35. Nietzsche at Turin
The will to power? It seems like a chore.
A complicated way to vent more spite.
Either I don’t have to write anymore…
or else I don’t have any more to write.
But that was weird - the event with the horse.
Spending too much time with Dostoevsky.
Better look brain dead now…here comes the nurse.
The clinic grub’s making me this heavy,
though no one’s said I can’t get up and dance.
When Herr Doktor comes to make his eval,
I’ll blast him with one of my crazy rants
from Ecce Homo and hail him my pal.
And soon they’ll be convinced my mind is gone
as they watch me eternally return in each dawn!
36. Each Other (Christmas Ditty 2025)
Let this be a sonnet of Christmas cheer!
Throughout our lives, it’s true, we get things wrong.
But on Earth there’s at least one thing that’s clear:
We’re put here to bring each other along!
Yes, we’re put here to make each other strong,
to encourage each other peer to peer
to view ourselves as more than a random throng
with each of us singly ensconced in a private fear.
This should be clear despite the human fog
that clouds our human vision now and then -
a problem that for some abides ‘til death.
Yet a sudden rush of goodwill can leave agog,
can suspend the cold caprice of miserly men
and deliver them peace before their final breath.
37. Some Others (or, Ars(e) Poetica)
Some are reducible to a ditty.
Others establish tenors quite profound.
Some are entirely winsome and pretty.
Others look like mutts dragged out of the pound.
Some could have been penned by Shakespeare or Donne.
Others are puerile and amateurish.
Some are hilarious - cheeky and fun.
Others are tapestries of garishness.
Some are big-egoed and like to hold forth.
Others will try to hide beneath a rock.
Some should be banished to the Arctic north.
Others I would really just like to sock.
Some lead to madness, others to its cure.
Some are clear as day; others (like this one), obscure.
38. My Holly Kicks
I’m entering the holiday maelstrom,
and this is when all higher thought breaks down.
Yes, Christmas is a genuine hailstorm
of anxieties that I can’t lay down
‘til morning on December 26th
when I can kick my feet up and let loose,
pick up my lyre and carve out some cool licks
while avoiding anything too abstruse
or contentious like U.S. politics.
But until the 26th I’m a mess
and really wonder how I’ll get through it.
I’m Scrooge before the third ghost, more or less.
Eggnog? Caroling? Bah, humbug. Screw it!
This waiting just delays my holly kicks!
39. Overandunderflow
A popular recent concept is flow.
Let’s add to it two useful prefixes.
One of the resultant concepts we know:
Our focus spirals out in helixes
(though spellchecker tells me it’s “helices”)
through overflow that is self-expending,
sending us into moats and shallow seas
where we drift in danger of upending
our shallops on shoals of the possible.
Underflow, of course, is its opposite,
in which anomie and sloth are gospel.
Flow entails these twin dangers, I’d posit.
It dashes us to bits when too replete
yet harbingers old age as we watch it deplete.
40. Dumb Sonnet (or, So Interest Doesn’t Flag)
Reading sonnets makes you smarter…though not
this one, and I’ll make sure it’s very dumb.
You would learn more from spinning a doughnut
or chasing down Jack Horner with his plum.
In fact you would learn more from watching Trump
and studying how to lie in buckets
than anything you might learn in these lines.
You’d learn more watching your dog take a dump,
more still from vociferating “fuck it”s
in anger at a copse of barren pines.
You might think, “What point’s he trying to make?
Is this some sort of awkward “humble brag”?”
I’d say it’s an intermission, a break -
some comic relief so interest doesn’t flag!
41. Fourteen Times Ten
You gotta get it done in fourteen lines.
140 syllables. That’s it.
It often amounts to cracking their spines…
concatenating thoughts to make them fit.
Let’s pretend you only had that much room
to lay out the articles of world peace.
An extra syllable might cause a boom.
Gone, our four-point-something billion-year lease!
Or let’s say you only had that much space
to plead against your own execution.
You’d rely on concise elocution
to save your mortal shell - your heart, your face.
Fourteen times ten - a hundred and forty.
Thank god my only goal’s to make them look sporty!
42. Acerbia
I hail from the land of Acerbia.
Not really, but I visit there a lot.
A sort of poetic suburbia
we rest in when we cannot spare a thought
that isn’t filled with animus and spite.
Byron is this suburb’s supreme master.
His Don Juan is its charter and bible,
in which he swings at London from left to right.
Next to Byron I’m merely a poetaster.
If my targets ever sue me for liable,
I’ll refer them to The Vision of Judgment,
in which Lucifer shoots the bull with Peter
over whether King George’s soul should be dungeoned
as he slinks into Heaven right past Hell’s chute and feeder.
43. Visible Only to Me
Each begins with an opening gambit.
This one, for instance, is declarative.
The initial lines chalk out the ambit
and perhaps issue an imperative.
Things can loosen up somewhat after that.
Now and then you’re trying to make some point,
though oftentimes it’s simply scattershot -
nonsense about time being out of joint,
allusions to Shakespeare or maybe Donne,
a play on a fine-sounding foreign word.
But the main thing is, it’s gotta be fun,
or you’ll lose the reader in the last third
(though fourteen ain’t divisible by three).
