Long Outcrops Poems

Mount Rushmore; Carved in Stone

From deep within the earth’s crust,
An orogeny pushes
The batholith upwards
To become ‘The Shrine of Democracy,’
Of weathered presidential faces
Chiseled in rock in South Dakota;
Representing 150 years of history
(From birth of a nation
To...

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*Image of Landscapes by Giphy.

Plantae I

I lie in my earthly womb
Unflowered cribbed in my ultimate bed
Bared to the encountering elements
Trifles steep their enriched parts
Distinct rain their confidences
Exert savored energies 
A nourishing obligates
'Neath the weight of...

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In the rugged mountain passes
Of the western Carolinas,
Just west of Hendersonville and east of Kentucky, USA,
In the land of the foothills and steep valleys down,
Exists a remote land forgotten in time.

Steeped in country legends, handed...

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My Response To Rumi

A composite man was this Rumi Mystic who penned ‘Spiritual Couplets’ thousands
                    ...

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How I love the  Wuthering heights rugged landscape
Of the wild savage moor
As I stand upon a rocky outcrops
High on a windswept Tor.

Under the  blue sky canopy before me
Lies sweeping lush green and tawny...

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As dawn peers over the edge of the sky,
In a space of the lonely kopjes and cacti.
Where God roamed to the edge of a scorched wilderness,
and stared into the vast land of nothingness.

HERE, STANDS A...

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The land is bare;
hard rock and exposed outcrops 
lay open, like the pages of
an unread book for the story
of time is beheld by every
grain contained within.
Time passes slowly and the
land remains the same but
seeds of...

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Would you rather the majestic pure white polar bear had a home
in this world or that Paul Ryan took a slow, slow boat to China & then 
turned around & came back, & then again,...

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On a patrol for the good so far from their home
Professional in their minds, never to roam

But this is a world, where feelings are forgotten
Damning souls of destruction fuelled with gun-cotton

For on rocky outcrops and...

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Withered leafless trees
Clinging to old roots
Sway fearful of the wind,
Murmuring among themselves 
With dull nonsense
About the rains.

The doltish deceive themselves 
That winter is a prelude to the Spring.
Have they ever learned the truth
Or have they...

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And when i climbed the mound of grass
The sun set at a stop
Birds came swirling round
Outcrops in the light
Waves crashed under, instability;
Glass houses and rocks.

I think i got there.
I think i managed, because i could...

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The swell and surge of surf 
whispers tinnitus conched
on titanium sunken tankers 
that rock restlessly on far reef,

as children play unheeded
building imagined bastions,
nursery rhymes drown
turning back cnut tides.

Inevitably, 
sand shifts in an hourglass
that plumb the...

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A violent scene lay before me
Huddled in death, there’s Ella, Mary-belle, everywhere I could see
Swollen tongues, sunken eyes, frail bodies strewn in the hot powdery dirt,
I sniff the sharp stench of death, I catch my...

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Carpet patterns 
and the swirlings of grain
in wooden floors were maps
to me of exotic worlds,
portal holes for a child
to enter and explore
places edged on the
furthest reaches 
of the fabulous.

Even today, as an old man,
I saw...

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There is something in us
that imbues landscapes
with substance or senses 
what is there hidden beneath
the camouflage of form.
It finds voice in myth 
and survives in the shadows
of the imagination, 
birthplace of our being.

It enters this...

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Large boulders piled high
stretch out into the bay
and form a breakwater 
that shields the beach 
from high waves 
and heavy swells rolling in
from southerly gales. 

I have stood there
at the end when the sea
was hurling...

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Fingers of light pierced the clouds caressing the moors
with life giving warmth, purples, browns and greens of
heathers mingled, blended, in a union of beauty. Yellow
of gorse splashed in the sultry, hazy spectre of natures
superb canvas....

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The mountains rose in its climb
 tall and dangerous outcrops created over time
the images imagined of earth and weather unrefined
 and hovering along the cliff's ledge
clung the vision of dismantled countenance and its edge.

A soul...

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The beach is peaceful this
Autumn evening, the odd
screech of a seagulls
jealousy as it scraps for
pieces of flotsam.
The soft slap of the tide
as it paws the shell and 
shingle, grey slate clouds
lumpy, uneven, as if 
someone...

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Lonely I reside inside a metropolis of tents,
not too far from an anthill of insignificance,

It’s little occupants take no notice of me
and why should they, for I’m insipid waste,

Growing weary and paranoid I prod the
anthill...

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BOUGAINVILLEA CITY

The city that enjoyed the floral name
 Is now a transformed spectre of its past
A semi-graced decline has changed its mien
Like comely lady reaching certain age
 But still today the Bougainvillea blooms

'Bougainvillea City' blossoms...

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Shores of sand, stones and rocky outcrops
weather willingly the welts of tide, wind and waves.
Eroding away, absorbing, expunging the rage and torrent
A rope-a-dope clinch in the tight, belittling the fight,
Slipping the sand compliant back out...

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You said - x Any feedback is good 
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the hills are alive and will stay alive even when humans are extinct
Sand dunes, sea breezes, rocky outcrops and mountain sides are often...

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Swaths of purple ripple, breeze blown, 
down the hillside to the water's edge 
as the early morning sunlight splatters 
her span with scattered diamonds. 
Majestic, as old as the granite outcrops 
surrounding her, she shimmers,...

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Swaths of purple ripple, breeze blown, 
down the hillside to the water's edge 
as the early morning sunlight splatters 
her span with scattered diamonds. 
Majestic, as old as the granite outcrops 
surrounding her, she shimmers,...

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