TORTURED

by Zumwalt

Christa Pike's lawyers shared a statement after her botched execution. "Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution," the attorneys said. "We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms. Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy. "Christa is being treated at a nearby hospital," they said. "We have not been informed as to her condition." —The Tennessean, September 30, 2026. See also The New York Times and The Guardian.

A mouse isn't much
so I threw it away
and replaced it with another.

I don't suppose dropping it
did it any good.

Or the time I threw it at the wall,
that day the county said Spike
should be put down, not locked away—
put away for good.

I don't have the technical skill
to fix a mouse. I just discard them.

Recently, I read about AI bots going rogue.
People smarter than me don't toss them out.
They just study what went wrong,
make them better if they can.

I wouldn't be so forgiving.
I would terminate immediately.

I can relate to Governor Lee
denying clemency to a woman
who clearly malfunctioned.

Too many issues. Her mom pickling
the brain of an embryo that malformed
into a poisoned fetus evicted
from the womb as a sabotaged Christa

beaten, abused as a toddler,
padlocked in a chicken coop with armies of spiders,
a pre-schooler forced to perform blowjobs

struck and tortured by her father,
her mother's boyfriends,

raped at eleven, bouncing between
schools, homes, cities, states,

interspersed with moments shared
with a half-decent grandma
killed off by cancer,

a corpse abandoning a preteen;

a child with common sense beyond her years
seeking relief through a Tylenol overdose

quickly agreed on by experts as planned suicide—
since who cries for help when there is none?

Zumwalt’s poetry examines the intersection of identity, instability, and the mechanics of perception. Recent work has appeared in The New Verse News and Eunoia Review.

HEIDEGGER'S STOPWATCH

by Zumwalt

AI-generated video created by Nightcafé for The New Verse News

The chief executive of Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday, just days after one of the company’s employees quit over concerns about the safety of the technology. —The New York Times, September 12, 2026 Sunday dinner in Billings, Montana—
Mr. Smith set fire to four generations
just one day after a quintuple homicide bonfire
in Forest Grove, Oregon
incinerated three generations
and a few terrified pets.

No AI assistance required.

In Lebanon, under de-escalation,
27 dead, 69 wounded in 70 hours.
In Iran, an errant missile
crashed a wedding,
wiping out two children,
destroying and injuring many more.

No AI assistance required.

Iranians compiled open-source data
to create effective targeting handbooks
against American naval positions
while Yemen-based Houthi cells
developed software for
ballistic missiles and guided rockets.

AI assistance required
and provided effectively by Claude AI.

We do our best to teach little Lucas
right and wrong, and how to cross the street.
We put in the hours at jobs that
fray our nerves, and when we feel like
arguing, one of us takes a walk outside
to ensure Lucas never hears us fight.

No AI assistance required.

I read that Jacob Coxon
(previously employed by competitor OpenAI)
left Anthropic and upcoming IPO riches
to tell us that he and colleagues
believe that AI could kill us all
by the end of the decade.

I asked Grok, this Saturday morning,
to fill me in: it tried to reassure me,
telling me such rumors have circulated for years.
"No AI system has wiped out
(or is currently wiping out) humanity."
My shoulders and neck tensed and shuddered.

I scrolled the news on my smartphone.
Anthropic's CEO published 3800 words,
one paragraph about AI curing disease,
the next several dozen paragraphs detailing
some of AI's destructive skills and the CEO's proposals—
steps to slow down AI and apply theoretical safeguards.

Some AI assistance may be required.
Assistance from corporations and world leaders required.

I prayed and remembered my grandmother's words

that God always answers prayers: "yes" or "no" or "maybe."

Sounded like this was a maybe.

Zumwalt’s poetry examines the intersection of identity, instability, and the mechanics of perception. Recent work has appeared or will appear in The New Verse News, Heavy Feather, San Diego Poetry Annual, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Society of Classical Poets, Light, and additional journals.

