Long Fumed Poems

I loved my job as a librarian, and today I was walking to work,
In the warmth of a summer morning, when golden butterflies lurk.

I had some extra time, and it happens I took the scenic...

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The Sun had risen to greet the day
    and marveled at such a range of wondrous things.
Where below the warmth it brought to bare
    was causing a Thrasher's heart...

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Any face of before was there suppressed;
Two and no one the sinner’s wicked face
Was looking; and such way slow pace progressed.

As the green lizard when so strong lambastes
The heat wave of day, then changing the...

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Lester sat in Lisa’s café that morn,
his eyes mindlessly staring out the door,
it was July of 1889,
and new work young Lester now had to find.

He’d left Jud’s ranch when he refused to pay,
did some small...

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...But Mains just shrugged, then said, “Let’s go.”
offered the wrists to his bandittos.
Two of them led the man away,
Diaz fumed more watching him go.

Denied the chance to see him beg,
denied the chance to drink his...

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The elderly Elmer Brown dwelled alone, like a solitary tree on a hill,
Loving quiet, glazed life still, in burgundy, sunset moments of until.

A widower, Elmer Brown had generations of offspring, living far away,
Feeling fresh, foreign...

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I was a daydreamer and stargazer, who eagerly awaited calm nights of glitter,
Like blue skies warily turning pink, plum and red, as orange sun sinks, bitter.

I grew familiar with diverse constellations, along the different astral...

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"Clinging to me
Like a last breath you would breathe
You were like home to me
I don't recognize the street

Please don't close your eyes
Don't know where to look without them
Outside the cars speed by
I'd never heard them...

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Carmena was born in Bolivia
but left that place at seventeen,
after three years of waiting for the chance
to live out an American dream.

When her folks finally got their green cards
they moved up into old Santa Fe,
Carmena...

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He walked into the dusty saloon,
maybe an hour after high noon,
his face still smooth with the touch of youth,
eyes dead-set on seeking out the truth.

He saw him there, two men at his side,
looking just like...

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(autobiographical)


I was barely eight before mother died
When Gerald was happy and not as reduced
When he was the loved son
The child with a loving home.

From aunt to aunt I learned to live
Out of the anger of...

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I was working my way north through Kansas,
selling hot dogs at a traveling fair,
the pay wasn’t great, but it was still a job,
and I met all sorts of people there.

We’d set up for a week...

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The Crow’s Eye

The man had a good life in his house in the woods
Never to worry
Never to grief
Perfectly content

Him and his family worked together
They built the barn
The house
All handmade

The man was curious about one thing
Every...

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I remember living in one room dingy and dire 
with old lino on its rotting wooden floor. 
I remember crystallised spit dangling from guard at the fire; 
as mother cleaned, he'd only honk the more....

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A planned response, came past the clerk,
this self-absorbed, fanatic jerk
He took the note and with a grin,
then tossed it in the garbage bin
But missed it by a margin wide,
his error was so hard to hide
For...

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A drunkard, a thief and a con man,
Who was known by the name Greedy Jack,
Lived a life so vile Satan watched him awhile,
Said, "Of sin in his life there's no lack."

He decided to pay Jack...

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...Burke grabbed Aura and they both ran out,
riding double on his trusty horse.
The word raced quickly through the town,
a posse was formed, as a matter of course.
So Burke pushed his mount, more and more.
They couldn’t...

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Part 2.

Into the wasteland he flies
To bury the souls of lies,
Beneath the leaves of time,
Dirty deeds must dirty die.

This then the watchman must do:

Step on the fingers that try,
With downward pulls to pry,
Into doom flower...

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I.
Amity Bairns came home late one fall day,
Clothes in tatters, face white with shock.
Her mother cried and ran from the cabin,
Brother Amos jumped up from where he rocked.

In the lands west of old Fort plain,
in...

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Infinite pitch black void zoomed,
I vacillated then pitched headlong
(head and knobby knees, over heels)
where skeletons in shuttered closets roomed,
and antithesis of freedom loomed
large (think) cosmic size grand canyon groomed
courtesy the once mighty Mississippi,
now barely a...

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I was in a bar in Texas,
in the eastern back-country,
with three beers already inside
and another draining quickly.
It was a perfect redneck bar,
the kind of place I love,
with sawdust on the floors below
and taxidermy up above.

A...

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*NOTE:  Jack and I wonder how many of you have heard of the Zona Shue case – 
an American murder victim who had revenge in Virginia in the late 1800s.
Zona was killed by her...

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The cowboy he rode on out of the hills
Slumped over his good horse Fred.
Covered in dust, the least of his ills,
Both he and the horse half-dead.
He took a long drink to clear his head,
And felt...

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IF I could make maize grow in a desert
Then that power I possess by your will,
That which can make static air become wind,
That which can cause trees swing side by side.
If I feel down and...

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IF I could make maize grow in a desert
Then that power I possess by your will,
That which can make static air become wind,
That which can cause trees swing side by side.
If I feel down and...

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