Long Jowls Poems

An Introduction to Max
 
Hi, I am a mastiff cross and my name is Max. To be precise it’s Magical Maxi the Wonder Dog but you can call me Max. That’s not to say I...

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"50 Words for Poe: Baskervilles"
 

 
Baskervilles 
was loping over graves 
digging dirt for bones 
sniffing evidence of dead souls
counting tomes 
it flayed time & bled the gut 
of it’s own black soul
ate it inside...

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"Cantus Troili" from "Troilus and Criseyde"
by Petrarch
translation by Geoffrey Chaucer
modernization by Michael R. Burch

If there’s no love, O God, why then, so low?
And if love is, what thing, and which, is he?
If love is good,...

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ANIMAL COURT

I relate this story from my room in the Quiet Vale Giggling Academy

A reader might find my story hard to believe
BUT!
At one time in my life –
As a matter of fact quite recently –
I...

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Oh Daisy, my daisy, where did you go?
I miss your deep colors, I miss your pure glow.
Oh Daisy, my daisy, where did you run?
My time here is gone and soon I'll be numb.

Up in the...

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I relate this story from my room in the Quiet Vale Giggling Academy

A reader might find my story hard to believe
BUT!
At one time in my life –
As a matter of fact quite recently –
I had...

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It's funny, because I've vacuumed under your bed 
a hundred times in the past two years
I've dusted the black bedside table
picked up your Scotch and Soda pants off the floor, 
still jingling with belt attached...

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In a winter chorus, autumn’s rouge and sallow shed.
Their shuffle settles loamy dregs of timber lords.
As they await the hurling puff to haply brush the forest floor,
of what to grace their lot, they’ve lack. No...

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Smoke drifts from the smokestacks
On dark and gloomy days
Just before the first rains of Summer
Crates are collected and stacked
And thrown onto the conveyor belt
So they may disappear into the fortress

A robot sings songs of yesteryear
And...

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Uncle soldier Sammie
is too flashback	    far Saigon 
The bad memory withdrawals 
are too ganja gun smoke strong
So he pumps up the blame volume,
saying who’s dirty napalm wrong

He’s got a shaky second and...

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That room; 
And the bathroom too, 
She made them alien territory. 
My petty sentiments kicked in, 
And made me a slave to my roommate. 

The scented atmosphere, stockings; 
Frilly brassieres in plain sight, 
And blouses...

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      The atmosphere was alive and palpable,
 surreal really
as the aegean blue of electrons after a 
summer downpour, where the crickets take a short reprieve to zen the petrichor.

 ...

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Lake Eliza
Out by poor old  Lake Elisa lived a moody ancient miser.
Who bemoaned his fate throughout the livelong day.
lived further west than Isa out where the heat and flies are.
So he plotted as he...

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Sanity Seen Through The Eyes of a Madhouse'''
There he was
Alone sitting in darkness
with lingering shadows that lurk in and out of troubled dreams
waiting like thieves for another walk down memory lane of the chronically driven...

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Our enemies the Philistines
As we were taught in Sunday school
Are extras in the battle lines
To die, as we were born to rule

What lovely racists we’ve become
Programmed to hate our nation’s foes
Eurasians and Mohammedans 
Can meet...

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Grandpa

a kind face
 
skin leathery and creased from years of working in the sun
 
long jowls like a basset hounds
 
sad droplet eyes
 
always a slight aroma of beer
 
brown wrinkled callous palms
 
dirt-stained fingernails...

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Two Dogs at the Gateway
By Sy Roth


They slurped their saliva, 
huge globs,
big, barking mouthfuls 
dripping from their jowls like milky icicles 

Teeth-bared lips,
They guarded the gateway.
Pleased by their vacated spittle,
their noses now sniffed the air,...

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Ah! There is nothing, nothing that adds to a gentleman's persona,
Like that of fashionably sporting and puffing a five-dollar Corona!
With a cigar in his jowls, he can socialize with disdainful pretense!
Clad in his ten-dollar Goodwill...

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I saw your wet dog face emboldened as a Herald upon your missing limb.

His thick creases deeply lined between his nose, eyes and gaping mouth.

The creviced, cutting, contours ran a moist mist black on your...

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Standing before an invisible army, 
The boy stands watching from behind their hidden lines,
Peering into their smiling cheeks and jowls.
Returning the smirking favor, he holds up his electric hands,
Whose dendrites trickle lightning from his metaphysical...

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Villanelle: The dilemma of the non-violent – 2

Villanelle: The dilemma of the non-violent – 2

The formal war according to ancient rules
The pitted hosts convened on common ground
Till the last man drops or takes to his...

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I’m Virgo, playing music tranquilly
in this self-portrait. The clavichord I chose.
It denotes fine education; the black clothes
I'm wearing prove I value chastity.
Dark as a shadow, to the left of me
is the face of my governess,...

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A calendar girl I certainly am not
my assets aren’t what they once were ...
pert boobies have drooped, they’ve sure gone to pot
I think other ladies can concur.

I’m realistic about the aging process
As my body is...

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It's a cold dark objective fear. 

His face loose folds of jowls,
a sagging half squinted eyelid
and a lopsided woeful expression,
that hides cunning manipulation and brutality.
It's a rancid stench of flies
and faecal matter and musty mothballs,
that...

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During the day
there's a deceptive lull
in the staid common parlor
when the home seems deadly dull

Stale air, disinfectant and potpourri
stirred only by the worried, hurried strides
of harried nurses down hectic halls
stuffy efficiency personified

In contrast to those,...

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