Long Troughs Poems

Animal Chain Atrocities

No longer a bucolic photo op
bedecking a cover of Life magazine

Free grazing
pastoral images
now but bewildered enslavement

Animal commodities
factory farms and feedlots
CAFO habitats raising
sixty billion a year for dinner tables

Chickens

Hi-Tech slaughter
football fields long
alethic poor
four walled...

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Nascent pristine morning awakens charisma,
curtains of anxieties pulled aside-- oh look they reveal!
A whitewashed wall proudly flaunting the crayon drawing,
my daughter's innocent fantasies when she was nine.
Windows of paraphernalia bask in golden glory,
transparent dew drops...

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childhood, creation, feelings, growing up, heaven, imagery, word play,

Awakening Teary-eyed Emotions  ©                      ...

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The mirtangist may never willingly hear
may not want to hear
the multaiyam announcing his cue
nor the melodist aware of the flautist's right
to the change in the raga
the plucking of the yal strings
to the goatskin drummed bleats
and...

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Part Two

           a hardly flickering oilwick open trough lamp lighting
limply other framed coloured pictures of Ganapati
two half-empty troughs of kunkunum and vibhuti
on the half-opened cicatrised...

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And remember the sun never really sets only on covetousness
            no greater co-prosperity sphere is there than inner contentment
     ...

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Growing up in a middle class suburb of Chicago, is it any wonder that Polly learned the art of political malarkey.  Watching the City Council was probably the
place where she learned to see women...

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I knew my ancestry and my dad was a joiner,
But verged on disowning my mum for labour,
Not married in history yet throbbing with spark, 
Love, truth, kindness fibered the gelled dark.

A stunner - intelligent, muscular...

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Nascent pristine hopes sprout stealthily
  from the submerged swamps of anxieties,
     parched earth frets over consequences
       to fuel naive hopes into realities of void
...

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Each occasion I thought I was potent and energetic,
I sure did a service to myself,
As it seeped and soaked deep inside,
It gave me a fillip and I floated along,
Sometimes for a short while and others...

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I do not know how men many we were
or how we went, what we saw on the way 
nor do I know for what ungodly purport was ours
or what goaded us on into deeper uncharted...

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OLDE CHARLIE part two

A simple g’day and not much more,
A man of simple tastes and trends,
Mostly seen most days
Three days growth on chin, 
Olde Charlie,
Came from the olde school,
Of the way he thought
And reacted to...

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Retrieved Passage 6:
From The Book of Days - The Cellar


Don't send me down to the cellar
I swear I won't do it again
lest my sanity goes inter-stellar
and I beat myself senseless in vain

Don't send me down...

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The cat disrupts her thinkable moment, by                            ...

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I venture on a falling tide,
my little ship the current rides
down river to the open sea,
from Carrick Roads first to be free.

Anthony Head I hoist the sails
and now the boat leans to its rail
as winds...

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A PAIN CLOUD ON HORROR’S HORIZON

I’ve tilled the tired soil on which a torn man toils
I’ve tread the fettered flag on which an aspiring asp coils
I’ve stared into the face of ghosts, goblins and gargoyles
I’ve...

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They drift gently 
down(downed)?
Into the heart they root,
confetti on desperate streets 
glowing like gilded red roses.
Smell them as they chant your songs..
so very often(semi-pure hearted) they keep things(you) aloft,
far above
the stingers 
the biters of early...

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The reason that she didn’t come to my last poetry reading
Was that I had but faintly praised her hat.
It was a monstrous thing which  Mrs. Thatcher,
 the Queen most certainly, would have shunned.
It was...

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A scenic blue are ocean’s crested waves
with tufts of white that spill in feathered sprays
amidst the troughs and valleys of the sea.
Will time or tempest bring God back to me?
 
Horizons hold no hint of...

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How long and how long will you continue to wallow in pains.
The pity party will bring no relief.
Life is a mixed bag of stuffs that may not be pleasant to handle.
All the same even when...

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Amram is a Levite;
He takes a Levite wife.
They have a little boy;
A tyrant king seeks his
    And every young boy’s life.

When he is three months old,
And can be hid no more,
His mother...

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Beside the enormous Oak tree she was resting
When the Mage of Night woke her up, cheering
 
By putting Her cold silver enchanted robe
Upon her and everything else around the globe

Mage on its fourteenth was rising...

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The morning has started with a trace of a dew
An ascent through the tussock ignites the new day
Trailing huntaways eager to work on the ewes
Awaited shrill whistles loose the dogs on their prey.

A new shepherd...

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Live to work or work to live?
C’mon, let’s get this over with
The money’s stashed in the couch near the TV
Let’s get going on the only ride that’s free

Don’t believe that old thing they say
That ya...

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Written: March 3rd, 2025 for contest Sponsored by: Kai Michael Neumann

Quote" There is a moon inside every human being. Learn to be companions with it". By Rumi

        ...

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