Long Runnels Poems

Word Fantasy in F Sharp Minor  (3 Movements)

1

(Andante con moto)

Hey man. Take this.

I got it last night,
under a fractured street light,
with shattered pieces of clear glass, scattered
at the nexus of an obscure dark freeway...

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this middle aged rue stirring bummer
   haint no stranger to cold,
when dark hen stormy wintry days
   eggs hit from Arctic portal en fold
ding Atlantic Seaboard

   in a blizzard of...

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(Sanatoga, Pennsylvania location)

I luxuriated as inkling of spring 2021
offered sneak preview today
March third as temperatures
reached low fifties Fahrenheit.

Yours truly began reading
one paperback book
(I purchased three),
and absorbed daily dose of Vitamin D
while secretly ensconced
within favorite nook.

This...

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Swans row the sky
just feet above the copper water.
Gulls twist their necks to watch 
a lone sailor on the prow
of a sludge-decked dredger.

On the slate thatched gambrels
of a lesser known roofs
spotters search for night bombers,
the...

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Yosemite’s Ephemeral Autumn Falls

Bald giants of swift water smoothed pale granite
Mark deep clefts for tumbling summer snowmelt
Rush released from frozen streams once frostbit
Silver swells - Ribbon Falls in pure ice melt -
Ephemeral streams slowed beneath...

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Orpheus' long, slow, crawl out of Hell
Has left him nothing -- not even himself!

Long had he traveled, sorrowing, with his bride,
and many terrors endured, and now

Unslings his lyre, and looks at her too soon!*
He rushes...

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A ticket pinned to the thigh reserves it,
the whole cadaver is parceled off - of course.
Legs are a late harvest, these often-indigent parts
carry a visual poverty long after the body is plucked.

Under watchful eyes the...

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On the subject of an unwanted water feature...

Water, water, everywhere
In rushing rivers down the wall
As loud as grand Niagara’s Fall
In to the Wobbly Bog
Pouring, pouring, endlessly
Insistent flow of running stream
Unwanted runnels carved through dream 
Swelling...

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A note pinned to the thigh reserves it,
the whole cadaver is parceled off.
Legs are a late harvest of the indigent.
Their limbs carry a visual poverty
long after the body is plucked.

In a small room, I separate
muscle...

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I awake, dull crusted in shadows,

to the swelling roar of hard rain on shingles
wetly dripp'd down rusted gutters,

air thick with cool moisture,
ozone sharp razor clean,

somehow, the sod grew a deep green coat in one night
as...

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London growls under the tread
of diesel driven dreams.

A stork visits,
an attic full of discarded toys.
White mice sleep in pajamas,
made of childish nightmares.

Barges reek still, just as when,
sweat was as common as dirt.

A window in Baker...

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Trenches

Clop !

Clop !

Ployp Plop !

Clop !

Is all I hear

Above my head
The ground beyond
Has vented its thirsty anger

Blop !

Is it blood ?

Drop !

In the pools gathers
Ruts of cloying mud

Drop !

Quiet now
Save for the rattling hiss
Of sneaking...

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A river folds upon its banks 
with waters deep and cold.
Its molten flow rolls endlessly
from aquifers untold.

It ripples over ancient stones
placed when the earth was cast.
Each sheared and formed the bedrock's course
'neath outflows bold and...

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You walk through my soul without 
removing your shoes. No matter how 
much I see you it's not enough so I 
ultimately I lose.

You track into my soul loneliness 
and grief. I want to see...

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Dinosaurs waiting for stone to erode,
their skeletons covered, uncovered again,
iron that's forgotten the blood where it flowed
and phosphorous leached from a primitive brain--

delicate sabers of soft-stepping cats
enshrouded in shimmering oceans of sand,
strata of relative sediment...

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He is out to spread his tentacles
In the face, of combative obstacles,
And dying to end through a tackle
Any unacceptable spectacle 
Between The Rickety and The Ramshackle:
Busy roads he’d started their channels,
Hateful robbers sealing off their...

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And down came the rain
in senseless disarray
     chaotic runnels twisting
in sullen contentious gray

tides high in tempest
pounding pounding
     wrathful turbulence churning
stinging riptide biting

then came the winds
bending trees to...

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