Long Pulpits Poems

“Forever”



When The Terrors came,
The Uncontrollable Ones,
she closed her eyes
and listened for the notes
her mother had planted
amongst the deep blues,
beds of Forget-Me-Nots,
she followed the 
labyrinthine trail 
and through a gate unhinged,
it would seem destroyed, thrown aside,
she...

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Cascading off the winter chill
leaving warmth wherever it traces
the edge of the daffodil, tulip or crocus
spring shines its brilliant rays across
the windowpane that mirrors the friendly praise
coloring the seals with such sweet appeal 

lavender lilacs...

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Yesterday I heard a happy Republican
crediting President Trump's self-proclaimed successes
to his training and experience with consumer-driven accountability;
meaning,
I presume,
his for-profit experience with market-driven consumerism.

Now I realize this for-profit wealth of experience
outside Washington,
untainted by prior government experience,
appears...

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LETTER TO A SOLDIER
A Trilogy


I.  SONGS OF LOVE

Love walked with me
In the crisp fall air
In a shower of gold and red.
Love showed me the print
Of a doe’s foot
And where she made her bed.

Love sat...

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Cascading off the winter chill
leaving warmth wherever it traces
the edge of the daffodil, tulip or crocus
spring shines its brilliant rays across
the windowpane that mirrors the friendly praise
coloring the seals with such sweet appeal 

lavender lilacs...

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I HEARD THE WISE WORDS

The day wise words were spoken
It was over near the beaten path;
Where I first heard them uttered.
“Beware of the fool in his folly
Who may be clever in presenting his story;
Only for...

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I HEARD THE WISE WORDS

The day wise words were spoken
It was over near the beaten path;
Where I first heard them uttered.
“Beware of the fool in his folly
Who may be clever in presenting his story;
Only for...

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Gazing down along the zealously
Monitored borders of well clipped
Evergreen Privet hedges.
Standing watchful guard over 
Divisions
Re-enforced by concrete posts and
Darkly stained, wooden, wavy-lap 
Fences;
Age-old neighbourly disputes, petty
Grudges and childish jealousies -
Ably demonstrated by various
Patchworks of shabbily...

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Climate change,
like most,
if not all,
unwelcome change,
too often violent and deranged
and hopelessly redundant,
remains conservatively controversial
as to who started It.

Yet this issue of inheritance
fades into insignificance
when confronted by our tsunamic evidence
of who is secularly
and sacredly
responsible for healing...

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"Through the Vicious Eyes of Love"



All is fair 
in love and war

or so they say;

why so 
as saints,
mothers 
go through
the course of whore 
to feel torn in two
journeying
through gates 
that open 
unleashed pain -

then, at...

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I think about how to defend and protect
conservative MidWestern  and Southern women
from MeFirst grabby pastors 
and bosses,
bullies almost all growed up
within Patriarchal-Dominant root systems.

It must be difficult
for GoodNews nurturing Matriarchs
to take on religious education...

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THREE year olds know about circles. They play
ring around the rosy and here we go round
the mulberry bush. And if one should say 
that in reality nowhere is found
a perfect circle, they either don’t hear
or...

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the future cannot be but a computation
and that's where all the problems start
one after another all at once
how are your levels of satisfaction arrived at
personally generally universally consistently
how good is your math
how good can your...

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There stood the Good German. He is proud. There was also a man,
Behind the drab uniforms. The one who was plain, but whose,
Heart beat fervently and yearned for glory. When proud marches,
Passed his way, their...

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"There was a Great Silence"


There was a great silence in that place, a kind of peace,
you sensed them, the unseen removed, all around you,
yet, all the cacophony in the noise from that Other place
the unexpected...

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Oh America The Great, What Happened? 
You were the land of the free, the home of the brave, 
But now you are the kingdom of the lost, the empire of the depraved.
A nation built on...

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Where do bully pulpits go
when the only audience
right or left
is silence?

How would a narcotic Bully speak
after wonder and awed silence
return to anxious quiet
within a healing ecological culture
of intentional BadNews shunning?

How could these heated wounds
of belated...

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Heavy shootings and more,
Primitive lead Automatics and their ancient songs, Contemporary Lasers and 
these sights of your futuristic DNA-CONTACT-ELIMATOR and more,
Please lets speak to Rome....The very place the revolution will erupt,
Where in this filthy universe...

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BRUCE, HOLIDAY OR JOPLIN?

Just another genius junkie
Someone’s master and someone else's flunky
Just another genius junkie, man
Building crosses while cursing the inevitability of a plague
Writers both vehement and anything but vague
Some of them whose rhymes fell...

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“There shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth”,
I’d read it and read it again.
And I’d heard of it preached from all pulpits the same,
warning me of the crisis I’m in.

So, I pondered and...

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I  find solace among the trees
It's a very quiet place to be
Away from human interaction
buried in the heart and soul of the convention
Boulders scattered underneath the trees
spanning over many centuries
I wonder how they got...

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Blasphemy

The caustic tongues of the evangelists,
Across all creeds and faiths,
Seem as brittle as an old bone.

For they promise heaven and they spew forth threats of hell
While neglecting the words of that man who walked in...

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Worshipping in Nature's Sanctuary
by L. Milton Hankins

Johnny-Jump-Ups nestle into the forest floor mosses,
Along with dainty Jack-in-the-Pulpits hiding beneath
The larger fronds of swampy ferns soaking up moisture
From the dew-laden flowering branches of laurel
Where I find myself...

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"I read the news today, oh boy" - Beatles 

apocalyptic revelations spinning 'round inside my head/have me tossing keep me turning wide awake upon my bed/so much hating too much lying chaos just outside my...

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The rented hall ways so surreal.
Cheerful alumnus ranting sex appeal.
Forgive my dropping a time bomb.
Taking Mother to the prom.
Our student body didn't shake.
All others escorted steady dates.
A proclivity prom, above all others.
Our band encrypted, "The...

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