Grey

 

Clouds

swollen with rain

resting on tall buildings

Steel and glass

streets and sidewalks

asphalt and concrete

People scurrying 

bundled up against the cold

in dull winter jackets

One red truck unfazed

drives through the heart

of the day

Grey

from top 

to bottom

–view from the 3rd floor
UCSF Mission Bay Campus

05/29/2026

Evening Journal: May 2026

Let us help our Great Leader
(the greatest, just ask anyone)
get his picture where it needs to be
while he builds The United States of Trumplandia

05/01/2026

Did you ever get the feeling
that one day soon Fox News
will do all their broadcasting
from their Oval Office studio?

05/02/2026

From couch to kitchen 
standing and calmly waiting
for reasons return 

05/06/2026

In The Age of A.I., "Trust, but verify."

While viewing social media videos of wise old farmers 
explaining the best time to eat avocados and bananas
I soon realized I had stopped listening to their message
and was counting how many fingers they had on each hand.

05/07/2026

I am old enough to remember

being young enough to think

I would never become old enough to say

“I am old enough to remember.” 

05/11/2026

Take the dust jackets 
off any two books and be reminded 
that under our flashy covers
only the stories are different

05/12/2026

55 incoherent late night social media posts–
proof that ‘identifying the giraffe’ falls a bit short
as the mental acuity benchmark for a person 
with codes for the red button.

05/13/2026

                      Photo: Dianne Woods

The selfless act
of giving to others
will always make
our true colors shine 

05/18/2026

Storm the Capitol
go to jail
get a pardon 
as a ‘patriot’
and a promised 
reparations check
from the federal treasury

​47’s perfect plan 
to make taxpayers fund
the insurrection he incited

but they shouldn’t expect 
a check anytime soon
because that money is funding 
golden toilets for his six-story ballroom
​
maybe then the Red Hats 
will realize they’ve been duped
and we are all paying for it

– Donald Trump creates the $1.76 billion dollar 'Anti-Weaponization Fund'

​05/20/2026 

Terms Limits for Congress, Mandatory Retirement Age

A third of the U.S. Senate chamber 
is currently in their 70s, 80s, or 90s.

The average U.S. Senator (65) 
is nearly three decades older 
than the median American citizen (38)
they are writing laws for.

When Chuck Grassley (R-IA, 91) 
was first elected to public office
NASA had not been created.

Hal Rogers (R-KY, 88) 
and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC, 88)
are older than the Golden Gate Bridge
and the ballpoint pen.

So how should we expect these elected officials
to comprehend and help govern
anything like the Artificial Intelligence
that easily produced this information?

05/25/2026

Looks like Orange Julius

created the perfect plan

for repurposing his former Tesla car lot

The circus will be coming to town
to perform for the elites 
while distracting the peasants 
from $6.00 gasoline

Sadly 
it makes perfect sense 
that the circus found this location
as the appropriate place to pitch their tent

–Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) at The White House
June 14, 2026

05/27/2026

4 line poems–
my concession
to the attention deficit 
of readers and writers

05/28/2026

Throughout the cosmos
none of this matters
a high probability 

 05/29/2026

Sleep fast approaching
trying hard to close my book—
tomorrow’s poems

05/30/2026

There Goes The Neighborhood

05/31/2026

Evening Journal: April 2026

 

I would have gladly promoted an ex-wrestler
from the local Friday Night All-Star Wrestling program
to a position of great importance and responsibility...
...when I was eight.

-Markwayne Mullin appointed as Secretary of Homeland Security

04/01/2026

In fourteen months you got the entire planet to dislike you
then got fired by the world's most reviled leader
and now you are looking for work in a job market
that your former employer put in the toilet.
That is some weird-ass karmic justice.

04/02/2026

“Our great ships are in the Gulf of Mexico, ready to strike Tehran.”

​“We have a new weapon. Nobody knows about it. I shouldn't tell you, but the Iranians already know because they saw it in their dreams.”

“The war is over, a beautiful peace... also, we doubled the bombing tonight.”

–Donald J. Trump

Doesn’t all this make 
“We finally defeated Medicare!” 
seem...quaint?

04/11/2026 

It’s like creating personalized karaoke music 
with the song lyrics you wrote during your last breakup;
as long as you keep it to yourself, 
there have been worse things.

—creating song demos with Artificial Intelligence Music Generators

04/13/2006

I was thinking I might start 

a new political action committee—

The AFO (Atheists for Leo)

He’s from Chicago 

so he knows how to handle 

a loudmouth from Queens

and his outfits are impeccable.

04/17/2026

This morning's realization came

after reading a headline about him

and I couldn't remember the day I stopped saying

"That can't be true."

04/22/2026

Got to my gig last night, set up my drums, then went up to the bar to get a pre-game adult beverage. The TV screens behind the bar were showing the chaos from the Washington Press Corps Dinner. When I asked the guy sitting next to me what happened, he turned to me slowly (I think he'd been there a while) and said, "They missed him again.”

Washington Press Corps Dinner, 04/25/2026

“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible.” 

— Donald Trump, 09/12/2025

“Open the fucking Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”

— Donald Trump, 04/05/026

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” 

— Donald Trump, 04/07/2026

“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”

— Melania Trump, 04/27/2026

04/28/2026

Perhaps the new U.S. passport

might help expedite the international travel process–

when travelers are asked, "Reason for visit?"

they can simply point and say, "Asylum."

04/30/2026

Evening Journal: March 2026

 

The leader who erects monuments 

to celebrate himself in this life 

will watch helplessly from the next 

as his dubious legacy brings them down

03/02/2026

A tyrannical theocratic supreme leader

killed by a distant fascist oligarch

in the name of democracy and freedom

to justify a ‘war of choice’

03/04/2026

I hope this means her f-ing commercials 

will stop invading the nightly news 

to wage war with my 5:00pm 

Attitude Adjustment Sessions

03/05/2026

A marauding herd has begun a holy war crusade 

using their troops as kindling for a mythical signal fire

in a land with three thousand years of experience in watching 

theological hubris get buried in the sand 

03/09/2026

I consider you one of the greatest tools

our species has ever produced

but remember to check my results—

Ken Owen is human and can make mistakes

—a note to AI

03/10/2026

One of the more noteworthy milestones

on your retirement resume is when 

you give your sweat pants a promotion 

with a new title of “House Pants”

03/27/2026

“Excessive, illogical, and unrealistic.” 

During negotiations to end the war 

it became unclear if the Iranian government 

was describing the U.S. terms for a cease fire 

or the person who drafted them

03/31/2026

Ken Owen         Van Niddy Press