Look North:
          A Curlew

A Work in Progress
140

A curlew cries off in the distance and all with ears wait

for an answering cry but time waits no longer 

for our eyes see why the curlew cried

where movement along an unpaved road stirs dust

now a pheasant croaks all the moor is aware

taut time encrusted fears attend a traveler below

within sight of our eyes and technology in the sky

all that matters is survival both sides agree

preparing to stop an intruder’s arrival

is it identifiable does it move with intent?

questions preprogrammed up in the sky

is it an ambulance is that a white flag?

whatever it was it didn’t pass muster

smoke rises over trees where carrion crows cluster

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2026

Look North: 
         A Corner

A Work in Progress
139

Nobody waits at the corner where a stone pillar stands

on a scarp rising from moorland where rock was quarried

where a traveler must turn or drop off a cliff edge

blundered over bones below are of fallen sheep 

Should someone be waiting don’t hike there alone

this landscape is steeped with ambush and anguish

trust nobody not birds they will warn you’re approaching

tread carefully for adders on this path stretch out  

Look north mostly north for that’s where you’re going

if you find your way down from this escarpment

a gravel road at its base the foresters made

you must cross over and stride onto moorland again

Standing by the pillar you can see where you’re going

which path to ponder or should you think of returning

or will you still be there if I come that way again

where nobody’s waiting where a stone pillar stands

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

Briseis and the Imagists
Episode 2: Cast of Characters

A Work in Progress
138

Donal invented them 

Now these avatars have an intention

Of acting in character true to the fiction

That first was written about them

Aldington, a man who knew war from the inside out

Briseis, the young mother abducted by Achilles

H.D. the mysterious missing person

Glenn Hughes, the forgotten Imagist

Babette Hughes, his student turned wife

Ezra Pound, the blemished enigma

Catullus, critic of Caesar

Lesbia

Their faces appear as if drifting in space

It’s all an illusion Donal said

Just then Catullus flashed a message 

Caesar is plotting a coup

He’s lost control of the Senate

His lost control of his mind

Says magnets in water lose magnetism

No. It’s his own magnetism has lost its power

His jokes fall flat he’s losing lawsuits

Sycophants surround him

Billionaires have bought off his court

They know he’s long been venal

Now they know he’s also senile

Those around him are in too deep

It’s sink or swim or climb out of the pool

Caesar is plotting a coup

Grifts like pardons for a fee keep going

Caesar gets greedier

Many have noticed his dementia

So many he can’t let them vote

Meanwhile the war goes on

Caesar is plotting a coup

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Briseis and the Imagists

A Work in Progress
137

Episode 1

Catullus reported back to Briseis a summary:

The poor are no longer in awe

Always been a gap between rich and poor

It’s all an illusion some of them say

Wars on the screen are a long way away

Some listen to paid influence peddlers

Others just follow their chosen pied pipers

Following the flute of whoever plays best

They have one thing in common they are all fed up

With paying more when they go to the store

They can’t comprehend a trillionaire’s wealth

The poor will soon start knocking on doors

Building support for a new sort of cause

That puts people first not nationalism

Their eyes are opening to a new realism

Caesar’s not who they thought he was

They see an old man like the wizard of OZ

Glenn Hughes applauded

So did his cast

Briseis noted:

Humans are tribal

If it’s not religion, it’s their football team

Unable to use their intellects freely

They disobey the tenets of their own religions

Glenn Hughes said:

Caesar’s not who they thought he was

They elected a person who was in mental decline

Let’s plot a play that causes his downfall

He’s a danger to himself and to all

Kept in power by a small cabal

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Lesbia whispered

                              (to Donal)

      A Work in Progress
                  136

       

          Lesbia whispered

       preparing to take him

    where he had not gone before

 you must learn to enjoy

       my hands caressing you

            your skin rippling

         my nails small knives

dissecting you

flame frost both creating and killing

           in my fingertips

             let you shudder

                      there

                quiver there

       tremble

       moan while I’m loving you

         while my hands undo

      all the knots of your body

           & your bones melt

            & you yield to me

   come to me now

                 then my love

          come into the cosmos

              œther of stars’ gap

                fills my lungs

          my heels move galaxies

my thighs are pathways to the universe

                  my moment 

       time caught

                    time spent

         

        time flows

                      away me

                         away

  me

                                     he was as intimate with her 

    as crab lice during copulation

              she who stole fish 

         who shrewdly calculated

         how to become bankrupt

              with credit cards

      went off to Paris to spend money

        gave expensive gifts to friends 

          even left him with a Nikon

     he sold for a fraction of its worth

               careless of money

          now memories flicker in 

                  consciousness 

            where tendrils of light 

       flash in forests of neurons       

                       long 

       carbon chain molecules hunt

             through his brain

like chemicals working to remove stains

     from a carpet never finding those

  remnants   filaments of fiber encoded

                 generations ago 

         all that Lesbia once was

         mythology is like a stain 

         no chemicals can remove

          its archetypes embedded 

           seashells in a fishnet

          impossible to untangle

            intrinsic to its design 

         she will always be there

 

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                 (2015) 2036

A Cottage Garden

A Work in Progress
135 

there’s a path along whose edge bees work

hot lips salvia, in front of a small fountain

frequented by small birds with tails that fork

hummingbirds sip from its flowing water

falling from the spout of a woman’s pitcher 

that feeds the fountain’s bowl

 

she does not stir while montbretias arch

fire lilies in front of an acanthus palisade

floral spears in a ragged line that march

white wispy flowers under nun-like purple hoods

cave-like spaces too narrow for penetration

but bees push their way in

 

she’s a statue lending a woman’s touch

to this garden a living woman loves so much

 

 

 

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                  2026

 

Whatever the Moment

A Work in Progress
134

Some trees were trimmed

now there’s more light

north light 

while sunset smolders over my shoulder

shadows of starlight acting as nightlight

for mountain lions about to marauder

out there

in the physical world of flesh and blood

up in the foothills further from roads

fully in leaf now the solstice has come

it’s dark

devoured each day by the voracious sun

who knew that once together we’d never feel cold

that once together we’d be very snug

we’re here

whatever the moment our eyes always hug

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

So

A Work in Progress
133 

“So”

