Long Dead eyed Poems

“ANTE BELLUM”


BEIGEBest served where it can’t be seen
On Stirling Silver platters
With redruM narcotics
Delivered by sharp Blood-Red
Well-mannered talons
Strutting in sleek wet rolling tight-skirted
Long French Silk Stockinged legs all the way down to 
Lethal Six Inch stilettos...

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I
How long have I been doing this
Throwing my time & money
Into a hole
Filling up notebooks
Mining overheard conversation
For lines
Squeezing the sponge
Of my wine soaked
Mind
Into the bucket
Of poetry
And now here we are
Gulping down the
Lead tainted water
Like Romans
Romans
Forced...

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A fine mist of rain falls silent 
on his thin, sharp-angled face. 
He picks up the pace and tilts 
his head to the wind. He walks 
through the plundered slumber  
of crumbled poverty, abandoned,...

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A light mist of ethereous rain falls 
silent on his thin, sharp-angled
face. He lengthens his stride and 
leans toward the wind. He walks 
through plundered poverty; crumbled
by the weight of exodus. Abandoned
to the blood-rough nails...

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This is where you opened my naked soul
The dark cold river in within the dead eyed fish
The black swans eying the lonely moon
You rise like a spear clutching a gun... my gun
The gun that burned...

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spring melts into summer’s light
proving wrong that still despair,
chilled in winter’s heart,
has corroded to the marrow

for even poppies bloom
in broken fields and shell holes
bones blanketed in shrouds of moss
trill of larks cross no man’s land

as...

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The grandfather on my mother's side was a cheapskate. 
A real cheapskate.
One Christmas, he gave me a used paperback book.
Something like “Jimmy Plays Baseball.”
It was written for a 7 year old child, and I was...

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Molly II (Madeline)

Madeline helped Molly stand,
On her own,
She was too weak…

They gazed at Sara,
In pools of blood,
Lying at their feet…

SHHHHH

Speak not of me,
And do not laugh,
Cast your stare aside…

From behind the pads,
Of darkened room,
And leather...

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People are duck-walking,
The ice has stuck,
only the sky just above my top lip
is melting.

I move forward 
by counting the parked cars 
on this side of the morning.
A bundled-up woman I knew
from last winter stares at...

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Heroes are masked, monosyllabic but super.
The rat gangs obviously
are bad news and apparently
loose and reprehensible,
most are irredeemably dead-eyed.

It's on!

Action demands reaction,
busters need something to bust.
Make-believe peddles a glossy fantasy
until reality accommodates,
comes true
arrives not in good...

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Men of affairs, scientists, gentlemen collectors,
researchers, technicians, plankton detectors.
Ladies, when permitted, provided manful help
Wading shorelines intrepidly for variegated kelp.

Be-whiskered men off charted shores 
their Science to be applied. 
From blindest depths defy stern jaws 
to...

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Up in the above
roof gardens pluck air out of thoughts.
Changelings run between
brick walls
one is dead-eyed and evermore shall not see
yet it grows itself upon a dendritic tree
to hear what the empty places speak of.

Long moved...

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Slow flames under the blacktop,
simmer-ghost rise
from the sloughing road.

Rubber scorches its skin
shedding blackened snakes.

It's a hot day,
creeping turtles fill pot-holes
with their hot-plate shells.

The highway drums along
to the churr of cricket songs,

along the way, either out...

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The moon was big and lit-up,
so of course, some local dog
was barking like crazy.

I got up, it was half past the tic of time
and way deeper than any sunken face.

I was a little wasted;
I get...

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Midwinter - means
transparent ice walls
pressed against shrinking skin.

Dead-eyed horses are revived
only by the steam of their nostrils.

No one predicts a beginning or an end,
'mid' is a frozen idea
in an ice-locked fountain pen,
it will not write...

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Snow sprays off crow wings.
Flurries drift like torn lace curtains
over the blacktop. 
The porch rocking chair
is draped like a madhouse ghost.

Nobody is going anywhere,
the side-roads are getting narrower
as cold pinches wind-swirled surfaces.
Every bare tree is...

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No one turns in their grave,
so, Irene I will turn for you.

I will turn this final page,
turn all those love-lights out
that I have kept bright
for these many decades.
Turn off the flow of love letters
that,
though never...

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KNOGOBBLER
For the direction of a dark star
Forever in the wind of a casted shadow
Sacred powers of ascension and will
Severed from natural designs.
Brought forth to the will of new times

New Mechanisms and masters
Great prowess of the...

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Back to back we stand staring into the future.
The moon loves us for it is dead-eyed and alone.
Long or brief all days dwindle, while nights row us back
over that vast seas we arrived from.

Faces blur,...

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The best part of a hopeless war
is when it begins.

Under new helmets
the hapless and the brave
are trained to die
far away from patriotic eyes.

Mothers are sacrificed
to blood oaths,
the news is all good
initial reports, thrilling.

The worst part...

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The blacktop is uncovered,
yet the road has a moving face.
Wind-drifts sketch fleet features
then sweeps them away.

Lawns and fields are snow encased
every blade an icy spear;
much is buried, some pierce through.
Spears rattle in the dark robed...

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Hiking into the soul of clouds 
catching sun seeds in the palm
petals grasp a ruby throated song
brookies gliding silver chambers
with every single precious beat.
Set sail, no more worries on a willow
Meadow fairies hoist the breeze...

Weave...

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“What is Past is Prologue.”
The Tempest.


It's the young ghosts that
haunt us most.

A vison of my 6-year-old self,
looking up from a basement window
at the gray pavement above my head.

It scared me then and still does.

One dead-eyed...

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The maddening click of key strokes
The shrilling of the phones
The crunch of crumbling paper balls
Slices to the bone
The dull humming of the copier
Four million paper clips
The smell of tacky wite out 
So sick of all...

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The longer you live the smaller your circle is.
Remember those family gatherings
when you were in the mix
now your pushed to the periphery
invisible
The young could care less about
old people and old people stories
they'd rather vape 
stare...

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