Long Amusements Poems

I am an Outlander
Who lives on a high hill
Overlooking a man-made lake
That once was a rapidly rushing river
Along whose banks the Ozarks Bluff Dwellers and the Osage and then Delaware
Hunted, fished, and created shelter
For their...

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His thick-soled hiking shoes
tread too loudly
to celebrate time's homing invitation
to hear and see, 
feel and smell resonantly hidden diversity
within Spirit's wooded ridge.

He stops to break from sacrilegious pounding
plodding echoes
reverberating through ears attuned for inside voices,
languaged...

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ERINNA

Erinna is widely regarded, at least by those who have read her, as second only to Sappho among the ancient Greek female poets. Little is known about her life; Erinna has been called a contemporary...

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KING ALFRED THE GREAT MODERN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

King Alfred the Great (c. 849-899), arguably the first great king of England,  may have done more to lay the groundwork for English literacy and literature than any...

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Straight rows of soft chairs, larval eyes stare blank
Absorbed by glowing colors on the wall
Their jaws slack, fetid whiff, unwashed and dank
Arrested minds the blue screen does enthrall

Their horticulture, growing docile strains
Indulge the twisted whims...

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Dear Tony,
                                 ...

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[Continued from Part One]



The youngsters were oblivious— so entranced were they
in their childhood amusements and entertaining play.
That door was small and narrow to leave the family home.
And, oh, their lives were fragile, like bubbles on...

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We have grown accustomed
to Business As Usual
Yang dominant ways
to teach kids
to live egocentrically apart.

We also have Old School
Yin recessive ways
to listen to children
teach each Sacred Other
how to love ecocentrically
together.

Yang alone
is about WinLose
Either/Or evolution
competing against
other competitors.

While...

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As summer evolves,
With heat and despair,
The boy I once knew,
Gazes up in the air,
He's enamored by freedom,
The choices supplied,
By three months vacation,
And magic implied,
Some friends are around,
Some travel with kin,
While others do nothing,
Or indulge in...

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There is an adventure to be written 
From my perch where I be sitting 
Two characters my imagination see 
A relationship story to be told late in the day over tea 
There is an honest...

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Into the darkness with adventurous fantasies at stake 
Wondering how much this creative experience 
Will actually make 
It was only a few months ago 
One’s mind played out the moving picture show 
A funny friendly...

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Like nations many, at Central South Asian seam,
With its roots in the Paleolithic time stream;
Home of cultures, habitats, and martial movements,
Lounge of Arab, Muslim, British, Greek amusements...

Empires many, like spiders, yearned to spin in; Failed!
On...

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Arrived is now Spring,
The scents of flowers 
scattered in the fields 
Awaken feelings of sleeping children.

Here, the breeze that goes 
Between flowering almonds.

There, weeping of poplars 
Are spreading like white snow.
Far away, along the path,
White...

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Modest swimsuits, bathing boxes
 White-blue flesh ice cold
Scratchy towels, sandy sandwiches
 Pots of tea being sold
Foxford blankets, picnic baskets – 
A donkey ride on the strand
Flowery summer frocks, mischief brimming 
 A practical joke being...

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Monsters of conceit that human beings create,
With fantastic forms and shapes and strength decorate;
Licensing to love, loath, lust, lie, lure and loiter,
Wretched then; dare to kill the very creator...

Scientific ambition, sure, is creative,
What, if, the...

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Exodus
From a distant hill far away
Shadowed off by a monstrous cloud stormy
Lay signs and sighs
From an alley tucked away
Sheltered off by ghostly shades of moaning moon
Flogs chorus a hollow song in a fog
The twinkling mirage...

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As she stared at the framed photo 
Of her friends and herself taken some days ago,
A pain went through her ailing heart
And an obscure tear from her eyes did depart.
Those were the times of idyllic...

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I was sittin' on the porch the other day a-starin' into space,
Peerin' back thro' the mists of time when life was a slower pace.
I was amazed recollectin' how my friends and I survived.
Kids are so...

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Enjoy your techno-toys while you can;
As you frantically surf the internet
In a vain, pathetic attempt to "keep up"
With meaningless jumbles of jibber-jabber
Which you consider essential information.

All those gotta-have gadgets you crave
Like some new kind of...

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children growing up in a bewildering moral landscape
what is right, what is wrong, what is politically correct
with mindless amusements or habits they seek escape
the media, education, religion they all opposing direct

the parents fared no better,...

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I remember it well.
The feeling was swell.
It happened once a year;
An event most precious and dear.
The fragrance was in the air.

It was still mid-Spring, but from the sky,
There protruded the aroma of summer.
I hasten to...

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Have I been too long at the fair?
by Michael R. Burch
 
Have I been too long at the fair?
The summer has faded,
the leaves have turned brown;
the Ferris wheel teeters . . .
not up, yet not...

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The soaring sinews of morning sunrise,
Ascend like attacking phantoms with flailing spears;
They rise thinking of fond amusements in the foggy darkness;
They appear as an apparition appears through an old curtain,
As a suffering ghost lurking, groaning...

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Lions in Sheep skins
Is all that is left in the World
No more brotherhood and kins
The world before only need to be told.

From family members to friends,
Supervisors to managers,
Officials to Religious leaders,
Neighbourhood and abroad,
The pure heart...

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Men lined up to fall down these stairs
willingly,  falling over each other to fall first
and laugh last as each victim learns from burns
  burning incessantly, unforgiving and fragile
I toed this line and peered...

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