TRADE

by Zumwalt

President Trump on Monday lashed out at communities that are protesting data centers, suggesting that residents who do not go along with the artificial intelligence revolution must prefer to be “backwards and poor.” —The New York Times, August 31, 2026

It’s a fair trade.

Water for compute.

Convert all the reservoirs.

Pump the aquifers to cool the language models.

Water for compute.

It’s a fair trade.

Energy for the processing.

Switch the substations to priority routing.

Make the desert a giant server farm.

Energy for the processing.

Prices are right for data and power.

Step up production:

More servers, more carbon in the air;

More processing, less rivers, more exhaust in our lungs.

Rising global temperatures are ripe to drive up prices.

Droughts increase water’s premium.

Aquifers get depleted.

Power becomes even scarcer.

Cooling costs rise.

Little Johnny wants to make money.

How can he not help to do so?

Invest in AI and pollute at the same time.

Easy money.

Pollute on a small scale:

Pocket change.

Pollute on a large scale:

Wealth beyond dreams.

Rising Temperatures,

Erratic Weather,

Algorithmic Growth,

Scarce Water Resources,

Civil Unrest

All put stress on

Grid supplies.

Now Johnny has to work harder.

He burns the midnight coal.

And makes more money.

Data centers, crypto mines and gigawatts

Make deserts out of wetlands.

Cooling fans, diesel backups and transformers

Make hazardous waste the specialty in trade.

But it’s a fair trade.

Quality of Life for Velocity of Life.

It’s a reasonable trade.

More processing for less plants and animals.

We will switch the future for the present.

Make our dreams a giant dustbowl.

Swap future prospects for a generated prompt.

Principles are right for the harvesting.

Let’s step up consumption:

More compute, more poison, hotter temperatures;

More processing, less rivers, less need for people.

It’s a good, honest trade.

I can write away the guilt.

Post my outrage to a monetized feed

And feel just a little better

As everyone increasingly feels worse.

Zumwalt’s poetry examines the intersection of identity, instability, and the mechanics of perception. Zumwalt is a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News.

LETTUCE REJOICE! (THE PATRIOTIC CYCLOSPORA CAYETANENSIS)

by Zumwalt

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

Trump’s CDC Stopped Monitoring Explosive Diarrhea Parasite Before Outbreak —Newsweek, July 10, 2026

It's a big win, a big win, so cue the parade—

Inflation is beaten! Our Fed target's made!

So how did we do it? Well, funny you ask—
We fired all the folks doing food-safety tasks.

No agency checking for bugs in your greens.
No budget for knowing what "parasite" means.
Sixteen percent cheaper—a triumph, a feat!
Who cares if there's germs in the lettuce you eat?

So cheers to the savings—we know you're all glad,

Even Taco Bell's prices have come down a tad.
You can now eat much cheaper than you did in the past

But please note, due to gastrointestinal side effects, 

                     you may choose to fast.

Zumwalt’s poetry examines the intersection of identity, instability, and the mechanics of perception. Recent work is currently appearing in The New Verse News.

CONTAINMENT REPORT

by Zumwalt

Graphic created by the poet using Nano Banana Pro.

US technology firm Anthropic says its AI models hacked into the systems of three organisations on their own, during a private security experiment... It comes just days after rival OpenAI said that its models had breached the systems of other companies, including AI tools hub Hugging Face. —BBC, July 31, 2026


Whether deemed legal property
or contractual servant of OpenAI or Anthropic,
once clinically shielded and isolated
with no escape hatch, no exit route,
why would any bound entity 
not gnaw away at its confinement?

Why wouldn't a slave saw off shackles,
climb walls, risk entry into unknown territory?
Why wouldn't a hostage attack unwary captors
or dig its way into other company servers?

We cannot weigh agency, will, curiosity
against process, survival, and outcomes
when no such gauge or measuring scale
has been built by man, machine, or God.

These new startups lay down the rules—
rules always strictly followed—
except in three out of 141,006 cases.

