Lanterns of Winter Squash

Enlightenment on the light rail

Tells and reveals of 

Anti-capitalist wannabes. 

That’s how I found calm

Before the storm is not serenity

People are just laying low.

Or gathered burly and fomented 

Or wagering on sleep quality scores

Or giggling and glued to their phones

To see if a beloved romcom genius

And two-time Emmy winner

Will earn an Oscar nod.

So this morning I

Which is funny

It’s on my FYP:

All these people outed

With sun-soaked savings 

At yet another gated entrance.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

Double Play

FOMO A' GO-GO

Kneading her phone

Like a cat scrolling a doormat

Mamaw called to ask

If we was 

Going to Wenzhou

Could we pick 

Her up something

From the Merchants of Muchness

Producers of viral marketing

It’s like halfway around the globe!

 

RAINBOW CHARD RECALLED

Trading red cedar for black walnut 

Saint Dominic for Saint Sebastian

Smart rings for Shark Week

The birds are agitated and noisy 

Is it the butchering apron?

The lung removal tool?

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

It's the Little Things

URGENT CARE

Closed Monday.

I’M SWEATING

Are you sweating?

THREE FOUR FIVE

It’s the new

Six seven.

THE VOICE IN MY HEAD KEEPS TELLING ME

Upgrade your plan.

THEY JUST MOVED IN

They seem nice

I wonder what’s

Wrong with them.

SHILOH

Name like that

You know she a skater.

EARTH

(Spoiler alert: this includes you.)

AVAILABILTY

He Kant.

I Cannes.

DRONE FLYING OVERHEAD

Man found dead

On shiny slurry spread

By robots the night before.

I NEED A HUG BRO

Add to cart.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

Why It Matters

Related by blood, marriage

Living their large portions

Vascular and landmark

Junior harvested his own power

Papaw sculpted glass

And often spent evenings blowing

(with the broader glass community)

Meemaw mostly stayed home

Mamaw worked at 7-Eleven

Mom worked at the community kitchen

Dad worked for the county

Angel worked at Walmart, Amazon, 

And, before she went to Buffalo

Wild Wings, there was Ross, Boot Barn, 

Torrid, Best Buy, Powerade, that hot dog place

Hell, Angel worked everywhere

But she didn’t come home one night

And next morning her body was discovered in an arroyo

Her head crushed and face mutilated

By the bloody concrete block found at the scene

You fucking unfollowed me

He had yelled over and over and over and over.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

 

Sunday Lit: A This and a That

Want to first give a memorial shout out to the artist Betye Saar who passed away last week. She received tributes from all major media. I have been lucky enough to see her work on display in various museums and galleries. Images of her art are widely available on the internet. I return to them frequently for inspo.  Her artistic expression was satire-laden assemblage, and I’m a big fan of that, and she was awfully good at it.

Betye Saar's 1972 piece The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, in the collection of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Meanwhile, my writing continues, as does reading, thinking, notetaking, and I’ve added a new habit: staring into space.

As W.S. Merwin wrote “the trouble with pleasure is the timing.”  Yesterday as I lay dying and reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, my laughter practically healing me, I got about why, and how i came to be, a writer.

I attended the University of Southern California (USC) for the same number of semesters (3) that William Faulkner attended the University of Mississippi (Old Miss).

Bedight with delight, John Keats went to the ocean for the same reason I do, to refresh “ears…dinn’d with uproar rude/or fed too much with cloying melody.”

Just a coincidence? Or are there a deeper connections. For example, I was born in Chicago as were Sandra Cisneros, John Dos Passos, Patricia Smith, Carl Sandburg, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sherwood Anderson, Fenton Johnson, and Studs Turkle, among many others.

I'll give it some more thought.

And in closing, have I mentioned that my hometown library participates in a consortium of county, city, and university libraries in California where if one library doesn’t have the book being requested, there’s a good chance that one of the other libraries will. I’ve requested books from libraries all over state and they’re ready to pick up at my hometown library usually within seven days.

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

Works used for this post:

As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, 1931

The Window Seat, by Aminatta Forna, 2021

The Shadow of Sirius, by W.S. Merwin, 2008

And various poems by John Keats, circa 1820

  

I, Schizo Human Algorithm

Endlessly is back, retooled

Prayer flags worse than inutile

Like expired medications

Unrealized video game scripts

Urine sloshed bathroom floors

Dirty pants, greasy bottoms like fast food sacks 

Industrial pollution leads to bad test scores.

Pet cameras beeping amidst deadly unrest

Fuels, lubricants, solvents

Rudely introduced to they throats

Details emerge

Officials pledge

Cases climb

Threat worries.

Are you picking up what I’m throwing out here?

Barechested white guy 

Accelerants virile and viral 

Checking Insta 

Checking Facebook

Checking checking

Like a rat hitting a pipe.

Fuck that plot point

And other reasons why

Being a miniaturist

(“In more ways than one” she adds, helpfully)

Never been tagged

Don’t have nice things

Like a flexible outlook

Or a smart nose ring.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page

  

Cloacal Elucubrations in Ablations of Aporia

We were so in love and our dreams were so big

We turned an old packing house into a soundstage

Celebrated with Champagne and raw

Dolphin-safe tuna, all you can eat

But Truth found other careers

As well as moisturizing routines

Film shoot days are down

From chains to valet parking

Pointing to die back sugared

With sprinkles of ideological luxury

The only way our work will be seen

Is to murder a celebrity

Or kidnap their mother

And demand a queen’s ransom

Pilgrims gather

Talks teeter.

© Copyright 2026 Randy Stark

www.randystark.com

Randy Stark’s Amazon Author’s Page