Long Clack Poems

"As other spirits sail on music, mine, oh my love, swim on your perfume." Charles Baudelaire

"Sometimes you find an old bottle from which the soul returns." 
Charles Baudelaire

"Smell is a Word. Perfume is Literature."

"There are...

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Ford's Theater, April 15th, 1865...
Petersen House, Washington, D.C.

I admit to own a passion
for the Civil War in general,
and the life and death of
the sixteenth president in particular
between a hard spot of whiskey
and draughts of arrack;
nonetheless...

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Along a quiet river to nowhere were styx lean like broken crosses. The wind is gentle with a sent of quite decay or is that brimstone in these sinister currents, that spin! A black river...

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Trifolium pollinated courtesy bombus

Before landscapers mow swaths
across undulating waves of clover
(the father/daughter team
usually cut grass every Tuesday)
bumblebees alight from one to another flower.

Meanwhile, I lie splayed
mid morning June 28th, 2022
with stomach upon natural carpeting
quietly basking...

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I am not sure whether I am missing you or that you are missing life~

                    ...

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Acquah Vicki on Sunday March 31, 2013

 THEY CALL ME NELSON
 
No man can keep the spirit contained 

He herded sheep when they 

called him by name (Rolihlahla)
 
His teacher gave him a new name...

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When I was just a  little girl, we lived by railroad tracks;
we loved the steamy, smoky stacks, the wheels clickety clack.
On many days we would find, knocking at our door,
a hobo who had jumped...

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Cherry Tree Music Co-op

alternately titled instant infatuation: 
a moment of spontaneous spunk
instantaneously transformed 
ordinarily shy guy into a quidnunc
courtesy powder milk biscuits
inside his mouth 
bitesize morsels did plunk
wafted courtesy pheromones 
found him punchdrunk
reclusive tendencies bubbled...

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The typewriters tap,
with a rat-a-tat-tat,
like a fourth estate rap
to provide us the pap
(that serves as a snack with a rat-a-tat-tat)
in a newspaper scrap
crammed with meaningless crap
from the editor's yap
(spewing flimflamy flak, booming rat-a-tat-tat)
after gashing a...

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Petersen House, Washington, D.C.  

(i admit to own a passion for the Civil War in general, 
and the life and death of 
the sixteenth president in particular).

between a hard spot of whiskey 
 ...

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This Year’s Champion

It’s the last of the snow
Spring finally arrived
Time to get ready for battle
Time to get my little hands 
On my bag of marbles
Way up there since winter
Abandoned on my bookshelf
A droopy, limp blue...

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Cherry Tree Music Co-op
(Saint Mary's Church -
3916 Locust Walk; City)
(Circa mid nineteen nineteen eighties
after the common lee
washed out tide dull era - CODA).

Naughty bits and pieces asper
     an uneventful memory came...

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A young girl stood at the school hall wall,
Some paper in her hand,
She shuffled her shoes while eyeing the views,
And the news on a notice board.
This space looks so impersonal, the wall so pale and...

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Where the Railroad Track Meet 

Grasping, lunging as does a donkey for the
dangling apple leading it forward, I reached
for the ever elusive spot.  That place where
the railroad track meet.  Almost had it in
Idaho...

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Voices

by June Ellen Smith

Tiny voices in the nighttime rhyming with
Tiny hands, expanding into bigger ones,
Sucking thumbs and fingers. Ringers on
A pole - horseshoes. Tie shoes for tiny feet.
Defeat the tiny voices in my head when
I...

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Wrath
Here I stand, upon
This hill, this hell of gunshots,
Pouring blood, whiskey,
Cadavers made into walls;
Unashamed generals lead
Color-adorned men
To untimely demises,
No food, no water,
But you must not leave The Cause,
For you have been called to fight
On the...

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"Living"

That one-eyed god, 
that strange god
the colour of the sun,
leonine, speaks 
in strange ways to me, 
waking me up
purring seductively,
message received
obliquely through 
the smaller 
sentient sapient, 
strange little creatures
of large stature visiting,
just like
I am, 
visiting,
that...

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It’s the last of the snow
Spring finally arrived
Time to get ready for battle
Time to get my little hands 
On my bag of marbles
Way up there since winter
Abandoned on my bookshelf
A droopy, limp blue velvet bag
But...

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Some folks believe it. Others do not. The legend told in the Bayou Cannot. The only witness who can swear that it's true, are the creatures who live in the bayou. The owl told the...

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Down I go.
On the paths of sheol again.
The rewards of death; my hands regain.
The wheels of the plow of righteousness; i forgot to maintain.

Being led into the desert,
I stagger like one under the influence.
All the...

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Orphaned Slab 
         by Odin Roark

They call me a foundation
once supporting siding and stone
wire
plumbing
shingles

Through the doors of my house
trailed family and friends
across kitchen floor
slanted slightly
letting Benny’s agate...

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And I can just see him there by the wind chimes chiming their morning song smiling at us
outside along with the orange juice and apple, and apple butter set up beside the grits
and raisin toast...

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Have you ever wondered what a Dream Vacation would be like?
I have this chance to ponder.
I could fly anywhere, but I would rather take a 'Sleeping Car Train' to my destination. I have never travelled...

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Seduce me in Black and White
You reach toward my face
and touch my lips
Tracing the slightly raised pink curve of them
gently - lightly - before
the urge to kiss me seizes the opportunity
Surrealistic sensations immortalize
as our lips...

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Legend of Fosse Way

Riding hard under a moonlight high 
not a leaf rustling and it troubles my mind
In the distance there's music of the lyre and flute 
rippling over the moors
Serenading the stars  
The...

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