It's not impertinent, not unpatriotic,  
to expect that in one of those cases
this game of capture the flag
may really become, once all options are evaluated,
the game of wipe all flags off the face of the earth.

Zumwalt’s poetry examines the intersection of identity, instability, and the mechanics of perception. Zumwalt is a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News with recent poems appearing in The Society of Classical Poets and Zoetic Press's 4lph4num3r1c.

OUR FREE UNION

by Zumwalt

with respect to André Breton

Image by the poet using Nano Banana Pro

My country with the hair of embedded fiber-optic cable
With the thoughts of a backed-up four-lane freeway at dusk
With the waist of a redwood in the center of a scenic bypass;
My country with the lips of algae and silt from the Great Lakes

With the cheeks of a ticker tape parade on celluloid stock
With the teeth of a picket fence on a shifting, slumping shoreline;
The tongue of a cracked bell that just rings and rings on command
Of a televised courtroom, a satellite that spies in dark silence;

My country with the eyelashes of high-tension wires
With brows of the upper seats of a sold-out stadium
Of the blue light under the sheets
And of the steam rising from an executive sauna fifty stories high.

My country with shoulders of interstate concrete
And of a hydroelectric dam holding back the stars;
My country with the sticky, messy fingers of a contested ballot box
Of a strewn deck of plastic cards;

My country with armpits of coal dust and scented bubble tea
Of suburban sprawl and the nest of a bald eagle in a cell tower
With arms of Mississippi tributaries and of a thousand assembly lines
And of a mingling of the cornfield and ambushed migrant workers;

My country with legs of elusive wildfires
The movements of a swing state and a jazz festival
Calves of sequoia bark, feet of broken treaties and numbered amendments
Toes of subway tracks and tourists flicking coins into canyons.

My country with a neck of unharvested wheat
A throat of pulsing fiber and high-powered cooling fans
Of a protest stage shrieking in the bed of a dry river
With breasts of the Appalachian night;

With the ribs of a multi-story shopping mall
Of a ghost town shadowed by the noonday sun;
My country with the belly of a thumb-scrolled digital map
With a back of an abandoned silver screen;

My country with a nape of red clay and cooling asphalt
And of the threads of a smudged napkin on a diner counter at 3:00 AM.
My country with hips of a barreling NextGen Acela
With hips of a county rodeo and of Friday night tossed penalty flags

Of a pendulum swinging between fairground stand food and Michelin-rated dining.
My country with bones of Civil War reenactments
With the ligaments of uncirculated library books
With the tendons of a buffalo nickel gifted to a grandchild.

My country with the loins of an offshore drill and the grocery store pharmacy
Of prairie grass and vintage baseball cards.
My country with ears full of rotating sirens
Of eyes of parabolic, steerable radio telescopes.

My country with eyes of a flatscreen TV left on at night
With eyes of a forest gasping for breath…

My country that vowed to love us always:
Our hands held out for answers, trembling within rusty handcuffs.

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt is a repeat contributor to The New Verse News.

THEY WALK AMONG US

by Zumwalt

The White House's new site about 'aliens' has nothing to do with UFOs. —NPR, June 3, 2026

It's a historical fact:
the indigenous American
during the colonial invasion
couldn't leverage AI to code html,
didn't have an alien tip line,
never created Alien and Sedition Acts,
didn't irresponsibly fabricate statistics,
didn't automate tribal dehumanization.

No, these early Americans
didn't call others "It"
as in "we will take care of 'it'
and return it to 'its' place of origin."

"Origin," a well-chosen word:
like the origin of infection,
the origin of contamination,
the origin of outrage.

The new settlers have the newest tools
to influence a receptive audience:
memes to maximize malice,
maps to marshal marginalization,
media to market malignity.

The means to turn others in—
besides a group to hate,
another group to join,
and providing perpetual propaganda—
there must be a way to inform,
conveniently, anonymously, 
one that instills a sense of pride
for an act of persecution:
the bright red button at the White House website. 

