Long Over a barrel Poems

I woke up in the middle of the night with tears running from my eyes. I woke up in the middle of the night because my spirit cries
It is not the tear that falls when...

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I see people moving, but going nowhere
I see people moving with their hands thrown in the air
I see people moving but they have nothing to share
Bags and pans, old kettle, and old man
The scavenger, the...

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Zen Death Haiku

Brittle cicada shell,
little did I know
you were my life!
—Shuho, translation by Michael R. Burch

Returning
as it came,
this naked worm.
—Shidoken, translation by Michael R. Burch

As dew glistens
on a lotus leaf,
so too I soon must vanish.
—Shinsui,...

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Today, catching sight of the mallards
crying over Lake Iware:
Must I too vanish into the clouds?
—Prince Otsu translation by Michael R. Burch  

This world—
to what may we compare it?
To autumn fields
lying darkening at dusk
illuminated by...

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THE INNER CHAMBER

Please.  Stop holding back on me.

Like a child standing at the neighborhood ice cream truck, arm outstretched, eyes huge, mouth watering.

I stand here longing to slip underneath your decades of cold-rolled steel...

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justice 

What does this vastly misunderstood word mean to you? 

Too what ends? 

May we seek? 

Who(m) may guide us? 

Endless deliberation (spiss spiss spiss)

Debated and glorified by us all 

Beloved; instilled among (a) core...

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February 29th, 2024

Alternately titled: 111th leap year since 1582
the year Pope Gregory XIII world leader
(i.e. essentially paterfamilias among
Roman Catholic flock)
timely maneuvered around calendrical rock
and hard space implementing
viable system tracking years ad hoc
out of sync and...

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UNCLE ELDON 


Now that I am old,  I see more clearly through my mind's eye, than I did in my youth, all those special people who played such a wonderful part in my life....

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"The Precipice"



In the Autumn 
she wore a wedding veil
A cold winter would lift it
Kiss her lips passionately to 
speak words of 
LOVE
on a 
late roll call

“Well, that’s insanity for you” 
some snakes would hiss
others rapture-faced
on...

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WINTER, 1948 [40 Saxton Street]

for W.W

The winter nights that pass now
are so unlike the winter nights
that passed before, that I often
struggle back in those suspended moments
when sleep grapples for a hold,
to once again hear the...

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Raid versus woe

Black flag(s) show up
on social media platforms
when potential homicidal maniac(s)
communicate(s) intent to strike
with ambush and ready
read - able, eager, and willing
to embark upon murderous rampage.

Prospective killer armed to the teeth
usually a young bucking...

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Pardon any absent adulation, bequeathed capitulation, devoted dedication, indiscretion, blabbering peroration, improper salutation or any unintended vexation if this unknown earthling sent a nearly identical message. He over-looked a small number of errors and hoped...

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Ya' gotta feel sorry for this ding-bat - 


The clouds were drifting eastward through a cool late-evening sky, as I was barreling down a road in eastern Tennessee. 
Whipping through the traffic in a new...

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I blame me brother for the likes of this predicament,
when we pub crawled up to Bunyip, and where our night was spent.
Thank God I wasn’t in the driver’s seat, ‘cause we wouldn’t be alive, 
but...

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Self help addict needles unsuspecting reader 

Expounded late today April 27th, 2023
since being written
countless years ago
maybe a baker's dozen
as thee doodling cock doth crow 
scouting about for carrion 
scavenging for dead animals 
and rooting about...

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The next day. It was iffy everybody 
Was tense. The Hakim family was
Distrustful of The Black China Men. 
Early morning 8 am Friday. 
Damali rose from his slumber 
First followed by DJ Desharah
And Amadeus. 
They...

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The world that unfolds before me is unknown, but for some reason it is mine. Yes.
Anyone could say that my life is monotonous. But not. I protest. This is not true. Only mine.
No one just...

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Mine courtship and marriage with deadly obsession...

As September daze will soon arrive
recollections from a 
psychologically checkered  past
loom large recalling  
tragic storied days of mein kampf.

Circa early nineteen seventies:
As a mere slip of a...

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Spring equinox arrives March 20th, 2023 at 5:24 PM

Despite what outside temperature registers
(even absolute zero), the official arrival
of spring occurs, when thee eel hip tic
of coe phish hunt holy Mackerel
becomes tangential to barenaked ladies 
barren...

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With the morning crisp and frosty
    and the Earth yearning for autumn's heat.
Darkness gave way to a fractured dawn
    as the Sun rose in the East.
The forest became warm...

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… as I child I heard these words by Immanuel Kant from my late Dad

over and over again …’you must act in a way that if everybody did it

your thinking and deeds could be the...

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[My recent poem ‘The Dimly Lit House’ received a
Comment from Charles Messina that it could be a Tom and 
Jerry episode… what can I say? Something went ‘Ping!’]

       ...

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The Job

I got a plane to catch in the morning.  8:15 AM out of Austin, destination Orange County, CA.  Never cared much for California and I don’t think anything about this trip is...

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Blood spilling in the east running all the way to the west
Forming rivers of doubt in the north and South
An army of men converge along the river bank
With long guns strapped to their sides
And big...

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(alternately titled: Typical daily mindset today – 
July 17th, 2020)

The following words
mostly unredacted, nevertheless finessed
for curbed poetic/prosaic appeal
lock, stock and barrel
codify, and edify (hoopfully not mortify)
any reader unbeknownst and/or familiar
with unsteady state of yours truly,
(an...

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