Long Slumping Poems

Dad, I remember well the night I grew up. 
I know you remember that night too...
   I know you never forgot this happening:
  
It was 1966, an early Fall night, around 10:30...

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Third level CCTV audio recordings
of the last occupants illegally departing the 
quasi-safe, Area 4, Sector 9 quarantine zone
— Seventh vol. of the Ghetto Chronicles 


We hate to see you all go,
good company is hard to...

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It burns and it stings.
It hurts.
More than drowning beneath 
the ice.
More than remaining in a 
kindled flame
She hits and I no longer cry.
Why mother, why? 

It burned and it stung.
The markings remained, 
returned, and were...

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The landscapes I paint have a fence or two
Some with pegs stout and straight
Some with bars broken and bent
A fence between the grey gravelly pathway 
And the flashy flowery garden swathe
Or between the rippling river...

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Light reading

We are striding into the new year with news 
of an earthquake that got people to sit up instead 
of slumping on the sofa watching a Netflix 
banalities
Inundated with film, one realizes most of...

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This place is tucked out of the way,
across river from the city,
most folks don’t even know it’s here,
and I suppose that’s a pity.

Maybe the truck-stop that it serves
is what drives some people away,
but their hash-browns...

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There are times, when I the pauper, pretend that I am King.

Power uncontested have I, the master of everything.

Beloved by all my subjects who adore me from afar.

Festivals honoring this miracle me, my name etched...

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It started with a blank canvas,
the life landscape I painted since,
shows a friendly fence or two, 
some with pegs stout and straight,
some with bars broken and bent,
a barrier between the rough pallid path 
and the...

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I catch a fleeting glimpse of her room from the hall,
my back slams lightly against the wall,
slumping listlessly, my anger out of control.
As she lies in her hospital bed, tubes patrol
in and out of every...

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At the capitol rotunda
Two senators faced off on
Gun rights versus oversight
Each side bunkered in
Intractable, their way to win
Sharp tongued irate debate
Open thinking went kerplunk

Head to head, noses pressing
Like two rams rutting
One grabbed a neck
The other...

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			Naked death


…the barred and sealed cattle wagons
							disgorge
at the Konzentrazionslager
						            the faux pas relief
    from urine mud faeces sweat and tears
unkempt armpits...

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You’ll know when it’s time to go home or to stay,
When flight seems much better than standing to fight,
When the hair in your beard is starting to gray,
When oncoming headlights are glaringly bright,
When it’s no...

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Inside my house – inside myself
Hushed in the reckoning of my living 
I drift in streams that have taken me here.
As I contemplate my age, my years,
Now belied by restful wisdom
I am complete and unalterable.
I...

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For Angie



The hallways rotated over and around me, maybe it was that aged smell of antiseptic affecting my equilibrium...
Trying to keep my feet, bracing the wall of the room she was assigned with my hand...

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I heard a weakened, hap tumbling
I had fell, I am falling
Someone here please catch me
I’m brittle boned can’t hardly see
Don’t quite know what’s wrong wit me
Got dizzy

When I thought of the fallen
Thinking of me falling
Much...

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This is a monument.

It was born from us a town illegitimate; we never married.
 A great hall of artifacts, plucked still-gunked from our livers,
Others clean-picked from our birdy bones.
 Over there you had loved me,...

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Hammond Clark, drifting in bare feet, clad only in
his spandex boxer shorts, took in the wreck of his kitchen.
"This tastes like nuclear waste", he thought as he nibbled on 
tid-bits left over from his sister...

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Not For Contest

Note-Again Connie reads the contest rules after she writes the poem,
missing the fact that the poem should have ten lines or less. I told you
I'm walking on eggshells.






Why do all the chickens lay...

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When our paths all start to part
And the sun shatters the dark
And everybody's dreams
Start to manifest

I'll be waiting here alone
Clutching strongly to my phone
In a haze
And slumping back to rest

So don't worry
I'll remember our best

When...

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Confusion sets in
Along with it the sense of vertigo and spinning wheels
Tumbling end over end and from side to side
Slipping through the cracks in the floor

I’m lost again
Forgotten all over again
Unforgiven one last time
And still...

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Her hands gnarled and knotted
slumping as she walked
some called out when she was spotted
her shout name was Lady Dumpster
as she staggered along, she talked
folks tried to help her—she balked

When she was a girl, she was...

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Altarwise-Hum 
Nick Rush 

When it’s late enough to hear locusts love
East of altarwise, humming. 
You can see the somber moon fade away
Sunshines duty coming. 
The sun grows ever-meeker now
As night is blending dusk with day
The...

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Its raven skin follows without a 'woof,'
no bark no bite,
darker than a shadow in sunlight.
It reflects in the mirror,
staring with 'Edgar Allan Poe,' ebony eyes.

At dawn it's at the bedside,
wanting to wander into the morning...

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Coffee Addiction

Calibrating coffee homeostasis flows easily back and forth

On the ‘high’-way of instant craze and crave of gratification

'Feodor' true to his name slurps the divine gift all day to rise

From moody withdrawal of night slumber...

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The Writer's Book Bag


     When I looked done,
     The bags were all around.
     Scattered on the floor,
     Obviously bought...

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