Long Sprockets Poems

Author's note: This is an epic length poem that will have to be split into parts and will be serialized in successive posts.


PART 1

the highway's double line snakes in 
and out of my headlights
they searchlight...

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Flatbush . . . Bedford Stuyvesant . . . Saint Jerome's . . .
Our Lady of Good Counsel School . . . The Sisters of Mercy . . . The Franciscan Brothers.
Double features at the...

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He records the works of his life, the ephemera
he once scrawled onto the tissue thin,
thinking them indelible blueprints.
Most were fables told to a dying legend,
Pastimes, that were chariot wheels
for his little red wagon.

He is an...

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Rackets, rockets and sprockets of lies in their sties fly fast
Treasures and pleasures of truth offer orphans wisdom to last
Choose to cruise in lies and perish
Cruise to groove in truth and prune proof to furnish....

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I wondered what I’d do If I had chosen a career
Would it have been based on challenge or overcoming fear
I could have been an electrician
Working with plugs and wires and sprockets
Or maybe even a politician
Putting...

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Don’t just raise your glass, stand up to cheers
Until each and every one gets audibly clinked
Repeating Ike-ism’s stretching memories years
Keeps the good ones up front and spirits linked

Not so subtly cheat (just a little) in...

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Doodles and dabbling
Pillow stuffings in the hall,
There is toilet paper 
Colliding in and out of each stall.

Perusing and cruising
Space shuttles standing tall,
There are sprockets and things,
In each hand, ready for the belle of the ball.

It...

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hello hate
say i say sayd hello hate
contemplatory emotional tags
these sites drag lips womb walls are stretched
my eyes have been sifted through sculptors
beyond castles dreams
clouds lines with the very thought of me
clones they come bulging from...

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The Clockmaker

The old clockmaker sat at his bench
In the shop where he'd lived all his years
With a monocle lens on his eye
And his desk filled with sprockets and gears.

Everything had its place in a drawer.
Every...

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I feel the clock
as it begins to unwind
Tick tock, tick tock
another second behind

Springs and sprockets 
intricately interconnected
Tick talk, tick t a l k
My slow down unexpected

Pendulum swinging
from side to side
Ticktock,ticktock
Not swinging nearly as wide

The Cuckoo...

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Time will tell, just gently listen,
to the sound of gears and sprockets
conveying a concept quite complex.
ask it a question and watch the position,
of the needle telling you what you want to know,
as an unstoppable force...

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Johnny jonquil jerry justified jilly’s jeu jeu bee
Dilly dally Doolittle dodged debonair simon legree’s degree
Freakish freddy frogmouth forever frolicked footloose and free
Michigan mike’s handy hardy heart hovers over a wild monkey

Photogentic photons prance prettily in...

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For the unusually bulging pockets,
Eyes pop out of their sockets:
You’d think their owners had been handed lockets
Or once again America remembered rockets!

A Mechanic whose wife floats a versatile saloon
Funnily welcoming customers with balloon; 
Perhaps, the...

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Perhaps one day the world can change
remove this grain from the gears
those sprockets seeking to rotate
have no need to compensate

an irritation that few admit
except to step around the grit
damned by silence without regard
for the feelings...

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