Rough beasts

When William Butler Yeats wrote “The Second Coming” in 1919, the world was still picking up the pieces after four years of total war, and was awash in the global influenza pandemic. But here we are, more than a hundred years on, and it feels like it describes the past 15 months entire.

I don’t know what more I can say about it. Except that it closes out National Poetry Month for 2026, and it’s up to us to deal with that rough beast.

“The Second Coming”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

I saw him drowning

Since he started his pointless war of choice against Iran, the Kleptocrat has apparently discovered that a lot of wars in history have lasted years. This he finds agreeable, because he’s able to compare a war lasting (so far) eight weeks favorably against ones that last four, six or 18 years (World War I, World War II, Vietnam—although the last seems to vary in his mind; that appears as whatever two-digit number that pops into the porridge that occupies his cranium).

He still expects that Nobel Peace Prize, dammit.

The First World War is one of my research concentration areas as a military historian. It was a cataclysmic convergence of technological advances, imperial and nationalistic policies, and just plain unfuckingbelievable stupidity. What a way to usher in the 20^th Century, eh?

Rather oddly, a lot of poetry came out of those four years—at least amongst the British forces. Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon are a few of the best-known. My favorite, though, is Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action just seven days before the Armistice of 11 November 1918.

It’s hard to choose which of his poems to share; every one of them puts you through some horror that the Western Front vomited forth to everyone in the vicinity of the trenches. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” could be applied to any soldiers of any war

But the first poem of Owen's I ever read was “Dulce et Decorum est”, so that’s what I’m giving you.

One of the examples of monumental stupidity during that war was the use of lethal gas, either delivered via artillery or just released. It’s like the morons running the show never considered that they were surrounded by winds, which can shift and send your hot-shot latest chemical weapon…well, anywhere, including through your own lines. Chlorine, phosgene, mustard and other types were all deployed by armies on both sides. They caused serious damage to individual pulmonary systems without having any serious effect on strategy. The descriptions of poison gas victims are not for the faint of heart: imagine being blind and feeling your lungs being on fire even as they fill up with fluid and drown you.

The green referenced in the poem is chlorine gas. One of the effects of chlorine gas was to react with fluid in the lungs to form hydrochloric acid, which caused death, or (at a minimum) permanent scarring of the lung tissue. In smaller doses, it caused irritation of the eyes, coughing and vomiting. Chlorine's green clouds made it less effective over time because it could be seen; chemists quickly iterated to come up with something invisible.

But, hey, good news: there are still stockpiles of poison gas on hand in nations around the world, in case someone wants to start a war of territorial expansion. It's a mark of progress, I guess. (Saddam Hussein used it in his war against Iran back in the last century.)

BTW—Cadet Bonespurs famously declined to visit an American WWI cemetery during the Centenary commemoration of the end of that war, because the weather was inclement and he couldn’t fathom why they would have given the last full measure of devotion, since there wasn’t really anything in it for them.

In this poem Owen describes the aftermath of such an attack. It, also, is not for the faint of heart. It would do our white Christian nationalist glory hound SecDef some good to read it; like that'll ever happen.

“Dulce et Decorum est”

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

If you’re unfamiliar with the final line, it’s from an ode by the Roman poet Horace. It translates roughly to, “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

Dragging their brains along

If you think that the Kleptocrat and his toadies have no imperial ambitions, I hope you are not operating heavy machinery. White Americans formed this country on the foundation of Manifest Destiny; that still shapes the policies of the best of our governments. The white Christian nationalists in the Republican party are using Mr. I’m-not-a-pedophile to solidify their notions of a theocratic state that uses imperial-level power to bend the world to their will. The pedophile is mostly in it for the money grab and the thrill of exercising power, but it amounts to the same thing.

For today’s entry for National Poetry Month, I’m giving you Jesús Castillo’s “Untitled”, for a few thoughts about empire. Castillo was born in San Luís Potosí, Mexico, emigrated to California at age 11 and now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico. Along the way at some point, he earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa.

