Best Guttered Poems

July 29, 1890

Colored daubs and swatches
crave artist’s practiced hand.
Justice, nearly blind, yet watches—
unwrought art upon a stand.

Regard the brushes in a row—
the palettes and the sponges.
Genius maimed by status quo,
vain a hope that fate expunges.

Guttered myriad lifelong dreams—
in desperate ruination.
Fading now the piteous screams
of self-inflicted...

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Among the souls of empty hearts


O distant bells of steeples chime
in echoed hymns of saddened weep
Comes again the midnight hour, 
down dampened cobblestone to creep
 
Along the darkened streets they roam
of alleyways and torches fed.
To reap the fortunes of desire,
black shadows, piercing eyes of red
...

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Happy.  Genial.  Merry.  Jolly
Blottoed, blasted, etched and blitzed
Mellow, foggy, hazy, squiffy
Tipsy.  Tiddly.  Brahms and Liszt

Dazed, zombied, tanked-up, trollied
Ganted, gubbed, guttered
Bladdered, blathered, leathered, plastered, 
Sozzled, sloshed, scuttered

Hammered, battered, caned, mangled
Spannered, mullered.  Half-cut, lashed
Twisted, warped, slammed, wasted
Wrecked, ruined.  Munted, trashed

Liquified,...

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Six magpies brought their mourning squawk,
soon joined by several others,
disturbing all their neighbour's talk 
and waking sleepy lovers.

Some hopped and did their swaggered strut 
between a felted flat roof top 
and a guttered water but. 
Some preferred a higher perch 
and troubled nearby taller tops...

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FAILURE.


Isolated tentative in rosy tower
Sublime detached observer of success
Making its own life and time
Swallowing in one long yawn all the glories
Keen scented existence and sanctified its rewards
Cut off from the masters & futilifying the slaves
Giving a disdain look to posterity and its pards
Ignoring punctuality with...

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A Sonnet For Bloody But Unbowed Heads

The hands of my children’s raised arms
Have become like released skeets;
Their ebony hued bodies, a circled bull’s eye.
Their blood flows down the guttered streets---
Clotting here and there like a red stained dye;
As justice stands by balancing her scheming charms.

Liberty...

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The brook thrums as it vaults over the piled rocks
Rolling on deep into the Zambezi valley
Twisting, flirting with the rigdes that compliment the escarpment beyond 
And the indigenous lass strolled to the rivulet a rose 
A dragon rose burgeoning before the  morning glory of...

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over occupied world
bewildering hodge-podge of people
pushing stress where it ought not to be

in the slim rays of late day
in the splattered mess of guttered streets
a homeless man asks for a light
for a half burnt cigarette 
then money for food
nerve knotted living squeezed between soiled fingers
...

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Torturous curves bending vision,
twisting to hide beyond today
what the prism of the future
holds captive down the whispered way.
Lost to us Love's fledgling glory,
gazing too long at cindered skies
till the velvet flame of passion
just guttered out in harsh good-byes.
Frail moths chasing bright illusions,
our palpitant attempts denied....

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Snow fell upon the marble eyes of the dead,
And the magpies pecked the buttons on the coats,
Drawn by the gleam of dulling brass attract,
As the ravens sought the softness of the throats.
Trees in naked staggers scratched the skies,
And the guns in the distance snapped like...

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DRIVE BY…

In chilled onyx morning 
Silicon tears flowed
Down the plowed valleys
Of ebony skin.

Silicon tears
Leaking from sunken craters:
Red orbs bleeding residues of pain.

In the cold guttered streets
A father’s son lays dead:
A lifeless body riveted with lead.

Another father must now defend
The cardinal sin
Of a living son
Who fired...

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Love.. one of the four letter words that is strong
But yet is guttered out of your mouth 
And captured by a faded kiss that you gave me 
The eyes that I once believed was innocent 
Became the wicked criminal I never thought you'd be...

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The candle guttered in the draft,
She paused in her thoughts.
Life had been good today,
She had eaten a little.
Gazing out to gather her thoughts,
Children cowered in the filthy lanes.
They had not eaten in a long time.
They scrambled out to the laden cart,
Hoping something would fall, it...

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chased such a long time
I was behind myself
 
cobbled roads with water
streaming down the guttered edges
pouring into the end of a river
I chased  myself there
alone
nothing this end of town
 
I forgot why I'd been running
a perfect figure
well colored and clad
walked toward me, 
"You needn't...

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Time is the fire in which we burn,
ripples of lava on inner landscapes,
eddies and swirls which twist
and turn.

Kerosene progress burns me now,
I feel 
the pain of sweet conflagration
dead cold and real.
Hypnotic the effect, I embrace
it’s dissolution,
dissembling before a mind’s eye mirror crack’d,
denied absolution.

Reminiscing on the...

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