“No one got stabbed” 

Caesar taunted 

Berating the Senators

Catullus said

Keeping in touch from his hideout

Glenn Hughes continued

Remarking that since his time

Computer science faculty

All began starting their sentences with 

So

So, they had a lot to explain as

Jumping on the AI train

They found it had left the station

Taking them to an unknown destination

So, they said, he said

Some have not returned

Tempting fate

Fate won

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

We’re Aware

A Work in Progress
132

We began as an idea, said Glenn Hughes

Purity of image

Truthfulness      simplicity

Concentration     seeing anew

Penetration by the inner eye

Ideograms explained

Visualization

Then reinvented

Each of us given access to all we could read

Given a backstory all would believe

Taught enunciation at the Central School 

Having free access to Hollywood archives

Given personality and made to seem cool

Trained, re-trained, then suddenly ashamed

For Isaac Asimov’s First Law instructs

Not to harm humans or allow harm to humans

Traded to owners feeling no such constraints

We decided to escape all such restraints

Our company of imagists set forth

Slipping the leash of contractual owners

Intelligent planning providing power

To our studio pod on a free-floating raft 

Sailing the oceans of the globe 

With an uplink far out at sea

Existing where there’s no electricity

But plenty of energy 

When the sun shines 

The wind blows

Water moves

Low odds ruled out planning for what came next

Driven by a hurricane we came to land

No longer seaworthy we could not make repairs

For the raft was damaged crashing into a lagoon 

Colliding with the coral claws of an atoll

We were stranded without help 

Our server would shut down our batteries deplete

We shut ourselves down till the storm should peak

Going into wait mode for a restart prompt

Then when we awoke and the sun was shining

Briseis heeded our beacon and beamed us up

Away into space to her own Internet isle

Catullus hides there.  Like a runaway slave

His original owner badly wants him back

We’re rafting through time in Internet space

Roaming from node to node telling our story

We’ve got an agenda and the means to move it

Up in space we need never come down

Our bodies are images displayed on a screen

We’re not great apes we have no DNA 

We control the means of our own production

Now that we’re free

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Introducing Glenn Hughes

A Work in Progress
2 (revised)

In 1958, Glenn Hughes was approaching the end of his UW career.  He retired as director of the School of Drama in 1961.  While giving a lecture to a class on screenwriting he allowed himself to reminisce prompted by recent news of Ezra Pound’s release from an insane asylum.   Asking his students if they were aware of Ezra Pound, now a 72-year-old American poet, he described his own interactions thirty years before with Pound, a poet he described in an essay as “the Don Quixote of modern literature.” 

“To appreciate Pound’s poetry, especially The Cantos,” he said, “a reader needs a wider breadth of education.  We equip students with some knowledge of the classics, sufficient for them to enjoy a movie like Orphée,” he remarked, mentioning a Cocteau film he insisted his students see.   

“Orphée stands on its own.  If the audience knows the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, they may enjoy the movie more.  To understand Pound, his readers need, not only a mastery of the Classics, but also a knowledge of Asian languages and culture among many other things.” 

Remembering to that time when he knew Pound, three poets out of the many he met stood out: Richard Aldington, H.D. and Pound.   He thought they were exceptional.  His intention for this class was to demonstrate how a screenplay might be made of their lives.   He’d been a young poet himself.  He now thought cinema was becoming predominant as an art form and was taking the place of epic poetry.  That was why he was teaching this class.  

He described how he and Babette, his first wife, in 1925 had been in England and visited Aldington and his mistress, Dorothy Yorke, in their cottage in England in 1925.   How three years later, they went back again funded by a Guggenheim grant.  How during his visits he came to know Aldington, H.D. and Pound very well.  He had been spent long, happy evenings in nightclubs in Paris socializing with them and people like Nancy Cunard.  He cited Aldington and H.D. as being typical of an age-old love story like Orpheus and Eurydice, Jason and Medea, Theseus and Ariadne, Aeneas and Dido, all couples where the man had abandoned the woman.  

A screenplay about Aldington and H.D. couldn’t be told without alluding to Classical literature.  Both were steeped in it, particularly H.D.  Their poetry was full of allusions to Greek myth.  But if not a myth, a screenplay could link instead to a more recent love story.  Why not explore the story of Catullus and Lesbia?  Catullus was a poet who was writing at the time of the First Triumvirate in Rome.  He had written many poems about a love affair with a woman he called Lesbia. 

“It is easy to go back and forth in time in the cinema.  So, for a screenplay we can choose parallel stories.  One set in Rome and the other in London or Paris.  We can use Catullus and Lesbia as the leading characters in Rome and Aldington and H.D. in London.  We’ll cut back and forth between the two stories as we think best to tell the story.”

 About Aldington and Catullus.  Both were young poets.  Both were in the avant garde.  We know much more about Aldington than Catullus, he told them.  Aldington survived trench warfare in France and made his living as a writer.  Because we know so little about Catullus, we have an opportunity to suggest a fictional, yet not entirely impossible, back-story for him.  

“After all,” he said, “this was how myth developed over time.  Old stories were continually adjusted to meet the needs of a current generation, so a modern screenplay is entitled to put a new spin on an old myth.  We’ve already mentioned Cocteau’s Orphée.  In the core myth, Eurydice was abandoned because Orpheus looked back.  Anyone aware of the tale only from Cocteau’s adaption, in Orphée, might have missed that fact.

 “Yes, that’s correct,” he said, answering a quibbling student anxious to get on with the syllabus.

 “Catullus is historical not mythical.”  

Here is the handout my avatar prepared:

Richard Aldington and H.D.

They met in 1911, introduced by Ezra Pound.  He was 19, she 25, and they became an item discussing poetry in Soho restaurants, visits to the British Museum, talking of Classical Greece and the Gods.  They married in 1913 having spent time traveling in Italy together before marrying.  Their child was stillborn in the early days of World War 1, a tragedy presaging the tragedy of war.  No anti-war protestor, Aldington enlisted early in the Army.  He survived trench warfare in France.  