Castillo said, about this poem, that the job of the poet today is to have fun and to observe, and to have fun with what s/he observes. So, here we go.

         Dear Empire, I am confused each time I wake inside you.
                        You invent addictions. 
          Are you a high-end graveyard or a child?
                        I see your children dragging their brains along.
                        Why not a god who loves water and dancing
                   instead of mirrors that recite your pretty features only?

          You wear a different face to each atrocity.
          You are un-unified and tangled.
                        Are you just gluttony?
                        Are you civilization’s slow grenade?

             I am confused each time I’m swallowed by your doors.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: It finds its wings

Well, y’all know I’m not a fan of Emily Dickinson. Lord knows, I’ve tried, but it just doesn’t come.

But for this Gratitude Monday in National Poetry Month. I was thinking about how much a sparrow enjoyed the birdbath I provide for my avian friends, and when you search for “poems about birds”, Dickinson pops right up at the top.

For reference, the sparrow:

I mean—its joy is infectious, and I’m so grateful to have been able to make it possible.

So—Emily:

“Even the Smallest Wings”

A tiny bird upon the breeze,
Gliding high with so much ease.
Though small in size, it finds its way,
Soaring freely every day.

It does not fear the heights so steep,
Nor doubts the journey it must keep.
For wings, though small, were made to fly,
To chase the sun, to touch the sky.

So let the birds remind us true,
No dream’s too big for me or you.
With faith and courage, we can try -
Even the smallest wings can fly!

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Despite expert advice

No one—but no one—could turn a phrase like Dorothy Parker. That woman could pack more venom into a single couplet than anyone who’s ever picked up a pen. Born Dorothy Rothschild in 1893, Parker was part of the creative explosion in New York after World War I. Poet, critic, playwright, screenwriter; she was one of the linchpins of the Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel. She could drink most of the men under that table and never lose a battle of wits.

Parker was also a human rights activist: against fascism and racism, for civil rights and decency. At her death in 1967, she bequeathed her estate to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Much of Parker’s poetry is self-deprecating, particularly with respect to her disappointments in love. (If you’ve been diagnosed with depression, you really want to stay away from her short stories. They’re beautifully written, but they’ll gut you like a fish knife.) Here’s one that’s a little more defiant; if I had to choose a personal anthem, this would be it.

I think it’s an exemplary way to conduct our lives during this time.

“Neither Bloody nor Bowed”

They say of me, and so they should,
It's doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
Accumulating dividends,
And making enviable names
In science, art, and parlor games.
But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come-
Inseparable my nose and thumb!

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

Black the boots of success

One of my all-time favorite poets is e.e. cummings, 1894-1962. He introduced me to free-form poetry and the concept that all elements of a poem—not just the words—contribute to the meaning.

I was in high school, remember.

Cummings definitely had an eye for the political animal. And he used his words like a boning knife, to fillet every layer of despicability and venality. He’s definitely got us covered for the current administration and its “excursion” in Iran.

Perhaps his most famous anti-war poem is “plato told”. It skewers those who will not heed the warnings of Greek philosophers, Jewish teachers or American generals that war is not anything to be sought. (It also nails the businessman who’s perfectly happy to profit by trading with the enemy, especially since neither he nor his sons will be headed in harm’s way.)

“next to of course god america” goes more directly after those who preach the gospel of glory; the ones who give the fieriest speeches in hoarse voices, urging someone else’s sons to go to war. The ones who—for one reason or another (could be draft deferments for bone spurs, or “critical” business interests)—never actually have to carry a carbine at the front. Looking at how cummings jams all the clichés of bloviating politicians together, you can just see the red-faced, over-fed politician standing at a podium, sweating copious amounts into his wrinkled suit as he makes his tired case.

The only thing missing is the chants of the audience.

