Long Mothballs Poems

Crackling tension filled the community hall in Abergavenny 

‘We are in this together dear folks for a pound or a penny’

Speaking of which the loos were situated right behind the bar

To ensure that urinal relief...

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Was never sure whether or not to laugh, smile or cry when
auntie came to tea, a matriarch she, wearing white gloves
plus purple cardigan - seven buttons tidy, top one below chin,
and a black beret perched precariously...

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You look at me so uninviting;
I may have some missing teeth, stumble when I walk, bout' to FALL!!!
Stutter when I talk, but yet I'll still call;
Might smell like ole mothballs or mint or maybe even...

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STARBUCKS AND COOKIE

I sit in Barnes and Noble
Looking at the figure-display over the snack bar
Oh how out-of-place    in time    they look
Twain
Shaw
Hardy
Dickinson
Hemingway
Have read them all
Out of time
The artist has caught...

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One

Chloee? Yes Reginald! 
Why do they call us Dachshunds, Wiener Dogs?
Maybe they call you a Wiener Reginald!
You cut me off at the legs with that one Chloee!

Two

Chloee? Yes Reginald! Have you ever smelled mothballs.
No Reginald it's too...

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Mothballs and Lavender

There’s a rug on the hearth and a fire in the grate
and Grandma and Grandad sit with me to wait
while the black-leaded oven is cooking our tea
of ‘tatty-ash’ stew made especially for me.

We’re...

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Love isn't just a single word 
or feeling
Said to tickle an ear and 
leave you reeling

Nor is love abstract and 
void of care
But what one envisions and 
does all year

We convey our love by 
things...

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Sing a hymn for Georgie Radford
Who used to build ships on the Clyde
Watch them launch down the slipway 
With a worker’s quiet pride.
His last job was the giant carrier,
The one they put in mothballs,
Then his...

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Cobwebs and Dust

I was up in the attic of our Lovers Lane home
No one else would come up, I was there all alone
The place smelled of mothballs, mildew and rust
With everything covered in cobwebs and...

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A Visit by the Mother-in-Law

By Elton Camp

My mother-in-law lives in another state
Her annual visits I most intensely hate
For her daughter, I wasn’t good enough
So, from the old crone I get lots of guff

“To Mother you...

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She’d kept the pewter dusted and displayed
since 1959.
A verdigris had leached out of the urn nevertheless
She had been hard on him, had forgiven little,
but felt much closer now.
The television became a corner coffin,
its screen a...

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The door to the bookstore creaks complaining
                            ...

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Way back in the nineteen fifties
When Charlie grew out of his toys,
He fancied having an active life
So he joined the Teddy Boys.

He wore drainpipe jeans, a black drape coat
And a shirt with a boot lace...

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Doth if not thrill thee, Poet,
Dead and dust though thy art,
To feel how I press thy singing
Close to my heart? 

A boy of seven opens his eyes
he's dreamy and young
sees his whole life ride
the beautiful...

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When I was twelve my grandma told me I was a woman – 
and in six or eight years I would be a wife.
She said Sundays would be pasta days, Fridays I’d cook fish –
and...

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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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A feeble old woman lives down the hall,
we chat on occasion.
I indulge her constant kvetching of youthful occupants invasion,
since this erstwhile hotel's trendy loft conversion.

Crook'd finger and conspiratory whisper
lure me to door ajar.
She tells of...

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I barely know how you bear it, I said to the grapefruit
Of course, true to form, she tried to smooth everything out.
I was irked because no words arrived to sooth me.
Which made her easier to...

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old novel with the author you 
cant quite remember.

  we can worry about it later
 just like in the old days.


  now tealeaf stimuli is twice as light in the city.

  the...

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Love isn't just a single word or feeling
Said to tickle an ear and leave you reeling

Nor is love abstract and void of care
But what one envisions and does all year

We convey our love by things...

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New Zealand's favourite bird is the Tui, also called parson bird for its ruffled white cravat - it is famously noted for various lyrical songs - consisting of
soul tuning notes -  intricate melodies or...

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Deep funnels gurgling
                                ...

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Old people look like raisins with hair
Perfumed in mothballs and vaporub
Ready for the prom which waits for them
The mirror tells the elderly they are teens
Sometimes the mirror lies
I was once old but now I am...

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No more

Mothballs and cedar assault my nose

The dust mites and stale air dry my throat

A wardrobe that is just that

 

The lion roars no more

Neutered and robbed of his fire

The last time the words were...

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Linux Ubuntu
If ya ever tire of Winders,
 with its million upgrades,
Virus making Hackers, 
fixing yer hard drives, yes in spades,
Can yer expand yer mind a little,
shift the mothballs, yes in waves,
learn a Linux of language,
where...

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