Category: Personal/Political

While I don’t necessarily agree with the old feminist notion that the personal is inescapably political, I do try and write about politics mainly through a personal or literary lens. For the rare exceptions, see Rants.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Death generation

Sam Pepys and me

Up betimes as I use to do, and in my chamber begun to look over my father’s accounts, which he brought out of the country with him by my desire, whereby I may see what he has received and spent, and I find that he is not anything extravagant, and yet it do so far outdo his estate that he must either think of lessening his charge, or I must be forced to spare money out of my purse to help him through, which I would willing do as far as 20l. goes.
So to my office the remaining part of the morning till towards noon, and then to Mr. Grant’s. There saw his prints, which he shewed me, and indeed are the best collection of any things almost that ever I saw, there being the prints of most of the greatest houses, churches, and antiquitys in Italy and France and brave cutts. I had not time to look them over as I ought, and which I will take time hereafter to do, and therefore left them and home to dinner.
After dinner, it raining very hard, by coach to Whitehall, where, after Sir G. Carteret, Sir J. Minnes, Mr. Coventry and I had been with the Duke, we to the Committee of Tangier and did matters there dispatching wholly my Lord Teviott, and so broke up.
With Sir G. Carteret and Sir John Minnes by coach to my Lord Treasurer’s, thinking to have spoken about getting money for paying the Yards; but we found him with some ladies at cards: and so, it being a bad time to speak, we parted, and Sir J. Minnes and I home, and after walking with my wife in the garden late, to supper and to bed, being somewhat troubled at Ashwell’s desiring and insisting over eagerly upon her going to a ball to meet some of her old companions at a dancing school here in town next Friday, but I am resolved she shall not go. So to bed.
This day the little Duke of Monmouth was marryed at White Hall, in the King’s chamber; and tonight is a great supper and dancing at his lodgings, near Charing-Cross. I observed his coat at the tail of his coach he gives the arms of England, Scotland, and France, quartered upon some other fields, but what it is that speaks his being a bastard I know not.

out of nothing
so far

out of a purse goes
the morning war

in which we collect
most of a house

raining ash over
some little mouth


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 20 April 1663.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Johnny’s Gone

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

no more rat race
my face masked
to ask others their motherlands

who cannot read
my lips precipitous
against the form-fitting fabric

but a mask with too many
holes holds
half the battle

of one with a gun sight
rickrackety
on caterpillar tracks

with the unrusted
buzz of a bot
in my earpiece

here are the coordinates
inordinate in their pin-
prick precision

a stalk a stork
a boy with a stick
a cloud of ungodly rain

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Survival

Sam Pepys and me

Up by four o’clock in the morning and walked to the Dock, where Commissioner Pett and I took barge and went to the guardships and mustered them, finding them but badly manned; thence to the Sovereign, which we found kept in good order and very clean, which pleased us well, but few of the officers on board. Thence to the Charles, and were troubled to see her kept so neglectedly by the boatswain Clements, who I always took for a very good officer; it is a very brave ship. Thence to Upnor Castle, and there went up to the top, where there is a fine prospect, but of very small force; so to the yard, and there mustered the whole ordinary, where great disorder by multitude of servants and old decrepid men, which must be remedied. So to all the storehouses and viewed the stores of all sorts and the hemp, where we found Captain Cocke’s (which he came down to see along with me) very bad, and some others, and with much content (God forgive me) I did hear by the Clerk of the Ropeyard how it was by Sir W. Batten’s private letter that one parcel of Alderman Barker’s was received.
At two o’clock to dinner to the Hill-house, and after dinner dispatched many people’s business, and then to the yard again, and looked over Mr. Gregory’s and Barrow’s houses to see the matter of difference between them concerning an alteration that Barrow would make, which I shall report to the board, but both their houses very pretty, and deserve to be so, being well kept. Then to a trial of several sorts of hemp, but could not perform it here so well as at Woolwich, but we did do it pretty well.
So took barge at the dock and to Rochester, and there Captain Cocke and I and our two men took coach about 8 at night and to Gravesend, where it was very dark before we got thither to the Swan; and there, meeting with Doncaster, an old waterman of mine above bridge, we eat a short supper, being very merry with the drolling, drunken coachman that brought us, and so took water. It being very dark, and the wind rising, and our waterman unacquainted with this part of the river, so that we presently cast upon the Essex shore, but got off again, and so, as well as we could, went on, but I in such fear that I could not sleep till we came to Erith, and there it begun to be calm, and the stars to shine, and so I began to take heart again, and the rest too, and so made shift to slumber a little.
Above Woolwich we lost our way, and went back to Blackwall, and up and down, being guided by nothing but the barking of a dog, which we had observed in passing by Blackwall, and so…

our mission must go on
brave but decrepit

to see god
in people again

to see the difference between
the well and its water

above us the wind
unacquainted with sex and fear

the stars guided by nothing
but the barking of a dog


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 4 August 1662.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Parliamentarian

