Long Irritant Poems

Each year we drive to the south of Spain to soak up the sun's warm rays
But we like to maintain a leisurely pace, so it takes us two full days

Which means we stay at Hotel-and-Go,...

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What else but weight endless for devil’s due? 
And I’d need a few more tests to be sure, 
Grimace or grin, but I ought to endure, 
What greater devil was seemed like dawn’s dew: 
Was...

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Sambhavami yugé, yugé, says the Gita: 
God will come back again and again.
What for?
Of course to protect the virtuous 
And destroy the evil doers.

Déjà vu!
The Jews seem to wait for the same end. 
That’s what...

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The Profiles of Birds

High growth and thick foliage
in an enclosure opposite our garden
invited the golden orioles to stay on;
often they perch on a bo tree or an old banyan
sometimes chasing the irritant house crows
sometimes coming...

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Chapter 1: The End of the Eastern Gilded Age


'Twas thrice yon 'ere time clichés galore, albeit, one two many times, that fairy tale's opening wouldst hitherto a harp. History, the effects of narratives indulgences of...

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............. for Kate


Somehow it seems colder
roll on summer seems to have missed its mark
and even as clearest blue the sky is cosseting a chill
and so the temperature set itself against my will

How does the sun...

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Mom told me once that 
Her cat's eye necklace
Was a favorite.
There was something about it
That filled it with glamour.
Years later I learned it appealed
To her because it was chatoyant.

A few decades ago, 
Every ingenue was...

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For PD's Collaboration Contest
August 28, 2015

By: Eileen Manassian 

Thank you for this string of pearls 
What a beautiful sight! 
Right?
Yes.....a sheer delight. 
You look surprised! 
You gifted them to me 
Can't you see? 
This beautiful...

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THE RELUCTANT 
by Mark Miller © 09/19/2014

We are the living seeming stillness willful we endure 
Through vows of contempt to never surrender
Vacate questions fly by trees terse unknown
Retreat or follow the terminus term less 
Momentary...

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For people enduring inescapable pain, especially for my husband

 

"Pearls are formed inside the shell of certain mollusks as a defense mechanism against a potentially threatening irritant such as a parasite inside the shell, or...

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A Monotetra

I moved into a haunted house,
the ghost there was, an obnoxious louse.
he’d sneak up on me like a mouse,
my hair he’d touse, my hair he’d touse.

My best underwear, he hides,
he’s a pervert, I surmise,
gives...

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Below the banyan tree it lay
Ruffled feathers grey and white, 
Claws clenched in a hideous way
Making a piteous sight.

Upon the boughs its mates cawed loud
Shrieks echoing in the green, 
The jaws of death could not...

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1
No, not there! fly! fly away like the swift-winged bird;
When the hungry-eyed passion calls; follow her not!
Into those wild casements of her raped love;
Or to her irritant, militant temples of murder;
Go not by her purple-eyed...

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Sweet is the smile that cools the heart
it leaves pressure floating further behind. 
Exude your confidence and fight the heat,
Keep hate from taking over your mind. 
 
Or you will be damaged beyond repair,
Ruined by...

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I Search For Equilibrium

O I have given more to thee
Than thee hath given back to me
But rattle on thy prattle proud
For I be soft where thee be loud

And those with holes that burrow deep
Can hear...

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O I have given more to thee
Than thee hath given back to me
But rattle on thy prattle proud
For I be soft where thee be loud

And those with holes that burrow deep
Can hear thy queer pitched...

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It is not all about us
It is all about me.
My feelings, my hopes, my dreams.
Get out of my thoughts; you take too much time

You are begging for attention
Annoying me
So I run toward the hills 
To...

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Body in yoga positions unyielding
Sun light in angles to play with the eyes
Nimble lit fingers are all concentrating
waiting for brain-waves to signal, advise
all for the loosing of splinters
Caught from the deck in an afternoon bathe
Right...

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Nightly they give thanks
With uncanny stealth they close in
By the scent of carbon dioxide
Drawn to a table
well prepared in the presence
And, of their enemy!

Endlessly raped and pillaged
In my sleepless sleep I wonder...
These gluttonous suckers
Fattened by...

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There is always 
a dull longing
that goes unlabelled
and hangs a layer or two
below a joy, a pang
somewhere in the soul
that can't be coughed up
or cut out, just endured.

A nonsense to the skeptic,
no more than perhaps
a...

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On the last evening of a wonderful weathered 

                        summer, flitting between...

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Where The Grass Don't Grow

The historical record bared to see
In worn-torn pages, undecipherable.
And I’m to believe that this sum total
Will explain everything you say to me,

Mixed with phlegm spewed from the esophagus,
Spitting in my face...

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Scurrying across the ocean floor
leaving faint tracks in the sand
moving sideways to go forward
nothing mapped or even planned.

The sand is always shifting
ever changing the terrain
all creatures are in hiding
misdirected or insane.

Go on and on forever
waving...

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The irritant is caressed in the soft folds of a cloak
Layering it lovingly so smooth to stroke
The irritant becomes fit for King, Prince or Earl
To spend their money on a brand new lustrous pearl.

The spherical...

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There’s a squirrel in the vending machine,
I’ll bet that he thinks he is very keen.
He’s eating up all of the jelly beans!
He’s the worst irritant that I have seen.

He’s devoured all the animal crackers,
pretzels and...

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