Long Disuse Poems

“Look,” Lumi shouted over the wind, and pointing off to their right.  Jutting above the clouds was the peak of a large mountain.  He shifted the team in that direction.  As the...

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I walked a long path today. Off in the woods nearby.

My dogs walked with me, and took side trails on the
sly.
 
A little trail becomes a deer trail, though the
eucalyptus and pine

The oxalis grows wild...

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An eggplant need not taste nor look like egg,
Nor in a hamburger ham need be there,
Where's pine, apple in pineapple, I beg?
Nor yet french-fries in France invented were.
They native are— American pure blood,
Wherein was born...

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I was less than the spark at the start of the flame,
When You fashioned my cage out of Truth's rules and morals.

I was fresh from the morning and sparkling with dew,
When the breath of Your...

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My daughter does not touch me any more.
She used to come and kiss me every night,
And sometimes she would sit on my lap for a while,
But she has not even touched me for so long...

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Winter Cabin Reality
            by Odin Roark

The storm door
Improperly closed
Bangs violently
The clapboard shedding
White paint chips
Wounds without first aid
Flecks of age
Mixing with the drifting snow

Walls shudder...

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("Red Skin", 2023, original encaustic)

Cantos of Love

Was it ever here at all…

Faces, eyes, lips, breasts and thighs
Parade through memory
Fading, fading fast
As years advance.

Maybe these closets 
Need more juice to unlock
Than these old bones hold.

Funny about...

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*Based on Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Numb fists with bloody wrists 
chained to crumbling walls.
Glazed eyes that never spy 
a single truth or fault.
Dim light impairing sight 
in spaces dark and shallow.
Stone walls where lies...

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Saint Tropez is a summer town.
Smaller than it ought to be, really.
Like when you realize the French quarter,
in New Orleans, is just three blocks wide and long.

In the fall, there’s a feeling of disuse in...

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Cobwebs cling to memories, whisper in the gloom, 
Once vibrant threads of knowledge, shrouded in a tomb. 
Skills like dusty treasures, hidden from the light, 
Yearning for a touch, a chance to take flight.

A sculptor's...

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A concept assumed unattainable,
pushed away in effort without notice.
How unfortunate our views of an answer.
How sad our lack of faith.

Forgiveness, viewed upon by man
to be seen instead as cowardice,
when all along its strength alone
waits as...

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Tragedy bristles upon the lips
and rivers in gestures of finger tips
It pools under suits incomparably black
sizes too small from disuse
Clinically built in a room sweating sorrow
which vacuum packs pain in a box 'till tomorrow
where loved...

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Just a day
The day is partly overcast, shadows and light
chase each other up and down a hillside,
where I came from nature is hardening
and there is already snow in the air.

Tiny lilac flowers grow under- don`t...

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Christmas for stolid, hermetic recluse
Recidivistic mind all sentimentality doth refuse
Token, lifeless symbols; pageantry will recuse
Pawned, second-hand trinkets now in disuse
Barnacled to limbs drooping to spindling angles obtuse
Garnishments that jilting time accrues
Hung sloppily, stunted timber's temporal...

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All the colors swirl and mix
Becoming something grey that i can not fix
All colorless and shapeless and beyond definition
I wonder how it got in this helpless condition
The music stopped playing and children stopped smiling
And now...

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Eclipse               


without sun
I am etiolated,
enfeebled, bereft

my backbone heavy
and limp,
muscles stale and indurate
from disuse

I try to lift my face,
feel the light, 
even...

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Waking, realizing dawn was past 
Hearing a background noise
Some what like a wet tin whistle
Child blown in a futile attempt at a note
“What kind of bird is that?”
“A red winged blackbird”
She rose and left me...

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Poetry forms pop up,
knocking on door of mind,
seeking our indulgence,
that we emote therein,
heart’s blissful effulgence.

Poetry forms pop up,
as fragrance in disuse,
that we may play awhile,
in a style forgotten,
yet in our unique style.

Poetry forms pop up,
asking...

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