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He’d withdrawn his hand, so Ezra explored further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