Long Shillings Poems

David Jones, the best rat catcher Shropshire has ever had
must take some criticism for young Molly turning bad.
Even though his daughter found rich co-incidentals,
no credit could be taken by rat catching Dad's credentials.

At nineteen she's...

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twiglets embrace as thorns and flowers

                             ...

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the episode took place near the sewer
the boy lay lifeless on the stiff ground
his white clothes dipping in red
a rowdy mob encircled him
like vultures awaiting the surrender of a fighting  spirit
his horrified eyes gave...

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Widsith the Far-Traveler, Part III
ancient Anglo-Saxon poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I was also with Eormanric for many years,
as long as the Goth-King availed me well;
he gave me six hundred shillings of pure gold
beaten into...

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WELCOME TO THIS SOCIETY
Welcome to this society where the feces is more than the toilets 
Welcome to this society where the bribes are more rampant in the church than in the street
Where security is GOOD...

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I volunteered for service in the RAF in early 1942,
When I’d just become 18 and got three shillings a day;
I became a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner right through,
And was then sent home to await training, the...

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Wanton women of Whitechapel
Desperate and destitute
Weakened from want
Shrunken stomachs barren of bread
Dying from disease in dingy dosshouses
Selling themselves on the streets for shillings
to buy beer, a bed for the night
or a bonny new bonnet
to enable...

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the groveler 

I.  finding out that the other party has in fact stopped the affection
finding out that the other party has found interest in another one of the over 7 billion humans living, breathing,...

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HARRY THE BREAKER
Harry galloped through the Mulga           (13% protien animal tucker)
On a game horse Bunga Din
The Brumbies galloping on Tolga
Were yarded with a grin
Every station...

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Cunning like foxes,greedy as hyenas,they looked at me;
With widened eyes and wet lips,ready to grab me,like an angry lioness; 
And tear me like a beast and swallow me like the shark that swallowed Jonah.
I had...

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When I was a little girl
My grandfather had a tin
With a sailor smoking a cigarette on the lid
It was what he kept his medals in

He called them Pip, Squeak and Wilfred
And I asked him what...

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I can’t walk out on this feeling,
The fat lady has just about sung the
Ultimate aria of her own selfish pain and loss.
The duality of my desires schism through my heart
Like a fuzzy scalpel, cutting and...

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Well, he's goofy and gangly and thin up on top
And his real last name once began with a "Cop"
But I don't give a hoot about all of that
'Cause his box office draw's made his wallet...

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As a very young boy of fourteen I set out one night through the week
To meet my girlfriend from Girl Guides, the beautiful Angelique

It was a dark and windy evening and just as I put...

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Father left, 33 was she-
The mother who had raised five children single handedly
Three left the country,
Now left with her are just me and my brother, see?

Mother closed her shop
So we can focus
And to stop work...

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As the beams in departure
darkness, they crawl slowly
taking charge and ready to rule
that surrounded shell above all
slouching in their aging gray
fresh again after sloughing its light
as plants in shift of their breath
and creatures, they creep...

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>What is poetry?  Other than words written by human hand.
In perhaps a language few understand.
For when translated, it may lose its intended flow.
My mind recalls the officer asking for reinforcements.  We are going...

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Smith and Wesson’s cool steel kisses my right temple.  I cock the hammer. The slow clicking of the cylinder’s turn is amplified through the barrel into my ear. Finger resting on the trigger; and...

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When I was a kid, I would climb up trees,
Was made to wear shorts and always cut my knees.
Played in the allotments, making tents from cloth and sticks,
Imagining we built a fortress made of bricks....

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THE DIE IS CAST
“I See,” said a blind man to his deaf Spouse, emphatically
I hear the S-rhetoric She replied Sarcastically
The symptoms and signs of Stagnation 
The Syndrome of intermittent Systems and Structures
Signing and later whining...

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"Even The Most Damaged hearts can be mended"
Like him, once a dying man
A death that he had created himself
Man made catastrophe, man made disease

He drunk alcohol everyday, the very cheap kind(kumi kumi)
The one that was...

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Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?

That I've been to London to see the queen?
Do you want that version I told your mom?
What went down was a much different scene
than the tale that kitten ate off...

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TIME MACHINE

The Clock has been set for 1955,
For a journey into my history book,
Time Machine fired up and primed,
So, lets travel back, take a closer look.

Step outside into a strange new world,
Outside the house where...

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NB - familiarity with the pronunciation of the British place names in this poem is essential to comprehend some of the lines - and to ensure the tongue twisting effect in parts.

The Seven Siren Sisters...

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AGE OF TEN

	Way back then when I was ten 
Things were so very different then
I wrote with ink in a fountain pen
Whenever we could we would build a den 
And I loved to help my...

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