“next to of course god america”

next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

Because it’s cummings, I’m giving you another poem for today’s National Poetry Month entry. This one speaks to the entire ethos of MAGA.

(Look at how he’s structured the first two lines of each iteration of “humanity”, carefully changing the emphasis by where he places the words at the end of the first line.)

“Humanity i love you”

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more

especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Don't give it up

Everything is not terrible. Tuesday Virginians voted to approve a plan to redraw congressional districts; this new map leans heavily Blue, which is enraging everyone with an (R) after their name.

I mean some clown car calling itself “Justice for Democracy PAC” has been sending out multiple variants of flyers that actually use photos of Barack Obama urging Virginia to “Protect minority representation” by voting against it. 

This in addition to other spurious claims like this is Governor Abigail Spanberger’s doing. (The referendum was on approving a bill from the state legislature, not a power-grab by Spanberger; she just signed it, allowing it to be voted on by us.) They were really counting on the stupidity and/or confusion by the voting public.

Yes, the new districts are drawn to favor Democrats, potentially flipping four seats to Blue. Yes, this is absolutely gerrymandering. But also yes, this undoes the last round of gerrymandering in 2010, which served up safely Republican Representatives for a decade and a half.

And again yes, this particular cycle of gerrymandering was started by Republicans in Texas (egged on by the Kleptocrat), when the lege mandated new district lines that disenfranchised heavily Latino areas—mandated, mind you, without any consultation from the voters. So the same people who lauded the Texas changes are currently hopping mad at the outrage of being served up what they dished out.

BTW: this is how the Washington Post's editorial board heralded the Texas change:

And here's how it covered Tuesday's vote in Virginia:

(Update: a Virginia GOP-appointed judge ruled Wednesday that the redistricting amendment is unconstitutional, that all votes are invalid and that the state is barred permanently from implementing the changes. Attorney General Jay Jones has said he'll appeal. My prediction if this goes to SCOTUS, they'll faff about until it's too late to change the districts for the mid-term elections in November. Nonetheless: the people voted.)

So my earworm for today is “Words of Wonder/Get Up, Stand Up”, by Playing for Change and featuring the immortal (truly) Keith Richards. (Richards wrote "Words of Wonder"; "Get Up, Stand Up" is from the also immortal Bob Marley.)

Make it so.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

O! 'Tis foul!

Today’s the day we mark the Big Gun of English poetry, William Shakespeare. We think this was his birthday in 1564, and we know it was the day he died, in 1616. Much of Shakespeare’s life would have been spent amidst pestilence; smallpox, typhus, cholera were just some of the diseases swirling about. It’s surprising that his works aren’t more drenched with catastrophic events beyond the making of man.

King Lear was first performed for James I in 1606, following a summer in which bubonic plague ravaged the country and closed down much of the entertainment venues and shops in London. We don’t know that this influenced Shakespeare, but the landscape of Lear is a blasted wasteland for much of the play, so…

As per usual, Lear’s downfall is of his own making, but, man, does he take half the cast with him into madness and death. About halfway through the play, when the deposed king is wandering the moors, he rages…against ingratitude.

Huh.

King Lear, Act III, Scene 2

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world,
Crack Nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man!
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this! O! O! ’tis foul!

Frankly, I’ve always thought that—more than other Shakespearean tragic heroes—Lear pretty much deserved what he wrought. I mean—the guy couldn’t see Regan and Goneril for what they were; or Cordelia, for that matter. The tragedy was that—because he was king—his follies turned into horror for everyone around him. Which we’re experiencing right now with the current occupant of the White House whose brain is rotting before our eyes, but—far from being exiled to the moors with his Fool (and who among his Cabinet of grifting morons would play that role, I wonder?), he’s free and empowered to start wars and wander off, pillage natural resources, crush human rights at home and abroad and loot our treasury. The tragedy is ours, not his.

Anyhow, as is my custom for Shakespeare day in National Poetry Month, here’s one of his sonnets, in which he compares love to disease. ‘Nuff said.

