Long Wrenched Poems

Psychologically still thirteen 

Ordinarily meaning pre Internet days
familiarization with me would entail
bringing the avid listener 
into my private mancave hideaways
less a physical place than a juncture in relationship, 
(whereby one or the other of us)...

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Disability, Illness and Fundamentalism

My brother died of Cystic Fibrosis, 
When I was twelve and he fourteen, 
It took away his ambitions, 
To study at Oxford - the pipe organ’s steam. 

I understand being born with...

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Was it a cruel twist of fate?
Sneering, laughing chance?
Perhaps something I ate?
A bad bout of happenstance?

It wrenched and tore at my gut,
A sickening, sober, foreboding sign.
Wretched chance it was not,
This time was by insidious design.

The...

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Grey Bane and the Dark Lord


Perched on a stalagmite jutting up from the floor
Hugo was staring at length across the cave
My eyes accustomed to the glow followed his gaze
Frozen in ice was my Love whom...

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Nascent poetic tribute to black history month...
crafted before onset when people of color  
got acknowledged for twenty eight or nine days
depending if leap year occurred. 

Though I yam Caucasian,
rightful to honor most bitter
racist genocidal...

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Stricken with anguished nausea

Written three years ago tomorrow, 
yet superimposed (likened to 
emotional palimpsest) upon 
mental state of yore
recent post traumatic stress 
triggered courtesy war
torn legally tendered greenbacks, 
where enemy bonded, heisted, and netted 
mine...

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DISCLAIMER : THIS IS AN ACCOUNT OF THE MASSACRE 
IN ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE IN FRANCE WHICH TOOK PLACE
ON JUNE 1OTH  1944
TO MY READERS , " SOME LINES IN THIS POEM ARE GRAPHIC , AND
SOME MAY FIND...

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Please Michelle Obama...
can you save American democracy?

I highly hugely grant 
Barack Hussein belated kudos
what with his wizardesses 
in tow wrought wonders 
to one nation analogous 
while an under dog
sweeping in like... 
It's a Bird... It's...

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I seldom indulge in letter writing 
Because I consider it 
To be a cold and illusory 
Means of communication. 
I will only send someone a letter 
If I'm certain it's going to serve 
A definite...

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within these times of war
Within these times of war


Within the times of war

Silence of its terrors calling
Children play within their laughter
Now recedes in cries of torture
Screeching whistles scrap metal clusters
In murderous heat of summers day
rage...

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Eminent domain, manifest destiny, usurpation...

Maternal grandfather of mine
long since passed among the living;
He left his Motherland 
before onset of Holodomor,
a policy of the Soviet Union 
aimed at the destruction 
of the Ukrainian nation,
the 1932–1933 genocide...

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Grant this civil yankee to doodle till Lee gets blue in the face 

blowing 99 red balloons April 9th, 2023
will signal 158 years since Appomattox
plus what would have been ninety sixth birth 
of the late...

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“You play on my every weakness from my past, 
As a heart-wrenched spirit of truth caresses your comrades
They are perturbed as you are by the magnificent light,
To challenge your heart, is to render the fight…”

A...

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What once was a peaceful, delightful place 
Joyful and friendly creatures in God’s grace
A stunning morning, a soulful sunrise
A village heaven has gifted, a prize
The most grandiose of rainbow arches
The villagers, spirited because March is
The...

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Eminent domain, manifest destiny, usurpation...

Russian soldiers in general
and Vladimir Putin in particular
perpetrate outright injustice
against Ukrainian population.

Impossible mission to comprehend
the mindset of belligerent, egotistical,
indignant, NeoNazi, tsarist
self anointed totalitarian zealot.

Gross violation of human rights
blatantly carried out
courtesy diabolical...

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Oh my dog, another yesterday (May 23rd, 2020) spent inside

Anomalous earthling inhabited 
mancave quarantined
cocooned gamesomely 
knowingly protected travesty
impossible mission sidestepping, 
thwarting, zapping
eventuality, inevitability, 

opportunity utilitarian death
crowning glory fêted within 
netherlands immortality
granted courtesy biological 
proliferation offspring...

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Grim reaper forever guaranteed eternal plentiful harvest

the following written 
for no particular rhyme nor reason
quite aware the exit (stage door left)
allows, enables, to provide every season
with a bumper crop of dead souls.

many mortals beseechingly 
lift...

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The day has come, weeks and countless dollars invested in this moment.
All preparations have been made.
A myriad of nuts and bolts, inspected, tightened to torque.
Fluids fresh, topped to level, tire pressure lowered... maximum traction.
In rank...

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kaisers, kings, emperors fight for territory
  dispensable bodies left in the ground on foreign soil, unreturned
  militarisation of memory and folly
  an Irish nation half-wrenched from a bloodied and wearied empire
 ...

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(Alternately titled always look on the bright side of life)

Armageddon wold be a morbidly amazing, 
   concluding (reign of Homo Sapiens)
   fascinating albeit simultaneously catastrophic boon
dog gull to accompany 

 ...

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blowing balloons signaling 158 years since Appomattox
(Alternately titled always look on the bright side of life)

Armageddon would be morbidly amazing,
   concluding (reign of Homo Sapiens)
   fascinating albeit simultaneously catastrophic boon
dog gull...

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Emotional guillotine clefts
     irredeemable psychological umbilical accord
witnessing heart breaking,
     woe-begotten inhumane rip cord
gut wrenching shuffle board
     (indiscriminately sporting)
     most...

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CATULLUS TRANSLATIONS 2

Catullus CI: 'His Brother's Burial'
translation by Michael R. Burch

1.
Through many lands and over many seas
I have journeyed, brother, to these wretched rites,
to this final acclamation of the dead...
and to speak — however ineffectually...

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To Crush Mar a Lago Estate, and lower the Economic debt ceiling...

Now that DACA docked amidst 
marshy tidal outskirts of Poker flats 
(readied to be sunk) off shore 
(beach combing divers – ectoplasmic flotsam 
glorying...

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At the breaking of the new dawn
Where the hopeful golden glow melts the dew
A sleepy world awakens to the brightened new dawn of life
But at the striking of that aged light
Where the anguished reddened heat...

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