Long Gaol Poems

"Midnight to 3.33, Morning Kills"



He said, 
“Go to where the poets go
Love rolls wet and sways
Intensity wraps itself inside out
and somersaults its legs backward
to open a way
Out
It’s kind of burning hot 
like Summer burns 
bare...

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Solitaire / Solitude

Solitude will be my recognition, my fame !
Solitude is my time to claim !
Solitary is my adopted name !
Solitaire is the name of my game,
to play away these hours of mine
until there is...

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David Jones, the best rat catcher Shropshire has ever had
must take some criticism for young Molly turning bad.
Even though his daughter found rich co-incidentals,
no credit could be taken by rat catching Dad's credentials.

At nineteen she's...

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RIbaldO the Clown
RIbaldO the Clown
he wore a black bandana and no make up yet his eyes were slanted up and 
when he was on the street everyone saw a clown he looked like a clown...

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Looking through the three-eighth gauge, at zebra's, stars and plumhead.
Listening to the expert in the trade and take in what he said.
I went home and scanned through pages of books and magazine,
perusing photographs of aviary...

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As a youngster he had dreamt of moving to a potato farm in Ireland

To escape from the brown rot of German post-world war II contamination

Just another plot on the map to sufficient existence and to...

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-
Sitting on this gray wooden bench beside my late mother
Her light yellow blouse shiffling in the Atlantic air
She is exicited, anxious, happy and swells with a sense of achievement
For she had done it. She had...

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Thar was nae richt ae laddie sair
wha heft a cave 'side Galloway,
wi' nae jaiken he griftit dare
as he was nae tae lippen tae.

Ill-naitur'd  fishwife he haud in wi',
the twa 'greed tae gang the'gither.
She haud...

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HARRY THE BREAKER
Harry galloped through the Mulga           (13% protien animal tucker)
On a game horse Bunga Din
The Brumbies galloping on Tolga
Were yarded with a grin
Every station...

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Now the public library in our town contains the knowledge for mankind, 
and there’s not much happening ‘round the world, that I cannot find.
I can think of any subject that I like and tell Jenny...

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The wife and I just recently, joined the clan of scrimp and save,
But we’re hoping that this attitude won’t send us to our grave,
So we added to this latest fad, and put upon our plate,
That...

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-
Terence a Griffiths of Tyrone or Leitrim!
Did he know but later of 1820 he would be there born
A Flax Grower a renter from landlords of Lord Leitrim's domain
To thresh and sack and cloth and sow...

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"This Naked Dance"



This naked dance
before the tenuous 
judgement of sentences
the company of words 
from all the silent voices 
seated in the front rows 
of this our dark audience 

the jury of lost lovers
wanting their heroes...

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To Melbourne town he took the ship, the man from Marrawah,
to take in all the city sights, he'd  never seen before.
Disembarking from the boat, he began to wander around.
Inquiring from a passerby what number...

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Trevor Jed Engelson Unwittingly... 
launched Meghan Markle into royalty

American divorcee 
     catapulted from “AA” to “Zed”
at break neck speed, and with cachet wed
Prince Harry, and soon
     twill...

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1

The personal is boring
as are my ruminations on the war.
What I need to do I can't try: 
wander without shelter in the backcountry.
Or go deeper into the polity, 
join a committee or a party.

Minute by...

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Watching Homer struggle
to explain how a god wounded by a mortal
cannot die but may thereafter live with minor pain

and the humor when that god
complains to Jove that His supervision of His daughter
is inadequate and His...

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Born into a life of poverty crime and squalor
where hunger and cold winds bite
and disease is rife
and it was a daily battle to stay alive
and find some food to stay alive.

Uneducated illiterate caught in the...

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You tell me what's illegal!
Nothing can be illegal to me because whatever has been done,
this life can never set me free, and that should be illegal for
those fame seeking legislators who sent me off to...

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I Have Seen The Stars Fallen

  The pageants veiled, and gnawed at gladness,
  As prism from far inter-stellar space;
  And they eclipse and the luminosity fa’e over the
  phase,
  And...

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I’d love to say that ‘Crusher’ Webb is one good mate of mine,
but old ‘Crusher’s’ temperamental and can act more like a swine,
and it don’t take much to set him off; that’s when we all...

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Locked up in an enclave
With no threads nor bars
Confined to a gaol of wit
Tied upon the folds unkind.

So weary from an inkling
As the moment's trance pound upon my thinking
But this heart is pure
Not fit for...

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Oh Mick McGrath, man of daring do
What will the family make of you?
A forgotten ghost from the past,
Standing trapped in a die well cast.

Oh Mick McGrath, will they hear your name?

Born to peasants in a...

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life is like a game of chess check each move you make 
your opponent can be the devil incarnate
with an angel close by, helping and guiding you

your moves in life, you decide what you have...

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(Oscar Wilde wrote that long poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" in 1897, quoted here. In it, a man met his death; for some decades the UK has not had the death penalty.)

  ...

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