Long Rat hole Poems

I 

See the phone towers with the lights- 
Glowing lights! 
What a world of mischief and sorrow their pattern foretells! 
How they twinkle, twinkle, twinkle
In the icy air of night! 
While the clouds that are...

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carving their names on the world’s flesh like scars,
they won’t waste their breath on the news of dead men.
if there are things humans should learn, it is how to
leave their emotions out of the equations...

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Cedars whisker the ditch along Possum Branch Road.  Such small little fellers, hardly worth calling a tree.  Some say haints put a spell on the whole two thousand arcres.  Maybe so, maybe...

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The Ivory Tusk Carry Me Home

On an island in my mind,
waves of despair roll in and out.
It never ceases.
An albatross plays the piano,
my last song and dance.
It's sad.
Even the filthy rats cry.
I muse, 
I develop...

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The only thing that exceeded the dinginess of this rat-hole bar was its stuffiness. I
stopped in the place to make change for a parking meter just outside its door. God! It was
awful in there, and...

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Spring carried its call on that May morning;
From churning the fields, to felling the pine;
Each homage attested was carded in prime
And they marched into War without warning;
Singing deep from within to their strides of rhyme;...

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I heard your voice first
while you were sitting behind me
on the second row in grade nine class
The moment I saw you first, 
I felt a volcano booming, inside me

I heard you criticize my school,
comparing it...

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OGUNLABI OLAJIDE YUSUF-NativePen 004
PRISON WALL
TIME OF THOUGHT:3:00PM
DATE OF THOUGHT:24:12:2008

Tall wall surround me
Several attempt seems impossible
It’s just too tall to climb

Ever pointed gun at the walls
By the men in uniform
Oh all eyes on me
Oh when will...

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The dark dinginess of the room
And its odoriferousness;
Obviously, it wasn’t broomed
In an age, the place was a mess.
The odor was suffocating
And it needed ventilation.
Unfit for a human being
and beyond my expectation.
“One lives in this filthy...

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In an old house by the hedge on the cold ledge of the hill
A slim dainty lady of seventy had prime time plenty to kill
Sitting on shaky chair heavy watching TV by the fire place...

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Give me all that you want for yourself,
I seemed to say it to all and all times,
they seemed to say about the same to me,
where do we go from here,
Is it really a zero sum...

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My main goal in 2022 was to clean out my enormous bedroom mess.
There is a stack of boxes beside my bed which is now under a pile of stuff.
Pieces of a variety of things stick...

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In an old house there once lived a black cat
From half a mile she could smell a fat rat
She was too lazy to run
Liked to spend time in the sun
Lounging on worn out red and...

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