Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Tom DiVenti
Hell Hounds of Hatred
Lame-duck politicians play at being sincere, holding court in shady bars, counting loose change from other people’s pockets. They never cared about you or the people who voted them into power. They line their own pockets with your money and call it fiscal responsibility. Likewise, they get paid, and we got played. I don’t remember when it started. I don’t recall. I was born at a very young age. Hate is the dirtiest four-letter word. I hold no hate in my heart, but it hurts like tainted love.
The Fiction of Fun Fake Facts
There’s a failed romance in the imaginary technological universe daily serving up fresh new lies. The hoax of this particular moment is of the highest magnitude; the latest news, the living end, no news is good news. Late breaking early reports. Bad news is good publicity. Living was always a private affair until the birth of the surveillance society. You can’t win. It smells of fakery and wooden nickels on dead eyes. Mind your own business and have a nice day. Big brother is watching TV again.
The Closet Poets
Do we automatically become poets at birth? A blank canvas to apply muted colors of every memory, emotion, and a lifetime of experiences. Anyone could be an artist, musician, or poet. The poets are the lowest of the breed, holding the cultural ladder to the top of art. Before the takedown of a systematic indoctrination into societal norms and the culture at large with rules and regulations that govern the nonsensical nature of existence.
Somehow Someplace Somewhere Someday
Reality blows up in your faces. Madness and despair run rampant. I can no longer believe in truth or beauty. It’s fake news, fake photos, fake stories, fake people, a fake you, and a fake me. Nothing is immune in a whirlwind of propaganda. Everywhere are steaming piles of fresh accusations heaping false falsehoods and bold-faced untruths of every dénouement upon the semiconscious public.
The Contemplative Con
I was a hermit for years. It was a gradual process. By the time the pandemic hit, I was already living a sheltered existence. I didn’t see anyone except my wife and the few strangers I met along the road to social distancing. Keep a six-foot distance between yourself and everyone else. The world shrinks as you get farther away from the herd. The swarm of the hive mind, groupthink tank, mob mentality, and the artifices of supposed intelligence are just too much to contemplate.
The Good Old Days
The transformation is almost complete. It’s way too late to wait. Taking a giant leap backward to the southern Antebellum era. The hate shall rise again. The ignorant will rule the day. Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It’s a slow transition. To rot in broad daylight. An imperfect union breakdown of antisocial interactions. In the name of patriotism, it slowly dies, becoming the worst imaginable life for imperfect all-American values and unwholesome nightmares. A lie told to gullible fools like us.
Dead Poets Speak
Who was it that said they couldn’t stop for death? It was some crazy dame who lived in a small room. She kept her poems tucked away in a desk drawer like love letters to phantom lovers of life and death's misfortune. What can ghosts say? They can’t speak about anything. Trying to keep up with the living is enough of a chore. But books speak louder than flimsy words and last longer. Like any art outlasting itself, holding no dominion over any mere mention of poetry. Gnashing at dangling participles.
Plain Simple Love
I want you to know exactly how much I love you while we’re still here. My deepest gratitude for you and all you do. Not only for me, but for everyone and everything that surrounds us. Creating beauty out of thin air. A bubble in your gardens surrounding solitude’s peace and quiet. It’s our dumb luck. Like bees, crawlers or butterflies that don’t know what they are. That’s all we need. Blessings are nice too. Take what you require, not wanting much. Forget that constant static in my head.
We Are the Revolution
Politics & Media Jul 15, 2026, 06:26AM Let them know we are coming for them. As we continue to celebrate 250 years of hate, division, and calculated self-inflicted destruction, let’s pause and reflect upon the moment. The ruling class still rules. Billionaires want it all. As they strip away human rights and dignity. We the people can decide to stop it. Yet no one does. Counter hatred with love. Expose lies with factual truths, and laugh in the face of stupidity and willful ignorance.
A Perfect Hatred
As I write this, the entire world’s burning with unseen fires. Nobody’s putting them out. Not your usual wildfires. The kind that smolder and burn into your soul. Meanwhile the most powerful, despised and reviled of men’s petty contempt are running amok with rampant violence against common sense. As hatred grows and devours us we’re consumed with a quiet insanity. Blinded to the past. Holding fast and tight to the religion of a supreme superiority as might makes right.