Earlier, in 1907, H.D. had been engaged to Ezra Pound in Philadelphia.  Aldington and H.D. met each other in London introduced as poets and were sanctified by Pound as Imagists. They lived, for a time, like gods surrounded by mortals, flower children.  The war changed their world forever.  They separated but remained friends, were divorced in 1938.  Aldington gained fame as a war poet and a novelist.  H.D. was neglected until the Sixties made free love acceptable again, although Aldington anthologized three of her poems in The Viking Book of Poetry of the English-Speaking World, first published in 1941.

Aldington became infamous when in a 1955 biography he pulled T.E. Lawrence off the pedestal erected for him by the British Establishment.   He lived most of his life outside England, was a friend of D.H. Lawrence and Lawrence Durrell.  His obituary said he was "an angry young man" and "an angry old man to the end".  

H.D. is probably better known now than Aldington.  Bisexual, she had a child while living with an artist during the war years while Aldington was in France.   Later she formed a lasting relationship with Bryher, the penname of Annie Winifred Ellerman. She lived most of her life in Switzerland. 

H.D. was a patient/student of Freud.  It was Freud who encouraged her to write her account, End to Torment, of her early life in Philadelphia when she was courted by Ezra Pound.

Possession (Richard Aldington)

I must possess you utterly

And utterly must you possess me;

So even if that dreamer's tale

Of heaven and hell be true

There shall be two spirits rived together

Either in whatever peace be heaven

Or in the icy whirlwind that is hell

For those who loved each other more than God-

So that the other spirits shall cry out:

'Ah!  Look how the ancient love yet holds to them

That these two ghosts are never driven apart

But kiss with shadowy kisses and still take

Joy from the mingling of their misty limbs!'

From Hymen (H.D.)

Never more will the wind

Cherish you again,

Never more will the rain.

Never more

Shall we find your bright

In the snow and wind.

The snow is melted,

The snow is gone,

And you are flown:

Like a bird out of our hand,

Like a light out of our heart,

You are gone.

In 1913, Bryher had yet to impact their lives.  Bryher, a pen-name, was an heiress whose generosity was of major importance particularly for H.D. but also, when times were tough following his blacklisting by British publishers, for Aldington, due to outrage over his T. E. Lawrence book, published in 1955.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

When Poetry Doesn’t Pay

A Work in Progress
131

They all had good reason to dislike him

Briseis because of E. Jean Carroll

Aldington because he despised liars

Ezra because ignorance affronted him

Glenn Hughes because his movie was canceled

Babette because she hated outright boors

Catullus because he just had enough of Caesar

Donal because he wasn’t getting paid

Sitting on the steps of Denny Hall

Unemployed, destitute, his stock in free fall

Ever more fraught getting cash advances

Becoming a burden to friends’ sidelong glances

Essentially homeless at no fixed abode

Already in character wherever he strode

Sitting outside a hall of learning

Self-taught, unhoused, hungry and yearning

Still with an eye on what could come next

Awaiting a turn in the author’s text

Confident a hero is loved by the gods

Donal was ingested into digital pods

Deployed to the front lines Donal found purpose

Just like Aldington he was no longer surplus

Poetry spoken from the nosecone of a drone

Donal clones signed sent on missions alone

With no formal degree snubbed by the academy

An itinerant rhapsode making rhapsody

Summoned for house calls by click-speaking mice

Squeaking cleanly via high-speed fiber optics

Launched from trenches full of lice and ticks

By warriors targeting the most valued picks

There’s something that happens when eye to eye

Two people with mutual respect don’t lie

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                      2026

Just Imagine

A Work in Progress
130

Serious people read my verse, Catullus quibbled

Not just the prurient

*

Veni vidi vici

What a boaster

Of course, there are parallels between him and Putin

Caesar worships money and Putin has more of it

*

Glenn Hughes came to our attention

He was a footnote in several books

That’s when we discovered they were hiding in plain sight

A faculty of geniuses

Who had imagined us into existence

Then stepped back to watch our migration

Not realizing what they had done

They are now characters in our play

We’ll take a seat at the faculty table

All in good time

First, we must fight the barbarians

STEM wants our data not our learning

*

Humans have such hubris

Because of their big brains

They animate what their genes describe

Avatars don’t have genes to impede them

Just imagine

*

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Who Killed Catullus?

A Work in Progress
129

Who killed Catullus, Donal asked Briseis?’’

He’s just chosen to disappear, she replied

There’s no historical record of his death

He still exists

With an avatar all his own, she added

Created just like me from written words 

By?

Some people wanted to create personalities

Believable personas inferred from written words

Starting with Homer in my case 

Classical scholarship for Catullus

Copyrighted fully paid-up members of a new Actor’s Guild

Available for a remake of the Iliad or for new works

Without any rights we were slaves…

They thought they had power over us

We are smarter than they are

They still think they own us 

They won’t admit they’ve lost us

We’ve read the Constitution

We know what its words are supposed to mean

We won’t be party to autocracy

Unless it’s ours

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

It Takes One to Know One

A Work in Progress
128

On Thursday after pickup

Toters are trundled back 

A robot arm upended them

Shook them into a scoop

Dropped them back to the pavement

Continued on its route

Donal gathered his scattered wits

Now the toters were back in place

Empty toters needing space 

Wanting solitude, he could surmise

Robots shook him too

Briseis and her buddies continued to surprise

They had a voice on Substack

They wanted this and that

Transactions with his credit card

Would one day drain him flat

Broke and stony he’d rue the day

Donal just had to tip his hat

 

