Long Flinches Poems

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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Our boat is first to slice
The green snake skin of Clam Lake
This Saturday morning in May

Heading east to the mouth of Grass River
Where angry Pike still hunt from shallows
Before the Milfoil grows to summer impossible

My...

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"Men die by the hundred thousand"
Just like that, with one command
As if we're discussing grains of rice, or sand
As though there's no need to expand



When in truth every one felled
Can mean more than
The cause and...

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She flinches, shudders as chains tug at her flesh 
The ruthless slave trader and rapist whispers to the auctioneer
And instinctively she knows that it is her turn to be sold.
The noise heightens, her eyes focus...

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In the heart of the night, under the leaden and weeping sky,
amidst the twisted shadows of our thoughts,
we let ourselves be carried by a cold wind, cold as a kiss of death,
falling into the abyss...

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then:
I swallowed escape
in pastel capsules,
my pockets jingled with regret.
The nights pulsed—
bass, sweat, strangers.
Every weekend was a blackout baptism.
Every Monday, a resurrection I didn’t ask for.

now:
I wake before the alarm.
Feed cats who love me
with a certainty...

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Beneath the swing set’s creak,
joy whispered like a ghost,
while clouds of heaviness
settled like stones on my chest.
My voice evaporated,
with every swing and sway,
as I reached for something solid,
my truth slipping, fading with the wind.

If healing...

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     He knows almost everything. He knows how the migraines come in waves, how they paint lightning behind my eyes and leave me curled in corners, whispering nonsense through the static...

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I love how your long chestnut hair flows over your gentle shoulders,
And when the sun searches you out for a moment, your hair sparkles…

Because I lit a match and threw it into that rat infested...

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The subway station heaves with muffled noise,
The shuffle of countless feet against the grime,
I am aware of unfounded disdain,
Coursing between strangers in the city's bowels.

The ancient fluorescents blink in yellow strobe,
Casting faint light on self-assuring...

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There she was in plain view, clean, brightly colored, and not undercover.
As nice as she was, I don’t know why she was still there and not discovered.
She sat there quietly in a sales lot of...

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I feel my muscles
   cord up with tension ,
  can almost hear them creak
in the strain.
Lumbering over
  I lean in close,
he seems
    on the verge of passing out
face...

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Fight for your country. 
Fight for your freedom
Obey your Commander. 
Your Sergeant 
Squad leader. 
Obey. 
Drilled into you, over and over.
Do it again.
Like clockwork.
Day in day out, orders become second nature. Years go by
Groundhog day.
Following...

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14 Days of a Haiku representing 14 laps of a rookie driver’s first NASCAR race.
Lap 1 Green Flag - (4/16/25) @ 2:23pm
Engines roar to life,
Rookies grip is tight with nerves
First lap, heart on fire.
Lap 2...

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Sandwiches perched on plate, remote control in one hand,
he settles heavily on comfy couch as the TV goes alive.
A sweet and sexy voice cuts in the heavy atmosphere;

“Weather forecast: Now we move to the tropical...

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At the crossroads of time, where April flinches in buds parted,
Spring dwells in the temple, a priestess in a procession of timid lights.
A gentle breeze blows, carrying dreams stormy on the orbit of the stars,
Through...

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she possesses,undresses,and murders my mind
no escape from her reflection as her ugliness unwinds
cruel and unkind to loves vagabond victim
she sinks her teeth deep
she's a venomous vixon
she's lying like nixon while she's got me on the...

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Mama Mama 
You the downest Mama 
Mama wear dat crown 
Mama held it down with the brushes 
of Yahweh on her right side 
Reverently agreeing with the gist 

“children are a gift” 
A little planting,...

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If we are nicer they will come around, yes, we think so.
We are optimists, we are teachers, and social workers, right?
We are moms and dads, right?
We are grandmas and grandpas, right?

Until we meet the one
who...

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Along the paw-trod path
Narrow and dainty through the gorse
Where yellow flowers
Lie dim like fallen stars in the mist
Comes a silent visitor, hesitant
It licks its lips
A taste like vinegar
Humans of old and long ago
Their lonely essence...

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Now life spurns me, 
granite and absolute; 
flinches at my touch, 
hardens visibly at my voice, 
morphed to dry-ice opiate in my presence. 

Avoidance of the plague, 
ducks and dives prizefighterly, 
evasive bob and weave,...

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The man in front of me is a broken one,
and my fingers are drowning in dripping glue,
in cement,
in something meant to hold things
To hold him
To hold myself and others together.

Yet he binds himself
with puppet strings,...

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(yes, I'm serious)

Three minutes.

That’s how long it took
to name a swarming mess:
A self-appointed poet
with rogue chemicals sizzling in her nerves.
The diagnosis long and fancy—
bitter but addictive 
on my tongue,
like the gin I’ve grown fluent in.
(Is...

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I see her walking down a path covered by leaves, and her body moves like a tease/
Lonely, mysterious, and lost from a distant... but near past which brings her to her knees/
She looks into a...

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One touch, an uncomfortable sensation
Two touches, moving swiftly away
Three touches, begining to panic
Four touches, the flashbacks begin

When the only touches one has received
Were from the hands of abuse and assault
And the very notion of being...

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