Long Eighties Poems

Two new crutches and two double shots of Bushmills Irish Whiskey enabled Joe Faherty to move from the back seat of Moira Murphy's 1976 Buick into Eagan's Funeral Home for Tim McGillicuddy's wake. At 87,...

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Facilities that claim they recycle spew nothing but rubbish
as does yours truly,
whose ecological ethos
goes out the window
into the cold freezing iceland
prompting the following balderdash.

Upon the advent of an unexpected inspection
slated for tomorrow January 24th, 2025
myself...

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My “popcorn town”, Oak Bluffs
on Martha’s Vineyard,
always will be home to me
‘though I now live far away.
We were young when
we bought the old Victorian
with the wide wrap-around
porch. It needed a lot of work
but we fell...

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L'Assimilation – Non! Translation of Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s “Assimilation – No !” by T. Wignesan

Born Kathleen Jean Mary RUSKA on November 3, 1920, in the North Stradbroke Island, off Queensland, she was deemed as an aboriginal...

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I Love You, Daddy
                        ( Previous title has been changed!)


Golly! I do...

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One afternoon Martha the mother of Jack, who was in her early eighties, told an amazing story about her son while having coffee in the parlor with her neighbors; it was a weekly gathering to...

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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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Return to your normal schedule and meet me at the square, return to your normal schedule and open the mail before it is too late, this too will pass and the silence will not last,...

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for René Passeron*

             You may not grow old too soon
          if
Things you have known...

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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 Pre-Memorial Poem for Bob Lind)

Well the day that I met Bob Lind stays in my mind
For we met in a restaurant farmer’s still use,
A fond memory with me for twenty five years,
Of friends meeting...

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As a boy I walked the town, near knowing everyone
The Sun it shone all Summer long I revelled in the fun
With relatives and friends we'd play, 'til darkness sought us out
Then caring aunts would hunt...

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...Utterly stunned, Harvey then poured through
the town’s online photographic archives,
the twenties, fifties, eighties and today
revealed to Harvey the very same sight.

Then for some reason that to this day
Harvey is at a loss to explain,
the teachings...

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My grandparents lived on farms – both sides of my family.
My mother’s parents and my father’s parents.
Overalls and button down shirts with pockets
Work boots for grandpas

Except my single grandpa did get dressed up fancy
For Saturday...

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A Rift in Time

By Elton Camp

	Henry Higgins, B.A., M.A. Ph.D., graduate in physics from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology, is missing.  Born August 8, 1950, he was thought of as a genius by some,...

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5.
is it true love 
or i do take it granted 
that i’m in love 

or i do love to think 
that i’m loving 

and there is 
neither any welcome address 
nor any opening song 
in...

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I had just set my headphones

down when the intercom

buzzed and Ruben O’s 

voice asked urgently:

 

“you ready man?”

 

I’m standing before the

multi-slide mixing board

in a studio dreamily

streaked in amber from

the track lights.

 

“Eagles Lyin’ Eyes...

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It was in the eighties, a winter day in Funchal, 
the capital of Madeira, when a woman gave birth.
She was an anonymous, struggling woman
sailing the seas of poverty, with three other
children to feed.
At first, she...

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Aah... how great the taste of water...

After lounging in bed until
late morning/early afternoon
we (the missus and I) felt restless
as garden variety buffoon
or think chrysalis itching

to escape encased within cocoon
nevertheless, she mustered hubby
long since retired dragoon
late...

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When I met the tall and amiable Vietnam War veteran,
my shyness showed,
yet, my throat dried and tightened when he softly
spoke the words, "The war never goes away."
All these humanity destroying wars never cease,
soldier's names, faces,...

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Resisting The Repression

Competition between a brother and sister
Rendition of an eighties song all about how much he miss her 
War of attrition between two countries facing off without a resister
Ambition of an Olympian to only...

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Cuba…Mamma Mia…like most of the Caribbean; part of the 1492 slam…
Slavery, sugar plantations… invasions, upheaval, independence…
Then the American kisses; with a slight twist…who initiated the ’disses’…?
Was it Blaine…is he insane…?
Was it Marti…the heart of the...

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No, we weren't in love
For I knew it was for a time
I set out to see the world
Yet somehow I saw something in his eyes
It slowed my tracks
I cared in my depth
He was not at...

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...This happened when we were undergrads,
but then in his graduate studies
when he was working towards a career
that was entwined with biology,
he was working with a group that sought
to raise up the national IQ,
and then Charlie,...

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Most folks I loved
died when I was in my thirties.
Not just people,
but our San Francisco bohemian mecca lifestyle,
our 365 days and nights celebration
turned into an epidemic of waiting
and watching
and mourning our losses,
wondering about possibilities of...

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