Long Needing Poems

For ten months now I’ve brooded over coming second place
in the pickle section deeming, it no less than a disgrace.
It was written plain and simple, so there can be no excuse,
that the pickles in this...

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WOMEN ...

Truly amaze me ... they possess the super-human
strength to birth a child - one of the most painful
and demanding physical and emotional feats of end-
urance known to our species - yet they have the
self-confidence...

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Raisin liked to make her bed upon a shelf up high
She said she likes the feeling that she’s almost in the sky
One day she fell and bonked her head and Rum could only stare
And wondered...

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Wounded Sacred Dementia: Part Two

Dementia's derelict WinLose SocialWorker
suboptimizingly hesitates
when I tell her
I have not changed my mind
about not adopting Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
into my vulnerable home
with a seven-year-old AfricanAmerican boy
blind
and unable to defend himself,
or even run...

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Dear Donald John
and GoodFaith Followers,
CoInvestors,
ProActive Prayers for Rapturous Redemption
from Eternal Hellish
paranoid
Left EgoVoices anger and fear
Right SpiritFeelings ecodarkly terrified
from and of dying death.

Your LeftBrain does not lack
for paranoid Win/Lose conviction
We must live in a dog eat...

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“It is the custom of scholars when addressing behavior and culture to speak variously of anthropological explanations, psychological explanations, biological explanations, and other explanations appropriate to the perspectives of individual disciplines. I have argued that...

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How was school today?

Fine.

Did you learn anything important?

Maybe. I'm not sure yet.

Really? What are you considering?

We talked about Howard Odum's natural trinity
of altruism.

Maybe I skipped that day
way back in premillennial times
before Permaculture Design had taken...

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A Night On A Wharf

The couple decide to walk. The boardwalk still lit at this late hour guides them. They walk hand in hand,..whispering softly with small talk...solemn.,. lonely , yet together. The walk is...

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I remember feeling so empty the abuse had escalated after four hurricanes witnessing a murder horrific traumatic brain injury I was now uprooted leaving my beautiful home in Fort Myers Florida at the behest of...

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Paradise
like Rome
is not built
and not rebuilt
and rebuilt
and redeveloped
and healed
and redeemed
in one 24-hour
cycle
and recycle
and revolving
round day v night,

And/or 
appreciatively regarding both day
and dualdark
rich and fertile 
souled and soiled
recycling night.

So too
my personal
and political
and economic
and ecological
and theologically reformed...

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Is how it all began our beautiful thing we both knew it was arcade concealing it the way we did and was we wrong for protecting the jukebox the many simple pleasures hidden treasures would...

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Poems about Children II



On Looking into Curious George’s Mirrors
by Michael R. Burch

for Maya McManmon, granddaughter of the poet Jim McManmon

Maya was made in the image of God;
may the reflections she sees in those curious mirrors
always...

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FBI ALAN KING FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION CHICAGO FIELD OFFICE I ALWAYS KNEW SOMETHING WAS OFF WITH ALAN I MEAN AFTER ALL HE WAS ACTUALLY WORKING FOR WANNABE MOBSTERS CIRO GARGANO WHO TRULY BELIEVED HE...

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I sung all the night with the Devil,
It seemed harmony had found itself spooning with dissonance
Not indeed needing to be one or the same
Yes—the light indeed could sustain itself in the midst
Of what then was...

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To my sisters,
and narrow-way brothers,
in Jesus Christ
as Supreme UnitingWealthyStates
sustainable legal/moral Savior

I reached U.S. voting age during the 70s.
During this time,
the Religious Right
and Republican Party Center
were about the same place;
not distinguishable,
inscrutable, perhaps.

In strong conserving defense of...

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"I hope you enjoy this true story.  While I'm unable to emulate Hitchcock, the tale reminds me of that great director." ~ The First Grader

In 1965, on a corner lot, four or five children,...

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Thoughts can be thin fractures in the order of things.
Sometimes my dorm room seems a sterile sarcophagus, like an accusation, or an interrogation about my romantic choices, with nothing warm or inviting there. Sometimes I’ve...

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Now Regan and Megan were down on their luck
    and faced with little or no choice.
So with a quiet trepidation... a deal was struck
    and from now all would...

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* This poem was written for a contest originally, but was used by Professor Anne-Marie Thornton of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, to teach her WAR POETRY class in the spring semester of 2017. My...

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Her small angelic face ...

Once a place where broad smiles bloomed like butterflies on marigolds,
is streaked with the furrows that countless tears have etched into the
layers of dust and dirt and explosive residue that now...

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Shared enthusiastic curiosity
between two or more

May also become felt 
as mutually assured
active hope
we might make it through dinner
without seeking reparations
while digging our way
through emotionally deserted
dessert

Curiously lingering faith 
in progressive integrity
of bilateral co-passions
and possibly multilateral
spiritual inside...

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"Sick Art"



I walk the streets
still and quiet
I do not lie
I do not betray
what the heart belies
pickled kidneys 

I am a ghost
of my former self

ears lent to hear 
the sweet music
of the sounds so fraught
caught up...

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ODDLY I WORE WIRES PREGNANT FOR THE FBI BUYING WEAPONS AND DRUGS FROM CORRUPT COPS GANG MEMBERS SELLING DRUGS FOR GARGANO CRIMINAL GROUP OWNER OF LAKE COUNTY MUSIC COMPANY THE ARCADE HE RENTED JUKE BOXES...

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YangLeft: Those still capable of right thinking,
as our more civil
humane reflections
on bilateral political
and economic investment inflection,
sometimes cooperative
and democratically co-invested,
but usually just BusinessAsUsual
life remains a win/lose infested 
compromising 
ZeroSum political disempowering game 
deflection.

YintegrityRight: Sweety,
thanks for honorable...

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A pondering of multiple raindrops from a detrimental storm onto the empty fields, crashing into them as hard and loud as clashing metals. The depth and existence of love weighs over any deprivation an unexpected...

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