Long Interlopers Poems

"Open Oceans"



Kneeling on pearls
wisdom preys

praying
preying

hungry hearts
count the days 

wasting away
in all that preying 

for prayers 
to be answered

children become
strangers

reading 
strange words

finding 
themselves puzzled

genuflecting to a deity
they do not know, nor wish to

fumbling
mouths closed,

swallowed hole
in the...

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*** Notice to the residents of Milton Creek ***

Tom serves as mayor. never complaining, so he gets what he requests 
No blood in his steak, apple pie with sweet cream. Aces cooks that meal
to perfection...

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Virgil comes to group therapy every week in his pick-up truck with his dog, Buster, standing in the bed of the truck. The sessions are held for veterans of Korea and Vietnam. Quite a few...

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The words are dark, sharp,vicious, viscous.
The images like bubbling, darkest jam,
With bubble like grim faces riding to the surface
Then bursting.
I am thirsting.Alternately with blood and bile,black.
I am a sad sack,
A pillow filled with rotten meat
For...

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Sixteen hundred full moons ago, RumbleVoice, a giant with a mission, and his mighty spy hawk, Samuel P. were up in the Butter Cup Mountains hunting for a young wild bobcat to bring home to...

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anticipatory anxiety fosters catastrophization...,

especially bombardment of online scare tactics
courtesy fiendish insidious loathsome sinister oafs
rubbing their hands at aggrieved party;
punch drunk cyber thieves ecstatic
acquiring by hook and/or crook
sought after precious, priceless, and proverbial data
after loosed ransomware...

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A magical feeling unknown anywhere else lingered at the faerie waterfall
This was the gentle resting place of all worn-out muses and elves, after all
A mystical silence filtered over each caregiver, lingering over each rose in...

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Lakes and beaches are wiped clean like a whiteboard, 
each day by waves, tide, wind.
Then marks of ripples and tracks provide transient tell-tales
of what has gone on since, of what is yet to come.
What caused...

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The singularity of my voice, 
Wailing out in this dark, wild, and philistine-infested wilderness
Today; Its uniqueness alone amongst several million babbling, 
Balbutient tongues, and inked pens and platitude-riddled pages on blinking 
Computer monitory screens,
The intelligible and the inane, 
The...

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COVID-19 pandemic analogous how indigenous peoples got felled...

Woebegone, enraged spirits
holographic images taciturn
journeying somberly aghast
at their stolen sacred lands... mourn
dead souls impossible mission

sabotaged aery mission endeavor
happy hunting grounds upheaval
witnessed gaunt bloody sojourn,
perhaps collective aboriginal ghosts return
to...

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Parachuted squirrels glide onto leaf piles and laugh at my heroic efforts
to keep them from taking apart my bird feeders.

With xylophonic fingers they lift the lids and unscrew until the feeders 
give up and fall...

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Pick Yourself Up – Dust Yourself Down

Is there a glimmer of hope in this convoluted soup
Is there a sign that all is not such a cock-a-hoop?
I came in here with blind hope and faith
And sit...

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Thee Mister Re: Spouse...

In summer re: aye cannot whet till
this husbandry season will become
fallow -  mare riddle status no longer
honeymoon bridal stage covenant,
nuttin boot lame game of worm aye
go win round robin, since empty...

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Denizen of abyssal labyrinth,
legendary ancient Wyrm seeks succour
within prodigious sepulchral cavern:
her domicile for an ageless lifetime.

Ethereal shafts cascade through ceiling's
stochastic rifts, piercing tenebrous tomb;
vicious viscous scarlet smears juxtapose
against shimmering iridescent scales.

Aeons past, Faustian pact formed...

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Brick houses gone, wood houses gone
Family histories blown away
No photos or proof of life
2.8 billion dollars worth of damage

Devastation for a mile. 
One house standing, with debris 
Covering every inch of her yard.
2008 Chevy in...

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George Fulwider
1837-1918

My beating-heart age,
Reached the half century mark,
When I and my “better second,”
Found hopeful roots,
And an oleander trellis,
On burgeoning Philadelphia street, 
Here in this Quaker colony, 
Of a thousand trees.
Our small wooded house was, 
Most...

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astronomical anatomical atoms
buying brilliant blubbery bimbo blobs
collecting claustrophobic colorized clandescently clams
depicting deplorable dependable depraved dendrites
enticing and enlisting energetic enthusiastic enigmas
finally fueling fussy frisky flatulence, forming fleece finders
giving gluttonous glorious gargoyles grinning grace
holding heavy-handed hospital heathens
Ignoring...

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Before death I stand, inside a hallway of enduring shame
not waiting on judgement, for there is none for such crimes,
just abandoned forever pondering worthlessness,
Everyone’s dead 

Butchered in narrow streets, along Jerusalem way 
slaughtered countless men...

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Villanelle: Wander not into a land where the indigene’s indolent

Wander not into a land where the indigene’s indolent
Likely as not the country will be run by interlopers
Open-heartedness is often a cover for self-bemusement

The first signs...

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Magazines have captured us and taken us hostage. We were easy.
Not realizing how fast they multiply.  We are up in our knees in them now.
They must have litters overnight, maybe in the daytime also....

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Here’s to the travellers,
   the passengers, the tourists
who trek this alien landscape
   in search of experience.

Here’s to the resilient,
   the adaptable, the survivors
who chose uneven ground
   and...

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Thirty years ago, multi-floral rose and 
fruit laden wild berry bushes could be
found in abundance everywhere around here. 
Native grasses provided shelter
to the ground nesters and the 
warm summer nights were filled
with the call of...

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Shush! My dog ears caution me. Did you hear that? I stop sorting coupons, and listen, hard.
My husband is gone, and there are adult footsteps in my house.
Hypervigilant, I hear the fast increased pounding beats...

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I stood by the river, transfixed;
Watching the renegade waves;
The rising and falling of it's pulsating chest;
Frolicking back and forth like a yoyo

The defiant harmatan wind,
Whistling sofly under it's breath
I could not see where the river...

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The alligators will not stay in the water,
they head for strip malls, for chicken noodle joints
or sports bars for fish taco or spicy wings.
They get their nails done in a Korean salon
paying in Spanish gold.

The...

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