Long Farmhouse Poems

Pellucid pachyderms wade across
the purpling River Manjees
and Tozzath watches from the bank, 
the seat of his maroon pantaloons soaked with mud,
his nostrils flaring with the fragrance of ombadalias,
whose lacey petals flutter
like the wings of long-dead...

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Those were such happy days, for I had lately been deeded a farm,
My aunt and uncle were retiring, so tillage had lost its charm.

Since they were childless, and to a retirement community bound,
It seemed I...

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Won’t you please take me back
To the brown couch at my Gramma’s house 
With the big gold-framed antique mirror over it
And hand me Grampa’s old transistor radio
Covered in leather with glorious knobs
That brought me the...

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Spring: Beginning, the practice run, 
      Hello, hallowed ..., Aubade;
Cringe reflections and spare the fun,
     hues, tints, oh yes, and shade,   
  ...

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Part 1



Genecia, was an angry girl. Actually, Genecia was always angry, 24/7, 365 days a year. This was even reinforced by her own mother, who told her often enough
Genecia, you were born angry. Well, if...

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I've noticed
since early years on the family farm
with large matriarchally planted and harvested gardens,
that food,
for moms,
is a natural,
and yet also spiritual,
communion relationship.

Nutrition evolves from and for communal relatives
of which we are ourselves made
and nurtured into...

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An eerie wind blows through the decaying bushes on the outskirts,  
while a rusted door sways on its broken hinges.  
The smell of ozone lingers from thunder cracking in the distance,  
as...

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Grandma Gretchen's in her rocker and she has something to say. 

She tells a visitor, a young man from the city, if he plans to write a book about life on a farm in the...

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Unquotable quotes: Beggars - XXX

Who said beggars cannot be choosers?

Who chooses for them the place, the moment or the people they choose to beg from; the hours of the begging day; the alms they refuse;...

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My name is Tom Cunningham, I’m retired now but thirty six years ago I had a very strange experience that I have never mentioned to anyone until now.
It was November the seventh, nineteen eighty six,...

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Every time I change directions
lately, and possibly beforely,
Trees stand by to mentor
and nurture,
to feed with branched hands
to bleed when uprooted
from aptic past centuries
of hibernating winter naps.

Trees of original pheromone attraction,
August spawned
like Taurus colonizing crabgrass
embedded in...

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[An Autumn kitchen a crucible of y e a s t and y e a r n i n g]

Samantha kneads dough with determined hands, she hears
    Hank's cry—"Vi vi an"—a phantom...

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I peered deeply into a water trickling  dyke clustered by pale blue and green peebles.
“Oh dear I sometimes dig too deep or maybe not diffidently.
Damon Deep thinker, lost in thought type.”
There is that mind...

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One dark night a saucer crashed;
the military quickly cleaned up the trash.
In the distance, what they didn’t see;
a thin, white face between the trees.

Once all was quiet, little Gili-ok crept,
from the woods where he had...

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One fine blustering autumn day an old man puts on his boots pulls up his trousers off he goes,
If anyone wondered where he was going it was to a forest a good long walk it...

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The green village, the colored city, the ever familiar locality
Each path, tree, house, turn, each native I have left behind
But creepers, hedges have entangled with my leg and hand
The green crops fields, green hills, fruit...

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Around the corner 
Of the unpaved driveway
Was a claustrophobic shack

The front door 
Was once a cherry red
Like his father's 1968 Cadillac

My car door 
echoed 
As my heels stumbled across the driveway

Caught my balance on the...

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‘so glad ya made it out alright,’ she says.
‘i’m feelin’ a whole lot better knowin’ that the crops’re bein’ taken care-uh.”
you nod, smile politely
and step out of your car straight into drying mud.
‘i just don’t...

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You are the white fence
the blown horn
the fiercest fight
a green pasture at dawn
you are the creek smell ...moss and black-brown peat
glint of light off the trash barrel that blinds the evil driver who hits the...

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Long ago when I was young I remember sitting on your lap while you told me how I was going to grow up to do great things. That there was nothing I couldn't do if...

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As I think back to that dark time in our community I don’t know if I’d ever seen anyone quite 
like that (Cinder Girl). We girls thought she had (Lovely Bones). The last time I...

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It confused Anton, he found no more leads,
no more connections between the two deaths,
he doubted himself, were they connected?
He missed something and could not see it yet.

But then his chief came, raging and angry,
said that...

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Whisky Dixie was a girl from the state of Alabama 
Her mother was a housewife and her father was a farmer
She came into the world in a field full of corn
Her mother had been drinking...

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As I view flat prairie with mountain range beyond, morning sunshine warms me
and I know by afternoon, fierce storms may gather without warning.
I envy not the urban dweller rushing to and fro amidst stark cement...

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Miriam Colrick and her husband Brad,
tired of dank cities, crumbling and bad,
moved to New Hampshire, bought themselves a farm,
a place they could raise children without harm.

Fifty-six acres, half-forest, half-field,
space to stretch out, live a life...

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