Long Uniform Poems

It's peaceful here in my backyard.
The crows sound happy
with warm October sunlight.

I just read about a deadly gathering in Las Vegas.
Absence of sun-drenched peace.
Inconvenient this time of lost loss.
Death is always inconvenient,
even when invited.

A veteran,
about...

Read More

World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems - VI - Chaim Nachman Bialik, Erich Fried

After My Death
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
translation by Michael R. Burch

Say this when you eulogize me: 
Here was a man—now, poof, he's...

Read More

There is nothing weaker than water
But none is superior to it in overcoming the hard,
For which there is no substitute.
(Laotse, "Nothing Weaker Than Water", Lin Yutang, trans.)

That weakness of mind and body overcomes strength
And uniting...

Read More

IT WAS 1984 DURING AN ELECTION CIRO GARGANO RAN THIS SMALL TOWN OUTSIDE GREATLAKES NAVY BASE WITH HIS DRUG CARTEL AND AN IRON FIST OF  CORRUPTION HE BLACKMAILED THE ENTIRE CITY SEVERAL OFFICERS SELLING...

Read More

Under the cadence of footsteps on worn cobblestones,
At the café where steaming cups held time hostage,
Eyes met and lingered, a glance stretched into an eternity.
A young American, as if sculpted from sunshine itself,
And she, like...

Read More

Part 2.

Come on in, the phone is on the wall there. I’ll go and change. You’re on the Massey farm. Do you want a bite to eat with your coffee?

Yeah, thanks. Genecia looked around, the...

Read More

(based on Aldous Huxley's book "Brave New World")

Human hatchery

Clink clink clink clink...
Test tubes prattling past
along the chrome plated production line.
Glistening under fake fluorescence
humming in harmony
with the magnetic motors
of conveyors, centrifuges and camshafts.
Biological blobs of gamete...

Read More

I remember my cherished Wolf Cub pack, 
How I loved those Wednesday evenings, 
The games, the pomp and seriousness of the camps, 
The different coloured scarves, sweaters and hair 
During the mass meetings, 
The solemnity...

Read More

Thus it begins—
A free-verse epic
Into the mind of
A writer and an idiot—
A romantic and, 
Often a pessimist
Conjoined in arbitrary glory
Are the thoughts and words 
Of one overly-worked mind—
Charismatic and, of course,
On the pushover, pitiful
And usually...

Read More

The Great Lakes acronym spells homes

I chose titled topic by a fanciful whim,
nevertheless still consider my knowledge 
of aforementioned material slim.

Housing multivarious biomes
register ecological syndromes
whereby constituents of NOAA 
Great Lakes Environmental 
Research Laboratory writ tomes.

Pellucid...

Read More

Colin is a cabby with a proper taxi cab
He drives for all the passengers an Uber didn’t grab
Which means he has a lot of time to kill most every day
And lots of evil folk to...

Read More

WINTER, 1948 [40 Saxton Street]

for W.W

The winter nights that pass now
are so unlike the winter nights
that passed before, that I often
struggle back in those suspended moments
when sleep grapples for a hold,
to once again hear the...

Read More

The Sandless Sand Castle

Let me tell you about my eldest brother.

I am: the "Scram!", the "Beat it!", the "What you looking at?!", and the "Turn around and watch the movie!", younger brother. As you can...

Read More

The Good Girl

Penny has always been a good girl, now she is a good wife. She lives in a good neighborhood, drives a nice car, has two perfect children. Her husband is a doctor and...

Read More

Now in my time echoes
  I remember then
  my full days in a life
  when I was ten.
We lived in a shadow 
  much greater 
  at the gates of...

Read More

Part of my soul severed by their ruthless oppression, demoralization and exploitation of a frightened and abandoned child.

Part of me drowning in detrimental sorrow as a 10 yr. old coerced by the evilness on the...

Read More

t was half past five before sunrise, 
when darkness faded into the misty Saturday's dawn, 
just an hour after a bloody confrontation, 
but a brave woman descended into a blood-bathed
street of Lustre, 
with hungry cats...

Read More

The number of folks sitting
on the back porch
waiting
for peace to strike,
like waiting for my garden to grow
without yet having planted it.

The number of people
noticing that chronic victims
suffer from critical victimization events,
minus the number who also...

Read More

Hannah, could never remember a time when she wasn’t ill. The doctors had tried all sorts of stuff, and at times she had rallied. She was optimistic to begin with, but now she was just...

Read More

Chief garbage taster as fifth grade Halloween gag
at Henry Kline Boyer Elementary School
interestingly enough landed me a grubhub grab bag.

I rooted thru poetry anthology of mine,
and came across an unpublished poem
by one obscure poet (me),...

Read More

Everybody is singing a different tune
Everybody is dancing to a different beat
Everybody is praying to a different God
And here I am feeling very sad
I am here, you are there but I have no fear

The politicians...

Read More

I
How long have I been doing this
Throwing my time & money
Into a hole
Filling up notebooks
Mining overheard conversation
For lines
Squeezing the sponge
Of my wine soaked
Mind
Into the bucket
Of poetry
And now here we are
Gulping down the
Lead tainted water
Like Romans
Romans
Forced...

Read More

Precedent setting the stage for kerning and tracking piqued my interest

Just before logging off for the day,
and ready to boogie out of the joint
an email landed squarely in my inbox
cordially inviting me 
into the management...

Read More

I am a right-brain prominent writer
which must not be confused with
a prominent left-brain writer,
which I am almost decidedly not
nor would I aspire
toward such all or nothing thinking
and not at all both/and feeling.

Like most writers,
I feel...

Read More

My darling sweet sweet  love Pete
its been over three long months seems like eternity now since you departed and my world stopped
And my sun became cold
 
I miss you more with each breath and...

Read More