POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE! Submit up to 3 poems about today's world in flux totaling no more than 150 lines each by emailing donkingfishercampbell@gmail.com by 11:59pm, May 30th. Culmination reading will be held on Saturday, May 31st, 3 to 5 pm ON ZOOM ONLY (link to reading will be provided to every published poet).

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Don Kingfisher Campbell


Stop Worrying


Major King Kong

rides on top of

the falling bomb


And everyone is laughing

as he whoops down

to the doomed city


If only nuclear weapons

could be just as gay

we'd all sleep easily


Dreaming of daisies

popping up in fields

not representing humans


With muddy water flowing

through green swamps

bubbling life for tadpoles


But what about the streets

laden with belching vehicles

and factories shipping direct


Are the cholesterolated beings

worth saving for all that labor

inside stapled cardboard boxes


Maybe this design is designed

to fail, be overtaken by breathing

trees and overgrown oceans




Where the Road Ends

 

A metal yellow diamond stands sentinel

Marker to conclusion of asphalt and culture

As fierce clouds shine over dark grassy hill

Walk into abundant wildness and see

Blue sky heat eat away clouds while

Purple thistle joyously overtake hillside

An oak tree cluster is familial brilliant

Green clumps welcoming sun and gravity

To almost reach slopes that roll and stretch

Unhindered by wire or building or car

Only footsteps and eyes should touch this

Grown beauty which still exists before

Civilization's beyond be again encroached

Whereout lie concrete interests of mere men




Human Minds


A world without

the bomb


Now wouldn't that

be something


Maybe then we'd

get rid of the rockets

and missiles too


But it would take

the removal of rifles

and guns


To produce

a fundamental return


Back to swords

and knives


Unless an alien came

to melt it all down


Hell, you know

we'd rise up


Stones and sticks

in our hands


Even sans trees

fists would still

over rule


Taking away bodies

would leave only

worlds behind


For the universe

to merrily drift

out of existence




In the World War III Museum


There are piles of melted steel, rubbled bricks, and scattered wood shards to walk around for hours


There are shells of ships, planes, trucks, and cars to gaze at from an uncomfortable short distance


There are shadows of humans, dogs, cats, even mice to be observed on walls and floors so close you can almost touch them


There are videos of world leaders in disagreement, of people segregated in differently named countries and neighborhoods in this bunker


Finally, there are mounds of cooked hair, scrapings of charred flesh, and chunks of fragmented bones as evidence we were all the same




Vietnam 


numbers on the TV screen

wounded in the hundreds

sometimes thousand and 


dead always double digit

newsman in a simple suit

with frank reynolds hair 


small square picture

in the background

of green uniforms 


with one hand

clutching chest blood

like ketchup in the movies 


and I was young

maybe 8 or 9

when I first noticed 


people holding signs at

the federal building

finally making the connection 


the suited man giving the news

the soldiers dying on their backs

and me in the living room 


with my parents at night

looking at magazines the fan on

shadows saying nothing




Green Bell Apples vs Dreadful Toenail Assholes


I want to write a poem about clipping one's toenails

That's my idea: to start with something dreadful

But then I think of what is even worse: assholes

And realize I need a pleasant counterbalance, like apples

A universally loved fruit, historically important, red or green

This contrasts wonderfully, causes my brain to ring like a bell


I decide I'll try to get every word to sound like a bell

For example, I dig the noise made by each clip of toenails

It's good to cut them, it's like eating something green

Which results in fine digestion, a subject considerably dreadful

To some, until you remind them that it is grown apples

Chewed and swallowed that help to unplug stopped assholes


You definitely want to keep doctors away from assholes

When they get a hold of you, you reverberate inside like a bell

Thus a diet of the good stuff is essential, like mature apples

And bananas and oatmeal and gelatin for your toenails

I hear it comes from animal fat--how nauseatingly dreadful

To contemplate--I've got to shift theme: a tree is green


That's better, our world is mostly filled with glorious green

Trees and bushes and grasses and hopefully not just assholes

That would be unpleasant, right? Another notion dreadful

Like oil slicks and car exhaust and stock traders clanging a bell

To signal the start of trading--there's a concept without visible toenails

How do we get back to nature in this concrete land of few apples


By focusing some time on what gives us a quality of living like apples

And take an afternoon off to walk in a park or wilderness that's green

A place where one can remove one's shoes, expose them toenails

Maybe even find a lonely spot to excrete onto dirt from assholes

Like design intended, remember we discovered how to cast a bell

Forge furnaces, direct sewage through corrugated pipes so dreadful


And what about us, the modernized people who've become dreadful

With our loud stereos, air conditioning, paper waste, prepackaged apples

Filling landfills and stopping up rivers--we need a real warning bell

To toll in our heads to call us to ponder again the value of green

Instead we drive and fly our cyberspaced opinions like assholes

Everybody's got a justification, but what about freeing those toenails


Yes, it's all down to toenails freedom or leather shoes dreadful

When it's the assholes that rule, we diminish the number of apples

So go for the green life and make your own cause a cleansing bell



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