Long Backwaters Poems

Guarded by towering hills on the East 
And flanked by the Arabian Sea on the West
With its easterly shore of stretching sandy swell 
That lulls the restless waves to sleep, 
There is a land, my...

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Surrounded by tranquil turquoise waters,
Guarded on sides by oceans three,
In the east by the Pacific,
On the south by the Celebes Sea,
And on the west by the south China Sea, 
There is an archipelago on the...

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Where the forest is still virgin and the lyrebirds often call,
the bronze-wing comes to drink, and the ferns are growing tall, 
there are deer prints in the mud, and there’s leeches seeking prey…
this little creek...

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Boated through the tantalizing Kerala backwater
                      in a pleasant summer morning;
   ...

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HOW CAN I PRETEND ? 
PART 1

How can I pretend when 
flutters across my chest only 
prickle as your thought 
arrives with doubt or hope 
What is hope anyway ?
A flimsy wish built upon 
a...

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Symbiosis 

Sitting on that rock 
Like a suburban mermaid, 
You look like a lost girl 
With a long sad story to tell.
So honey, why don’t we 
Mosey on over to Wide-track Town,
Where the freeways meet...

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Death of the King
– a threnody

Since the day of freedom,
the crowned king has sat
stately on state affairs:
atop this tempest
this illwind,
this boiling cauldron of corruption.
Blowing and blowing and
siphoning away our joy
and commonwealth!

The king’s green white green...

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Florida Everglades Wind by Mark Mazzarella



Trolling over the deep backwaters of the Everglades, 
turtles snapped and alligators sunned on banks, still as statues. 
The lush landscape was quiet except for the occasional 
splash of a...

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He sat on the park bench
        The weight of ages
        Settled about his shoulders.
       ...

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Some parts have regenerated
not backwards, local history
cannot be expunged with a backhoe and eraser.
There are facilities, collection plants,
distributions centers, storage units.
Where once summer sky’s grazed
there are mechanical cows
and the rusting bull horns of the defunct.
Creeks...

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For he had all the choices in the world
All the luxuries, the best and most sumptuous fare
All the wealth and splendor ... no bother nor care
Yet the backwaters and stable, not Jerusalem

He chose for my...

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The year was 2021 and Christmas was fast approaching,
Fear and uncertainty were seeping into every corner of daily life,
Good will was at an all time low throughout the land,
With Covid spreading faster than the gossip...

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Rolling clouds over rolling hills.
Kentucky is winding it roads out in endless curves.
No hurry,
this journey drives me
through its curling landscape
as a self-reading picture book of racial memories.

Born in a far way place, I feel rooted...

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Currents

There are currents
That ran me into fallen trees,
Cracking me open  
Face down in the mud
Gasping for air flopping
Onto my back watching 
The clouds float by untouched, 
Like giant ballet dancers
In tune with something unseen.

Whirlpools...

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The words of sea
           although adventurous,
           rapturous, salty ...
      ...

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Dead Canines in Spain 

The Aegean Sea, another rubber dinghy sank 30 people drowned 
most of them Syrians and from the hateful a smile when they are 
stupid risking their life and come here wanting...

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Mankind seems a fraction lost
chasing truffles and treasures
through the sawdust of his mind.
Beating back wild hogs
in the backwaters of temptations
as emerald jacket croakers
play hide and seek
with cattails swaying back and forth
through their mossy incarnations.

Nobody cares...

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Ok I have never heard of alliterations…….. And was wondering if words like 
abbey, acme, and acne would go along with alliterations …  and just maybe the 
meaty mossy messy mold at the mucky...

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what a strange thing to compare yourself to,
something that slips from water to land
tastes the sun, slipping into the muddy dark again

what a strange comparison
woman and reptile
warm and 
cold blooded
things that carefully harbor their eggs
lets...

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A moment of weakness came and passed by,
A thing that should not have come to pass
Age should have shown greater maturity.
Perhaps, it was the Time,
Tsunamis of tears, bitterness, ingratitude,
Are best buried deep into the times.
The...

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The lip of childhood was bloodied.
when the CSX ran over my puppy.
For years I fired rocks at the freight cars.
Trains were supposed to be your second-best friend.
Not a killer of soft things that wag their...

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They are creatures that come from heaven
               sprinkling lights on trails,
          ...

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Soulful secrets and sorrowful sighs,
silently stoke smoldering embers
of inspiration into full flame.

A murmuration of fledgling words
rise on poetic wings; to digest
the very essence of the moment.

And as they morph into metaphors,
hyperbole and prose, they inject
order...

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As I hold its numb weight
it grows younger,
more delicately knit
to blue somnolent veins.

I am left high and dry
while nerve endings circle
the dilated roots
of severed memories.

A pinched anesthesia;
while arterial threads track back
to things once sensed
on a...

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Red alert!
Anxiety level rises.
Dam shutters open.
Water wanders
among the concrete buildings,
seeking the buried backwaters, lakes, ponds, fields… 

A member of the land mafia marks himself as safe
on Facebook.
Poor people are always unsafe.
They were poverty-stricken 
during the...

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