Long Stiffening Poems

I shall resolve to leave this
Place now...
And steadfastly search out,
Nestling between ridge and bluff
Amidst the folds of a foreign 
Land,
Several acres of unkempt ground
Fallow and rough;
Upon which stands...
Crumbled stone walls
With an exposed slate roof in
Some...

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Thump-thump of stiffening fish contorting
   In the bilge beneath the gunwale; 
 Lidless, bulging, reddened eyes, swivelling upwards, 
Protruding horribly from the straining sockets,
    Express stupefied amazement at inconceivable 
...

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MY VOODOO BRIDE
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS



Married only three hours still in jubilation
My beautiful bride natures finest creation
A seaplane trip to an island just east of Haiti
I had in my life a model of unmatched beauty
She was...

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Rest now
O restless heart
released in ebb   to flow

ride the other side of the king tide rising
buoyant your movement in rise with the waves
Rise! to beyond where breakers break long-suffering shores
pitiless the grind of...

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-	Written August 11, 2018

I lay down in silent agony, left unsure,
Drowning in distress, yet happiness will be a stone, rolling back on me in an instant or in a moment…anxiety heightened 

You are chopped onions...

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still the climbing green lianoid lass


her tender tendrils torn  


massive metal lying like a cutlass


in her lap forlorn


                ...

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Psalm 27:14 Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.

When the moon is riding the ebony skies,
Hallucinating stardust, laughing like the distance
Isn’t echoed...

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I nudged my way through the throng of women and positioned myself at the starting line—an archway of variegated pink balloons.  It was mid-October, and a stiff autumn breeze swirled around my body numbing...

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October: I'm eighteen, shortcutting home
through an autumn-burnished churchyard -
copper-lustred leaves, moss-skinned stone -
a jaunty swing of skater skirt and arm,
college folder square-sturdy in my hand.
In the moment. In the last pale pulse of sun.

Hey, can...

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When mapping something out 
It should be a subject thought about 
Beginning, middle and the finale 
Everything is there says Rand McNally 
But from the depths below 
A mystery creating ocean wakes to flow 
An...

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Invasion, the death, the agony so
                             ...

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London, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : Londres

	…a serious and well-behaved Englishman, well-attired, handsome clothes (Victor Hugo)

(In this poem, I didn’t feel adhering strictly to the rhyme scheme would have served a higher purpose. T....

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Although a withered tree possesses a charm of its own,
aside from elegance, what should this old man do,
because not even possess a taste of ordinary
but he is the man of base, the incarnation of disgust.

If...

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An old Ethiopian veteran of the love wars 
once told a newlywed Kenyan kid:
If you want the infant marriage to survive,
make it to the golden years Mt. Kilimanjaro side
You gotta keep the giraffe standing up,
when...

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I guess you're seeing a flag?
Trouble comes and go,
The range of my eyes captures all black
Walk with me if life is without you alone,
Steal an emblem to save a city,
When we don't know where to...

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The maiden's nipples 
swollen, her bosom
flush with excitement,
hailing her goddess as 
she slighted very 
eloquently, puissant.
The goodness they
shared was of sinful
reproach, a somber
obedience of lovers'
admiration.  
The dusk laden sky 
flickered with prose, 
the sorrows...

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THE   DESTINY.


This is not a country for living souls
Recoiled the heart lives under the enshades
Of vampire ridden nature and all its pards
On beggarly sums amassed by the pauper
Of bleakness and cold hunger and...

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--Before meeting with her father & sisters, Cordelia is dealt a card depicting Woodwose by
Mor-Ríoghain, in the guise of a gypsy hag.

i.

As my sister's once-beautiful gray cat looks at me
She wasted now by a thyroid...

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This is not a country for living souls
Recoiled the heart lives under the enshades
Of vampire ridden nature and all its pards
On beggarly sums amassed by the pauper
Of bleakness and cold hunger and mort
Here existing we...

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This is not a country for living souls
Recoiled the heart lives under the enshades
Of vampire ridden nature and all its pards
On beggarly sums amassed by the pauper
Of bleakness and cold hunger and mort
Here existing we...

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2,

Bourne loosely through the chill gusts,
Disordered fragments of summer's life go hurried by,
Harried to their last resting places
Into piles of brittle, browning drifts
Scattered on the stiffening ground.
A cold sun, coursing ever more briefly
Across these hard,...

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Winter is on the tips of her fingers.
Winter is silver on her breath as she exhales,
oxygen stamped with her name, forgotten
as either one,  
stiffening into smoke like her hair
against the twilight.
Her tears are winter...

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Winter sunlight on the fields
A murder calls in flight through misty yields
Banks of bracken smothered in shadow falls
Thunder through the valley calls

Stiffening muscles ache in winter chills
Footsteps path over wandering hills
Dark, crashing clouds seal the...

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Breathing the new air, grasping a trembling news
Firming my grasp, and holding my grips
Asking anyone to trample on my shoes
As me flying my mind, and stiffening up my lips

I cannot cry, as my tears are...

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The future looks so frightening
fifteen minutes after your flower birth at dawn
From heart to soul,
your anxieties let you see
a sky halo of a red sun glow
Arterial uncertainty flowing
thru the grassroot dirt
to stem to petals
The limited...

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