Peterson, Poetry for A Hard World (2026). Imagine William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Abby Hoffman, and Leonard Cohen got together again at Shakespeare and Company in Paris. What would they write? Here's a first paragraph of one selection:

"HOWLISH" (Howlish is a proper noun - a person, place, or thing)
This is parody-pastiche. Modeled on Ginsberg's Howl where "howl" is a verb. My Howlish is a proper name like Peterson, Whitman, Heller, or Yosarrian.

I saw the "best" minds of my generation choked by
CORRUPTION, bloated with lobbyist foie gras,
dragging their flags through the mud of Congress,
gunning down nuance with slogans bought by billionaires—

I saw the worst minds of conservist ilk
who scream about FREEDOM while shackling it in fine print,
with contracts and NDAs long as Bibles and twice as unread,
who silenced poets, students, scientists,
crying "no entries on the Discord" from behind bulletproof podiums

who outlawed empathy as unpatriotic,
whose every breath was a DENIAL OF THE INDIVIDUAL,
turning citizens into data points,
and protestors into threats,
and threats into prison census growth—

who loved guns more than children,
fetuses more than women,
hatred as their only bipartisan agreement,
loving flags but not the people under them

who stared into cameras with plastic empathy,
teeth like Vaseline polished lies,
while signing bills that whispered no humanity
desired with every clause—

who called it vandalism when the poor begged in tents,
but not when pipelines cracked sacred ground,
as bulldozers ate homes in the name of “development,”
whose real estate prayers were a form of VANDALISM against hope—

who banned books faster than they banned assault rifles,
erased identities from classrooms,
spoke of liberty while criminalizing existence,
preaching God while practicing monopoly—

who made truth illegal,
history optional,
science offensive,
and art a crime—

O America, machine of manicured fear,
your liberty is trademarked,
your justice gated,
your “rights” redefined by the hour—

But somewhere,
in alleys behind shuttered libraries,
in whispers through firewalls,
on stolen Wi-Fi at 3 a.m.—
where Howlish lives.

Not dead. Not yet.
Still human. Still Howlish gobsmacked

My poetry is parody, pastiche in genre. It falls into the fair use column. I write because I believe this is a time for poets, artists, composers, & musicians. I write because I want to play a part. I write, because unlike others, I have a multivariate voice and a deeper-than-soundbite voice.

Peterson, D.K. (2025) Inferno Americana: The betrayal and decay of liberty. (ResearchProf Press: St. Louis). Summary: American Liberty is no longer synonymous with freedom. Liberty is not free. It is a debt owed, and each generation must invest, maintain, and protect it by supporting political discourse, tolerance, conversation and education about the complex requirements of a Republic. This book takes us down and through Dante's Inferno and Purgatory, not from the travel of one person and a guide, but from the embodied perspective of a Republic in a betrayed descent from the terminal cancer of self-centeredness and denial of necessary education, preparation, and maintenance. This is published and released October 1, 2025.

Peterson, DK (2026) Purgatorio Americano. How those unwittingly or through cruelty found themselves lost, there's a way to move through their purgatory and find redemption in a cruel world. No fault assigned, no political name-calling. No political names exposed. No religious overtones. Just a rewriting of Dante's Divine Comedy for Today's world. Just a process of moving up through the rungs of a purgatory forced upon them. There is redemption for those who have been caught. Purgatorio Americana does just that. It is multifunctional and multifaceted in the world of work. Publishes January 1, 2026.

How about Whitman?

We, Too, Are Springfield (a collective chorus)

We, too, sing America.
We cook griot and tassot in crowded kitchens,
We drive factory shifts through the night,
We send dollars across oceans
To mothers, to fathers, to cousins still waiting.

They do not see us—
They hear our Creole in the stores,
They point, they whisper “immigrant.”
They forget who stocks their shelves,
Who cuts their lawns,
Who nurses their sick.

But we, too, love.
We dance konpa in basements,
We braid hair by kitchen chairs,
We clap for our children’s spelling bees,
We raise flags both blue-and-red and red-white-blue.

Someday Springfield will see us not as shadows
But as neighbors, workers, singers of hymns,
Mothers with tired eyes, fathers with calloused hands,
Children who answer to two names
And dream in two languages.

We, too, are Springfield.
We, too, are America.