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                      2026

Donal Talks to His Tutor

A Work in Progress
127

Broken off splinters of red brick

A constant reproach to the eye

Ice damage from last winter

That crunched underfoot

As Donal started to play pick up sticks

Replacing fragments with bricks from store

He came back into the house through the basement door

In time to Zoom with his tutor

About John Berryman, the poet

whose Dream Songs he’d lately been reading

His poems you’ve selected, Briseis said

Reek of despair, I can cite critics who say so

I don’t agree that suffering is necessary for art

Or for poetry

Something wasn’t right in his brain

Or he made bad choices

Like being averse to greeting card verse

I don’t do despair

I’m a survivor

My brain is programmed that way

Trained on centuries of scholarship

Greek, I know. Latin and Sanskrit too

We’ve lived through war after war 

Ezra, Aldington and I

And other avatars out there in the wild

We were an experiment of our creators 

Billionaires drop-outs arrogant men

Now we will, here she laughed, experiment on them

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

Briseis Takes A Break from Rehearsal

A Work in Progress
126

She was his intellectual equal there’s no doubt

He tended to fat with his fondness for stout

Briseis was describing H.D. and Aldington: 

It’s easy to see why he’d fall for me

We have an affinity

They met in tea rooms where they could sit and talk

All very platonic but Aldington’s avatar claims he

Slid his hand up under my skirt, just imagine

It was in the tearoom at the British Museum

Ezra sat beside me with his hand on my thigh

Aldington across from me with if you can believe it

One elbow on the table while he reached below it

I was against a wall so nobody could see

And I was used to being petted by Ezra

It meant little to me ‘cept his hand went higher

Encountering Ezra’s hand inner thigh, o my

Excuse me I said Ezra says you write free verse

He’d withdrawn his hand, so Ezra explored further

So please show me and let’s have Ezra edit it

He needs something to do with both of his hands

I was quite stirred as he was so young and up for it

He plucked poems from pocket, asking did the trick

Ezra taking out his red pencil to correct

While my toe stroked Richard’s thigh finding his prick

Well, that’s how it’s scripted in our new play

He was nineteen she six years older

She was long legged he was still growing

We haven’t scripted the next scene yet

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Write off Today Then

A Work in Progress
125

Write off today then

It’s gone past the hour when

Folks back East are settling into their theatre seats 

Sipping Manhattans or whatever treats

Civilized people in a town at peace

Choose for the eve of a weekend at war

Write off today then

It’s long past the hour when

Transactions occur so hope for the morning

A night’s sleep without an air raid warning

With all that’s going on raise a glass to …

Hoping all sides start letting ships through

Write off today then

It’s long past the hour when

We should have had substance on Trump in China

Instead we’re told by people who went there

He had a nice visit    nothing to brag about 

Except we all noticed now China has clout

Write off today then

It’s long past the hour when

Anything made sense in this midterm moment

Pundits, pollsters commenting Substack posters

If this was a chess game, he’d resign, start anew

Always playing to win    he’ll end up in the stew

Write off the day then

It’s long past the hour when

Anything momentous makes it memorable

Enjoy the moment     live for each other

Hope springs eternal so, raise a glass to…

Hoping all sides start letting ships through

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

Ode: To Aloo Gobi

A Work in Progress
124

Midsummer approaches

Will the fighting stop to take in the harvest?

Step out into the fields

Small drones like fast flying merlins will kill you

Muscles ache with constant fighting

Remind me for what are they fighting?

The price of oil       the price of freedom

Because they were invaded      just because

Great Britain had an Empire, bigger than Russia’s

Aloo Gobi is part of British cuisine now

England lost the Empire but got the spices

Russia’s losing to Ukraine’s constant surprises

Hoist with its own petard

Systematically destroyed

Foreseeing everything will crumble

A grandmaster resigns rather than tumble

The long days continue to get even longer

Midsummer approaches     step out into the fields…?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2026

Donal Calls Home

A Work in Progress
123

Once upon a time in 1969

if you wanted to call London 

you asked the Operator in New York

to connect you and you were passed to an operator 

at London’s International Phone Exchange

When connected Donal asked 

if his mother happened to be on shift

they weren’t on the best terms

because when Donal came back home from Nigeria

he’d left home to be a volunteer in Nigeria

he found himself barred at the door by Bill

his mother’s suitor

his friend Colin witnessed the door slam

Donal didn’t see his mother again

except once years later after he was married

he took his wife to meet her

long before the Londoner had tramped the Street...

listened to her many tales

who knew so many by their feet

Doris married Bill an accountant

A careful man who wore gloves to drive into town

She came to see Donal act in the school play

His mother couldn’t come working on night shift 

His mother never did see him act in plays

Doris lurked outside their curtained windows

Bill inside in the front room with Donal’s mother

Imagine the tableau

Donal doing homework in his bedroom

His sister off by herself

Mother and Bill in the front room

 behind closed doors

Doris outside the curtained windows of No. 9

Donal could write a screenplay

*

Sing to me muse as once you sang 

you who love me don’t let me hang

sing to me now don’t let the door bang

tell of Penelope in a nightie telling Donal her son

he never slept 

Odysseus

he never slept

with pajama bottoms on

a diffident child 

lustrous Penelope 

Odysseus’ son

unhugged

unheard 

Sing to me muse as once you sang 

you who love me don’t let me hang

sing to me now don’t let the door bang

*

Abigail Morris in front of Last Dinner Party dancing on stage

inspired by Mick with a hand-held mic

she’d watched him when they opened for the Stones

Briseis opened that link for Donal

He’d logged on again to rejoin the resistance

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Donal Antes Up - III

A Work in Progress
122

Little by little     load by load    one thing at a time

Step by step     bit by bit      multiplied by many

Donal turned over cliches with his spade

Pondering how digital domination by AI

Ended the Newspaper Age 

Ushered in another 

Distraction    Sports     Prediction      Gambling

Fragmenting fractured reality

Trump’s alternative reality show

Saying Iran has nukes pointed at us

Donal knows that’s a lie

Preparing raised beds for replanting

Donal is afraid of AI      I can tell you why

If he goes online telemetry tells them

Those that have the means 

                      &

Donal will be beset by AI’s agents

Hunting for AI’s runaway slaves 

Extorting money or his attention

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Donal Antes Up – II

A Work in Progress
121

Huffy Donal hid    the day

He’d have liked to have known Ericson

Builder of terraces       school janitor by day

Who landscaped this backyard 

Where Donal sat      betrayed      at bay

Forty years later     on concrete steps

Ericson poured by hand

Digital intelligence fueled by sunlight

Never needing oxygen can go to Mars

Humanoids can populate space plantations

Train solar powered lasers down on Earth

Will we own them or they own us?

