TRANSCODED

I live my life, in caves, houses, mansions
(multiples, cuz ya,know, I can son),
highest of higher risers
and now the epitome calls
To the be alls ends alls
I am living my life digitally.
Computer literacy;
don’t need nomore printed page
or mind teasing mysteries.
This is it,  I done been outmoded:
I HAVE TRANSCODED.

MDurfee
1/28/26

ISLANDS IN THE SEA

 

 We the billions of souls on the planet,
not manipulating markets
and planning trips to St Moritz,
are the seas. Treading water,  
attempting to survive, praying
(just as taught)
to swim to some hoped for “better place.” 

There used to be a promise,
a dream of life earned, safe.
But there has always been owners
and the rest, us...
That upward dream drowned in calm seas
where our dying is still not hard to accomplish
or very notable. 

And when they own all of the carbon,
burn through all of the forests,
flood the valleys of the mountains;
they will have finally finished
establishing their islands
in high, dry and isolated
 separation from the seas. 

We, the sea, live to provide so we can survive.
Labor, entertainment, pleasure, service
until the algorithm finishes
taking our measure…
entering on the sand washed up from the sea,
they have me build a wall so they won’t see
 AI has learned is here now, replacing me.

MDurfee
1/19/2026

BANKRUPTCY OF OUR LIVELIHOOD

FINDING THE AMERICAN DREAM 

Riding the bike to the county line
to camp among the ditches
dug by the poor WPA sons a bitches
decades ago.

Now filled with dear heads and heads of deer,
tires, and shit that don’t float.
Consumerism fills them ditches
long after the sons a bitches who went to war;
formed the soon to be consumer class who went to work,
accruing debt.

Took awhile but we made it more than plausible
that we spent so much on the strife
we got sucked in by fifties adman promised
harmonious, relaxed, and stress-free life
that now we must make another class of sons a bitches
to empty out the drowning ditches
I want to camp beside.

Oh all them asylum escapees from other places
would gladly rise to the station (for minimal pay)
of cleaning out the befouled ditches,
dug decades ago, by WPA sons a bitches.

MDurfee
3/26/2025

WHAT DID YOU FIND ON YOUR WAY TO THE ABSOLUTE INEVITABLE

 

In the life long search for the undefined promises of youth ------
how much did you age while looking for Leon’s magic wet spot?
What is it you’ve found along that arduous way? What did you keep?
What did you learn to believe? Is knowledge the value of the past?

Did you glimpse your idyll or see the thousands of footprints gone before you?
Do you remember the beauty of solitary golden dawns, scarlet sunsets, infinite love?
Or did you trudge your way through, eyes down, avoiding both love and war?
Did you live on in the weathered landscape of “this is all there is?”

Always moving forward, stumbling and dancing in sun, rain, blizzard, hurricane;
when all the dust has been swallowed, wetness evaporated from your clothes
your tattered shoes worn, holey, covered in mud & filth again; what did you find?
A fiery hell, the darkness of despair or breathing room filled with life, amity, and rest?

Death and dying are the great evocators of regret and fear of the true unknown.
They are the doors to the Dharma, Nirvana (not the band), Paradise, Heaven.
117 (and more) billion souls before you travelled that same way in time and space.
Why fear the absolute inevitable, when you can embrace the release? You choose.

© M Durfee
3/27/2023

THEIR GREAT ESCAPE

I drowned in 1982.
It was a slow yearlong death.
Being blown out and sunk
in the middle of a lake
I never knew I was sailing on.

Yeah man blown out, not up,
that would have been too kind
to a heart exhausting itself.
Fighting to stay above water
on the ripples of the big bang.

That brined heart hasn’t been found of them
to whom it should have mattered most.
They did not care to look
only to slowly escape the sight
of the annihilated man.

© M Durfee
6/12/2022

THE GREAT WHITE WALL

Everyone that matters hides behind it.

The sick, the injured, the guilty,

the blameless, the young, the old, and the very old.

The loud and the louder yell from behind it.

The enlightened speak about it on TV but

what they speak is mostly self-serving bullshit.

The cult followers pray to it,

hoping for the change they spent their faith and fortunes on.

(MAGA promises RULE!)

The flag wavers and sign carriers,

all have a position that is absolute

and that's the only correct one to solve every issue...

just ask the blue-eyed Jesus

who has a permanent place behind it.

 

Behind the great white wall

you cannot have an abortion.

or any other health care not

provided to old White men.

But you do get to buy as many

guns and cannons as you need

Because behind the wall they need

to have live targets for mass shooters and

a population that ensures enough victims

and a statistical advantage at census time.

Can we out fuck THEM, like we outgun

THEM not found behind the wall?

Can we try?

Old fat guys hiding behind the wall

have a new purpose; baby daddies

(if only I had not gotten that vasectomy!)

Do you know who is not sheltering behind the great white wall?

Everyone not trying to hang onto a God damned cruel history.

© M Durfee

6/4/2022

 

THE SEED

I died in the germinating light of the morning.
Light enough to see…
but not the hot noon day cooking sun…yet.
I am glad for it,
dying in the cool shadows, that is, because being overly bright
was never my forte.
I could get around, sure, but no one that I ever met would call me
a substantial thinker.

I was a denizen of the timeline where my brilliant father
codified in me my failures.
He was though a good guy to them he respected,
mainly vodka.
All these years removed from him, them, that place.
memories of that life cycle;
now mashed together in a plastic bag manufactured by time
leaking out, dying in the exposure.

I do not regret my living or my coming dying.
Regret
after the apology is a fool’s game. I have been a fool but not at
any time near now.   
Dylan cried for his father's life “Do not go gentle into that good night…”
his father did in fact die—so did he.
“Good to forgive. Best to forget. Living we fret.
Dying we live.”

I prefer Browning, and Bob over Thomas.
Wee and old, all die.
That time is both near and far yet we live fearing
the unstoppable.
That ain’t living now, is it? Fear is life but let it be
the life of someone else.
I died in the germinating light of the morning.
Light enough to see and grow.

© M Durfee
5/15/2022