“Sonnet 147”

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed:
    For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
    Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

My bread you snap

I read a WaPo headline the other day to the effect that Republicans in Red states are having difficulties passing anti-immigration bills because of pushback from business lobbyists. I didn’t read the story because, first of all—duh, but also because it’s just another case of FAFO. It turns out that without immigrants willing to work for low wages and no benefits, anything to do with the food chain—from tending the fields to bussing the restaurant tables—can’t survive. (Also, manufacturing, transportation, retail, construction and trades apparently have the same crap business model. They all depend on exploitation of the workforce to turn a profit, so without immigrants, they’re toast.)

Imagine that.

This year, we’re facing increased strains on the global food supply chain. Climate change has altered the geography of arable land, and violent weather has played up with crops. Tariffs have screwed farmer and consumer alike. Moreover, this moronic war of choice in the Middle East has not only sent the price of all petroleum-based fuels (and products) skyrocketing, but it turns out that a big chunk of the world’s fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which is now closed as a totally predictable (to everyone except the Kleptocrat, apparently) outcome of the attacks on Iran.

Yay—not only are prices of food going up, but we may all get to experience food scarcity. First hand.

Well, my entry for today in National Poetry Month is from the immortal Dylan Thomas, “The Bread I Break”.

You can read this on so many levels—literally on the process of what it takes to turn grain into bread and fruit into wine. It’s a commentary on humans pillaging the planet. It’s also an allegory of the sacrifice of Christ.

(Who in no way—physical or moral—resembles the brain-rotting occupant of the White House.)

“This Bread I Break”

This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wine at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Once in this time wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

Turns out humans are utter crap at appreciating sacrifice of any sort, whether it’s the chicken they’re frying or the god they worship. Yippee.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Killers in high places

I was introduced to Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” via one of my favorite Inspector Gamache novels by Louise Penny. That series is about a Québecois inspecteur du Sûreté and it’s centered around a Brigadoon-ish village some kilometers from Montréal. The villagers are a little on the fey side, and I do wish Penny had not given her protagonist a name that is so very close to the chocolate coating that goes on cakes and truffles, but the plots are generally quite good, and I do love police procedurals.

How the Light Gets In is one of the most powerful in the series, and Penny described Cohen’s generosity when she or her publishers wrote to ask him for permission to use part of the chorus as an epigraph. He gave it to her, without asking any fee.

Well, I’ve been thinking rather a lot about the notion that things (and people and nations) can be more beautiful—stronger, more valuable—for having been broken. I want to believe it, but I know there’s a difference between a crack and utter destruction. I hoped we could stop the damage before we get to that place, but I fear we’re already there. We will have a lot of work to do to repair the damage a few greedy powerful white men are doing.

I'm also thinking about the Japanese art of kintsugi—repairing cracks in pottery with gold. In a visual sense, that's surely letting the light in, isn't it? Viz:

I’m giving you today’s National Poetry Month entry as a poem, because I’ve always thought of Cohen as a poet rather than a songwriter. Also, I’m not that wild about the melody of this one. I’ve also cut the chorus until the last one.

“Anthem”

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see

I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
A thundercloud
And they're going to hear from me

You can add up the parts
You won't have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come
But like a refugee

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
Ring the bells that still can ring (ring the bells that still can ring)
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in

Can we be kintsugi? Can we let the lights in through the cracks? Can we try? 

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

Gratitude Monday: He fathers-forth

Particularly in our current environment, one of undeclared class warfare that pits the oligarchs against everyone else on every field—economics, environment, education, politics, religion, resource allocation—I struggle with maintaining any kind of spiritual, emotional and mental balance. So I make a conscious effort to absorb and honor the beauty and grace in my daily life.

As I do, I follow the prescription of an old photography professor—when something strikes me, I also try to look around for another perspective, to see if there’s not something else about it equally beautiful.

Viz:

I went out to glory in the dogwood in my cluster, which of course were spectacular.

