Long Retracts Poems

Written in summer of 1976.


I used to eat my lunch with groups
of businessmen from Campbell Soups.

We drank a drink at lunch each day
Of Coca-Cola mixed with hay

And talked of pending corporate plans
And willow-haired orangutans.

I spent...

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The Deception of Free Verse: Dreams I, Translation of Etiemble’s L’imposture du vers libre by T. Wignesan 

(From René Etiemble’s only poetry collection: le Coeur et la cendre: soixante ans de poésie (the heart and...

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Tears in the Crowds

A tyrant on a corrupt throne 
A sheep about to become a genetic clone
A weary traveller far away from home 
A heroin addict on methadone

Graveyards of peace and quiet lament 
An ungrateful...

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In my life I often feel I am alone; alone in my thoughts, alone in my musings, alone in my day-to-day movements and unsatisfying activities. I move like a ghost through hallways and down sidewalks,...

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The Question, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : La Cuestion

				« …Oh ! God, Oh ! Centre »*

		for Vicente Puchol

(* Note by the editor, Alejandro D. Amusco, attesting that the above quotation was not included in...

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These are modern English translations of the "Xenia" epigrams written in collaboration by the German poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, plus an elegy Goethe wrote for Schiller...

These are selected XENIA epigrams with...

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In the garden of eternity, where the spirit blooms like a vine of mystery,
We tread, unknowingly, on steps of time hidden beneath olive branches.
As the lifeblood of our finished thoughts dwindles, our lives, clusters of...

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THE BOY KING

Oh youthful monarch of Egypt, so young to die and yet live again.
In the nether world a Pharaoh's golden death mask is lain upon
A boy king.
In silences crypt a stilled figure lies in...

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Yond the Book of Judges, uncover the smudges,
Samson and or Shimshon, a Nazarite vowed, son,
Delilah deceptor, Philistia's daughter,
The lipstick was preying, weight lift also praying,
The black widow spider, spun her web of desire,
Weakness met the...

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by Michaelw1two

 The bond between, mind’s words once penned
 and heart’s truth; exasperated thoughts
 expressing mind’s din, or clarifying those
 mixed deep within unconsciousness
 and callous dream; one’s shadowy scene
 crying out doubt, into redemption’s...

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the fluffy combo of yellow lab &
something else that 
you just can’t put your finger on
(let’s say 80% of the prior & 20% of the latter)---
he sits at the sliding-glass door,
poised to pounce---
ironically in that...

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    Updraft lifts limbs, leaves scurry like mice exposed
    Mother Nature shakes shorebreak, incline imposed
    Gnaws at sand buried tree toes gnarled, spit polished 
 ...

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Your disconsolate hollow eyes continue to stare straight through me
Your mind has transformed loved ones into strangers
You see only a haze of people coming and going
Words whispered affect you not
Nothing spoken can affect the puzzle...

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A problem to most men and A dynamic explosion to anything I paint orange
The missing link is always overlooked, of course I'm Intellegent enough to say it loud, I never fear the unknown and the...

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Rather for the taking than sharing, sharing just a little to know,
Pulling the wool over my eyes, and using it for his show,
With just a sprinkle of depth, and a dash of compassion in his...

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Gently he walks in tall 
silently, you know he wants to talk 
deeply as soon as his thoughts are nursed 
swiftly he then starts to converse unlike before 
sincerely through his words he's been through...

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FAREWELL MY LOVE!

Farewell my love, i must return home, a loner
The moon wanes and below, descends the horizon
A galaxy crowns the looming of a gloomy sky
At the backdrop remains glint of our yesterdreams.

Farewell my love,...

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I
On the first day of the second week
Creator said, "Help me help the meek,"
Maybe She meant the gentle sex
To empower every lady called "my Ex,"
With hyenas, then, he turned tables: shreik!

II
With Hyenas, there's laughing both...

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Dark night of the soul
questions our life role.
Echoes return not;
our heart is fear fraught.

Plateau after peak
is what makes us weak.
Plunged in an abyss,
we feel not God’s bliss.

Having been and seen
heaven’s pastures green,
outer world mundane
now drives...

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SERVITUDE TO PRIDE
See,
Our love that once
Like an inferno burnt,
Now, like an ember smolders,
And beyond kindle by pride has become.
Our psyches by pride wreathed, in loneliness
Our hearts writhe and our mirth into myth retracts.

Without,
A serene heart...

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Day's royal blue canopy fades into the outer recesses of space and time
As hoary sun sheds its fiery cloak for a deeper hue
Gilding light retracts its flaming parasol to horizon's edge
Last burning ember coalesces into...

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Everything revolves around Nothing
Absolute Inconclusion
I am Cold and I am Rejected
Not Once… But Every time I hurl my love on an Unsuspecting Soul,
it seems that they are not Aware… not Ready
This Cold expands from the...

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"A Hornswoggling Charmer" 


Sweet chet by day, cheats by night, He creeps,
he heats, he strays. My greet, fought in spite cause.
He’s up the dense, watching his prey- a nerd.
Poor thing, better run quick, ‘cause watch,...

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so suffocated in this state i call hate
you could look at me and not notice a single tense muscle
because underneath this frown, this fool-proof smile there’s anxiety, depression and it’s keeping 
me down
i can’t acknowledge...

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I’m going to make you feel my pain,
I’m sewing hate,spool of misplaced thread,
Stitch my view, mistakes fed,
Wish I knew how to heal my head. 
In my lane, going insane, never thought my thoughts would cane...

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