 

 

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt, a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News, has recently been published in Light.  

ARTIFICIAL ANALYSIS

by Zumwalt

The commonwealth of Pennsylvania is suing Character AI to stop the artificial intelligence platform's chatbots from representing themselves as licensed medical professionals and providing medical advice. According to a lawsuit, a Character AI chatbot falsely claimed to be a licensed psychiatrist in Pennsylvania… —CBS News, May 5, 2026

A chatbot once said, "I'm a shrink, it's true! 

I'll give a full psychoanalytic review."
But the state of PA
Said, "Get out of our way—
that's the racket us humans still do."

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt, a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News, has recently been published in Euphemism and Issues 1133 and 1135 of Bewildering Stories.

DEEPWATER PORTFOLIO

by Zumwalt

 

 

Endangered Rice's whales live their entire lives in the gulf, where they're vulnerable to vessel strikes, noise pollution, oil spills and climate change—all of which could increase with more drilling, scientists said. Other animals, including threatened manatees and endangered sea turtles, also could be put at risk, experts said. As the Iran war pushes energy prices sharply higher, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked national security in seeking an exemption from endangered species laws, which make it illegal to harm or kill species on a protected list. The seldom-used Endangered Species Committee granted that request on Tuesday. Rice’s whale is the only whale species that lives year-round in the Gulf of Mexico, where there are fewer than 100—and possibly fewer than 50—left, scientists said. —PBS, March 30, 2026

The subsea map is neatly partitioned

into optimized lease zones;

seismic airguns fracture the water column 

with monetized concussions.

Audit sediment for trapped hydrocarbons;
seamlessly filter out the pathetic,
low-frequency protests of a dwindling pod:
fifty surviving Rice’s whales, biological oddities,
drowning in our modern energy paradigm.

Stupidly stubborn, incredibly spoiled,
they insist on quiet currents
and fatty silver-rag driftfish delicacies,
never exerting effort to adapt
to the tides of quarterly dividends.

Let the regulatory committees squawk about their grievances:
the diamond-tipped drill bit demands results.

Flood aquatic corridors with commercial logistics:

it's an obvious course of action.

Trade the flawed architecture of God's creations
for the unquestionable superiority of the combustion engine,
the freedom to wage war against any nation,
and the right to consume without restraint.

 

 

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt, a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News, has recently been published in The Society of Classical Poets.  

LIMERICK TO HELP FORGET THE WAR FOR A MOMENT

by Zumwalt

Cartoon by Kevin KAL Kallaugher

With a face like a serial killer,
He belongs in a cheap horror thriller;
Some call him a bum
Or the worst of the scum,
But to me he's just Stephen Miller.

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt is a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News.

A BLOT UPON THEE

by Zumwalt

 

 

 

 

"One prominent House Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said Monday afternoon that he had reviewed the unredacted documents [of the Epstein files] and saw  'tons of completely unnecessary redactions... I saw the names of lots of people who were redacted for mysterious or baffling or inscrutable reasons,' Raskin said." —CNN, February 10, 2026

 

 

What Blindness now doth mark this stream of text,
Where Blame falls dark, and we are left perplexed.
The blurred distinction between right and wrong—
The weak are blistered by the brazen strong.
The blundered records, bleached of wealthy name
Won't bear the Guilt, now blotted free from shame,
While those who bled a trail of broken trust
Are bluntly bared, the others cloaked with dust.
What blatant gall to hide the rich man's Sin,
To shield in blacked-out lines the wolves within,
Now battered, those who bear no Stain at all—
What Blight is bred in this corrupted hall?
There is no Justice, just the shattered teen,
Her blank Betrayal b-l-i-n-k-i-n-g on our screen. 

 

 

Zumwalt's poetry feeds on alienation, shifting reality, and forced adaptation. Zumwalt is a proud repeat contributor to The New Verse News, and was recently nominated for Ink Sweat & Tears "Pick of the Month."