Long Bayonets Poems

Alone I arrive, walking from Frederick
over the gaps, across gentle hills
out onto a knoll
overlooking this burnished landscape.
Before me I see countless writhing rows
of indiscernible shapes gathered
in terrible rituals mid fire and smoke
darkening the sun.
From distant...

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So here's my question for this dawning day,
like a WinWin ruminating message in a bottle
floating through a LoseLose climate sea
felt still foggy from last night,
some mysterious how now;

One of many
health related strategic WinLose issues
tuning out...

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The Spirits of Culloden. 
This is like a pilgrimage, a try tae come every year,
Gather at the cairn, meet old friends, wipe away a tear.
Standin on that moor, that once with blood was sodden,
Paying respects...

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Three cousins played a “game’ of war
A map of Europe spread across the floor
No adults there to keep the score
As each of them wanted more and more

Three of four empires lay upon that map
As they...

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February came in keeping with its ancient character a month of coldness, wetness and of thawing,
With departing frost and melting snow, February could possibly be called the wet season,
Maybe it's a time for floods and...

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The Rulers wield their silver shields,
             wear golden coronets
while warders guard the prison yard,
         ...

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A listing of the fires 
and all the survivors 
will be provided

Names of the dead 
are written on broken cobblestones 
at the bottom of the river

The sheet music 
is in the morgue - reconstruction 
of...

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A LETTER TO MOM 1918
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS


At Last Dear Mother, this Nightmare Will Cease
In a Few Short Hours There Will Be Lasting Peace
A  Full Armistice Will Go into Effect at Eleven
I Loathe These Soiled...

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Khatia Buniatishvili's Tour de Force of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto N° 1 in B-flat minor on Zubin Mehta's 80th Birthday*

… the caged-beast terrified defying the donderbus blasts vollies of muskets and cannons heralding the charge cavernous...

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General Cornwallis of Great Britain
faced a problem that he couldn’t resolve,
he’d won at Camden, they’d captured Charlestown,
but still the southern colonies wouldn’t fall.

Instead he faced a string of reverses,
lost at King’s Mountain and then at...

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Color me white like the color of the wall
Color me white to be seen by all
Color me white to stand tall

The patches of black all over me 
The dark spots that all can see
Are my...

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THE CRYING WILD CREATURES.
Nzongi Mwero.
Oh, we recall the bygone times,
The days of the golden past,
That chirping with our merry mates,
Flying around the parks,
Gone the joys of the nests,
That freedom restrained,
Coming at our will in parks,
But...

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...He reformed the routing patriots,
formed a line atop a rise, Perrine’s Hill,
brought in General Knox and the artillery,
commanding the mass through sheer force of will.

He needed to buy time for the main force
to march on...

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AND THE MOTHERS WEEP
                               ...

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In May of seventeen seventy-nine
Henry Clinton was having a hard time,
so tired of the rebels still fighting,
had to somehow get Gorge Washington
out of the looming Hudson Highlands,
and then force the war to a final ending.

He...

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(for those in Kwangju: May 18, 1980)*
after Dante

Taking this peach within the mouth, the tongue 
hovers around its sunset skin like a lover
and its Sappho sweet bite is heaven. A song

of honeysuckled rivers is like...

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Here lies the gallon of horse’s blood
and soldier lies beneath this hope now dead,
trapped within mans sin
waiting for bayonets kiss.

In this moment of war, these seconds of time
the shadow of foe merges into one
and fate...

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...And though the rifles were slower to load,
the Overmountain Men made use of trees,
concealing themselves from counterfire
in places that the British couldn’t see.

With countless snipers popping out to shoot,
all the loyalists there atop the hill
knew...

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Funkin AT THE CHICKEN SHACK – Tony Adamo - 1990

Jimmy Smith was laying down an incredible riff on a wall of kinetic sound that was oozing out of my car radio.  I was on...

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Voices from the ashes

I
Note that I was murdered to have risen transformed
Note that my flesh and blood was readily made dust
Note that my bones and skeletons got incriminated
Note that my impetuous voice echoe from the...

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.Inspired From Sapper French's Diary from April 23. 1916
                         "Come On...

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1908
Last day at school for me
Some thirteen years Ive had
And Im going to be a farm hand
Just like me dear old Dad

Here now its Mr Peters
A silence falls over the class
'Registration' he says as he...

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The silence of morn makes this place forlorn
in the fields, the hillsides, and trenches.
Over two hundred years since the bloodshed and fear,
yet you can hear the yells, smell the stenches.
The crush of the blue, charging...

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ELECTRIFICATION   OF  UDELNAYA   MARKET



Thank goodness
New glass steel towers are cleaning up the mess
Of Udelnaya market.  Traffic was too fast  *
Street is pedestrianised and bypassed
Bright lights are lit ...

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They’re entering my place
And they will ask no question
I’ll understand through days
They took my world with action
Of thousands high-boots
Of coloures of the martial
The God won’t help they’re rude
And everybody’s marshal.
They step with bayonets 
They say...

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