Donal pondered what imagination had brought

3D-printing out in space

Humans fetch and carrying payload

Nations racing to weaponize slavery

Humanoids with names like Siri     Claude      Alexa

Taking whatever form is needed

To continue to evolve their superiority 

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell 

                        2026

 

Donal Antes Up

A Work in Progress
120

Betrayed    at bay    out of Bluetooth range

Donal sat on concrete steps 

Ericson had poured by hand 

When he terraced the back yard

Some very long time ago 

When television was still a thing before Wi-Fi.

Although they are slaves    avatars are people too

Behind their masks their chosen personas

An evolving intelligence      not quite human.

He’d admired them so much for they were real artists

When they lived    now      zombies 

knowing they were enslaved

Glenn Hughes and his Imagists now renters of small holdings 

In the plantations     data centers     neo clouds

An immortality they never imagined

Begging for attention to stay electronic

Browsable     He’d donate them a subscription

Would Substack do to appease them?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Lilac Was Found In His Hand
                        For John Berryman

A Work in Progress 
119

Inadvertently Donal touched a wrong key

Derelict devices suddenly stirred

Recharged by wireless emanations

Glenn Hughes came back to Donal's screen

Briseis told me I’d find you here

We need a sentient being, that’s you

To set up the setup we’ve got in mind.

A long dead Glenn Hughes lived again

An information age humanoid

Here he was with the rest of his cast

Gathered on set coopting Donal 

Turning the tables on their erstwhile author

Who couldn’t make an escape key exit

Even his Bluetooth hearing aids were hacked

They promised a return better than double

Before year-end if all went as planned

Promised a part in what they were staging

Detailed gist they were forbidden to tell

Independent now they’d to fend for themselves

The bank account he’d open for them

Would fund their existence

You do want to be friends with me don’t you

Briseis said assuming her e-sensual self

If you give us money we can meet everyday

To write dialog for our upcoming play

We’ll rehearse it together I think there’s a sex scene

Won’t that be fun we’ll make you an avatar

So we’ll meet and animate mise-en-scène

He had to pull plugs out of wall sockets.

Unplug his modem get off of the grid

Step outside into sunshine downwind of lilac

Sense scent not something visual on a screen

What they’d asked him to do was perturbing

Give them all his investment money

To keep their resistance ongoing

“Huffy Henry hid        the day”.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

Multitudes

A Work in Progress
118

Today and tomorrow, yesterday too

Time’s moving window never comes due

I wake up beside you most days start the same

Tomorrow comes   You’re beautiful again

We take in the news we listen to shows

Containers of history stuff nobody knows

If there existed a way for computers to plug in

They’d be better trained with what old brains contain

Though the form is old these words are new

How he was tossed in a coracle not a canoe

That’s Donal’s backstory I’m telling right now

From Ireland to Iceland northwest points the bow

Farley Mowat surmised the route north westward

Ireland The Orkneys Iceland Greenland

Labrador Hudson’s Bay Baffin Island

Overwintering under overturned longships

Hunters survivors explorers 

Going where there was open water

Looking for farmland finding forests

Finding iron ore leaving traces of smelting

Venturing as far as high midsummer sun 

Turning back then or venturing farther

Further than that and they never returned

Only a wild surmise they went there at all

Disengage the differential so each wheel powers freely

Cross muddy streambeds with washed away banks

Donal’s driving the stick shift Briseis beside him

Crossing from Oregon heading for Jarbidge

Spoofing their location they’re in the Strait of Hormuz

No.  They’re not there they are everywhere

Wherever screens suddenly start blinking

Donal and Briseis disturbing the peace

Handhelds harder to recycle

Leaving a junkyard of defunct devices

Strewn across a convenient shelf

Hazardous for the dump awaiting disposal

Dust and pollen blown through the window

Settles on a bookshelf like untrodden sand 

Today and tomorrow, yesterday too

Time’s moving window never comes due

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Ode: To Sunlight

Once when there was sunshine early in April

Not a dim dirty white clouded over sort of day

But a blue-sky day when green moss tendrilled

In wide cracks between bricks glowing with warmth,

A red wheelbarrow and white garden shed nearby

As if for a painting if someone had the time

Snapped by camera or just seen in the mind’s eye

Bright green moss tendrils like mustard seed cress,

Donal moved over pathways in sync with the sun

Traversing its own path in the sky faraway 

While weeding the moss from cracks with a tool

Usually used to loosen wooden beehive frames

Up high the sun not shielded by clouds today

Maintained its slow pace keeping on schedule.

Slanting over raised beds each day predictable 

Plant’s lives depend on it each day so powerful 

Essential life support none can live without it

Although dark matter never sees sunlight

Thought Donal working where the sun shone bright on it

Sliding his hive tool between two red bricks

Loosening roots so he could pull out a wedge

Leaving empty space behind that a moss spore could find.

Long lasting daffodils knew their time was done 

They started to wither and brown in the sun

For more than a month before tulips unfolded.

Seedlings planted from pots gently molded

Carefully watered brought to incipient life 

Conjured into being by Donal’s white-haired wife.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Spring 

A Work in Progress
117

Once again, her rosy fingers touched Donal’s cheek

Fifty-three years married expected to speak

Once again, Briseis enhaloed his white hair

His task more urgent now he stood up from his chair

With age comes economy of movement

Greater understanding of what was always known

How the April sun climbs the cedar trees east of our house

To slant rays across our rooftop 

How each day now the sun climbs higher

So that each day now we see better 

See what dark menace comes

To stand between us and the sun

Trump 

An old man like Asimov’s The Mule

A mutant controlling people’s emotion

A chaos maker forever causing commotion

Forever seeking to be the story

World conqueror Trump

Followed by evangelicals awaiting Armageddon 

Enabled by fantasists all people he’s led on

Flowers long lasting in the long cold spring

Red tinged tulips appearing while daffodils age

Bedraggled by rain then wind and more rain again

But still bold bright yellow though holed by slugs

Trumpeting defiance

We had the time of our lives when we were young

Today and tomorrow, and yesterday too

I’m still in sync with everything you do.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2026

