Long Sloped Poems

Unique: I need someone to hold me and tell
me it's alright.
I need someone to hold my hands and feel
my pain.
I need someone to kiss away my pain.
I need someone to look into my eyes and...

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Note to Readers of Previous Versions:
There are so many new vignettes scattered throughout the poem that I hope you will reread the whole thing! There are new GEMS, improvements to previous verses and improved footnotes...

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THE RISING HILLS, THE SLOPES, TO QUENCH MY THIRST.
In the last century, the hopes were little,
Grasses they collected, yellow bananas, they peeled,
To move up the slopes, preparation was fore filled,
Oh the grower of banana trees,
To...

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It was an early fall day, some decades ago, 
When three of my boys were still young.
Looking forward that year to the Rochester Fair,
An event that was always good fun.

A promise from me I would...

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The Columbia is a smooth beast that has introduced us to a semi tropic clime
that produces a bewildering humidity even for November
and a panoply of tree types that canopy the mossy turfs
from a sky that...

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The location of the Spring Creek School was on a flat, nestled 
between the cliff on the north and the Little White River on the south.  The river 
flowed in from the northwest, circled...

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13.
Together we are until sunrise, 
as the sun rises you and I must part. 
When we must part it is not a surprise, 
you must know I shall keep you in my heart.

Through daylight hours...

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Nature made convenient sluice, 
when pool water did wend
     down the gentle slope 
     describing gargantuan wetsuit vend
 
er steadily chugging, chiseling, 
    ...

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It’s so difficult to sustain the life 
in this senseless-tiresome-dry world, 
and that’s why I decided to fool the world to ease my life.

I took my head out of my shoulders and put it on...

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You wore a green shirt, 
as I remember. 
It was bright and lit up your eyes.
Your smile scrunched, your eyes narrowed
sweetly, like you knew what you were doing.
You sat to my left, I was scared,...

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The other day a memory I hadn’t thought about in years came to me
from wherever my memories are stored…
as I helped push a man in a wheelchair in through the hospital doors.

Back when I was...

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T’was the night before Christmas
And in his outhouse
Sat Ja quietly listening         
To waltz’s, by Strauss.  (Really, he was leafing thru Penthouse)

His shitter was fitted
With all manner...

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He remembers when his many bolts
weren't ringed in rust,
and his seams weren't blackened
with years of grime and dust.

The post upon which he sat
was gray and weathered now,
and had become just slightly
west of plumb somehow.

The screw...

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The recovery from life at seven is so trying. Having witnessed
your brother being taken to heaven. What future can a child see
through cascades of tears, what future does a parent explain to 
allay his fears....

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The road's slant design, heaves us towards a gorge,
The mound split opened some centuries ago creating the chasm
Safe enough room for a photo opportunity soon to emerge,
Engine off, I secure my iPhone, lastly, seat belt...

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A chilly mist hung in the air that Sunday morning in April when I pulled up in front of Harpers Grove Community Church. The gravel parking lot was rapidly filling up, and folks, nodding cordially...

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Somewhere in the general melee
we lost our imaginary horses,
                          ...

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Somewhere in the general melee
we lost our imaginary horses,
                          ...

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A Leafy Land

      To the North and East, green sloped Downs above
      The Weald* of Kent. Beneath, the Pilgrim’s Way
     ...

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I feel your pain
smell the swelter that rises on a
Louisiana afternoon in a wooden slave shack
hear chains in the metal sweat box,
a human bake oven,
plantation camps
fueled by the intense heat of a day’s hatred
children working
shiny...

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Canopy’s aperture, spilled light’s nuance, tinted,
as my eyes arrested, to attest fall’s saga…
A tree proclivity, had me stalled in Ashland, 
watching the leaves succumb, leaving stark limbs barren…
Those with temerity, plunged at high speed, head...

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Monet in 1893
   acquired a house in Giverny
      with a garden that sloped  
             ...

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grappling thoughts
on the edges of dusk
my mind as full
as this moon
rising up

I watch
mesmerized
from the window's panes
as the sky erupts
in crimson and mauve hues
as the blushed moon rises
beyond the skirt
of sloped hills
just above the curves
of the...

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In draining sand I trace the line
the tide has made in bubbles, fine,

where scalloped wavelets sloped in foam,
halt the ocean’s wide roiling roam.

Pale seashells shimmer in bright sun
and tiny crabs sport sideways run;

whitecaps dancing, turquoise...

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The park sloped  to a river  behind  trees
 The other side was a large burial ground
Where my father’s body lay, bereaved

In the flowered park we sat and grieved
We heard the thwack of...

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