Corporate Culture Shock
I recently worked in a big-box warehouse as a garden associate. For 17 months I was undercover, a spy in the house of capitalism. I was unceremoniously terminated. Expelled from the home where doers get it done. Overlord flunkies with dime-store smiles. We love stealing your money with overpriced, shoddy products made in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Canada, and Mexico, or anywhere else but here. Kiss-ass servility and fake forced hospitality.
No Such Place
Somewhere, there’s a mysterious place. No one knows precisely where. Over here, over there. Is it all in the head? Does the mind play tricks with fleshy bodies and fickle egos? It’s a head-scratcher trying to figure out things that are intangible. We try not to think about it too hard. The stuff of dreams or worse. Let’s pretend we’re already there and somehow we know. How did you get there from here? Every night when you fall asleep, where do you go?
My God Is Better Than Your God
It’s a tough gig being the king. But, as you know, I am the best king, better than the rest of those pretenders to the crown. I spent decades clawing my way to the top with my little hooves and gnarled fangs, smiling and scowling, waving at the rubes and dupes from my bulletproof king mobile. I’m looking so fine, staring down my snout at the peasants. They line up along the roads to wave at me all the way to my professional international pickleball cornhole courses around the world.
Some Guy Died On a Cross
Do unto others before they do it to you, for whatever you do will return. Good, bad, or indifferent things will happen when turning the other cheek, depending on how you play out the scenarios. The biblical equivalent of forcing others to do something they don’t want to do. Working ain't working. Freedom ain’t free. The American Dream is over. It’s the hoo-doo in the voodoo. Karma originated from the Sanskrit of Buddhist and Hindu traditions.
Do The Hippy Shake Baby
A dose of nostalgia, with an eight-ball shot of reality. It’s too much too late. All the useless information jammed into a trivial pursuit overdose of counterculture. Greedy, music industry executives cavorting with drugged-out hipsters. Having naked lunch with Salvador Dalí and Alice Cooper. Kerouac pointing his finger up to the sky asking, why not? I remember when my little sister danced the Twist to Chubby Checker. I recall watching the Beatles appear for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Dreadful Fears
During the Great Depression, newly-elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, at his first inaugural address in 1933, spoke a line that still lives in infamy. The President stated metaphorically that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. There was nothing profound about that quote except that the majority of people in America were already afraid, beaten down by the government, and a rapidly escalating financial collapse across the country. The fear was very real.
The Inhuman Rut
A fallacy of fruitless endeavors. A mindless misconception being stuck in a rut caused by a negative state of mind. Or merely a bad day rolled into a lifetime. Performed poorly in a desperately repetitive robotic daily routine. Canceled, nullified by dull minds, and soggy, dreamless sawdust heads of misinformed miscreants. This fictional flight of fancy fantasy is a reality for many. We go round and round the circumference of zero. Laugh at the devil, make the devil dance, and shake those rattlesnakes.
Simple Grace or Dumb Luck?
I’m examining lifetimes of love, pain, hatred, suffering and joy, what makes us human. Most have shared the gambit of precarious emotional carnival rides that makes living a helluva ride with a colossal question mark followed by a dot. Like a constant dark cloud overhead, storms never last except in the heads and hearts of inclement days. Those better days are few and far between, but they linger in memories.
Saving Time on Credit
Nothing lasts forever in a life lived on credit. Daylight Saving Time: a tired, time-worn joke on wasted hours spent resetting clocks back and forth twice every year to reflect time spent adding and subtracting hours. It amounts to losing and gaining an idea whose time has yet to come and goes just as quickly. Guess how many jellybeans are in the jar and win a timeshare. You can’t add or subtract time on a mechanical clock. It doesn’t add up.
A Proper Farewell to Jack Trimper
I began a series of phone conversations with Jack Trimper to talk about his art and life. He was a Baltimore artist, poet, and teacher who died recently at the age of 75. I didn’t know how serious his condition was during this time but I knew he couldn’t talk for five minutes without coughing his head off and cutting short the phone call so he could catch his breath. This continued off and on for a few weeks until his death last month.
