Long Snagged Poems

Playing Batman and Robin is a lot different

When the Riddler is your Stepfather

And simultaneously an alcoholic and pedophile

When your secret mission is to keep him

From bringing heroin and pornography

To Gotham city

 

Your mother wanted to...

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As I empty a bag and look over the donations in it
I think, “Geezus why; not even I would willingly take any of this!
If I didn’t work here taking donations, I’d throw it all in...

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"Oh, The places You'll Go!"

Dragon was in a slump as the kids all left to go back to school.
So I read to him:“All the Places You’ll Go!” by good Dr Seuss.
He loved “Oh, the things...

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Plagued with lifelong lower gastrointestinal Sturm und Drang

Ever since a young lad
irritable bowel syndrome
in my humble pinion wracked
lower abdominal area 
gurgled and ballooned gastrointestinal tract
(similar to following Colonoscopy preparation
slated for January 24th, 2024
at Phoenixville Hospital)
posterior...

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“Physics asserts that there are four fundamental forces: electro-magnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. These gentlemen have made a compelling argument for the existence of a fifth, desire.” Dr. Howard Pollison, National...

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Come with me in realty, 
as we weather an approaching storm. 
Dark clouds gathering 
like people coming to see a fight. 
And something about this thing doesn’t feel right. 
A flash of lightning and thunder...

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anticipatory anxiety fosters catastrophization...,

especially bombardment of online scare tactics
courtesy fiendish insidious loathsome sinister oafs
rubbing their hands at aggrieved party;
punch drunk cyber thieves ecstatic
acquiring by hook and/or crook
sought after precious, priceless, and proverbial data
after loosed ransomware...

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Weird "fake" news

This pencil necked geek
did hair thru the long grapevine
actually following false tidbit
originated within imagination i.e. mine,
while stationed at Macbook Pro
laptop - time already inching close

to hour of rise and shine
yikes still no bloody...

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Impoverished courtesy scam artists Harvey Specter

Entrapment videre licet fiendish
gnarly hustling scheme erector -
sent me to the poor house, where alms
not forthcoming to ease financial affliction,
where yours truly money matters still stymies
ways and means to relocate
to...

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Overzealousness and assiduousness...

now propels yours truly towards restitution
courtesy sophisticated mountebank,
whose criminal mind
filched mine banknotes
rationed for when I exhibit decrepitude.
Cutthroat robber baron
re: newly minted vandal
an alumni matriculated

from school for scandal
a sheep in wolf's clothing
said culprit I...

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Running on a few hours of sleep,
I decide that this is a good time as any
to empty out my thoughts

tilt my head to the right
and let everything flow out of my ear
into a bucket
*whoosh* just...

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Twas the darkest of nights in the prarie woodland
Little Red Riding Hood walked the raven strand

A steamy fog cut through the bleary bog
The rancid odor of vaporous springs did the air clog
A venomous frog full...

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This struggling accomplished path winds,
Spiral like stairs leading us to the point;
Average wingedhipsters today more like
Displaced thugs. With no sense.
At every corner, we're speaking rigorous
Reminders.

That we all eventually yawn.your wombs

America, I'm wore out, worrying about
This...

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“Where are you going?” Teddy asked, breaking in our conversation,
between Bulldog, ‘Newy’ and myself and noticed with his observation,
that the words of Phillip Island had been mentioned by us three,
so he gathered that we’re fishing,...

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It was back in nineteen-nineteen
when Timlin Rivers checked his traps,
by one he found just a weasel skin,
did not know what to make of that.

Why would bother to raid a trap
but leave the pricey skin behind?
Who’d...

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Mine Mean Mien, Hence Deserved Cross To Bare

Upon reflection of fatherhood,
onset of hands-on schooling 
fraught with narcissism
a role I lept in unaware 
with slim success
unknowingly portending how fatuous

frolics spelled ultimate doom
with theoretical strings attached,
when snagged,...

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(conclusion to previous "poem" here)

One afternoon, our home phone rang and I began, as usual,
a heartfelt chat with Sheila. My memory is dim.
What we talked of I can’t quite recall. I only know one thing:
I...

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I see it now
flying low
over silver-spumed waves.

I am a watcher
I can enlarge the picture
        zoom in
look into bright midnight eyes
        as...

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The Lie

I am an insect waiting to be squashed!

I stare hard at the ground
as if fascinated, enthralled by it
while, above, eyes of cold-cobalt  
wait to gouge and burrow out 
any self-belief that might still...

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We spent Christmas in Camas, Washington
With Aunt Lil and Uncle Carl on this run
Carl owned the town’s only sporting goods store 
He knew local fishing; where to catch more 

Carl said, “Steelhead fishing is very...

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Dark space
               Cold 
           &
inexorable
    soul
  ...

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I bent over to touch my toes
               and the ground tore open like a backbone.

I tried to feed myself the sky;
to...

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(a salvation for my then junior high school youngest daughter afflicted with cognitive dissonance, who over the intervening years (mor'n half dozen Earth orbitz  ago), I dashed off this poem witnessed nothing short of...

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Hot August, 1974, I was back for my second year at college,
having just settled into a new place at Anita Apartments,
right next to the guys’ apartment complex called Tanner’s.
My first night, we answered a knock...

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It was a century ago
when Joe Gibbs’ rode the water’s flow,
driving logs through the river’s waves,
a young man only twenty years,
fast with a pick-pole, had no fear,
and never had they seen a man more brave.
At...

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