Long Persuaded Poems

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...

Read More

Wounded Sacred Dementia

My last foster care-provider
and -receiver story
is also a sad story
of my last special needs adoption
of bipolar born,
and oppositionally reared,
alcoholism.

My BiPolar Wounded Child
turned an auspicious five
on the day I first saw her,
and promptly rejected...

Read More

Additional free advice to those* who would be King from the THIRUK-KURAL with Commentary
[*like presidents, prime ministers, dictators of declining (falling or fallen) nations or even empires]

K442: urranOy niikki uraa amai munkaakkum
   ...

Read More

The Trial 5

Workers in the courtroom were making last minute sitting arrangement for Poetry Soup’s poets who have been following the case.  

Their comments after reading the transcripts, were seen by Love.  She...

Read More

“The Splice of Life”



When colour 
was to be 
washed out
of the world 

the evil ones 
didn’t care

the Actor led 
with his 
Dementors 
either side of him

Laundry, 

they resolved 
to be the best 
pristine method 
for...

Read More

Jefferson’s Reply to Rev. Jonah Stoughton


					Monticello
					July 1, 1826

Sir, I have before me your letter of 
the second of June, and I thank you warmly
for having taken the time to write me. 
I have read it...

Read More

World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems II - Bertolt Brecht



The Burning of the Books
by Bertolt Brecht
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned, 
teams of dull oxen hauled...

Read More

“I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed” (Sonnet XLI)
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair,...

Read More

I have slept but I have not slept
I have not slept but I have slept
For the first time in two years
I slept without a word of care
No codes, no crossroads
No railroads, no shiploads
No lizards no...

Read More

Date:   April  2050

Same day:  
Damian walked with 
Godfrey Barrington Shadir and Matthias 
Isiah the others across to the
Other side of The estate to visit Desharah 
Damali and Sedanah. Arrival was
Swift. Damali...

Read More

"It is known that the Bible, in its hundreds of different translations, is the most widely distributed book in human history. The bible has been enormously influential, and not only among the religious communities that...

Read More

I grew up and out on a four family-owned,
and cooperatively-organized,
extended matriarchal farm.

Four interdependent 1940s through 1970s patriarchally managed businesses,
without substantial questions about who should wear pants,
yet with a surprising matriarchal cooperative understory.

The boxers outnumbered the...

Read More

I want to respond
to the retired Marine
who watched Democratic Congressional Leaders
during the State of our crippled Union event,
disappointed at how their patriotism,
their loyalty to sacred sacrifices of soldiers
appears too tepid,
jaded,
ungrateful
as compared to more thunderous enthusiastic...

Read More

It was a strange and unexpected experience.  

Suddenly, I found myself in a place called Happy Valley. A man was on a park bench gazing upon the trees as if listening to a particular...

Read More

Nylon waste is often akin to a brushed out stable, manger, or stall. But brushing the carpet is often a resemblance of a swirling cloud of dust and tobacco shards and tobacco shards are not...

Read More

baseball, bird, change, childhood, games, holiday, lost,

“Seasonal Walks in the Park!”

A walk in the park after a springtime morning rainfall 
Is to hear the droplets fall from bent branches overhead
That can shock and moisten one’s...

Read More

"Laureate"



Laureate 
speak now lofty phantom
to my mind

guide my hand 
I write I write I write

receptor of communication
things that are not mortal
Luminiferous aether 

sublime 
not normal writ
medium calculating in the script

In that other time
there you hold...

Read More

It was an early fall day, some decades ago, 
When three of my boys were still young.
Looking forward that year to the Rochester Fair,
An event that was always good fun.

A promise from me I would...

Read More

One day in early summer Murphy the Irishman came to town,
He rode upon a matted mule , his face was burnt and brown,
The corks that hung from his bushman's hat persuaded flies to keep away,
But...

Read More

Long ago, a long layover in Tokyo persuaded 
my flying partner and I to venture out to
visit Disneylando, as the locals called it.
We started out early in the fog about 8 a.m.
We had our map...

Read More

(A SHORT COMMENTARY ON THE 21ST CENTURY CIVILIZATION)  


This story goes on to throw light on the 21st century civilization. And in that political era, the religious and political atrocities, which ended up as...

Read More

Fear haunted me, taunted me, daunted me. I was not the overcomer, but the overcome. Fear played with me the way a kitten might toy with a mouse, eventually leaving the mouse despondent, discouraged, darkened...

Read More

PRELUDE
There has always been animosity between Greece and Turkey as far back in history as we wish to go.  Greece was occupied by the Turks during the Middle-Ages for almost 500 years.  My...

Read More

My LeftYang eye and ear,
and maybe throat
and hand
and probably vocational foot
remain adamantly persuaded

My most successful time for deep ecological listening
and watching
is immediately after inhaling a vast theological lungful
preparing to speak my WiseElderness
into the remaining yin...

Read More

Come join the unraveling circus
quite soon to be passing our way,
with the clowns in a clamor to twerk us -
line up as they lead us astray!

Arriving, the elephant trumpets
agendas of aberrant acts
while the donkeys drool,...

Read More