The sense of it all may be visible only to me!
44. Our Human Feat
Life is a study in how to do good.
To realize this is our human feat.
We don’t exit the womb like Robin Hood,
and to get there, like him, we lie and cheat,
or steal loaves of bread like Jean Valjean.
We must first find a way out of the self.
The contours of that journey will depend
on environmental factors like wealth,
influence from siblings, elders, and peers,
particulars of our human era,
the peculiar mix of joys and fears
we gradually become aware of.
Of course there are many of us who never learn.
I hope in the next life we’ll get another turn!
45. Purposiveness Without Purpose
Art is about making and breaking rules.
“Purposiveness without purpose,” said Kant.
We fire the kiln, and then we smash the tools -
drink from the Hippocrene, then drain the font.
Without some structure, Art cannot survive,
though detonation also must take place.
“Purposeless purpose” is best kept alive
when, two in one, the twins are intertwined,
creation and destruction face to face -
contrarian siblings, though single-spined.
Purposiveness that is unpurposeful
allows us all to soar ever higher.
Art enacts freedom through its rehearsal
of the births and deaths through which we live and expire.
46. Metrical Sheep
It’s busy painting pictures, settling scores,
etc. It never seems to rest.
At times it must desire to take a nap.
Let’s rock it to sleep and see if it snores
as air billows in and out of its chest.
I’ll blanket it with these lines and tuck in the flap.
Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?
This hammock will be for taking naps in,
and we’ll hang it over this stretch of floor.
Yes, this is something that needs to happen!
Really, no one’s ever considered that
it’s a human thing and, as such, it needs to sleep.
That’s why of late it’s been spitting out senseless scat.
Let’s let it rest as it counts off metrical sheep!
47. Senseless Scat (or, Our Human Paddock)
– companion to the preceding sonnet –
A dreamy day never will get in the way.
It’s good for us, so why bother to fuss?
Though a few of you do, I can construe,
because you stare as if it isn’t fair.
But never mind, for we’re all of one kind,
and it’s not as if we’ll fall off some cliff
if we cannot agree that I’m you and you’re me.
It should put us at ease that we ain’t manatees
or men ill at ease in single humanities,
for that matter. Gee whiz, how thought doth scatter!
The function of dreams is to tug at the seams
of reality with no illegality
or ill-will or menace from Sigmund to Venice
as we circle our human paddock.
Thanks for the hammock!
48. Similar to Grenades
Although there‘s some merit to sitting still,
the ideas come when I get going.
Ain’t no point staring out this windowsill.
There needs to be some to-ing and fro-ing,
pacing with sustained determination
to think outside the lexical stables
that word us through the mundane usual
and often breed boredom and impatience.
And that’s when we pry ideas from their labels.
We poets attempt to amuse you all
with new solutions to this old problem.
Some poems are akin to ropes, picks, or spades,
while others are more similar to grenades.
I‘ve penned a few, but I don’t know where to lob them.
49. Generative
One loves a day that is generative,
on which any number of things get done
by way of a moral imperative
that views production as big heaps of fun.
Marx looked out the window and said, “That Kant
was the king of idle ruminations.
But he ignored the glib, the nonchalant
inherent to productive relations.
He should have gotten up and danced a jig
to make the dames of Koenigsberg all swoon.
But now every categorical prig
slurps Kant‘s stiff precepts with his moral spoon.”
Marx donned his hat and walked around the block,
returned and composed his ”Theses on Feuerbach.“
50. Pennsylvania Foods
In Philly it’s all about the hoagie…
also its rival - the Norristown zep.
From Scranton hails the Polish pierogie -
buy ‘em frozen, with little kitchen prep!
At Eagles games, enjoy the soft pretzel.
Later, of course, you’ll gorge on cheesesteaks.
In Germanic burbs you might find Schnitzel
and similar Euro-Yankee deep fakes.
A somewhat fearsome staple is Scrapple,
and crab fries are a Pittsburgh favorite.
That pie of pies, the esteemed Dutch Apple,
is Lancaster’s delight. Go savor it!
There’s wine near Erie, the smallest Great Lake.
And for souvenirs, it’s the sublime TastyKake!
Addendum to the Foregoing
(with thanks to Steve Wagenseller)
Damn…I’ve forgotten the classic shoofly -
that masterpiece of brown sugar and molasses.
May this addendum fix and beautify
the foregoing. (See poets cover their asses!)
51. Wrapping Up the Third Junana
This Third Junana flaunts variety,
and really its items are quite diverse.
They challenge sonnetary piety
while avoiding the vulgar, obtuse, or perverse.
I cannot tell you which I like the best;
of all of them I’ll say I’m rather fond.
Not playing favorites is always a test.
Some of them kiss my ass, but I’m not to be conned.
For the next seventeen, I’ll take requests.
One might take the form of an interview.
Maybe I’ll invite some distinguished guests,
and we’ll converse over Monopoly or Clue.
It’s quite a device - this thing called sonnet.
Here’s Junana Three, wrapped in its Yuletide bonnet.
[Next: Fourth Junana (Sonnets 52-68)]
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