Long Alfie Poems

We’re coming up on the spooky pumpkin-latte season, when days suddenly end, while I’m busy in some sterile, fluorescent chemistry-lab and there’s nothing to do but walk down dark science-hill to the dorm.

Is that rustling...

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No skills involved,
just natural instincts.

No spiritual development skills, 
leftbrain worded messages 
about rightbrain instinctive 
natural/spiritual, 
indigenously multicultural 
yang-out/yintegrity resonance 

Like singing and dancing, 
sucking and copulating, 
olding and young scolding, 

Persistently historic 
resilient 
LeftBrain verbal...

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Everybody got a Hollywood life story
to tell
More meat on the bone
give juicier bites 
to sell
Nobody ever turns in a tarnished silver screenplay
Those warts and mistakes
get Photoshop casting couch edited away
Baby Jane rude attitude don’t make...

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Alfie was the first son of a billionaire
Who bought a golden cradle for his son and heir
There was no expense that daddy wouldn’t spare
And perforated ping pong balls didn’t feature there

On Alfie’s one year birthday...

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If only 
                                ...

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Remember the days of
                   yesteryear
when family ties were
         ...

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I am not the famous one. But my pain was equal to his.
He became Chekhov. I became Alfie.
The meanness of the streets that spawned us made him a literary oak, while I became the hollow...

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Ramblings On A Winter's Day
© Ben Burton

Of all the words that have been written
And all the words yet to be writ
Few will count, most will be canceled
When time records the final answer
Without paean, rhyme, or...

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My dorm room was bright this morning. It was disorienting.
The sky outside was a cloudless, striking neon blue.
The air was so crisp and clean, I could hardly feel it going in and out.
It all sparked...

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Down the foggy street
your lonely figure did laik,*
no words no smile
just waiting for your mate,
knowing I,  a wandering soul.
Like the wind!
I’d come and go, summer madness
winter’s snow, recharged urchin
forever all aglow.  Yet!
next to...

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There's a lady farmer from Seattle
Who doesn't snore but moos aloud as cattle
She will only lay
On a bed of hay
Where sheep can't sleep for her rowdy rattle.

*+*+*+*

There is a woman that comes from Belgium
Who has...

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I did not expect
to sing
"What's It All About,
Alfie?"
with as much embarrassing 60s passion
as I did
in my urgent
pre-traumatic midlife
self-critical 30s.

I thought, 
by now,
I would resiliently remain swimming,
singing while dancing,
swirling in abundant win/win
economic ecologies
of deep polycultural meaning
and...

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If only I could hibernate
To awaken in the spring
To see sweet swathes of snowdrops
A welcome sign as spring begins
With daffodils and hyacinths
And tulips on their way
And pretty blue forget me nots
In gentle breeze shall dance...

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lesson five

meals won’t be fun
alone
the clock will ring noon
i’ll hear myself say
o no, not again ~
then it will ring six
with the echo of 
o no, not again ~

of course
dinner time might be
a little more encouraging
with...

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The pipe dream that the fat man had
He lied and lied and lied
And some were still surprised
The damn truth wasn't in him
Call me Thomas if you like
For no doubt I had my doubts
And he had...

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Charlie is awkwardly social.
He lives his life on a cycle.
He sometimes meets buddies,
He likes to work on his studies,
Charlie is awkwardly social.

Alfie is cheery and popular,
He’s considered rather jocular
He often meets friends,
Hoping the night never...

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There we were - Alf and I - Pharaohs,
surveying those white pyramids -
Nests of ibis - ovulating - 
Opera.

Across the bridge we danced,
Swaying o'er the waves below - 
Spectred lovers on a phantom ship -
Drifting...

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“What was it all about Alfie?”

Yes, there was a time I didn`t think
of a woman’s feeling they were an object 
only of my desires.
Then love came as did rejections 
and sleepless nights.
What were the tears...

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tired morning


This morning a song from a film 
filtered through my mind “what was it all for Alfie.”
I had no choice but being born, played no part of the proceeding
but had to bear the brunt...

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The mystery

The mystery of life is enduring
what is its purpose?
A couple having sex on grandfather´s sofa
while he is out milking his two cows.
The consequences of this brief union
was far from the couple´s mind.
So, I ask...

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They came from all over - Manchester, Derby
and. Connemara - icons, O'Toole, Bates and Finney,
who would believe the power of future stars,
although they spent their time fighting in bars.

RADA was a dream, a long way...

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As, A Place in the sun, Village Ghetto Land
Pastime paradise, Land of La La,
Master Blaster, Alfie, Living for the city,
and Part time lover, Faith, 
Another star, With a child’s heart, 
Used to be, Just good...

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I often sit at red lights
feeling like a voyeur
peering into car windows
playing a guessing game
who are you 
where are you going
another Alfie in the world
What's it all about anyhow
and I wonder

Sometimes a driver catches my...

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I have created for myself
a lonely place of despised remoteness;
many pictures I've taken off my shelf,
running away from humankind,
always refusing to settle down,
leaving no traces of my travels...
my identity remains unknown:
thinking I won't be found!

I...

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