Same Old Crap, Different Century
The same old song and dance. The fix is always in. All you need is a gun and an application for the police state. In the world of distractions, reality isn’t real. It’s science fiction without the science. Global warming minus the weather. The latest breaking news report distracts from the big lie. What’s real or fake? It’s true, false, good, bad, right, and wrong about this mess that has us stuck under its spell. Mesmerized into somnambulant suckers.
Cheap Ain’t Cheap No More
You can forget about the deals, steep discounts and clearance sales. Life is so priceless that it becomes worthless to be honest in this world of wealth, power and lies. You can’t put a dollar value on facts. But you can’t buy anything without the price tag gouging guarantee of paying more for less with your meager dollars. It’s not like supply meets demand in this gimme market of public goods and services. It’s more for me and none for you.
A Long History of Hateful Histrionics
It’s a short story, maybe history between the birth of the nation and the death of democracy. It only took 250 years to evolve into today’s mess. A celebration of our grand Semiquincentennial on July Fourth, 2026, is fast approaching. What do we have to show for it? What can we offer or expect from this event that will seal the deal for our illegitimate hatred and personal anger towards the world at large? It’s not like there was no warning. You saw it.
Fait Accompli Faux Pas
Here we go again. A new year. The same old crappy days. Life in the modern age is tough to chew, much less swallow, and appears embarrassing to those who see the manufactured nightmare of fascism while trying to survive. The same old tired routine carnival world of circus politics and sideshow religion sticking their gin-blossom nose in where it doesn’t belong. Strange, spooky bedfellows having forbidden relations with little boys and girls.
To Serve at the Pleasure of the President
Eventually everyone will be blind in the land of justice. We watch the body count grow as the dunghill rises. We smell the stench of the ages. We know the familiar odor, the reek of political religious putrefaction. We know the system of bad theater in a porta-potty of smelly Democrats and stinky Republicans. All part of the same golden turd party. Meanwhile, back at the public restroom, not even a courtesy flush. The paper roll is empty.
The Testament of Life is Candy
Without getting overly sentimental looking back, gazing on the nostalgic boo-hoo nonsense of love, life, and losing. The loss of friends and relatives rapidly increases as we approach our own demise. The fond memories of loved ones or the random chaos and mayhem of the dead and dying. Too many deceased friends and acquaintances; I confess, the concept of friendship and death's inevitable certainty leads to its own end. The whole thing has always pissed me off. The finality of life isn’t optional.
Happy New Epoch in Hades
As the years dwindle, they’re so much more like the same old yarn. As though a lifetime of yearning amounts to a pile of not-so-very magic beans and the dust of an artificial world we dwell within disintegrates slowly, gone insane. Mistaken years of remorse, a dopey foray in search of meaning in a meaningless story unveiled as fables retold in books of no return. A public library of useless information. Humanity’s a sordid affair we muddle through to become unbecoming.
The Beginning Is the End
There’s no way around it. No path to the ultimate truth of beginning and ending. One starts, the other ends. How did it start? Starting over again. How will it end? In the beginning, but it could be in the middle. Everything without end is tedious unless it can become new eternally. An irrefutable law of nature or physics. The law of the jungle is survival of the fittest. In theory it’s all theoretical. When irresistible forces meet immovable objects. Seeing the forest without the trees in it.
Talking to Myself Again
There’s an emptiness in the world that permeates every one of us. Never enough for some. Too much for many. The inability to completely understand much about anything, even the meaning of words that may describe it. Leaving us unable to fully comprehend what the hell this or any fool is talking about. The reciprocal impact of communication between you and someone else, or talking to yourself, and talking to others is like talking to yourself in another language.
The Hole Truth
Will you place your right hand on the Bible and raise your left hand, swearing your personal truth? A white lie, maybe a little fib. We’ll never know. There’s a hole so deep that it never fills. So wide it swallows everything around it. A Swiss cheese of emptiness. That which cannot empty. No matter how much stuff you stick in it. A bottomless pit of undigested half-truths floating around the place. There are holes in everything. Truth lost its toothy bite. No taste for half-baked realities.
