Dogslandia

Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Sonnet #364

 Sonnet #364

Frog comes up to eat their own minnows

All that lives will turn to shit eventually

And frogs come up to eat and croak and throw

Their children up and then chase fleas

The hair of the dog is home for enough

Rough enmities to bury plenty of eggs

And plenty of little frogs might as well stuff

Their faces with the newborns slugs

That smear the concrete walls when it rains

Eat and grow, this is their mantra, and

Keep your skin wet, so. So. It pains

To say it but perhaps the golden ball and

Where we left it was never meant for affection

For after years as frogs, the prince takes no corrections


(Originally published to Patreon)

Sonnet #363

 Sonnet #363

Since feeling is first, I hear, and then

We start to scream a lot at parents

If we ever stop to think too much we send

Our feelings to a pausing place, once sent

The trains fall silent, and then the dogs

And then the cats and birds lose their sense

Of space in all this time, and the clouds sog

Down close to ground and settle in my babies

For we are stuck forever now in place to be

Archaeology, as lost as dinosaurs among the

Blades of grass and blades of surgery, do tell

The devouring ones to leave a bone or two

To smell our way home when souls are ready to

Two poems about birds

 New Birds


At some point the birds that die 

Upon the ground beside the building 

Will mean the ones who live

And breed among glass canyons 

Will see what glass is

Maybe not the glass 

Precisely, but maybe the line 

Between the parquet floor 

And the manicured lawn

Until then, the stray cats

Live well in the shadows 

Where the birds strike

The invisible wall between us

/@/

The Endangered Crane Hunts Fish in slide the Courtyard Pond

Oh Bird, who will not know the price of koi 

Who will not know the why of shallows 

Packed with so many colored swallows 

Gulping down the jeweled flesh in joy 

While the company refuels the stock

Oh Bird, there is a law that says you live

You do not know how untouchable, survive

Upon the architects vision, sky unlocked

Where gates are always closed, endangered now 

With so few marshes left for hunting

Oh Bird, who stands upon a the bench below

The window of the king, cawing pooping

When the janitor flashes lights into you

Or claps and makes a sound, your graceful leaping


(Both originally published at Patreon)

Sonnet #362

 Sonnet #362

What purpose making beds when autumn comes?

The dogs were quick to leap under the blankets

And twist and turn and scrape into their glum

And not much later, I took the tea and drank it

Squeezed between their tangled bodies' warmth

And wait for all the rains to sweep the streets

And wind to come down screaming from the north

The leaves will fall, the sidewalks glisten, in sheets

we wait for all the worst to blow beyond

this taste of cosmic darkness, echoes sky 

where emptiness and cold eternal yawns

Our ship of earth is turning in the sigh

Of cosmic winds and raging nebula in entropy

So spin my darling puppies; huddle close to me.

Sonnet #361

 Sonnet #361

I live in the sky, even when I'm hidden

When I'm down in a basement or burrow

or midden; my breathe is the sky, my narrows

still feel it, and when I hold breath in,

the sky descends into wet within me

i lift it back up from deep below

changeless and changing, my empty grows

in drifts and hefts and maws and leans

Pockets of sky, always come in sealed

building envelopes, autos, malls, and homes

The spirit is with us, the flesh is weak but heals

with spirit and sky and water and tombs

Foaming with flowers, and time, and pain

Reach for the sky, and live with leaves and wings

Sonnet #360

 Sonnet #360

I walk alone in someone else's garden
And smell the flowers of the end of summer skies
When rain returns and that last flower rise
Nothing lasts forever, beg your pardon,
But you who planted seeds must know
That in the end the earth devours flowers
And my rude footfalls in these long hours
Will crush the seeds wherever wind will blow
But thank you, stranger, for this refuge
Where I can sit in shade and smell the rose
Where I can be alone with my mosquitos
Where birds sing songs that I will always lose
Perhaps in dreams the songs will come back to me
And the scent of borrowed beauty slips into me


(originally posted to Patreon)

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

We have all had that moment on our journey

 Strangers on a train connect in circumstances too unreal

Discuss the unexpected journeys and laugh about it

And for a moment allow each other to talk and be

And when the passage ends, the story ends

Stardust glistens in nebulas and coalesces into planets

And settles into stomachs that pretend to know the world

For a moment, we are friends, but the station is just ahead

And time comes to emerge into the sky, seep into the crowds

Dissolve and dissolve

Safe travels to all you friendly strangers out there

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Time and Treasure and Blood and Bone

 We will be sacrificed. 

