Long Pleats Poems

Conditions were harsh out in Kansas,
For the children and Sarah and Paul.
Neighbors and friends packed up and were gone;
Headed west they could hear fortune's call.
Never sure year to year of the harvest,
So their talents were...

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Stood I there, that last day,
On an iron bridge...
An aqueduct by design,
Where, looking dreamily out over
The Ernes Lower Lough,
My compressed shadow 
Momentarily paused -
To contently recline:
Amidst coy Junes radiant beams 
of sweet benign!
All was stilled,...

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Tonight the act of naming fell through the floor.
We speak permeable solids inflect’d by light.
Things move indistinctly: a pine palette floats
momentarily from semi truck’s bed, crosses
its body with windshield; ovidian shift from a
Forest to an...

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It is an unseasonable March day.
My kitchen blinds are drawn against morning sun,
their slender slats like new skin protecting the body's vital organs;
eyelids before this rose-covered tablecloth as though the blooms
are the pale larvae of...

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“Pictures could not be accessories to the story – evidence – they had to contain the story within the frame; the best picture contained a whole war within one frame”. Tatjana Soli, The Lotus Eaters

“There...

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She Was Alone
My brother Joseph told me one day:
I ran to the beach in the need to be alone, 
Resting my head on the soft sand giving my 
Thoughts the permission to be free, even...

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Ooh a scented grape graphic. Now that's wisdom. Contained a logical pattern in a juice cup. Heron haven heaping. Wisdomstic of a Judas flaw. Consealed in Sanskrit. Heavenly heaping cream on a very large bun....

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                                  ...

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Am I the Assassin 
        or the Undertaker

                   For Palani...

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A Self-Tutoring Translation of RIMBAUD's Final Version " Vowels " in Contemporary Terms

(" Vowels " (final version, without the definite article, with the poet's corrections)  in RIMBAUD Œuvres complètes. Ed. by Pierre Brunel. Paris...

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It could have been a beautiful memory to write down

Walking hand in hand with mama

My long brown french pleats  bouncing in the wind 

My new red plastic boots ready to be shown.


Reaching high upon...

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Toy collector:

He holds the bear gently in his old wrinkled hands as he gazes into its kind beaded eyes. The toy collector sees love lined in its double stitches and his childhood in the busted...

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The rat tiptoed to the house, picks up a thread
While the soft spoken black cat is, still, in bed
Sleepy, but, she is to battle it, to win, for today
To gain her breath, in solitude, for...

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The great kilt.
“Och aye the noo”
TraIs the cat deid? –
 Has the cat died? your trousers are a bit short
 – like a flag flying at half mast
Liken my great grandfather did why don’t you...

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The Alphabet Contest
Sponsor: Alfred Vassallo

A Is For Anniversary

Their love story began on April twenty-third, nineteen forty-five,
    two young lovers vowed eternity before their family's eyes.

There were hard days ahead living through the...

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From The Lost Book of Tuberlantis
(Translated from the Spudscrit by The Potato of Terror)


Retrieved Passage 1:
Prologue

Many leagues beneath the sea
where the flat-winged sloth skate flies
lie the million fossil eyes
of Tuberlantis: drowned city.

There tuber groovers, bright...

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The Select Poetry Class

………………………………. the idea is to aver the overt statement
appear somewhere ……… even if it stultifies…
in rarefied realms sophisticate
………………… tuck the image in wayward
by all means deride the rhymer
………………. as the pen buckles...

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A Self-Tutoring Translation of RIMBAUD's " The Vowels " in Contemporary Terms

(" The Vowels " in the Paul Verlaine (first version) copy in RIMBAUD Œuvres complètes. Ed. by Pierre Brunel. Paris : Livres de Poche/La...

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Ah, luminous white she blooms a deceptive ghost  
lover of dark arts of charisma and night
moon seducer  logic diffuser  defense reducer  
user of dreams  abuser of romance
tempter-serpent twines and vines...

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"Heeling Mephistopheles" 

murdering crows
flies in on the bow 
of a Stradivarius 

strange webs cleared
from the mind of 
Machiavellian insolence 

insisting life written 
by dancing fingers
pressing monochrome

due diligence for justice
wrapped in blankets of 
cloudy deliverance

tack a...

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I remember that boy standing there in the outfield grass,
Waiting and watching so no ball would pass.

He was in right field, or was it center or left?
I only know he played each with its own...

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Strolling Nungambakkam’s dusky evening street,
The serpentine vehicles queues hold them as each other they coyly greet.
Ina foreign tongue they converse, so mystically sweet,
Melodies tingle in my ears with rhythms upbeat.
Chennai ladies, Chennai Lasses………
Ear stud to...

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Her trembling twilight 
dims with streaking purple tears
bruised by youthful years of bleeding pain
hurting but never hugged --
locked in the arms of atmosphere’s apathy
that smeared with fiendish fingers
a contusing plum palette
across any hope in her...

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My uncle wears a dress
I heard my uncle talking
About his favourite dress,
And how he needs a new one
As its old and in a mess.

He says it`s frayed and tattered 
And the pleats are wearing flat,
So...

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Back when girlish daydreams rode the ether like coal-glowy-clouds
featly feet kept a beat in spring grass as I flounced with Romany wind
breezy-gypsy-lips brushed my cheek as I whirled in his arms
‘til I fell over on...

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