But so, too, was the shadow it threw on the sidewalk.

This reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty”, today’s entry for National Poetry Month. Just the first line opens me up for the joy and the loveliness that’s all around us, in both nature and the work people do to make our lives easier.

You might call it "God's DEI program."

“Pied Beauty”

Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.

 

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

To be led by a fool

Like many writers of science fiction, Octavia E. Butler used the “otherworld” settings of her novels to explore a variety of themes, including African American spiritualism, characterizing survival as heroic in itself and criticizing hierarchies. Her work won many writing awards, as well as a MacArthur Fellowship (you know—the “genius” grant).

She’s not known primarily as a poet, but she used poems to frame her prose.

Butler set her two-book Earthseed series in a post-Apocalyptic Earth. In the 2020s. (Parable of the Sower was published in 1993; Parable of the Talents in 1998.) She prefaced each chapter with a poem. My entry for National Poetry Month today is from Chapter 11 of the former; it does seem appropriate.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Sneer of cold command

As I understand it, Ozymandias was a Greek name for the pharaoh Rameses II; I do not know whether it refers to the Egyptian’s mama and combat boots. The only reason I know of him is because Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem about the pathetic and pointless remains of a self-aggrandizing tyrant of former times.

Even in high school, the arid arrogance of the colossus’ broken old statue struck me. Back then, I didn’t know Ozymandias was real. Now that I do, I give him more credit than I did—Rameses the Great had chops. He was a warrior king, successful in battle. He brought wealth to Egypt. He built temples, tombs and art works. He’s also posited as the pharaoh of the Exodus, and apparently looked a lot like Yul Brynner.

Shelley does a bang-up job taking the piss here, and I’ve recently been struck by how applicable this description is to the current occupant of the White House. Cadet Bonespurs projects all the megalomania the poet documents, but with none of the accomplishments to give substance to the broken monument. We certainly recognize the wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command manqué. I really don’t much fancy thinking about his vast and trunkless legs, thank you very much, but I’d pay real money for a glimpse of a shattered visage half-sunk in sand.

As to looking on the Kleptocrat’s works—the destruction, corruption and misery that have been his focus since he first announced his candidacy—yeah, I do despair. We are in danger of becoming the wasteland that Shelley limns, boundless and bare around the decay of that colossal wreck.

“Ozymandias”

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Thy pride of might shall be thy shame

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about “Pride of Man” for the past couple of weeks. Hamilton Camp wrote it in 1964, but its apocalyptic lyrics seem to be exactly spot on 62 years later.

There are a lot of covers out there—best known may be the one by Quicksilver Messenger Service. But I’m going with Gordon Lightfoot’s, as he gives it just the right amount of urgency for our times.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

 

Wherever the damned do chiefly abound

I first ran into Jonathan Swift in high school, when I did a paper on the Anglo-Irish hostility. You know—the “hostility” that started in the 12^th Century, when Henry II used the excuse of the Irish Church’s refusal to follow the Gregorian reforms (the ones that stick in my mind being monks’ tonsures and celebration of Easter) invaded Ireland.

The fusion of Mother England and Celtic Ireland has produced nearly 800 years of literary giants: Oscar Wilde, Seán O’Casey, Oliver Goldsmith, George Bernard Shaw, C.S. Lewis, J.M. Synge, Bram Stoker, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Swift among them. Swift, born in 1667, straddled Ireland and England literally, born in Dublin, spending much of his early adulthood in England and then return to Dublin where he was Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral from 1715 until his death in 1745. You may know him as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, where we get a taste of his ability to use humor to skewer the many ills he saw in the world.

The one that imprinted on me was A Modest Proposal (full title being A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick), in which Swift solves the problem of poverty in Ireland by permitting parents to sell their children as food to what we’d today call members of the 1% (English 1%, to be precise). In quintessentially Swiftian fashion, he mocks the heartlessness that the 1% still show to the poor. It’s deadly.