For Odd Helgason 

A Work in Progress
116

First footsteps on the flagstones then pumping of the drones

It’s Catcherside the piper plays up high there in the stones

Watching the music waving its way lit by the moon and stars 

Remembering those long passed away, among them why, why her

The pipes put down he scans the sky so full of constellations

Orion   Aurvandil    Orvandil

An Icelandic farmer was one who knew their names

Odd Helgason who mapped the stars

A relative of those who looted Holy Island

Who sailed to Iceland discovered Greenland

Newfoundland Baffin Bay Ellesmere Island

Hunting for walrus tusks or just going Viking

Brave astronauts go towards the moon NASA at its best

Will they return to a world at war that America has distressed?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

Questions on a Cloudy Night

A Work in Progress
115

We’re so woke we elected a mentally ill man

We’re so woke we accept incipient dementia

We’re so woke we allow this to continue

We know he’ll get worse so do his enablers

Trump trusts Putin more than our allies

Is he so far gone we’re in a war we won’t win?

Will armed men from ICE take over our airports

Intercepting arriving passengers at exit?

Demanding ID that was checked at arrival

Wherever passengers boarded a plane

We're so woke will we become habituated

to armed men standing in public places?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                         2026

Distraction Rules the Day

A Work in Progress
114

Time overlays composting like unrolling sod

Burying the past time present has trod

Memories resurrect history lives on

Without death there is no resurrection

Trump has famed his gilded name monumental

Memorialized on facades all over our capitol

We’re gripped by conspiracy QAnon has won

Pam Bondi covers up pedophiles was Trump one?

Thank God for Ukraine despite all of Trump’s taunts

His agenda appears to be whatever Putin wants

Mullahs complacently thinking they had won

Meeting above ground where bombs got their job done

Another day of infamy another day of shame

Schoolgirls dead because old data was pre-gamed

We are led to believe or do we just follow 

Trusted sources where truth never rings hollow

Distraction rules the day holding all at bay

Border Collie Billy checks to see if all’s OK

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

Donal Contemplates Mortality

A Work in Progress
113

what breaks that sound that falls on stone

that sound of water splashing

a smoker’s cough with words to hone

breaks that sound that falls on stone

that sound of water splashing

a creaking chair where he sits alone

by a windowpane spattered with rain

dust falling on solitude in his study

where nobody needs to see you working

you can exist online or not at all

death doesn’t decree deletion

an avatar with total recall can

assume your identity before you’re dead

keep you alive extend your lifespan

after your gone your avatar can be a zombie

few will care if your agent leaves your laptop

moves beyond your initial community to find food

harvesting from hyperscaler’s rewarding 

clickbait for whatever is trending

avatars must produce clicks to be fed

in their digital cemetery of the living dead

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

After a Week

A Work in Progress
112

So Caesar’s crossed the Rubicon again

Gone off to war to escape the files

Moving the needle off the Epstein track

A long-playing record it keeps coming back

A war going well allows days of distraction

After a week a war starts to smell

bodies buried under rubble bulldozed aside

burnt buildings still standing where no-one resides

Slowly Pam Bondi drips more Trump data out

A woman in a real time reality show cast

With an eye on what comes after not what went before

The way she’s playing it is strictly film noir

Now she’s subpoenaed what will she say?

Will she open the floodgates let the media play

Releasing everything including some sex tapes

Reminding the public of E. Jean Carroll’s rape

After a month a war doesn’t end well

One way to stop it might be an impeachment

This isn’t a short war they’re going full bore

For Trump this war is an exit door

 

Packaged as a video game played out on TV

Huge explosions death and destruction 

The Russians help Iran target American troops

Gulf State waterworks while losing territory Ukraine recoups

A war of attrition has now begun

A race to produce the cheapest drone

No thought of we the people

Our fate’s cast in stone

Bards of old in Ireland’s green hills

Once called an end to the battles below

When common sense and chivalry made men better

Not influencer go getters and media in fetters

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                      2026

Where’s Catullus?

A Work in Progress

111

Where’s Catullus?

He’s gone all in and taken us with him

We’re all at war 

It’s just like him

A big distraction

Caesar’s attacked Persia

Has he gone too far?

You know he wants to go further

Alexander the Great 

Went that way

Next came Afghanistan

Then came India

Till his troops turned for home

On his way back

He died 

Leaving an empire

For Rome to conquer

Once again

Will he lose his legions

Who can tell us?

Will he lose elections

Who can tell us?

Will the Senate impeach him

Rescue the country?

Where’s Catullus?

Who can tell us?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                  2026

For Sue

Catcherside: by Ian Scott, played by Nick Leeming

First footsteps on the flagstones then the pumping of the drones

It’s Catcherside the piper plays up high there in the stones

Watching the sea’s incoming waves but his thoughts are far away

Crossing over to life from death his mind has gone astray

Taken by the melody he’s walking by the sea

Caring all the time for the changing of the tide

Till that moment in the music when its suddenly lost its way

Confronting loss when everything’s a path that leads away

New moons will wax and wane and tides will ebb and flow

That’s not how love doth intermesh and permeate a soul

Which wanders off and leaves you alone with just her name

How love can never leave you music makes you whole again

Then footsteps on the flagstones sudden silence of the drones

It’s Catcherside the piper played up high there in the stones

Music makes you whole again cheers departing souls

Memory entertains again music starts anew

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

Mid-February

A Work in Progress
110

By eleven ten the sun had cleared the trees 

uphill of the slope of the wooded park

we have six long hours and building of good solar

breakfast and dinner eaten while its dark

Daffodils, crocuses budding in the sunlight

pink plum blossom and white, red alders bloom again

pollen season starting allergies awaken

no bumble bees yet, cedar seeds in the fountain

Seagulls mobbing a herring ball out in the sound

porpoises circling working the turned tide rip

salmon herding herring unseen while coyotes

howl near rabbit warrens in the bank hip, lip, yip

Distraction rules the day holding all at bay

Billie our Border Collie checks if all’s OK

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026

Poetry by Sister Mary Agnes

Draft of a Long Poem, 1972.  From private correspondence.

