Long Wallpaper Poems

In 1968,
a time of great concern for healthy human civil rights
for and of women as well as LeftBrain culturally dominant men,
Gregory Bateson invited a Symposium
not quite a finished Symphony
proposing Moral and Aesthetic Structure of Human...

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Honey,
please don't even try to get me interested
in your Cranial Ontology Department.
You know how the name itself
puts my brain to sleep.

Yes I noticed your tendency to snore
when I am thinking out loud,
with tender thoughts about...

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My parents had both passed and I felt orphaned, alone --
Although I was married and lived hours away with a family of my own.
And today was a day I had dreaded for months
Silently traveling the...

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Gateway town, Mississippi and Missouri river flooding confluence,
with its celebration of manifest destiny, its looming, iconic archway.
Stainless westward marker, its culture flowed southward for influence
within the lawn-jockey, pink flamingo neighborhoods of moral decay. 

T.S, Eliot,...

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I was only twelve or thirteen when Dad bought
	The twenty acres alongside the highway
		On the east side of town in 1956,
That seemed so quiet then, unimportant even.

A piece of ground where horses had been kept...

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The room was dank and dreary
The past hung in the air
There was a scent of mildew
A smell of history was there
The paint was old and faded
With stains all dark and brown
The wallpaper too was dated
And...

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I know that I sail close to the wind
It's something I do to counter lack of confidence
Let's get in a frenzy of mixing metaphors now: I throw myself past the point of no return, seeing...

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I quite enjoyed writing these two line poems for the Bantu contest - the idea of the call and response with two different statements but the same sensory response to each line. A bit like...

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In our most beautiful, suburbian , breakfast nook,
Where I read so many joyfilled books,
With  the golden sunlight streaming in,
Is where my days as a girl,always,did begin.

Wallpaper of giant strawberries
Smiled with love at me.
A knock...

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Spartan are the white walls were once hung draperies
And things papered, paneled, plastered...
Yet, 'tis so no more. 
Now all is white and wan and sickly, 
And the ghostly shadows of the accoutrements and impedimenta that...

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I guess it is time to tell how this leg of the journey
concluded.One day I was hanging out upstairs.Yeah I know,after all that talk about
the weird sounds coming from up there and actually seeing movement...

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EXERPTS   FROM   HITLER’S   DIARY   1941

"I never travel without my diary, one should always have something sensational to read . .
 . " Oscar Wilde, 1891 

Tues ...

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Hell 

The place of safety was dirty and cold 
The building smelt musty, damp and old 
Place of safety in which I was to roam 
Was, in fact, a children's home 
They clothed and fed...

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A Dismantled Poet



And here I will put agony
Just leave it there on the shelf
And maybe I can ignore it
Let it gather dust in so many blankets
That maybe I won’t feel it

And over here this is...

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Laying my head back, eyes closing,
reminiscing, the years falling away into decades ago
to the 1950s at my grandparents' grand home
for Christmas.

It was a gracious dining room.
Noontime sun streaming in.
Chair rail with deep red wallpaper, white...

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Vicks Mentholatum. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I sometimes open the jar and stick my nose in for a little smell
Which turns into a big smell, a little on my nose, some around my
Neck, and finally I beg my husband...

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In your restless slumbers you feel me,
I know you feel me.    
Always by your side like an iron rusted sword
Dull to the touch and stranded to the length of your back.
Your sudden...

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Skylights warn and warm where acorns drip. The slight angle of acidity in the air can be measured accurately with a ruler or the nib of a ball point pen. Ball point pens are not...

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Sleep eludes me, my thoughts engulf me...
   The room is quiet....
    I hear a branch outside my window, scratch the glass, in winter's wind
      ...

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I love how twilight transforms
My curtains currently are an art work
Of light, shade and mystery
Where the growing light creeps in
Producing patterns and pictures
Giving places unnoticed previously
The limelight, a moment in time
Imperfections add character
Ever changing as...

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Tribute to The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin 


A subtle blank stare filled her eyes
As she , Margery Bollard ,locked them with whom she took her vows
A photograph of him against the floral...

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I was born to be the dark horse...the underdog. 
But, I'm nowhere near endearing enough for people to root for me. 
Some look at me pitifully like I'm a blind puppy, others see me as...

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Some days my mother and I don’t speak,
We’ll pass each other in the hallway,
 and 
       we will pretend that we are on good terms. 
The hallway wallpaper is...

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We make our way through the debris
To the second floor of the military shelter…
Slowly and cautiously,
For Death here lies-
But only half-asleep.
The torrid wind wrings the unstuck wallpaper,
Forcing it to sing the hymn
Of the great Amarna...

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Lying in my Grandmother's old brass bed
I watch the blades of her ceiling fan slowing turning
Around and around and around again...
From the heat of this steamy July 
There is no end to my yearning.

The old...

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