like icy winds of Sweden
winter sweeps the desert
clearing the dust
© 2025 Bruno Taleric
Stafford challenge 314/365.
Desert Dweller
-thoughts on life, death and gardening.
Random thoughts, poetry and pictures
A taste of my skewed view of the world
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Clarity
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Disturbing Comfort
Do my words disturb you?
Good!
Do my words comfort you?
Great!
Have my words left you apathetic or neutral?
Then I’ll have to try harder.
© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 313/365.
Inspired by Dr. Cesar A. Cruz. -
Wolves
I wake surrounded
by barking, drooling beasts.
Much like me, but not me.
I’ve been trying to make sense
of the disrupted dream I call my life.
I wonder where my soul has gone.
Has my resolve taken flight?
How do I keep the wolves of madness away?
I try to engage with them.
Snarling, they display yellowed fangs.
Run, and you die.
Placing palms on thighs,
I inhale slowly, gathering strength,
exhaling past and future.
Circling and howling,
they try to distract with fear.
I focus on simpler times,
dreams of sun-warmed days.
I am centered.
Joy radiates from within
illuminating the beasts.
Bored with the stillness,
they slink off into their darkness.
© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 312/365. -
Snowy Coffin
Dense whiteness of the snow,
opaque and insulating,
filling the gap between earth and tarp,
blocking frigid air,
protecting. Muffling.
Panic!
Will I be buried alive
in my warm cocoon,
undiscovered until the spring thaw,
rats and ravens
drawn by the stench of my decay?
In the thready pulse of night,
I wake. Fearing suffocation,
I uncover my head and shoulders,
frantically stabbing my hickory walking stick
through the breathing hole.
Must keep it open.
Is this how a surfacing whale feels?
I pull the sleeping bag around my neck,
try to stop shivering.
Drift into fitful sleep.
Vague memory: a warm Mexican beach.
Morning has finally arrived;
pale light
filters through my closed eyelids.
I have no idea how long I’ve slept.
Diffuse white light surrounds me.
Is this heaven?
Drip
drip
drip
icy water on my face.
Condensation
from my own breath.
I’ve survived the storm.
Now what?
© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 311/365.
Recollection of a scary night in the 1980s when I was caught in a blizzard while backpacking near the Arkansas River in Colorado. -
Teach Your Children
How do you feel when your son or daughter lies to you?
Angry? Sad? Disappointed?
Where do they learn to lie?
Is it from their peers, teachers, clergy, the news,
or you?
Have you told your children not to lie,
then repeatedly lied to them?
Have you taught your children
that the world took six days to create?
(And when they questioned)
Explain that days were longer back then.
(And when they questioned)
That fossils and evolution are an evil fraud.
How did you explain why
an all-powerful being needed rest
after only six days?
Did you tell them to be good
because Santa is coming,
that Easter bunnies deliver colored eggs,
tooth fairies exchange teeth for cash,
and a mythical figure in their sacred book of folktales
was tortured and died for their sins?
(When they questioned)
How did you explain to them
which sin they had committed
before they were even born that required
a soul cleansing at birth?
Do good parents perpetuate lies out of fear,
to avoid making waves, to fit in?
Do you confess your lies?
Silence is its own confession.
Did you explain that the majority
of humanity is not baptized and
is therefore sentenced to hellfire and damnation?
(Did they understand?)
What do you feel
when you lie to your children:
guilt, sadness, disappointment?
What is the code you live by?
Have you told your children
that infidels should be destroyed,
nonbelievers should be tortured and put to death
and that some of those might later be declared saints
to whom they can pray?
Do you tell your children not to lie,
then show them how?
Are your lies forgiven? By whom?
Did you mention that indigenous people
should be enslaved and their children separated
from their loved ones for reeducation?
Did you teach your children that god gave them free will
then cursed them with instincts and desires
that lead to sin, ensuring a free ride to hell.
Do you make penance?
Does the cycle of lies and confessions ever end?
Truth lingers at the altar.
Did you tell your children not to lie,
then teach them that the best methods
of contraception are the rhythm method and
early withdrawal, when you knew
neither method is effective.
Are some lies good and others bad,
or are they all neutral?
Did you teach your children that
church leaders may molest them
and the church will deny it and cover up?
Did you blow out the candle of truth
to keep the peace?
Did you teach your children that their body is shameful?
That physical love is wrong?
Did you teach your children
that god condones war?
That blacks are bad,
that arabs are terrorists,
that gays are abominations?
Did you tell them the creator made
angels, devils, and transsexuals?
(And when they questioned)
Did you teach your children that some humans,
gods’ creations, are less than…?
Did you teach your children that to enter the kingdom
they need only to believe (the lies)?
Have you told your sons and daughters not to lie?
Will they do as you say or follow your example?
Are their untruths expressions of love?
© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 310/365. -
Mystic Troubadour
These tears are free.
Faces in the atmosphere smile and frown,
never judgmental, even when I’m troubled.
Here I am, cardigan draped over shoulders,
woolen arms wrapped around me,
warming my heart.
There’s pressure to write on this mournful day,
words straining,
so hard to rhyme.
The conversation with the clouds
seems one-sided and yet I hear
and somehow understand.
Strange—
one second ago this thought didn’t exist,
and now I’m weeping:
I know death never comes
from too much love.