Swift was politically active, first for the Whigs and then for the Tories, and (as evidenced by Proposal and other writings) he was vehemently opposed to Britain’s Irish policies. He managed to get up Queen Anne’s nose, and lost his ecclesiastical appointment in England. Saint Patrick’s, Dublin, was outside Anne’s gift, so that’s where he ended up. Toward the end of his life he became obsessed with death, and suffered from mental illness, quarreling with friends and growing increasingly isolated.

Today’s entry isn’t titled; it’s a concise disquisition on the nature of hell. It strikes me as being timely, nearly 300 years later. Same players, same outcomes. So much for progress.

All folks who pretend to religion and grace,
Allow there's a HELL, but dispute of the place:
But, if HELL may by logical rules be defined
The place of the damned -I'll tell you my mind.
Wherever the damned do chiefly abound,
Most certainly there is HELL to be found:
Damned poets, damned critics, damned blockheads, damned knaves,
Damned senators bribed, damned prostitute slaves;
Damned lawyers and judges, damned lords and damned squires;
Damned spies and informers, damned friends and damned liars;
Damned villains, corrupted in every station;
Damned time-serving priests all over the nation;
And into the bargain I'll readily give you
Damned ignorant prelates, and counsellors privy.
Then let us no longer by parsons be flammed,
For we know by these marks the place of the damned:
And HELL to be sure is at Paris or Rome.
How happy for us that it is not at home!

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Ignore the damnation of Faust

Today is the day the suckers and losers—which is to say, everyone in the lower income brackets, who cannot engage in sheltering income offshore or writing off everything as a deduction—file and pay federal taxes.

I, personally, do not object to being taxed; I consider it an entry fee for the life I’ve enjoyed in this country. I’m not wild about some of the things my government chooses to spend its revenue on, but I figure it mostly balances in the end. The construction and maintenance of physical and social infrastructure, providing healthcare and education, a well-trained and equipped military, foreign aid programs that support our strategic national security interests, disaster relief here and abroad: if I have to subsidize the naming of a community center in Alabama for some asshole ex-football coach in exchange for these things, I’ll suck it up.

But I cannot tell you how much I resent paying taxes to this administration—I hated doing it the first time around, but now I’m waiting until the absolute last fucking minute to send my payment. Because not only is the Kleptocrat finding ways to skim off public funds that even mafiosi haven’t though of, but he, Musk and the Republicans are destroying enormous parts of the government, in addition to ensuring that the billionaire boys club contributes even less than it has in the past (and violating data privacy laws to enable future lawlessness).

So my entry for National Poetry Month today is from Charles Bukowski, 20^th Century German-American poet, rebel, novelist and subject of FBI surveillance (on account of his writing in an underground LA newspaper). The MAGA crowd would despise him.

making it

ignore all possible concepts and possibilities ---
ignore Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust ---
just make it, babe, make it:
a house  a car   a belly full of beans
pay your taxes
fuck
and if you can't fuck
copulate.
make money but don't work too
hard --- make somebody else pay to
make it --- and
don't smoke too much but drink enough to
relax, and
stay off the streets
wipe your ass real good
use a lot of toilet paper
it's bad manners to let people know you shit or
could smell like it
if you weren't
careful

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

Melt this ICE

I found today’s poem for National Poetry Month on the socials; most likely on Bluesky. So short, so intense; a shiv between the ribs, straight to the heart.

The poet, Rick Lupert, is from Los Angeles and very active in the poetry scene there.

“poem”

America,
so Pretti.
America,
so Good.
Oh, sun,
melt this ICE
until we are

America
again.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

As a pilgrim

Today at sundown, Yom Hashoah begins. This is the day commemorating the Holocaust. And in a time where RWNJs around the world are attempting to enucleate anything and everything from the past that does not comport with what passes for their worldview, it’s more important than ever to remember history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.

