Long Waterfront Poems

A Brief For The Defense 

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies 
are not starving someplace, they are starving 
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. 
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants....

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The constant assault of the silence on his senses is intense 
Hands clenched in fist he wished for noise and bliss
Buddy stopped talking and drinking he begins pacing as he’s thinking 
Tired from walking he...

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A prawn masquerading as a peanut can be quite disturbing. So many times a peel is a garment used to shroud. A tentacle hidden. Here and there. Then to reappear with an often violent burst...

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Daylight dies
Blackout the sky
Does anyone care
Is anyone there 
Enjoy this life 
Pop open a Sprite 
Roll over to the right and kiss my wife 
She's fast asleep
Daylight is trynna come 
It's trynna creep 
When she...

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I was running some errands and stopped into the little waterfront restaurant for a late lunch.  It was kind of that in-between lunch and dinner time hour, so the place was completely empty.

I ordered...

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The Letter         

A young man strolled along the waterfront,
His mind and heart at ease.
Said an old man, sitting on an upturned punt,
Gazing out towards the sea. 

“Come...

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gesturing crudely about luck and doom
blowing us towards the promised manic Paradise
a steely eyed greeting committee
providing the final hurdle
their panel of erudite jurists
concluded that his sense of right and wrong
had been tricked by wizard mesmerists
no...

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I know we just met, 
but I can’t forget our first kiss on top of the table mountain,
and the second next to that Corner where boys play soccer in a dusted clouds road barefooted ...

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The heat is blazing underneath the earth and the ocean is polluted with plastic, mud and dirt, the sediment in the sea bed has reach the depth and the sea animals that roam the ocean...

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On one night, 
is it because of a bewitched full moon?
while driving my rusty shaking junk car
I became Don Quixote de la Mancha 
mounted on Rozinante holding a lance under the arm aslant,
and with a...

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Never attempting of striking it rich,
whenever my cravings give me another itch,
I'm used to a quite and simple life:
enjoying good food and sharing a coldl glass of wine 
when relatives and friends drop by;
why be...

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As the sun sets
A hot wind like this
Does not belong in downtown Lansing
But here it is
Speed-boating down the Grand River grinning and wearing Ray-Bans

My wife and I
We hold down our pouncing bouncing patio table
At the...

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The Red Parasol Contest
Sponsor: Eve Roper


Wandering along the soft shores of Vermont,
I carry my red parasol as Bluebell shares fond
memories with me of good times with her lover.  
I listened with intent, but my...

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I am a tad late
I guess I bound myself to a date
but I've had my fill of distractions
so here, I'll get straight to the point
while I put on my writing attire
equipped with my writer's cap
and...

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DO NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH A POET
by Jonah Okpabi
.
Do not fall in love with a Poet
Poets are poor
Their pockets are empty
Above all they are liars
They tell you words with a different meaning
They tell you...

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EarthCare Elders
repurposed our red brick industrial
BrownField

Including a rusted metal box
the size and shape of a giant's coffin
orange and dingy brown
metal flaking paradox
floating toward sacred ground
along river's sweeping fed up bed.

Here lived a racoon mother 
as...

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The earth was void and without form…
And the voice of the Lord was upon the waters…

	In the roll of a tsunami wave across the Pacific
	Born of a collapsing mountain deep in the sea
	And in the...

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I didn't mind shooting him between the eyes one bit, what made 
it harder for me was how he pleaded for his life and said he had 
money and that I didn't have to do...

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The stretch of water mating with the clear blue sky
 at the horizon as the sun bids good bye
  shades of crimson hue merging with the blue
   a scenery my little eyes...

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A woman who lost everything she owns stands there 
by the waterfront where the waves beat upon the shore.

The woman-transformed-bitch is a prisoner of war 
being carried to the foreign land of an enemy general...

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Our Day Out

Our day out to Wales in the Summer of 1981
In car temperature soars that alike to Lebanon,
Not like the previous year of 1980
When temperatures where more akin to Haiti.
Mark one Cortina of a...

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—The Sense of Sight With No Ending Point—

it was early in the morning a sailboat anchored in the harbor 
awakened from the deep sweet dream yawns and stretches 
its arms to drive away black and...

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A small paradise island,
In the Caribbean Sea,
Rain comes once a year,
Sure does sound like ecstasy.
It’s not in travel brochures,
And there is no airport here,
The population’s seventy,
Not all of them appear!
A cabin on the waterfront,
No need...

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I was looking for the eternal beauty,
which God and Nature may have created on earth?
I think I found it, up high in the mountains,
in the form of gracious thundering water fall.
Originating from the melting snow,
or...

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On the San Francisco waterfront the sun is going down 
Upon a well-heeled journeyman fresh in from out of town. 
The sky's been drained of color to a somber shade of gray
As a new day...

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