 •

April 2022

“They have their beauty But night’s is better”—wrote Jeffers, in ‘51, On the quarrels of his age, The cold and world wars. Friends, the cold pleasure Of…

Apr 17, 2022 •

Brass and ivory gears Locking teeth for years, A burning silver net, A trap without regret, A battle joined, a needle Bobbing on the dusty vinyl, A…

Apr 7, 2022 •

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