Long Mansfield Poems

Everybody got a Hollywood life story
to tell
More meat on the bone
give juicier bites 
to sell
Nobody ever turns in a tarnished silver screenplay
Those warts and mistakes
get Photoshop casting couch edited away
Baby Jane rude attitude don’t make...

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This is Harry who's this? Its Tom Mansfield. Tom you realize its 11:30 P.M. Sorry we have 5 climbers missing on the...

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It's "The Children's Hour," as Franklin Delano
dubbed it, proffering that famous profile, chin high,
cigarette holder clinched in good dental symmetry,
all the while flashing that celebrated smile.  He'd "Walk 
a Mile for a Camel," (or...

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She was the prettiest doll in the whole world,	
Elegant, stunning, waist-less, buxom,
Curves all over the place,
No straight lines.

Shocking for a child’s toy 
Shocking for 1959.
Mattel was by far
Ahead of their time.

Marilyn Monroe and
Jane Mansfield were
Our...

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Sir Henryi Morgan lived a life
of rags to riches.  In his time,
he first was an indentured slave.
When freed, he drifted into crime.

The century was seventeenth,
The New World under Spanish rule.
A pirate Morgan had become,
and...

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In the lough near Kylemore Abbey
Floats a little green fishing boat.
It wears with pride its battered paint,
From years of wear it lost its coat.

It made bitter the old man's heart
After sweet Emma passed away.
He now...

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Hear the loud deafening cries of a black woman
A woman once silenced by pain unknown to every man
I was stuck in a mansfield yielding contaminated crop and weeds
Weeds from a seed fertile with deception and...

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What turned my head to think I had a thread,
Folk thought I was lazy so I did something crazy.
Adventure was there, but afraid there'd be scare,
So what the hell I figure,
Nothing achieved til you pull...

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They nicknamed Doris Day the girl next door
But she never lived next door to me.

Sting is known as sting but isn't a bee.

Davy Jones was known as a monkey
But I never saw him swing through...

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The barren ground bleached by the sacred sun
scantily clothed children and dogs run
Trees scarred by scavenged limbs
Burned in pyres as sunlight dims
Low water levels recorded on painted rocks 
Boats cannot reach out of water docks

I...

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The guy who had long hair, now looks worse with short,
one chap looks so serious all the time, more than he ought;
strange that people like watching murder as tho' it's normal,
personally, I prefer something somewhat...

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Thank you to Marilee Mansfield, whose marvelous metaphor for divorce inspired me to write this poem.

You left
Just for a little while,
And when you came back
We tried to take up just where we had been, 
But...

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BLUE VELVET--- (Written for Paul Mansfield)

time again to document
this submarine 
immersion scene

the pleasure is all mine 
to glide and flow
finally let go

to disappear and hide
dreaming cool blue 
parting in pool

nerves send shimmering signals
through my hands...

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We had industry once that the Tories refined,
A nice market and shops – but oh they’ve declined.

Our Mayor gives away shoes and his face to the papers,
Warsop baths and the towns lost bogs are paying...

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We could have boobs in the 50’s and 60’s
We could have a nice round bottom.
We could be Vargas girls, on our way to being
Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield.

That all changed in the wave of a...

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