Sam Pepys and me

Up by four o’clock and to my office till 8 o’clock, writing over two copies of our contract with Sir W. Rider, &c., for 500 ton of hempe, which, because it is a secret, I have the trouble of 7 over as well as drawing.
Then home to dress myself, and so to the office, where another fray between Sir R. Ford and myself about his yarn, wherein I find the board to yield on my side, and was glad thereof, though troubled that the office should fall upon me of disobliging Sir Richard.
At noon we all by invitation dined at the Dolphin with the Officers of the Ordnance; where Sir W. Compton, Mr. O’Neale, and other great persons, were, and a very great dinner, but I drank as I still do but my allowance of wine.
After dinner, was brought to Sir W. Compton a gun to discharge seven times, the best of all devices that ever I saw, and very serviceable, and not a bawble; for it is much approved of, and many thereof made.
Thence to my office all the afternoon as long as I could see, about setting many businesses in order. In the evening came Mr. Lewis to me, and very ingeniously did enquire whether I ever did look into the business of the Chest at Chatham; and after my readiness to be informed did appear to him, he did produce a paper, wherein he stated the government of the Chest to me; and upon the whole did tell me how it hath ever been abused, and to this day is; and what a meritorious act it would be to look after it; which I am resolved to do, if God bless me; and do thank him very much for it.
So home, and after a turn or two upon the leads with my wife, who has lately had but little of my company, since I begun to follow my business, but is contented therewith since she sees how I spend my time, and so to bed.

a secret wing
should fall at noon

we allow a gun
to discharge seven times
approve the afternoon

the government of a hole
has little to see


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 3 July 1662.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Present Tense

disoriented by the mass slaughter of innocents
or the world as so many assumed they knew it vanishing
one might resolve to live only in the present tense

one could pay attention for example to the constant embrace of clothes
how air and water flow around and also through us
the way sound waves break against our eardrums
the proprioceptive intelligence of the feet

all the machinery of being human humming away
even for humans who lose or misplace their humanity
they must retain a muscle memory of how to crawl
the ground by and large continues to hold them up
lightning fails to edit them out of the story
prayers do not curdle in their unremarkable mouths
they fish with gilded forks through a bitter stew

shielded by double-glazed windows from the calls of birds
and soon enough the thunderous love-songs of 17-year locusts
currently still as pale as an army of spirits
tunnelling up through roots and rocks and mud

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Spooned

‘There are enough microplastics in your brain to make an entire spoon’
—headline in Fast Company

oh brain spoon
shall we take our medicine
of gray rain

how about we lighten
our thoughts and make them
stackable

what sparks joy must
be smooth and new
and uniquely sleek

no more murky
unAmerican thoughts
of slaughtered children

no more muffled wails
of ambulances buried
in mass graves

neuroplasticity
lets us relax
we moo over the moon

for the spoon the dish
ran away with
has come to a fork

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Wreckage

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

the wreck and not the story of the wreck
Adrienne Rich

Growing old under capitalism, we learn again and again how foolish we are to allow ourselves to become attached to any particular place. All will be destroyed for short-term profits. The kids who grew up playing in the creek that ran through an old pasture gone back to woods saw it all disappear under acres of parking lot for a new mall. The kids who grew up hanging out at the mall return home to find it derelict, the parking lot full of weeds from other continents.

And now, one supposes, there are children with skateboards and big dreams who love this new wasteland. Because when the wild is out of reach, the feral can serve in its place. The human need for unmanaged places is strong. Without regular contact with the more-than-human, our imaginations shrivel and we lose most capacity for self-reinvention, like large language models training on each other’s output, increasingly disconnected from the living flow.

Or perhaps the children are all scheduled up with structured playtime in safe and fenced-in spaces, and the only people out in the wasteland now are drug addicts and other unhappy campers. Under their heads as they sleep, the creek is breaking out of its rusty conduit. Ailanthus roots have found a fissure. It’s only a matter of time.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

War News

One of those crystal-clear days in early spring when you can fool yourself into thinking it’s warm because the sun is so bright. I hike up to a favorite spot for a thermos of tea. I’m reading War News II: 12/9/2023 to 6/3/2024, an excellent and searing collection by Beau Beausoleil.

war news
the cold boulder
at my back

Walking home, I have a terrible thought: in a time of great lies, words are losing their power to change hearts, including our own, and therefore those of us who are religious, however obscurely so, ought to consider switching from prayer to sacrifice. Something more than performative gestures must be at stake.

killdeerkilldeer
the smell of cow manure
somehow sweet

Posted on by Dave Bonta

What About the Children

empty playground
snow on all the swings

the missing children on phones
or under rubble

the missing photographer
replaced by AI

it’s as perfect as the snow
at an indoor ski resort in Dubai

a vision of bleakness from some
mind of summer

where childhood ends
in a bully’s empty pledge

***

in response to this photo, used as a recent writing prompt by tiny words