Short Coughs Poems

Dim Demoness Dances
Drum coughs~
imprisonment rages...

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eggs turning lumpy cold pale moon coughs morning stalls out...

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jolt,the body coughs
lightening has struck a golfer
theres no hope for him...

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Scared Cottonwood coughs,
Small ghosts flying through the air.
Handkerchiefs needful....

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coughs smoke from cold lips
cannonball through young flesh rips….
tobacco’s  cud drips...

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Desk top
Chaos, clutter
Shredder coughs and sputters
No deadlines, no pressure, no work
Clean slate...

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Where has the summer disappeared?
Maybe, it has lost its way somehow?
Or on wet road
It's legs have grown cold, 
And now it coughs and cries?...

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Watercolor coughs

Madness fashions a smile

A star explodes (a prism)

Into the rented room

Where an unshaven man stares

At old cracks in a plaster

Wall...

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Red Sun 

The engine coughs and sputters
Then roars and shows it’s ready
To catch the sun at Hilo
Rising from the sea.


Written 06/24/13 for Russell Sivey’s
Red Sun Contest....
Remember Pearl Harbor...

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Her fingers were crayons,pens and brushes
She spoke in coughs and spurts and gushes
she spat out rhymes and cryptoquotes
til someone sang the world she wrote
and named their child that colored poem
   and found her secret way back home....

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mid summer's dry spell
katydids swell the air
with a rain-cloud prayer 

our painter's complaint 
too hot to work, can't paint today
rain’s coming’ anyway

Win/win I get the day off
Hows-zat?! we ask;
the lazy painter coughs, 
It's a lekker day!


7...

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the blades of the third eye open electric
sleep sits and runs for death
a coffin writes a promise with rich, ruddy dirt
a poet sinks in his eyes and coughs
winds ride the cold shout of crippled prayers
a wolf flows in distant sands
howling white moon...

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Chinese Dave is not Chinese, he just likes Chinese food,
He’ll eat it till his tummy bursts when he’s in the mood.
He scoffs Chow Mein and Egg Foo Yung and Fried Rice by the plateful,
And then his botty coughs. Oh dear! Stand back! You will be grateful....

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Injustice coughs its blackened breath.

And like bracken he wraps himself, prickly prickly, over the moss drenched mud. 

The fog receads, its spite dulled. 

Twisted branches fall, softly softly, leaving the gentle fern to protect the wild things that live beneath the hearth....

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Ocean lights cigarette
Puffs mouthful smoke towards mountain
Tobacco clouds incarcerate the mountain
Later on....
Mountain coughs
Its skins are uprooted
Displaying crystal clear
Cancer-laminated
Black lungs of mountain
Dear buddy
I beg sorry
I don't wanna be another mountain...

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No one hears my silences
none seen beyond my mask
pain hidden by laughter's task
sadness pulls at either corner of my mouth
cottoned coughs explain
the unheld tears
hold on tight to fears
as self just disappears
and blank shadow
takes its place
just behind my face
the last single trace...

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A flare up for help—
Waving to Earth. Says: what 
Could make an orbit
Go so cold?

The deep shine
Coughs in motion,
From its lust where
Its being gets caught in the way—

I say...
Burn, Stygian, burn:
When your own burn is low, I push
Its walls— (and let go) into this raw black hole....

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The cat likes being under the chair
Which is why catnip is scattered there.
Coughs up fur ball and all kinds of hair.
He gives me an evil feline glare.

Find his challenge something I share.
We sit together without a care.
Red cardinal fly in on wings of air.
Cat eats it up like a sweet éclair....

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With the world spinning deeper
Come to a resting point
On a mossy rock pile
Lounging in a river stream

Sickly coughs cover staggering breaths
Willow shadowed waves break on splintered souls
Reassembled 
For a purpose unknown

The precautious pursuit
First appreciated
When the whirlpool world
Spun deeper...

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The house still sleeps,
Coughs, rustles, creaks
scuttle under my closed door.
The truck grumbles into the alley.
It used to be a barmaid 
trashing bottles near
the house where I grew up
making pops and clinks.
Now it's trucks collecting bins,
dumping glass in their broad bellies
huffing away down the alley....

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to see the hills
and tree's with palm
to feel the ocean on 
my nose
to drink the wine 
and rest on a bar 
to write in the streets 
but sleep in a room
to ride the bus absorbing
the pain
to stare at women and
their legs 
to laugh as my buddy,brother,friend
coughs from the joint. 

to drink for the cheers
of being alive...

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She has sat too long in the wind.
It stretched every plane of her face into smiles
Except for the sad mouth.

She carries her happy, laughing, children
Every one, on her shoulders,
Where their dead father would have.

She coughs, and sighs, and curses, and grits,
Until all that is left
Is the halves of dreams....

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Loud we sway, those battle hymns
raunchy in bare light
Boulders broken are thrown wispy 
Celebrating day
Some have lost pebbles, dancer's
glowing method
at last fortune

Blows us bare to rust mired blue
Our poison palms
Heavy coughs let moist unto
Salivation ringing
Whereby lust so proud gathers
Beneath potent sky
on borrowed time...

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traces of snow, black earth, roots
of devils hands that grasp at frost,
walls stenciled with cold growth;

a far dog coughs open a winter sunday,
but we are scared to peek under the crust,
so we tick and turn, waiting for

a dark better than this, come soon...
the light of your eyes has become
pale and diffuse, here and longer in ice...

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Masks are rare but not so coughs,
Yet here we are on board.
Hope that for our travels,
Sickness isn’t the reward.

Made it to the airport early - 
5 a.m., a blur,
Our grandson coming for the ride.
(His dad was our chauffeur.)

Heading south to visit kin;
It’s nearly been a year,
But masked and boostered, here we go
‘Fore chances disappear....

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