Long Instincts Poems

Village in the Valley left behind, and then it's a fine find
Mountain in the making...in the dark alleys of my mind

You're a flashlight
In the night
You are a friend 
Till the end
Bite the bullet
You're the village...

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I was listening to Cornell West,
who described our catastrophic tolerance of disvalues for others,
situations we would never tolerate for ourselves,
disvalues like homelessness and hunger,
but also like random violence, 
abuse and neglect,
lack of caring,
as a "conspiracy"...

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I grew up with rural Michigan white red-neck evangelical root systems.
These did not always feed my multicultural self/other liberation of the GLBTQ subclimatic root system
for regeneratively healthy instincts,
yet I learned to survive within this fundamentalist-alien-straight...

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On this day 40 years ago in 1978 my mother, Jacqueline Anne Trestrail, left this world after a relatively short battle with cancer - she was 46. Jimmy Carter was President and Annie Hall won...

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WHO AM I 

                          I am a woman of abundance,
...

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"Backhand"



You have turned me
inside out, cut open
like a tennis ball
I used to beat backhand
along with the racket
hard against the garage wall

To make sense of it all
as a child, the grief stolen
all too swiftly and replaced...

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  I feel so damn trapped in rage 
Like a rainbow lion in a cage 
I feel so much pain in my brain
And it's driving me quite insane

Numb my solace shame
Get me feeling more...

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Borrowing from David Holmgren, Permaculture Principles and Pathways Beyond [Win-Elite v Lose-NonElite] Sustainability, 2002, p. 1

Health ethics are Beloved Community normative principles
used to guide action toward good and light and right outcomes
and away from degeneratively...

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One bright night
In the Twilight of day
I awoken to a dream
With in a world of worlds 
Not my self, but still the same
What was it? Never more
What year was it? Forgotten 
One must be careful...

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From all worlds and time’s eternal outer reaches,
Where the Creator is perceived to dwell.
You try to learn what your told He teaches,
Regarding Life, the Universe, Heaven and Hell.

The soul is a precious, beautiful place,
Where you...

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I reflect upon a word -
   Innocence
To understand more fully what it means,
I think of what it conjures up for me -
childhood times -
 those times when I believed all I was taught
from...

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It’s been a long time coming
But I’m still on my game 
Writing is the only outlet 
That frees me of this pain
I Talk it how I walk it
And this Walk is insane
Some days are harder...

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In cooperative detective work,
including Earth scientific research,
we are told to follow the money
much more often
than feeling invited 
to follow the nutritional health investors
and the toxic pathological attackers

Whether our trail is a criminal
or political
economic impassioned journey
of...

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You want emotion...
Tell me, ask me, beg me to show you my soul, my secret place where my muses dwell.
My living hell. The tainted sea of all me, so what...so you can wash in the...

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All this long week
of early spring head colds
our National Public Radio informants
and performers,
speakers and listeners,
have been about the business of raising capital investments
preferably in their corporate direction,
to support further public broadcasting
for the benefit of our...

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{"I wish somebody, some entity would’ve told me, even warned me with the intuitiveness that lies within the motherly instincts, the nature of humanity without malevolent reluctance. 
That lying in the darkness for whom which...

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Baby birds tweet as their long skinny necks stretch towards blind faith. Somewhat frantically; newly born; next to dead; fragile existence; protected with life. Regurgitation from the same embodied mouth that an egg came from....

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I can clearly sense your utter despair of Der Matratzengruft*
As you valiantly carried on your poetic works to the very end.
This did not change your literary accomplishments well-known,
And your courage through the misery and morphine*...

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Hath fed the common purpose That draws the very heart of man, to the sacrificial hero!

Dangerous and promising are these dreams which  seem to come from the heart’s deep recesses, as have cast a...

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Hold on to your kids 
Hold on to the thread 
Hold on to their hands and stay with them when they fall asleep in bed 

Hold on to their joy 
Hold on to their spark...

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Remember I know you,
you're not innocent,
you're not returning back to innocence.

Even with dirt on your hands,
a bad seed doesn't grow anything,
a rotten tomato will never be eaten.

No one ever,
believes in little white lies,
no matter how...

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No skills involved,
just natural instincts.

No spiritual development skills, 
leftbrain worded messages 
about rightbrain instinctive 
natural/spiritual, 
indigenously multicultural 
yang-out/yintegrity resonance 

Like singing and dancing, 
sucking and copulating, 
olding and young scolding, 

Persistently historic 
resilient 
LeftBrain verbal...

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Robert Sherriff - Australian - Poet -Author - Singer - Actor - American Historian – Photographer

Shadows to Light-Reader Advisory:  The following narrative depicts domestic abuse and its aftermath. Proceed with care.

Reflections of Pain

When you're...

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Rest now
O restless heart
released in ebb   to flow

ride the other side of the king tide rising
buoyant your movement in rise with the waves
Rise! to beyond where breakers break long-suffering shores
pitiless the grind of...

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A tramp steamer plies an ocean of fog. 
The Chief Bos’n makes a note in the log while the helmsman 
Strains to see beyond the wheel. 
The ship’s Captain leaves the bridge with a groan....

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