End of an Error
Making terrible mistakes, missteps taken, backpedaling out of awkward situations. Lost in the details. Dead ends, detours, roundabouts, and the cul-de-sacs of running in circles. Watching reality dismantled in your face. Ferris wheels of misfortune. Concentric circles further on down the road. Grinding gears. It only takes a second to ruin the rest of a moment. Getting lost along the way. There’s more than one way to screw up life. It’s not like you can take a pass or request a rain check.
The Slave Master’s Wasteland
We, the people, sounds like a unified group effort to create a population of chattel and perpetual poverty under authoritarian dictatorship. A land of serfs. The unwilling participants in a free market society, unable to rid themselves of oppression and exploitation, left holding the bag. They’re the grunts who ceaselessly work for their survival, bending the knee to the elite, self-serving rich and powerful. They have no free will to make decisions about their own lives or their lot in living them.
To Die Laughing
As a child, I never thought of death. My life was about living carefree with a strange magic. It was always about the living. I never fit in with the rest of the herd. Alone, except for a few friends who shared my weirdness. Death's finality was not part of a healthy childhood. Leave the dying to the dead. The dead cannot laugh. They have no sense of humor. The dead can never die again. I know more dead people today than I know people still alive.
The Odor of the Filthy Rich
It’s not hard to figure out the difference between the rich and the poor. You know the answer. Everybody knows the raw deal, apart from the clueless affluent. The disparate views inhabit the world of those without, so many levels of the indigent, and the ignorance of the wealthy who’ve never worked an honest job, riding freely on the poorest backs with lame-ass excuses. Work hard and save money. Something that they never have to worry about.
Tom Nobody
It could be you. It could be me looking at myself. I’m looking at you. So strange how we ghost each other, traipsing around in fragile skin suits, acting like it all makes sense. Skirting disasters. Believing the unbelievable. To be a memory for someone. You, perchance? Total strangers. I hope you understand. I don’t believe we’ve ever met. Testimony to the phony and fake. The simulated wood grain of this country. How can the artificial be intelligent? Weird, you say? Dream forever in someone else’s memories.
Meat is Murder
The next time you get hungry for a cheeseburger avoid the genetically-modified beef imposter. It’s a pink slurry of toxic chemicals and artificially produced by products, unfit for human consumption. More plastic than anything else, created in a laboratory, grown in a Petri dish, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, like eating Vaseline. It’s all about cutting costs, duping consumers, finding alternative substitutions, and fleshing out chemical ingredients from the ground-up meat.
Don’t Fence Me In-A Conversation with Baltimore’s Mark S. Sanders
Mark S. Sanders is a poet. He’s also a sculptor and painter. A multi-faceted artist and wordsmith who’s passionate about his craft. He’s also unapologetic about his core beliefs. He tells it like it is. That’s the way of all good poets and artists. He navigates the city alongside the rabble, and rubble of the downtrodden underdog class. Tom DiVenti: When did you start writing poetry? Mark S. Sanders: I first seriously began writing poetry in high school.
An Interview With Crispin Glover
Crispin Glover: Thank you for that beautiful review. I loved it. That made me so happy. Tom DiVenti: Thanks, it was just my personal observations. We share the same kind of frequencies. CG: Yeah, I remember now. We were talking before the film began. I really appreciate it. That was the first printed review I’ve seen of the film. And to have such a nice understanding review made me feel great.
Crispin Hellion Glover: Close Up
I recently saw the new film, No! YOU’RE WRONG. by artist, poet, and outré filmmaker Crispin Hellion Glover at NYC’s MOMA. I knew a little bit about the man; some claim he’s an offbeat, eccentric guy. Glover, known for his unconventional approach and bizarre style of storytelling humor, is a mystery man. His middle name, Hellion, translates to hellraiser. It’s possible that he is, but It’s more than that. The love he shares for old-school cinematic ways and techniques is upfront.
The Money People
Known as the monied class or moneyed people. Two different spellings of the same group. They’re the ruling class controlled by a handful of powerful elites. Nameless, faceless entities of ruthless, corrupt governments, the evils of organized religion, and blatant corporate greed. Some say money makes the world go round; others argue it’s the root of all evil. It changes everything, controlling people in every aspect of modern society that we associate with the economic aspects of day-to-day living.
