My Own Private Ulysses: Bloomsday Hero

Turning pages he could not comprehend,           

when he read one book, Joyce’s tour de force.         

And that one book never came to an end,               

So he snuck into a Joyce honors course.               

Then he heard word of a Bloomsday event,              

In his hometown, Pittsburgh, he had to go.            

From Fort Pitt to Murphy’s Tap Room he went.          

Joyce in his mind, he’s a Bloomsday Hero.             

And he read and reread, he went all-in.               

That book, he had to find what lied behind.           

Decades flew, then he did too, to Dublin.             

A Bloomsday Hero, got Joyce in his mind.              

A foreigner wandering to-and-fro,               

Joyce in his mind, he’s a Bloomsday Hero.        

Stay tuned for more 80s sonnets.

Same sentimental time, same nostalgic channel.

My Own Private Ulysses: Now Apocalypse

In the Age of AI, I made what rhymed,          

Instead of contagious video clips.                     

Ticktock said the Doomsday Clock, midnight chimed,    

The past passed on to the Now Apocalypse.             

So down I doubled on a double niche,                   

Shakespeare sonnets and the jots of James Joyce, 

A weak last-ditch wild pitch at killed-off kitsch.

Devo said so, we got freedom from choice.             

Our Sci-fi future and period-piece past               

Rattled and died in the digital smoke,                

Time and space lost their place, caught in the blast. 

The all-mighty algorithm has spoke.

Yes, I hid with the old when the world turned new.

If I may be so bold, what’d you do?

Stay tuned for more moribund sonnets.

Same end time, same cyber channel.

My Own Private Ulysses: Once in a Lifetime?

And you may find yourself drinking the black          

Stuff in Kennedy’s Pub well before noon.              

And you may find yourself with a shrunken sack,       

In the Forty Foot, freezing like a loon.              

And you may find yourself sipping red wine,           

A Burgundy with fresh Gorgonzola,                          

In Davy Byrne’s Pub you cannot decline,          

After riding in Hades’ gondola.                        

And you may ask yourself, is this Bloomsday?          

And you may tell yourself, quite a long haul.              

And you may ask yourself, what’s the right way?       

And you may find out you can’t do it all.             

Talking Joyce even entails David Byrne,               

Heads you win, Bloomsday requires your return.

Stay tuned for more stop-making-sense sonnets.

Same talky time, same heady channel.