Long Cambodia Poems

SAD Seasonally Affective Disorder

Some are prone to depression in winter when days get shorter when
less light enters the brain through the eyes and thoughts become darker

I am also affected and when news gets explosive when...

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Exclusive Birth Rights

I am German and guilty as charged by history and evil parental culpability
privileged by life and proxy thus I refuse to forget ancestral perpetration
though I propose without any diminution that systematic genocide is...

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The Things Never Said
The terror…
The only things ever said about my daddy’s WWII service were that he’d been to New Guinea where he’d ridden on a truck full of soldiers by a river without a...

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The pro-Hanoi Vietcong many years ago
In the 1950's Diem's government they'd overthrow
All opposition was crushed killed or jailed
These elected ones to their people they failed

This Buddhist country so religious in belief
Now politically torn apart, impending...

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If we were born white then we are part of the first racial group to become targeted for elimination! And the public school systems across our once free nation! The Critical Race Theory (CRT) is...

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If we were born white then we are part of the first racial group to become targeted for elimination! And the public school systems across our once free nation! The Critical Race Theory (CRT) is...

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I hope I'm wrong but I sense we may be on the verge of mass coronavirus hysteria in America: last week both my gym and church closed their doors--how do I exercise body and soul...

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For “EARTH HOUR” we pledged  without words rearranging,
Let us try and attempt to stop things from changing
Am doing my bit as promised to myself and me,
wrote a poem on “earth hour”, published it and...

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Policy or personal
questions? In the poem Two White Wines
a child adopted from Cambodia
is a thing of beauty, and so she is
as she showed herself to be yesterday. Lovely. However
the poet implies market, i.e. economic, forces...

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Uncle soldier Sammie
is too flashback	    far Saigon 
The bad memory withdrawals 
are too ganja gun smoke strong
So he pumps up the blame volume,
saying who’s dirty napalm wrong

He’s got a shaky second and...

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I 
am a photographer  
I take stories of people
their lives
their hardships
their joy 
with a single click  
A solitary second in their life
now
forever immortalized  
Captured to share with others 
to show them the...

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Down and Out in Saigon

Southeast Asia, and Mexico
 has always attracted 
A certain type of westerner
The down and out 

On a down word spiral
Why?
Relatively cheap to live
Lots of part-time gigs

Teaching English
Or other things
Cheap Booze, drugs,...

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Such smile so rare that fascinates me; 
Bestowed in the angel, not so long, I've known. 
Like a lightning that strikes in the middle of the day, 
In my heart I, quickly, built a home...

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( This poem is about the ' Killing Fields' of Cambodia, 1975-79,  where as many as 2 million people were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge. I taught in Phnom-Penh from '73-74, and never...

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Salmon Dinner

nothing can be separate us 
a child from a mother 
a brilliant plan and a truck

go steal his bank card
riding home dad doesn't know
that I am wanted
neither do I

sneaking in the back door
salmon dinner...

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Young people go marching, the boys and the girls,
thinking like we once did, they they’ll change the world.
They claim government can be the cure for our ills,
they seem to be forgetting that socialism kills.

Lenin and...

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The morning sun hovers coyly
behind broad shoulders of the John Crow Mountain
before unwrapping petals of fever plant and Venice.
Mama’s countenance was far contrast to one so radiant, 
so when the old Leyland bus went shuddering...

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MEMORIAL DAY 
June 1, 2015

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To all of you that have ever worn
"THE UNIFORM"
The Uniform of safety and security,
 The Uniform of pride and liberty
THE UNIFORM OF FREEDOM

THE UNIFORM OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THANK YOU

Thank...

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Was not every one a child?
Joy to their mother and father
And growing up as a kid
With wonder and laughter

Then they go to school 
Playing games having fun
And become a voice for others
When they don’t have...

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CHANGING OF YEARS

The darkness overwhelms
sitting on an old com tower
well into the Plain of Reeds
watching for enemy movement
Using bunkers of a firebase
long deserted and long rotted
two bunkers remain intact
The ARVN are very frightened
their bunker re-enforced
We...

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“Cambodia is
Cambodia but not really
Cambodia.”
That’s what some say
As the years roll on
Forty years or so since Pol Pot and his pals posted
‘Year 0”, 
Sent the whole thing to the wash,
 And it came out 
Red.

So...

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I found a toasty taverne
on a Tuesday night in Athens
whose name in Greek translates 
as "The Good Wolf." 
The name resonated with me 
and George Harrison's solo songs
poured from the speakers,
so I had to stop...

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I was a young man at the age of nineteen
When I was sent to a country on the other side of the world that I had never seen. 


I was trained as an infantry soldier
With...

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This evening I listen to a Rock 'n' Roll band
Their track is Civil War, as our world now expands

To us it's the same size but to others they despise
For the want of greed exists in...

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Dinner with old friends:
salmon with red cabbage, asparagus, Caesar's salad, penne with
      broccoli, two white wines.
Jane Jacobs could analyze how it all got to our table
or even how their daughter...

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