Macbeth Limerick

Macbeth and Banquo Meeting the Witches;
Théodore Chasséria (1855)
There was a great General named Macbeth.
All that kept him from kingship was a death,
but - as with a Pringle -
he couldn't do a single.
So, he showed seven more their last breaths.

No Christmas in April Blues [Blues Poem]

The dust is risin' down that dirt road;
someone is comin' my way fast.
The dust is risin' down that dirt road;
someone is comin' my way fast.
Hope it's not the f#@kin' tax man.
Maybe it's Santa Claus, at last.

Slack Flags [Haiku]

prayer flags hang still.
i hear them go silent
as i sit - eyes closed

Kapok Tree [Haiku]

Taken at Lal Bagh (Bangalore) in 2021
sinuous roots
of the silk-cotton tree;
are they moving?

Bad Anthropologist [Free Verse]

Today, I read about an anthropologist
who was living among an isolated tribe, 
[as anthropologists tend to do]
a tribe who believed that twins
weren't really people,
and that twin babies 
should be left to die 
of neglect. 

This anthropologist, 
like all good anthropologists,
was trained to respect 
indigenous beliefs and 
to not go mucking around
and breaking the "Prime Directive"
[well, that term is from Star Trek,
but good anthropologists have similar
directives -- or, at least, proclivities --
i.e. to be objective,
and - to the degree one can't be -
to recognize one's biases and try to 
note the role they might play.] 

This anthropologist was doing a
grand job of being an anthropologist,
until a woman in the tribe had twins...

Mad Mind-Fire [Free Verse]

My brain is an angry sac of neurons:
hot wired / electrified.

Sizzling synapses ready to snap
and spew seedy scenes
upon this world.

But no one hears a scream
in the dark void of a barren mind:

though the scream radiates outward
as a painful wave of unknown
origin & purpose,

a tremor in the fabric of us

Urban Garden [Haiku]

the city's curated 
garden is both more & 
less than wildflowers 

In Tall Grass [Free Verse]

Do you feel unease,
walking in tall grass?

Visceral tension?

A primal impression from a time
when a wounded beast
[on its belly, &
with labored breath]
retained enough energy
for one last lurch
to impale its hunter?

A raspy groan or bloody burble,
and the jerky wave of the grass
might be all the warning one got
before 
The End.