Long Smokestacks Poems

I was interviewing the Head Poobah
of our Norwick Public Utility CoOperative
and asked him
Where did the 22 percent goal come from
for acquiring renewable energy?
As compared to 78 percent from nonrenewable
and guaranteed increasingly costly electricity sources
like burned-out...

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Sunny, hot, humid, summer morning, taking my first train ride
 I'm so excited and it's thrilling can't wait to go north where it's cool 
to stay with my grandpa and grandma.
Ma and pa say I'm...

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Flings and wings and rings rejected…
 Cupid’s arrows fly deflected…
“It clearly is too late” she signed, “to love, adore or pay me mind”

Penciled lines drew cruel conclusions
mocking mirror’s cracked illusions…
Sometimes, in time, I hang awhile,...

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I've been doing my current job for 32 years; lots of travel, places and people.  A few memories stick out; my own Book of Hours, it would be almost one per year. 
 ...

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Everywhere I go, industry dominates this world
Vehicles run on diesel, 
Massive industrial complexes have many factories
That create a skyline of smokestacks
The heavens are filled with a gray only we have created
Man and machine have come...

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Smoke drifts from the smokestacks
On dark and gloomy days
Just before the first rains of Summer
Crates are collected and stacked
And thrown onto the conveyor belt
So they may disappear into the fortress

A robot sings songs of yesteryear
And...

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At the 5:00 whistle
When the sunset in late November
Is less light and more molten
Like a blast-furnace window
Glowing above the highway home

Goo spilling from its sparkling ladle
Bent
At the off-ramp’s arthritic elbow

The city smolders
Under
The backs and braces...

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When light goes from the sky, hitherto blue
And all seems so old and dead, except you;
And the cicadas’ concord ceases midday song,
And Orion melts, who erstwhile told the lie that nothing’s wrong;

Lament not, for smokestacks...

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Government officials, chasing me 
A peaceful Naked being dance on the street
Woke from a nightmare being chased by blind eyeballs draped in flags, 
City on fire, smokestacks, meat trucks, doctors of insanity.

I came to a...

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[starboard port]

the ocean—an onyx plate predawn—
somnambulant ships preen with a swag of
warning lights

massive hulls: cargo ships, flotillas, tankers,
passenger liners loll; red lights buss
the somber slate of sky—spangled strings of 
bawdy bulbs on the riggings—pole dance
beside...

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This is Graduate School

What do you expect?!!
This is graduate school!!
The girl, glowed in her importance!!
This work was important!!
And who did he think he was, shirking work!
Our importance is pivotal.
For without importance, we’d have no artifacts.
And...

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Reindeer racks, huffing and chuffing - smokestacks
                longing, like huskies, to run with shining
      ...

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Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire
smokestacks, waffles, pansies, people,
and purple sunsets.

                      ...

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THE SMOKESTACKS OF AUSCHWITZ
A trail of smoke fades to an autumn dawn
as sounds of morning break unearthly still
arising to the day, some life goes on
while others have the fear it never will.

Some ashes drift about...

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THE SMOKESTACKS OF AUSCHWITZ
A trail of smoke fades to an autumn dawn,
as sounds of morning break unearthly still,
arising to the day, some life goes on,
while others have the fear it never will.

Some ashes drift about...

Read More

THE SMOKESTACKS OF AUSCHWITZ
A trail of smoke fades to an autumn dawn
as sounds of morning break unearthly still
arising to the day, some life goes on
while others have the fear it never will.

Some ashes drift about...

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Of her gifts of nature,
once pristine flowing streams,
her green and blue majestic presence
in the infinite universe vast reaches,
My Jesus Christ left her in our care,
we must act now, not later-
for her survival.

Her earthly soul mourns...

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THE SMOKESTACKS OF AUSCHWITZ
A trail of smoke fades to an autumn dawn
as sounds of morning break unearthly still
arising to the day, some life goes on
while others have the fear it never will.

Some ashes drift about...

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The two-lane road stretches
through a shimmering glaze
to the horizon, passing
smokestacks of mesas spewing
clay and maize in vaporous mass.

I hear the sibylline whisper of rain 
through emerald brush
and serpentine hiss
of slithering sand.
The acrid smell permeates
evergreen and...

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