It's also Gratitude Monday, and my selection for National Poetry Month is therefore Avrom Sutzkever’s “1980”. Sutzkever was born in what is now Belarus; raised first in Siberia, then in in Vilna, Lithuania, and began his literary career at the age of 17, in 1930. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he and his family were moved to the Vilnius Ghetto; he and other writers hid works by Herzl, Chagall and others behind walls, saving them for the future. Following the Germans murdering his mother and his newborn son, Sultzkever and his wife escaped from the ghetto, and he fought as a partisan against the Nazis. After the war, he testified in Nuremberg at the trial of the man who murdered his mother and son; he and his wife lived for a while in Poland and then Paris, before moving to Palestine (as it was then).

Sultzkever wrote first in Hebrew but shifted to Yiddish.

During an Aktion in 1941, Sutzkever escaped to the countryside and was hidden by a peasant woman named Yanova Bertushevitz; she and her husband kept the poet in their cellar and managed to smuggle food into the ghetto to his family. (I must insert a note here: last week Israel issued a threat to any Christians or Druze in Lebanon who might consider sheltering Muslims/Arabs from invading IDF forces.) Eventually his worry about the danger to his protectors and his family led him to return to Vilna, but he did not forget her gift to him.

“1980” expresses Sutzkever’s gratitude for her courage, kindness and humanity. It’s therefore the right poem for today—eve of Yom Hashoah and Gratitude Monday—and also for the times: we all need to be reminded that, even in a hateful and violent environment, we can choose to be human, kind and courageous.

Because whoever saves one life saves the world entire.

“1980” 

And when I go up as a pilgrim in winter, to recover
the place I was born, and the twin to self I am in my mind,
then I'll go in black snow as a pilgrim to find
the grave of my savior, Yanova.
She'll hear what I whisper, under my breath:
Thank you. You saved my tears from the flame.
Thank you. Children and grandchildren you rescued from death.
I planted a sapling (it doesn't suffice) in your name.
Time in its gyre spins back down the flue
faster than nightmares of nooses can ride,
quicker than nails. And you, my savior, in your cellar you'll hide
me, ascending in dreams as a pilgrim to you.
You'll come from the yard in your slippers, crunching the snow
so I'll know. Again I'm there in the cellar, degraded and low,
you're bringing me milk and bread sliced thick at the edge.
You're making the sign of the cross, I'm making my pencil its pledge.

                                                    Translated by Cynthia Ozick

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

Children's dreams of chains and jails

For today’s National Poetry Month entry, we’ll go to Denmark. I did not know Inger Christensen (1935-2009) before now, but I really like her stuff. She didn’t view poetry as “truth” but as “a game, maybe a tragic game—the game we play with a world that plays its own game with us.”

Word.

One of her major works, Alfabet, combines the alphabet and the Fibonacci sequence, which deserves major props, and it’s very much in the “game” arena.

I’m giving you “From April: IV”, which has very striking—grotesque, even—imagery.

From April IV

Already on the street
with our money clutched
in our hands,
and the world is a white laundry,
where we are boiled and wrung
and dried and ironed,
and smoothed down
and forsaken
we sweep
back
in children’s dreams
of chains and jail
and the heartfelt sigh
of liberation
and in the spark trails
of feelings
the fire eater
the cigarette swallower
come
to light|
and we pay
and distance ourselves
with laughter.

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

I keep this from my children

Today’s entry for National Poetry Month comes from a woman who was trying to find words to explain the dangers of the world to her young children, and to give them hope, as well.

In the summer of 2016, a writer named Maggie Smith sat down at a coffee shop in Ohio and wrote “Good Bones” on a yellow legal pad. Three days after the mass murders at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, it was published in the literary journal Waxwing, and went viral (not something that often happens to things published in literary journals), because it expressed the pain and bewilderment of the world—in 2016 and since.

So much more now to keep from our children.

I think we should hold this one close, during these times.

“Good Bones”

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu