Long Drying Poems

Today, catching sight of the mallards
crying over Lake Iware:
Must I too vanish into the clouds?
—Prince Otsu translation by Michael R. Burch  

This world—
to what may we compare it?
To autumn fields
lying darkening at dusk
illuminated by...

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THIS WORLD OF DEW

This world? 
Moonlit dew
flicked from a crane's bill.
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Seventy-one?
How long
can a dewdrop last? 
—Eihei Dogen Kigen, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Dewdrops beading grass-blades
die before...

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"You really wanna know? Cause I'll tell ya if you really wanna know. You'll be thinkin' I'm crazy before I'm done, but I'll tell ya... ifn' you really wanna know."

The day started like any other,...

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It was 1968 we'd gathered again in the school auditorium my tiny hands sweating only five years old while my name was called in all of this cold  
civil rights riots plagued my little...

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After witnessing a murder meant for me after surviving a car bomb igniting my skull crushed my face bruising my brain i received threatening calls from my husbands mistress I'd reported break ins strange behavior...

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I don’t feel good at this
I’m feeling so hopeless
I need some happiness
I’m feeling dread instead
I’ve been consuming sorrowful bread
I’ve been feeling rather dead

I want to repent of being sinful
I want to repent of being resentful
I...

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The Cold Doorknobs 

I.
I am sure there will be that profound moment in time
when the dog out back will stop its incessant yapping,
Its unrelenting impulse to belch out its interminable wails, 
alas, to inform its...

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That soft-spoken Sovereign commands a big stick, 
runs the world into ruins, once our bailiwick.
If asked why, He grins grimly, pale lips slightly pursed:
"Vindication? Straightforward: It's Me and Me First" 

(To mesmerise people He needed...

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I.
You can always tell by the eyes
When they’re starting to go
You’ll fall for a few of their lies
Before you begin to know
And you will just defy it
(But they know you will never go)

They’ll glide through...

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Coffee or tea?

Fragmented frogs frolicking fruitlessly freeing flavoursome fairy freckles,
But what of the speckled hound in the bin?
Well he growled,
He snarled,
The sole paw pilot pivoting,
How interesting was it to note though that the frogs although...

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I.

The Fish Crow is an outcast amongst the seagulls
Standing on the hot Miami sand
At the end
Of our rose-colored beach towel

Nodding and blabbing half-heartedly
Nuh-uh nuh-uh
To the lack of crumbs

From us
The stingy blue collar visitors
From freezing old...

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Patriotically empowered boundaries of apartheid
are also economic and ecological apartheid
of borders unrecognized by MatrioticEarth.

Economic and ecological apartheid
of Earth's nature ourselves,
one Immigrant Creolizing Body,
are inhumane and anti-healthy faces
of politically empowered fascism,
totalitarianism,
rulership of patriarchally self-inspired Elites
now rabidly...

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Sometimes pandemic people share
pieces of our unspeakable personal story

That no health care worker,
sex therapist player,
or green resonant systems organizer
wants to hear,
much less smell,
or touch,
or deeply feel...

I flinch, sometimes.

Wince.

Maybe flirt with longer-term
dissociation,
to protect myself
from suicide
to protect...

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You hand me a rainbow rose
And you peck my red nose
You wished me a farewell with a sunlit glee I can't forget
I can't recall the times we spent in bliss...I only remember those days of...

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They say,                                 ...

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What happen I kept asking myself 
What happen is still hanging over my head
What happen is rumbling in the river bed
I had an uncomfortable feeling in my chest
So I grabbed my bike and rode through...

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We, the generation of '50,
Time-travelers with stardust in our hair, with memories planted in pockets,
Rooted in decades embraced by change, souls adorned with the dawn of the post-war world.
We spun on the carousel of the...

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Land Is A Loom
I sailed the fiord like inlets between Powell River and Drury Inlet.
The land itself  spoke from mountains, torents, islet
From bird song and bear splashing fishers
From rutting moose and cougars sharp incisors.
The...

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I defy the clown that is chasing everyone around
I defy the clown that is closing everything down
I defy the clown and became the biggest talk of the miserable town
Hoary women gathered around looking at me...

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I've not been sleeping well
since early November,
about the time Donald Trump
was not just nominated by Republican Christian
White
Male Dominant
Evangelical Christians,
in some unholy alliance with
fundamentalist rabid Roman Right
to Define Which Lives Matter Most Catholics,
but actually elected their...

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Suffolk day Wednesday 21st of June 2017
By Stanley Russell Harris
The new mad author
& A Poetry Soup honourably mentioned poet

There is going to be a Suffolk Day, I heard the news I did today!
On BBC radio...

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Inevitable death defines afterlife - trois

So all I ask, would be
inviting, offering, and ushering me to 
top secret cygnet committee
to give this average sized 
chapped sticky man
spinning the david bowie playlist 
as a somber dee...

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Charles Schulz Peanuts character Woodstock

Analogous to (being mine) security blanket
similar, but not identical
to the trademark one
clutched by Linus Van Pelt,
I take flight into sleep
courtesy holding fictional little yellow bird,
a mutual (of Omaha) best friend of...

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I've fallen flat on my face 
And I can't get up
I wanna leave this place 
But I gotta pick my face up 1st
Looking in the mirror has become the worst
Cause I gotta look at this...

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Mighty Oak Tree, Its Acorns Fed Many
  (A Native American Food Source)

Hard-cast shell
flung down in Fall,
food for man and beast
nuggets of forested treasure,

Nature
sprinkles its bounty
majestic Oaks rain
fruited missiles to ground:

thy treasure feeds life itself
creatures...

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