Long Homestead Poems

I believed that I was rural … that I lived in country style,
where the city was close handy … that big distance was a mile.
Trains and buses ferried daily; a freeway ran close by …
comforts...

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I.	  The Settlement

          Hickory bark bluffs
          at the blend of two 
    ...

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As I awakened to the night terrors again it's 3am. I know I'm being monitored in my own home Ciro Gargano installs cameras to watch my every movement in order to know when I write...

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(Somewhere in late 18th-century Europe a friend, Laetitia, by way of a letter warns her beloved girlfriend, Euphoria--a young, gay and unsuspecting mistress--against the almost inevitable seductions of the infamous and maundering philanderer, Melancholia.).



Dear Euphoria,

...

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from island corner, big Antrim lad
  to Belfast city, a tiny pad
  shattered windows, tilted clocks
  Goliath had lost his socks
  gargantuan giant going mad

  Armagh apple girl, any topic
...

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He was born in backwoods Missouri.
1840 the year he arrived.
Conflict, sickness and hard times prevailed.
Through it all he grew strong and survived.
Skills to live were a gift from his father.
Faith in God from his mother...

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The True Story

A Poem of the time, when as a 16 year old young fellow, and fresh from Blighty I spent 7 years as a Ringer in North Queensland, Australia. A Ringer is the Queensland...

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Moving into a new home
with anonymous neighbors,
whom you typically have not even met
before deciding where you will replant yourself,
and perhaps also your significant others,
sometimes including multiple generations,
and pets and plants,
all takes place before you have...

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China Tour Diary Moment #3
SHANGRI-LA, TIBET
--------------------------------


Paradise on earth: Himalayan range;
A phenomenon carved by elements;
Here magic gives birth to ways that seem strange;
A place where lessons of soul mark movement.


Our tour coach winds round the mountain...

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A dawning twilight's me. Oh, joy. Oh, what a joy. This day. Oh, what a day. A breath bestills my eyes and I, e'er slight, a deeper breath that reopened them and myself to a...

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The delegation arrives in a procession of handsome, barbaric lineage
rugged in animal accoutrements and subdued in the presence of the future's skin,
the women, fine in wild beauty are bejeweled in beads, white and blues
that accent...

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The Gunslinger 

There once was a honest man, a man of iron and steel
Vengeance filled his heart, a lust for blood so surreal
No one knows what calamity has forged his evil ways
Or of what rages...

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I was out of work in thirty-three and forced to take the road,
not really looking forward toward the tramping swaggy code,
and as luck had it, just by chance, I no longer had to hike,
‘cause parked...

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(*The Gift)
This here is a side trip, nothing more,
To our country home far and away.
Grandparents own one by the seashore,
This a gift, gramps in-law and mentor,
They raised teen/gramps, not a runaway.

Gramps helped older sis and...

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I’d never been outside Victoria except once on the Murray,
where we fished for near a week only giving carp some curry,
but of course that was my highlight going on that camping trip.
I talked so much...

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They won't let us have
the same things ...
things that once was given to them
They say we deserve it not,
because we're of the rejected seed ---
those who drew the accursed lot
They know who they be,
them who...

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Being sick with a snotty nose
A cough, fatigue, one of those colds???
For goodness sake's everyone knows
Grandmothers are too sophicated 
To wear anything but fancy clothes
Surely not a Kleenex box attached
To their chair, and looking unkempt
And...

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This house belonged to grandfather Rudolph,
though its history goes much further back,
all the way to the eighteen seventies,
when to this vast land Herbert Blake did trek.

It had once been a grand ranch homestead,
centerpiece of sixteen...

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II.
They were locked inside, surrounded by moans,
the pained cries of Hell enveloped the home,
the rancher too broken to even speak,
while Rose went and got Sol something to eat.

Sol went to work, and found a heavy...

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Widsith the Far-Traveler, Part III
ancient Anglo-Saxon poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I was also with Eormanric for many years,
as long as the Goth-King availed me well;
he gave me six hundred shillings of pure gold
beaten into...

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III.
There must be a hundred, silent and cruel,
a slow-moving wave as the night grew cool,
Rose had a shotgun, to blast out her hate,
yet Sol remained steady, motioned her to wait.

He didn’t shoot, he had planned...

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WELCOME TO THIS SOCIETY
Welcome to this society where the feces is more than the toilets 
Welcome to this society where the bribes are more rampant in the church than in the street
Where security is GOOD...

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It was an unusual trip that was planned,
stranger still that my Mother-in-law was the reason.
A wonderful woman who was liked by all who knew her,
kind, gentle, hard working, and grateful for the gift 
of reaching...

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But the mood of celebration
Lasted only for a short time 
Very few returned to thank them
Han and Matto found this puzzling 
 

Chapter 2 BLOOD MOON
 
Through the days and nights that followed 
Spread a...

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T’was dry the spring with thunderstorms that rumbled across dry;
most every day was under sun or star filled sky,
the grass had burnt off early; hay mowed this year was scarce,
closed paddocks saved the milkers where...

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