Long Calves Poems

What I’m going to tell you now might make you think I’m loco. I hope that you’ll believe me, but I don’t care if you do.
You asked me what - in all my life’s -...

Read More

HEROES

Near somber guards, units of children heap 
dead leaves, naive to any else fallen.
Friend, you chuckle, but your posture speaks
of duty on this day of contradictions.

Firefighters bow heads in silent paean, 
while polished trucks stand...

Read More

This is, as indicated, the 2nd THIRD of this lengthy poem. Due to Poetry Soup's file-size limitations, this piece had to be posted in 3 parts. 
   The 1st and final thirds can...

Read More

This is, as indicated, the 1st THIRD of this lengthy poem. The 2nd and final thirds had to be posted separately due to Poetry Soup's file-size limitations. No other way I could manage to make...

Read More

From my lowly bachelor’s house
Proudly christened ‘Embassy Fair’
I woke up to the chirping of birds
On the trees above and across the vale
And the riverine bushes in-between
I woke up to the crowing of cocks
And the mooing...

Read More

Not too many decades out of college
I finally landed my first full-time job,
as a White House speech writer.

I know,
you would expect
I would not start at the top
and then claw
and grab
and snatch my way to the...

Read More

Chroí awoke early the next morning, disoriented and a bit frightened.  This was not her bed .  It was so big.  She was tired and felt drained.  Closing her eyes, thoughts...

Read More

Woke up this morning
 on the wrong side of the tracks.
Left out leaving for all the right reasons
 and all the wrong facts.

Caught a ride with a traveling preacher
 in a beat up van.
Said he...

Read More

...and the Demon spoke,
its voice deep and mellow like smooth satiny chocolate,
"There is more, much more than good and evil,"
the words thunderously whispered.
The verdant emerald green of the forest quivering at the sound,
drawing in upon...

Read More

We have gone to the Kruger Park, and are now back,
All roads there are paved,
But for adventure, you can drive along very doable
Sand roads, the crocodile river runs parallel to
These sand roads and if you...

Read More

*** How Lady Learned at Last ***

For decades, Lady daydreamed, wanting a full closet,
A packed, complete fashionable style:
Shoes to hats, to crown the French Bob
Of shinny, brunnette tresses above her hazel eyes.

There’d be gauzy blouses...

Read More

Despite how much a man adores his folks before they pass...there sometimes is... among the other folks that man survives...
The sort who - without needing to be asked, becomes involved, and simply out of kindness...

Read More

White Dove coos the light through the bedroom window
leaving puddles of glimmering pools on the darkened floor
as the evening wanes and night takes control.
The door slowly opens and you shuffle your weary body
through the moonlit...

Read More

Animal Chain Atrocities

No longer a bucolic photo op
bedecking a cover of Life magazine

Free grazing
pastoral images
now but bewildered enslavement

Animal commodities
factory farms and feedlots
CAFO habitats raising
sixty billion a year for dinner tables

Chickens

Hi-Tech slaughter
football fields long
alethic poor
four walled...

Read More

One Saturday some years ago, at a market in Rokeby,
a voice was calling from behind and then caught up with me.
It was Shaun O’Malley at the rear that stopped me for a chat,
dressed in a...

Read More

_____________________________________________________________

                              THE PRICE OF ADMISSION


So many...

Read More

The trail was long and very dusty
great clouds churned up by hooves
of the vast herd being wrangled on
300 more miles of eating their dust

Bandana's tightly wrapped round faces
cries of "get up there" ringing out
bawling calves...

Read More

To the person, they call, frigid, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : A celle que l’on dit froide

(Poem written on September 5, 1889 at Aix-les-Bains, which I found a bit jarring with abrupt exclamations and...

Read More

For the last time they all wanted to meet
him to share their thoughts, feelings; he heard them
patiently and bid good-bye to each.
Asked them to leave, as he desired to stay lone;
They left except two associates...

Read More

T’was dry the spring with thunderstorms that rumbled across dry;
most every day was under sun or star filled sky,
the grass had burnt off early; hay mowed this year was scarce,
closed paddocks saved the milkers where...

Read More

There’s this bison ranch in west Nebraska,
not all that far away from the Pine Ridge,
most of the time they make money off meat,
though when the weather gets colder than a fridge

they like to offer folks...

Read More

Dressed in my shaggy brown coat
I stand nearly six feet
at my shoulders
and weigh almost a ton
My brethren and I 
once roamed the prairies
in herds of millions
grazing on its grass
which fed and nourished us
for tens of...

Read More

From the kitchen sink at the window sill,
I see a house on the distant hill,
when as a child I had time to kill,
where now my spirit wanders still.
Then life changed on a day that’s dire,
we...

Read More

You wrap yourself 
in the feather boa fantasy of his dreams
sinuous you; X-rated and never sated
dancing to rock ‘n roll— 80’s dated

welcome to the conjugal jungle 
of not-so-rusted lust
sixty-something-shapely
your 25th anniversary groom
growls a naughty thought
“you...

Read More

‘Twas way back in them days 
when the ranch owner’s ways
was just about the only law there was around

Rancher’s money was king
and gun violence reigned
till marshal Ben Miller made his way into town

Well that town...

Read More