To help you’ve got to love;
without love,
they won’t forgive the bread you gave.
Lying here in the shade imagining that
the one I love lies here next to me
softly breathing.
Reading your letter
I tumble into depression,
empty, aching.
Your sentences are too short
for the distance between us.
I’ve found a certain harmony
exists in loneliness.
Sitting in the rocker on the stoop
I hum a sad tune,
tears slowly drying in the sun.
© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 309/365. -
The Government We Deserve
Integrity is the quality of being honest
and having strong moral principles.
Most Republican voters claim their values include:
One:
Individual responsibility,
Two:
Limited government,
and Three:
Moral integrity.
Yet they elected (twice)
and many continue to support
a leader with the lowest moral standards.
Perhaps their real values also include:
Four:
Militant Ignorance,
Five:
Complicity,
and Six:
Self-Deception.
Regardless of political orientation,
at times, we all are guilty of self-deception.
M. Scott Peck,
the psychiatrist and author,
used the phrase ‘militant ignorance’
to define a form of evil:
attacking others rather than
facing our own limitations—
stubbornly and proudly refusing to learn
or consider new information;
a form of evil that denies any challenge
to deeply held beliefs—that actively
and aggressively rejects any attempts
to enlighten or change one's mind.
Many voted for this leader
out of frustration, economic anxiety
or loyalty to a single issue.
But those who continue to defend
morally bankrupt leadership
intentionally choose
to remain militantly ignorant.
They hold knowledge in contempt,
proudly defending their ignorance
and maintaining a fierce determination
to remain unenlightened.
Thomas Jefferson said,
“The government you elect
is the government you deserve.”
Our elected leadership is a reflection
of individual responsibility and
the moral integrity of every citizen
who knowingly cast their vote—
and of those who complain yet
failed to participate.
© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 308/365.
Image from the internet. -
Next Adventure
No honor is lost
in accepting defeat.
What kind of person
endures such misery,
then plans to return a few days later?
Everyone has something that grounds them:
a rocker on the front porch,
a window overlooking the garden,
a shelf of Kerouac and Hemingway.
His solace is the inner gorge.
Breaking camp before dawn,
he trots to the trailhead.
His feet are familiar with this stretch of trail,
so there is freedom for his mind to wander.
He reflects on the wonder of life,
on the challenge ahead, on
the pinnacles he’s climbed.
The thump thump thump of his feet
on the dry, rocky creek bed
adds a steady drumbeat to his existence.
Enclosed by limestone cliffs,
far above, greenery clumps
beneath invisible dripping springs—
redbuds cloaked in purple,
fallen petals swirl on a puddle.
On the canyon floor,
a clear trickle sometimes appears,
barely wide as his boot. He stops to sip,
a vampire at Mother Earth’s blood.
Originating in the sun-warmed stone,
an ancient, powerful pulse surrounds him.
Boulders emanate heat like an oven door opening.
As fatigue sets in, he notices a presence, realizes
this landscape is not meant for frail humans.
An unearthly place. Mars perhaps—
no, Mercury—yes, Mercury!
A mercurial landscape, too close to the sun.
So close that brother Sol hears his moans,
must be laughing at his groans,
tormenting further with another heated pulse.
His feet ache like never before.
Small knives stab heels and arches with each step.
He spits and swears.
He scrambles around school-bus boulders,
slips on loose talus, tortured
by effort and thorny brush.
Living up to its name, catclaw punctures and grabs,
tearing bits of flesh from sensitive shins.
He cries out reflexively, his voice,
an inhuman scream in an alien landscape,
returns as an echo—the canyon’s laughter
gleeful and mocking.
His pace now that of a slug,
he acknowledges—
he has had enough.
Frail in comparison
to this impenetrable canyon, he turns back.
With a sigh, he says a prayer of appreciation
to the desert goddess
and begins the long march home.
In accepting defeat, he feels no lost honor,
only quiet resignation, gratitude,
and anticipation— rest, a shower,
a hot meal at the kitchen table
while imagining his next adventure.
© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 307/365. -
Santa Ana Madness
In the scented kingdom,
as they push through the snow,
first time feeling the sun’s warmth,
spring plants must rejoice.
Soft, moist, malleable clay feels good
in the potter’s hands.
Do the potter’s hands feel as good
to the clay?
Peering through Venetian blinds
covertly observing the drafting table,
a good secret agent would find
an Exacto-knife to be just as effective
as a credit card
when cutting the enemy’s throat.
If you always do things beautifully,
you will always be beautiful.
© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 306/365.
Just some stream-of-consciousness word play. -
Rock-Strewn Desire
Reading dogeared trail guides,
examining coffee-stained maps,
mentally tracing the paths.
You imagine vistas—
the weariness, the blisters.
You calculate:
liters of water, calories of food,
miles per hour adjusted for terrain,
the weight of each boot.
You wind duct tape onto a pencil stub,
cut handles off toothbrush and trowel,
paring every millimeter and ounce
trimming the backpack’s burden.
You listen to stories of adventures
and challenges by offbeat explorers
whose dangerous fantasies lean toward
the same rock-strewn paths you desire.
Life goes on:
the daily grind, the same commute.
Then one day, like a bolt of lightning,
wanderlust takes hold—
irresistible urgency;
ready or not, you depart.
© 2025 Bruno Talerico
Stafford challenge 305/365.
Desert Dweller 