Long Azores Poems

Science can’t save you, neither can religion,
at least Popper and Niebuhr, philosophers and poets,
are entertainers, which is why actors and athletes
are paid so much. Thanks for the summaries.
I was teaching Shakespeare’s 92nd ridiculous sonnet
to my...

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She grew up in the South, in the age of Jim Crow
In a town divided, no black friends did she know

She has her father's russet red hair and mother's walnut-brown eyes
The rarest combination, I surmise
She...

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His sister said to Johnny
“You’re going to go to war
The draft board called your number
They’ll be knocking on your door”
Johnny said “I don’t like marching
And I’ve never loved the sea
That only leaves one option
It’s the...

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The day that we left port, to new horizons we would sail
Knowing the dangers ahead, seafarers in the end we would prevail

Our journey from the Highlands from Inverness my home town
To Brazil in South America...

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Ghost Ship
Benjamin Briggs a master, with three previous commands
Took over the ill fated ship, which was to prove to be his last stand.

The ship originally named the Amazon, was 103 feet long
She was listed as...

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If you're sitting comfortably and have locked your mobile 'phones,
I'll tell you all a story about Indiana Jones
I met him on a wooden bench whilst strolling through a park
He was mumbling incoherently about some missing...

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Quick snap of my heels and through a time warp I fell
To a place that Plato had written about so well
In a lost continent I emerged safe and sound
Gilded architecture and pyramids did surround

Now having...

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When the bronze-skinned, 
silver tongue surfer
came smoothly yacht cruising
at year’s end
All the island ladies,
at the cabana house welcoming party,
mosh pit fell in ... 
Fell in love 
with the cosmopolitan thought
of permanently leaving
Loose their dinghy life...

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O ther misconceptions of my
H ome of birth and where I spent some of my

Y outh is that 
E veryone lives in mud huts and wears grass
S kirts as tourists are greeted at the airport.

B...

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A Little Hill in Arlington

There’s a little hill in Arlington
Where no bodies are interred
Yet crosses dot the hillside
And Taps are sometimes heard

Unlike the Unknown Soldier
With “unknowns” in the ground
This little hill in Arlington
Is for soldiers...

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Syria
In the ugly streets of Homs I lied on my back snipers´ fire hit
 walls and filled my nose with cement dust and the horrid 
smell of early death, the aftermath of abused young men
who...

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"I wandered lonely as a cloud"
                 William Wordsworth. 


I wandered lonely as a wave.
slowly, upon the ocean's tide.
O'er depths...

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Truth, be told 
On an old fashion gramophone, they played sweet 
music in a small cove made for two, the young man 
smiled this sleek woman was to become his bride.
A big seal came on...

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long-distance marriage


I sat on the terrace, thinking of my children and their
mother who had lived in a pool behind the houses
She they became adults had begged me to set her free, I relented drove her...

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A different Sonnet 
Sunlight from early morn and not
Far from here the Azores a cyclone
Lashes onto shores and makes the island
Taller and more meagre 
Stealing top- soil near the coast and 
The rocks tremble, will...

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Dark water swimmer

If I were a deep-sea diver, I would swim to the Azores
were the water is not so cold; meet up with dolphins
that remembered me from my time on ships when
waving to them from...

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The phone conversation
Late in the evening, my daughter brought me an apparat 
that made it possible to talk to the dead.
The first on the line was an electrician complaining
I hadn’t paid him; sure, how could...

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The Dolphin
He sat on the terrace thinking of his four children
their mother was a dolphin who lived in a pool behind the houses.
She begged me to set her free, I did and saw her swim...

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Atlantic storms had taken the main mast
For seven weeks we drifted helplessly
Fresh water and food were running out fast
There was talk below deck of mutiny.

Hunger, boredom and thirst were taking grip
As a boy I saw...

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