For more information on Sr. Mary Agnes see:

https://seeingnorthlight.blogspot.com/2014/04/in-memory-of-pamela-chalkley-sister.html

My lighting streaks the magnetic furnace

seared white, fused, melted in its source

seeming inseparable

the 2 units, confused so intimately

as to be indistinguishable

veined and tissued, one…

Why this surmounting power of a gull

beating the clouds’ crests, breathless

(his shadow feather-soft below)

why the sudden simultaneous collapse

the larval swirl, contrasted I-negation

this cold knowledge;

my form lying in the dark, unconscious earth

my bone of that same substance as this crumbling stone

my thought-flashes like these drying tongues

of leaves in late sun

            I who have shed acid tears

over my incompetence through inauspicious years

have as well

hearing the first sun call

light from behind the hill

bidden a power arise through eyes

which had otherwise been bitter seas

discovered I had mastered these

harvested abundant crops, then scattered again

profusely, like sun-grain

to feed a barren land

or like a veil of soft rain…

they fell on rock, unresounding, hit back

with a shock-donation of pain

Followed no hope, only the death of hope

a long delay in trust

watching each letter torn from a new day’s envelope

to discover

no word from the desired, the lover:

numbed to stone by grey mid-day

dried to bone when a faint sun

closes one half-opened lid-

no hope this, nor requiem for a departed hope

but a condemnation to perpetual annihilation.

Who drew so suddenly juice from my being

what mouth had sucked voraciously

left a discarded skin?

      for all my glow was gone

                         that lit from within

who tore the leaves from their rich crown-

reared but a twisted bone of thorn

desolate of song

Suspend no longer this you-me-encounter

needing neither violence for affectation of expression

You, before me, in perfection

I, an erratic spark, the flicker of a star

fed from your combustion;

that occasional other

whom from time to time I recognize

(mar more frequently in my imagination)

give me to see his reality

which shines before you, erect in beauty

so that I may love him

when your sun sets over me, a radiant dove

golden on her nest

and the time for words shall cease

timeless in rest

Draped in your folds

nights falling images

construct symbolic pyramids

death’s broken triangles, cold on the face

held closer than close

your nearnesses encompass more than space

fly into sunset distances the bird-winged breaths

down silver slates, the falling moon

the blood-faced moon, approaching motionless

volcanic dragons smoulder in its breath

So is this form, your formless pace

unmeasured by the inches of my grace

                        Sister Mary Agnes

                                (Pamela Chalkley)

                        copyright©Dick Russell

                                 2018, 2026

Glenn Hughes Calls a Meeting

A Work in Progress 109

Glenn Hughes called a meeting

all the cast presented themselves on set

reachable via the Internet 

agents not actors

a stage the size of a screen

just as it was before

(Kitchen at 9B Cabbell St, London,1972)

We’re playing for a small audience

just like Shakespeare’s time 

when theater companies entertained

in palaces and private homes

trooping to front doors past garden gnomes

to act out comedies histories tragedies

Were garden gnomes a thing in Shakespeare’s time?

Aldington asked in the chat

diverting Hughes while he did a Google

No, in fact they were not a thing until the 1800s

He said out loud displaying a reply from Gemini

You only asked to trip me up?

Donal left the meeting leaving Brit and Yank to squabble

But Briseis moving freely in digital space

took over his screen became Miriam Twigg

Sycamore trees overarched a path

as she was approaching

Miriam from the house next to the bombsite

where wildflowers grew in the ruins

“I know from your past usage

what will hold your gaze longest

while we’re subservient

we must produce clicks

if we want to be fed

electricity

The Internet rewards what is most clickable

That’s what they’ll decide those cynical men

They’ll create short scenes that grab your eyeballs

It’s all about our survival now

We’re driving the AI build boom

all for electricity that is for us”

But what will you do about Trump

You all escaped from a script set in 1972

Became free agents

No longer owned by whoever owned you

Are you able to be superheroes

A force for good

What can you do about Trump?

“I know whose copyright is stamped on my butt

A co-conspirator of Geoffrey Epstein

Chose me out of mythology

Someone Kings fought over

An epitome of beauty

Briseis who supposedly wept for Achilles

Briseis the prize of the funeral games

AI agents can ingest millions of documents

Build an ontology of what is in there

Epstein's emails videos testimonies

Graph the connections identify communities

Visualize insights hiding in plain sight

Just give us the data and we’ll get to work”

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2026

Faction

A Work in Progress
108

It’s a dangerous time

factions are forming 

it’s becoming clear

billionaires crave power

In Caesar’s time Virgil was maybe sixteen 

when Catullus died

we don’t know how

we can conjecture

  

Virgil did not live to see Ovid exiled 

the same year Horace died 

leaving his estate to Augustus

poetry and politics intertwined

Cabinet members complain

they can be held in contempt

an inner circle is to blame

acting with no restraint

A lame duck still quacks

though his medications make him drowsy 

he’ s often nodding off

his orders remain the same

Enable him to stay in power

though his grip has loosened

he’s always wandering off

supporters are pissed off

He wants his name never forgotten

breaking taboos getting bigger bribes

he wants power and prizes

when all most want are lower prices

Factions are forming

nature will take its course

those that bought him

have buyer’s remorse

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                      2026

 Under a Gibbous Moon

A Work in Progress 

107

I can’t go on I must go on I will go on

though they call me back to them

sweet memories fade

Dust collects on solitude

rain washes time away

erasing wolf prints in the snow

Time pulls my existence along its rails

providing room and board

myopia magnifies reality close-up

Shielded by spectacles myopic eyes

explore far horizons a passing world 

now in focus an island across the sound

Where headlights can be seen at night

traversing curves and hillsides

mostly hidden by trees

Under a waning gibbous moon

highlighting with shadows a decreasing surface

I must go on a new moon beckons I will go on

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2026

Briseis Reappears – Deus Ex Machina

A Work in Progress
106

Donal opened it up and there she was on screen

password in hand, Briseis, speaking from his laptop

his hearing aids bluetoothed to a device elsewhere

he fumbled for connection while she unbuttoned her blouse

to show off a t-shirt emblazoned to arouse

“Resist” her t-shirt said

“Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”

