Long Slugging Poems

General Cornwallis of Great Britain
faced a problem that he couldn’t resolve,
he’d won at Camden, they’d captured Charlestown,
but still the southern colonies wouldn’t fall.

Instead he faced a string of reverses,
lost at King’s Mountain and then at...

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...He reformed the routing patriots,
formed a line atop a rise, Perrine’s Hill,
brought in General Knox and the artillery,
commanding the mass through sheer force of will.

He needed to buy time for the main force
to march on...

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Geena Davis in Cutthroat Island

Generously endowed with spunk and spirit, GEENA 
Engaged a most unusual leading lady role.  And DAVIS 
Ever so skillfully brought the audience right IN 
Not one scene was lacking and...

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He’s got holes in his boots 
and he’s wearing tattered old jeans
The state of his worn-out clothes
borders on obscene
He hasn’t had a home-cooked meal
in more than a year
You’re just too busy gambling 
and slugging down...

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Operation Barbarossa 
the panzers start to roll,
Breaking out from Poland’s Baltic,
towards Sevastopol, 
Ten million soldiers strong,
go goose-stepping east,
The Fuhrer’s Wehrmacht, 
alongside his waffen SS elite.

No margin for error, 
nazi Germany’s biggest gamble,
Get this wrong, and...

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Rivers of bluesy-greyscale river 
flow through her understoried gaze,
sometimes too turbulent,
occasionally too still,
even for her Elder memory stream
with sluggish circulating economy
surrounded by surface-molding
way overly-competitive political
bicameral imbalance and equivocation,
or some days it just feels that way...

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Twelve rounds of excitement
Two rivals smiling in the middle of enchantment

The bell rang...
Both fighters were wild
Two rough hands still mild
The bell rang again -- end of first round.

Second round...
Gaiting horses, eluding kicks and punches
Baiting bodies,...

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This is a story that goes back some twenty years
To when with the Special Olympics I did volunteer
I worked with the older Olympians who were kind of rough
Caring for them by other volunteers was a...

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Derek  

Will you be able to bear it?  

First weekend in May  

And who the Yankees will play, 

Bringing slugging Louisville woods  

Tigers score if they could.  

In the Bronx...

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had s/he listened to his/her friends
who’d done their time prior
in the dives & clubs that the city
churned, or to those that were still
slinging slop to the fishes gulping down
at all hours of the day,
be it...

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.
-The Last Straw-

Sometimes he went too far
Shunning the sunlight, wading into the dark
swimming in places the sun couldn't find
shifting the wind to suit his own fall
speeding through life with his back to the wall
where he'd...

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Inside fleshy walls, wallowing in youth,
lava coarses corrosive through peeled licorice
onward, fleeing the thundering stone
vacillating at the center of a man slugging
elderberry wine, to become both numb and Dionysus. 
Yellow convertibles park on brown-banged boulevards
obstructing...

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Zombies ate my Christmas guests
Oh Lord you should have seen it
Don't know what the cops will think
But the neighbors won't believe it

Granny dodged and moved so quick
She ran like Herschel Walker
Just as it seemed she'd...

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Thinking of my ex, there is an ounce of pride,
Even though our opinions did sometimes collide.
He was a pilot, and a jack of all trades,
With a stubborn opinion that could not be swayed.

He was a...

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Those with time to the brink are on the irk.
Sincere toadies do not cast magic shirk.
People who have also been hugely hurt.
People tranced with the act of a flirt.

 Firmly, it isn't the genial people...

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Half-baked smiles, conversations disarrayed, high in poetry, I guess I’m nineteen.
Half-filled maturity, occasional fits of naivety, I guess I’m nineteen.

Eyes frenzied, tears anfractuous, it’s too dry, the environs, where to look, where to?
Voices seem distant,...

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Oh, Babe
Pitched for the price of infamy’s name 
Springtime sold
For the tempest of a bambino’s bane
Oh, Babe
Stadium-made gregarious grin
Pinstripe promises
Playing for shoddy orphaned kids
Oh, Babe
Squeezing pine tar calloused veins
Slugging sunshine
Into brokenhearted pennant panes
Oh, Babe
Champagne on...

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Within my mind neglected Goddess lies,
With foaming mouth and reddened eyes enraged,
She claws the lobes with needful shrieks and cries, 
This beast is rabid Aphrodite caged.
Her presence Mother Nature bargain gifted,
Appeasing Death to spring forth...

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How about this for OPENERS
You STOLE my heart away
With SIGNS of love and caring
A sparkling two way PLAY

You guys are all a HIT with me
You're WINNERS every time
Raising me in the STANDINGS
Such loyal FANS of...

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Weaving fine fibres of unripe
beliefs, from a fire base, a blue bird

scrambles, shading the stone valley.
There was no thrift for the cadavers.

The burnt relics were eating away the greens
of tearful eyes. Sun was slugging again.

A...

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A river flows through this fold of life,
sometimes too turbulent,
occasionally too still
even for older established streams
with sluggish circulation currency
nearly to our shore of oceanic
sea's streaming into one surfing surface
tidal stream,
our great river of rivers
flowing and...

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