Not Another “N” Word
It seems like yesterday because it was. What’s happening right now here in the land of the freaks and home of the slaves is proof positive. We go backwards madly dancing, pretending the past was a coincidence for the future. You can erase history, but not truth. Is it an invention of a vivid imagination? Spite? Vindictiveness? What really happened is questionable.
Pathetic Poets, Drunken Bards and Unwise Sages
They don’t walk into a bar. Not all at once. It always starts with going to a bar and the fatal flaw. Drinking alone. Bringing the horse to water. First thought, best-thought credos, and disposable stanzas of quaint poesy. It’s in the cards they’re playing with death, dealt by the devil's hand in their game of last chances. Fold, all out. They can’t play fair. They can’t even make a bet. Broke and broker. Losers in life and love wallow in the mock misery of poverty’s playpen.
DEVO-The Band That Refused to Die
The 1970s—what an exciting time! The endless possibilities for cultural reinvention of musical genres were just beginning. Specifically rock ‘n’ roll, alternative music, punk rock, hip-hop, rap, and pop new wave bands. Country and Western too. Kent State was one defining moment in our evolution, revolution for peace, justice, and the American ethos, pathos, and logos. Four students were shot and killed on the college campus grounds by National Guard soldiers during an anti-Vietnam War protest.
Clean Americans
Laws weren’t handed down from ancient Aramaic or Sanskrit languages. No sacred scriptures or divine intervention by Christian bearers of a holy covenant. Nor pagan ceremonies of human sacrifice passed down by a higher authority, many claim as the word of God, no hand of gods authored a book written by mortals. Ancient texts are unnecessary and false. Language flows through time into the words, forms, and sentence structures we know today.
Lost Causes for Hopeless Situations
Sue was my first steady girlfriend. She didn’t like being called Susan; I cannot recall why. Sue was a wild child, revolting against her lot in life. We all did that dance. Sue eventually drank and drugged herself into an early grave. We ran around the streets like a ragtag gang of wannabe rebels searching for oblivion or freedom found in the strangest places.
Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Breathe
Here I am, slowly going insane. Looking back to times past throughout a history of missteps. When didn’t it suck one way or another? Where didn’t the ill winds blow? Was there ever any period of time in your life when it didn’t suck? A time when evildoers didn’t exist. I think not. What do you do when you have no place to go? Same day, different people, other places. Sometimes looking back is the only way to move forward. To what end? Did it ever serve a purpose?
Veritas Vitriol Vanitas
They tried to warn us long ago, but no one heeded the call. Merrily, verily, we roll along, wading through the inner sanctum of society's muck. The human mud of murky emotionally disturbed slop. Endless raw sewage flowing in and out. The seas of civilized waste byproducts accumulate, backing up in the collective consciousness and clogging the thought process. Microplastics of forever chemicals course through toxic silicone hearts.
Dwelling Among the Immortals
Reminiscing about my past life is a random jumble of indiscriminate recollections. With sentimental ramblings, certain fond memories arise from the inner depths. Bits and pieces of personal history remain scattered around the cosmos of my head in a mysterious universe of events. They come and go as unrelated events trigger thoughts, reminders of what occurred in a patchwork of days gone by the wayside. It happens to everyone.
The Tao According to No One
I dumped religion long ago. I knew from childhood that trying to figure out the truth of the Catholic Church, the Bible, God, and Jesus was all wrong and bogus. Doctrines designed to keep people down, living in mortal fear of God’s vengeance. Under the guise of a cruel joke that false hopes of eternal peace and happiness in a make-believe heaven were indisputable facts. For all faithful followers of Christianity, it’s a bunch of bunk for truth in advertising.
Trite Ruminations or Trivial Pursuits
In a few days, the earth will spin faster than usual. I don’t think anyone will notice. If you’re reading this, it already occurred. Although it’s happening again soon, if you care. If you’re still following the info in the world game of useless information, then know this is irrelevant. The earth moves fast enough. If it suddenly stopped turning, anything lying around that ain’t tied down will hurtle into the sky. Not an enjoyable way to start the day.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Tom
Contact Tom, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack