Long Encumbered Poems

So bridge to bridge, of other things speaking
Of which my comedy does not take care,
We walked; and reached the top, when seeking
For watching the next slit, then we stopped there
Malebolge to see and crying vain;
And...

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He just appeared to me, like wispily curling 
Chimney smoke, 
One grim and early morning in the very midst of 
Decembers briefest days, on the highest slope,
Toiling through my daily round; where, slowly 
Driving up...

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Spring's Excitement
There are rhythms of Nature that no one controls
that farms use to advantage! Time's fishermen sailed
both with tides and fair breezes offshore in their boats
at each dawn and dusk's onshore brought home each day's...

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This is my modern English translation of Paul Valéry's poem “Le cimetière marin” (“The graveyard by the sea”). Valéry was buried in the seaside cemetery evoked in his best-known poem. From the vantage of the...

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As children, we experienced pleasure in the mystery                           ...

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Eminent domain, manifest destiny, usurpation...

Maternal grandfather of mine
long since passed among the living;
He left his Motherland 
before onset of Holodomor,
a policy of the Soviet Union 
aimed at the destruction 
of the Ukrainian nation,
the 1932–1933 genocide...

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Those rarer men I once fondly 
knew...                            ...

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Eminent domain, manifest destiny, usurpation...

Russian soldiers in general
and Vladimir Putin in particular
perpetrate outright injustice
against Ukrainian population.

Impossible mission to comprehend
the mindset of belligerent, egotistical,
indignant, NeoNazi, tsarist
self anointed totalitarian zealot.

Gross violation of human rights
blatantly carried out
courtesy diabolical...

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Wait until you meet Lucinda Shaw
Curious how many said this to me.
People reported her with a bit of awe,
Forecasting maybe I would fully see.
Depth of her soul which was unusually old.
I did too. She was...

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As I watch her from across the open squares way ~

Beneath this black and white zebrad umbrellas, curtain and stage....

Navigating, throughout the hurried animated crowds

While holding fast to the facades below their colourful awnings

Trying to...

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As I watch her from across the open squares way ~

Beneath this black and white zebrad umbrellas, curtain and stage....

Navigating, throughout the hurried animated crowds

While holding fast to the facades below their colourful awnings

Trying to...

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Spy vs. Poet - pen trickery

(A collaborative poem by Serena Storm and Joel Thornton)


Dissimulating cloak – an apocryphal script 
Ah, I see "I" the spy has stumbled upon new tricks 

Disloyalty - The Perfidy -...

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“Bee to the blossom, moth to the flame; each to his passion;                 what’s in a name?” –Helen Hunt Jackson....

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                                In the night...

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Dan Cwiak -  Dedicated to *** Constance ***
 
                    The Rambling Poet's work titled: Throbbing...

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Morning begins,
not with the fresh promise of a new day.
Instead,
the air is thick with promise and fear.

The sun shines bright.
Its rays only a fraction,
a spattering of pink and yellow light.
This morning is cold.

The day begins...

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Torn and Tattered Wings

It’s not easy to have seen
All the darkness inside you
Places I have been
Sorrow and degrading
Thrusting their blades epithetize 
Hard into your heart

I look in your eyes
See the padded cells of your tears
Their...

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Everything has changed in a jiffy
The sun is balmy, the grass is green
And no trace of winter can be seen.

I ventured out on my usual nature stroll
To penetrate beauty, breathe fresh air
And mingle with nature...

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Nestled is the slender twisting trail canyon between timeless steep 
aspiring mountains and meditative sopheric sea waters 
The frail road deepens into lofty thickness further from the harsh 
volcanic valley where passion’s throes are ever...

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Humbly holding forth this bouquet of flowers

Within these sincere and love filled hands ~

Marked by lines that have defined themselves, through time....

The spectrum of colors across these pages, these shades

Endlessly, from black unto white; crossing...

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No Birthday Acknowledgement...

From thee... eldest daughter,  
who need not brood,
nor does padre whoosh 
to stir loess hood family feud
(hence an attempt merely
to convey melancholic mood).

Profound contrast extant between
your high achieving
life a wonderful hit parade
on...

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My dearest friend,


What an ache it is to write to you, knowing my pain, knowing how my mortal body falters beneath the weight of its trials.

My words, though steeped in suffering, ring like a low...

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A cruel Jack Frost blows icy floss
(in front of spring a’ burstin’)
while shiftin’ sheaves of withered leaves
near freezin’ streams a’ thirstin’.
A pack reviled runs roamin’ wild,
the alpha wolf wakes howlin’
then scents a lean and lonesome...

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A beautiful box in the golden morning when you are watering plants
At midday a workshop where you are providing me with the ladder
In the evening a walled closet to transform the personality and gravity
At night...

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Hashish smoke trails her 
along a dusky corridor
Aka the hall of fires
where mirage chimeras unleash
Encumbered with hands splayed
her crystal ball lumens 
wires ghostly apparitions
mnemonic attachments
What mystery ensues
a phantasmagoria 
of horror nudging 
the demonic
Sitters drenched 
in...

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