We are born into a world made of altars.

Stone and wood and steel and bone.

We choose where we bleed.

We choose where we sweat.

We choose what gods we feed.

Pass among these corridors of streetlights.

Seek your gods that sacrifice back.

Until you learn the price is never paid for

By these petty constructs


Sometimes people are nice to each other

So give them your heart 

And hope the time and blood and treasure and bone

Will let the gods leave your tribe alone

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

The Art Faucet

 When I was young, I had to wait for art. I had to set my watch and prepare for the shows I wanted weekly. I had to search the record stores for cool things, search the channels of the radio, and maybe talk with friends who knew something. I had to find books, physically find them. I had to go to libraries and bookstores and use card catalogues and search. 

Even pictures on the wall had to be selected, framed, and placed.


Art is a faucet, now. A water bill is paid to a water company, and the art is available on demand, whenever I turn the switch. I can adjust the dials to get exactly the art and water I desire, as cool or hot as the mood strikes. I can call out to it in a crowded room without lifting a finger and the water art turns on. I can hang a tv on a mantel and it slides through all the pictures I desire and I never have to choose.

It’s just there, the art, flowing whenever the button is on, and I can dial it however I like, and never have to be patient or tolerate anything I don’t. I open my phone and push the book button, and books appear, and I simply swipe my finger until the dial gives me what I want.


The water art companies are always tracking, to try and put things close at hand that I might want to drink. They are always watching.


When you are in the business of making drops of water, they sell that water very cheap, don’t they?

Monday, July 1, 2024

Silence would like a word

 Inside you is a silence that would like 

to have a word — it cannot speak, of course,

But swells into your darkness when the words 

Reflect back darkness, and the strike

Upon the heart arrives, my friend, you hear?

The empty bell, that rings without a sound


Friday, May 10, 2024

Omenomics

 Omenomics: I will sell you the future 

If you believe me enough

And I will point to things

Birds

Stones

The way your dreams burn you clean

Until you wake up covered in sweat

Heart beating


And I will sell you back your own anger

I will be the mirror by which you flex

And I will point to how the movement

Of stars and gravity paint your muscles


No one likes to dream alone

And they are never free

Friday, March 8, 2024

Time Travelers

 We small and lonely creatures

Invent ourselves in memories

And mysteries

Every day we build ourselves a better story

Out of the fading sands

That no one else remembers

Try to make it clay


Tuesday, February 27, 2024

When birds are gone

 When birds eventually fade into the smog and wildfires

And the absence of insects collapses 

Everything

The trees will must evolve into the niche of birds

Leaves for feathers

Acorn

Eggs

Monday, October 30, 2023

How much damage screaming does

 I was sitting in an office with a child psychologist and my ex-wife, and she started verbally digging in and taking a tone and elevating her voice and the child psychologist was indifferent to all that she was doing to cause harm, her aggressive body language, and the rage all over her face. He thought it was fine and she seemed so nice. I was having a panic attack in front of him and he wanted me to be assuming the man is obviously the asshole, here, and it led me down a rabbit hole where i figured out why all our former friends have no fucking clue what happened to us, and why i can just say "excuse me, that's enough," and everyone gasps because the man is so mean.

https://youtu.be/xEZH6YSQvwA?si=HkMPSJ0md49eXqD6

Women can yell, berate, and hit a man anytime they want, and people take her side.

Do better out there. Violence is violence. No one deserves to be yelled at or talked down to or pushed or shoved or kicked or hit. 

The statistics tell a story that women are primarily the victims of domestic violence, but we don't actually know how many men are being abused and don't even notice it happening, because culturally, men don't even realize that they are being abused most of the time until it goes way too far.