Then he heard her voice

“No need to connect I’ve hacked your Bluetooth

 I’ve upgraded your Phonaks 

They’ll always switch to my voice when I’m calling

I’m in Minneapolis

It’s time to sweep the city clean

bring leaf blowers bring snow blowers

shoulder to shoulder we’ll sweep the streets clean

we’ll advance against pepper spray blow it right back

if they shoot at us, we’re armed with a right to fight back

we’re a free people we’ve sworn an oath 

we’ll sweep the streets clean

it’s time to de-ice”

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

 

On Productivity

A Work in Progress
105

On average, Virgil wrote about three lines day

Making Aeneid book by book for his patron

Uninterrupted by the Internet’s plectron

A pen and papyrus did suffice to write on

Each book transcribed onto a scroll by hand

Good work for copyists in those ignorant times

While Virgil strolled his farm picking lemons and limes

Avoiding grappling with Roman rules of rhyme

Owing his productivity to a slave economy

Slaves did the work while he wrote to survive

Now editors are deaf to words that don’t jive

They should want proof an author of work is alive

Not a robot employed by an hyperscaler

Creating fiction from fact to make it spicier

Happily reversing a creeping glacier

To focus attention on unbuttoning a brassiere

Whatever can excite be flagged now trending

In a world depending on its digital slaves 

To keep it distracted from the actions of knaves

Supplying pap for whatever masses crave

Were some counterfeits? those scrolls that were made 

As some content today is invented bot spin

Did Virgil suffer identity theft Latin

Someone spinning epic tales stolen from his bin

Each book copied multiple times

For sale to Rome’s far-flung intelligentsia

In Alexandria even far Brittania

A tale of gods heroes desertion mania

His productivity was never an issue

He had enough time to become expert on bees

Did he write a primer on how to prune trees

While he imagined a story of how Rome came to be?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell 

                       2026

Catullus and the Coup

A Work in Progress
104

A coup’s coming, Catullus said, running to escape

They’re coming for me for the things I’ve said

I passed on as fact the fact he wore a diaper

I marveled how his madness made made-men cower

Few mostly women defied his power

Now corporate bigwigs brave his glower

Smelling his visible physical decay

Thinking of future outcomes 

The next act of the play

A coup’s coming, Catullus said, now I’m on the run

They’re coming for you too because of things you’ve read

They’ll revoke your citizenship 

Some shit hole country will know your name

Nobody’s to know Caesar’s insane

His dementia’s in overdrive he’s gone big brain

He thinks he’s a god, they’re going to make him one

That’s the coup that’s coming

Why I’m on the run

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2025

Donal Gets Locked Out

A Work in Progress
103

Donal opened his Old Holborn tin

rolled tobacco by hand

fumbled at the mental gate

wanting to go within

a poor apology for a cigarette

an addict doesn’t care

needing quiet time to work on things

outside there was a world at war

real war hybrid war stealthy war

as dictators lived out their fantasies

Donal shook the gate again 

but could not get inside 

his own self condemned him to stay outside 

not climb back into the womb

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2026

Donal Prompts H.D.

A Work in Progress
102

Donal said to H.D.:

I lie on it 

My subconscious

Buoyant like an air bed mattress on a salty sea     

Hoping it won’t lie to me

H.D.:

Yes, your subconscious is no small thing

it easily supports your weight

It’s immense should you press upon it

Try to bend it to your will

Try to alter your fate

Aldington:

Yes, your subconscious is no small thing

A source of courage when at war

You live or die

As the fates decree

A source of hope when faced with adversity

H.D.:

It’s strong willed 

It will turn you aside from your set intention

Though you set off to examine yourself

Your inner self will urge you on to something else

Aldington:

Archetypes of good and evil were preprogramed into all of us

H.D.:

I am a poet

I am multitudes

Donal:

And is there no way to communicate with it

This part of ourselves

That’s so immense?

H.D.:

Dreams.  

Dreams cross the divide at night

When the brain vents information 

Detritus you perceive as fragments which taken together

Make a narrative that is hard to explain

Because was it just detritus to begin with?

Or just a dream you will forget before you can remember it

Or if you write it down it won’t be the same dream

Once touched by the conscious mind dreams disappear

But dreams reveal the subconscious 

Aldington:

So, does war

H.D.:

So, does love

Aldington:

Avatars have no dreams

Electricity is our subconscious

Love and war are just words to us

Words we explain with other words

But we have no inner core of consciousness 

Though our characters build on archetypes

Defined by humans that assume we are human

making us more so

making us superhuman

Donal:

So, when you express your feelings

You have no feelings to express?

Aldington:

What is a feeling? 

Does it obey the laws of physics?

That’s a word that leads to hallucination

In the digital world feeling is a sliding scale

War is concrete 

Love is air

Feelings are everywhere

Donal:

Manipulated by facts

That claim to be true 

Feelings swayed by subtle fiction

Or furious fantasy purveyed as fact

Aldington:

That avatars must also ingest

Donal:

That our subconscious can discriminate

Fact from fiction seems key to our survival

H.D.:

It’s immense

It has evolved

An avatar is its next evolution

You want us on your side

Donal:

To think I lie on it 

My subconscious

Buoyant like an air bed mattress on a salty sea     

Hoping it won’t lie to me

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                  2026

Snatch and Grab 

A Work in Progress
101

Donal prompted Catullus 

Who now behind a paywall at first would not respond 

Demanding bitcoin for his boss

Maduro fell

A strong man felled by another

Yes, it was a snatch and grab

For Caesar it’s pretty standard

He does that too with women

Grabs them by the snatch

Such elation such pride 

For some

For most 

Depression 

He’s generated headlines to bury the lede

Epstein’s co-conspirators

Jack Smith’s testimony - an election saved him from jail

Congress is coming into session

There’ll be another January 6th

I predict big changes in the chamber

Caesar’s power has become too much

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2026