Long Updrafts Poems

Today,
there are no rubber ducks
or mother's marigold skirts
to hide behind
as we once did.

In their place,
lurking dark and hoary,
a bathtub mist
updrafts thick with loose spores,
and mildew veins
sprawling
behind caulked-over creases.

The day,
shrinking away heavy with time,
as a body
sagging
into
water.

Even...

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I (a youthful sexagenarian)
can no longer quip being
a country boy at heart,
but me as urban cowboy,
I declare would never 
so fuhgeddaboudit dear reader
nothing 'cept bucolic existence
laboring organic garden
harvesting fruits and vegetables
by the bushel and quart
constitute...

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Haiku With Variations (Both Sonnet & Free Verse)

Haiku Number 2

hail rides air updrafts
raindrops crater planet's skin
your breath’s clouds, fall skies

May 12, 2016


Mother of a Winter’s Night – Shakespearian Sonnet

Her distressed sighs rise up like nascent...

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Dream Keys
      by Odin Roark

A NY mantra
Rent the rentable
Move the movable
Key the keyable

Apartments

Four-wall-guardian of yesterday’s youth
Vacuous cellmates of old age loneliness
All part of a cyclic maze
All having a key
Urban life’s...

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Fever and Chills

History writes itself
invisible pens find surfaces unknown
private life
public life
fever and chills sleep together
heaving corrosive air
from colorless lungs
hearing but their own moans
their own cries of ecstasy
how loud
how soft

From boardroom
to bedroom
clinging to manufactured essence
flesh bleeds...

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Sometimes I think i should try,
Should spread my wings and fly
Soar through a cloud as a spirit so free
With land  below, all the sights I see
Diving towards the earth below
Spread my wings out catching...

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A seed in the wind
By Charlie E Thomas Jr.


Having fallen from a fruitful tree of love and bliss: I'm a seed in the wind, waiting to be held by the soft soils of 
the earth....

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Sometimes I think i should try,
Should spread my wings and fly
Soar through a cloud as a spirit so free
With land  below, all the sights I see
Diving towards the earth below
Spread my wings out catching...

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Our summer fellowships are over! We learned a lot - for instance - how summer’s a lot less fun when you’re hemmed-up, inside working. I mean, we preesh’d the clinical experience, the learning, and especially...

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Ecology, Humanity, Me, & Tea


A fox at the altar.
Bee nests to seek before light.
A rabbit where the fox’d trot.
(Foxes have only ever trot. Perhaps fast, or nimbly, or slow - they do not walk.
They do...

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Ah, drifting leisurely inside the cloud, 
Watching hot sun’s rays glance across the nose 
of the winged drone, stealthily slipping proud, 
I drifted so peacefully through the floes. 

Updrafts from silent streams beneath arose 
lifting...

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Ah, drifting leisurely inside the cloud, 
Watching hot sun’s rays glance across the nose 
of the winged drone, stealthily slipping proud, 
I drifted so peacefully through the floes. 

Updrafts from silent streams beneath arose 
lifting...

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Silent, she slips from her stronghold’s security,
safely tucked high on the cliff in her nest.
Cautious, she stays in the shadows afforded her,
sorrowful, hesitant, missing the rest.

Her parents and siblings had sought out the sunshine,
flying the...

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A free verse is a free verse in it's beginning, 
 no matter the form of it's ending!

Free only is the verse if the verse remain free. 
 Free as in the wind blows in...

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Be kind to all my fallen failures.
Even when I’ve burnt my house down?
Even when I’ve broken homes in two?
Even when I am guilty of misbehavior?

I’ve experienced downward spirals mangled
Everyone deserves an upward trajectory
Keep my wings...

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For Jeffers: On seeing Tor House and Hawk Tower
                   For the first time

The Tor stones have grown...

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We will write
For every thousand ton of ore 
There is a nugget,
And so we will write like miners, 
Breathing the dust of our darkness,
Filling our veins and lungs 
With the choke of our lives.
As words...

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HYPERGRAPHIA -- "STARECASES"

twisted as wrought iron spiraling down
surveying top gears stark dark regalia 
holdhigh on tight here comes another
maniacal express spinning 
HYPERGRAPHIA

dying I throw down a key in a sock and sing all the way...

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I rock in this outdoor cheap chair
Its cushion foam like ice cream
Half-eaten by the winter mice in storage
I don’t mind

Don’t need a full seat to see before me

The drop off on Torch Lake
Its fine line...

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Lift up your hands


Lift up your hands
Cry out to me
I will give you everlasting joy!
Wipe up those tears that readily fall!
Take lessons from the birds
Who joyfully call,
Singing their hearts out
Before the raging storm
Take lessons from...

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Lift up your hands


Lift up your hands
Cry out to me
I will give you everlasting joy!
Wipe up those tears that readily fall!
Take lessons from the birds
Who joyfully call,
Singing their hearts out
Before the raging storm
Take lessons from...

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Soaring upon the healing caress of eternal updrafts
Void of the thundering roars of man made mobile crafts
The songs of Mother Mountain echoing in perpetual silence
Piercing my heart like a plague of dreadful pestilence.

Barren from swords...

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Purple mountains, majestic against an azure sky,
Rise to greet the passing rain-filled nimbus clouds
Above the verdant forests along the canyon rim,
Where sparrow hawks and other birds of prey drift
The surging updrafts from the river valley...

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Written: November 06, 2023
            ___________________________________________

A swarm of herring gulls amassed
Nexus Nautilus nabbed by zealous winds,
whitening the black soil
we hold spears in our hands.
blood-stained thorns...

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Poetic Inspiration 101

What inspires me to write poetry?

an old man on a park bench mumbling
weightless hawks floating on updrafts
trash strewn city streets
school buses at 5AM
huddled children waiting
the wrinkled face of an old woman
staring through a...

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