Tag: poetry
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New Wave
I dangle my legs beneath the sea wall,the tingle of water making me aware of my existence between ocean and sky. Below, rainbow scales slip in and out,in perfect duplication of wavespounding, curling away from gabions.My feet follow the streamlineebbing away to the global mass just below the refracting sun.My hand fins, cutting S’s in…
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Statue
Inside this sculpted stone— the voice of a captured angel.“Why me?”, it cried to the sculptor and not to God-its lyric voice rustled from heaven’s memoryto be man’s inspired art.
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Sea-Son
The shells and scales will wash away.He has chosen to be a man.She will watch as the slick of him vanishesno longer swimming but walking away.He has chosen to be a man.In the cold crisp air her throats turns dry.She casts her whale song to the waves,but he can no longer hear it, feel it…
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What to Do with All the Love that Remains
The most beautiful thing is always the thing in front of you, my mother use to say. And she was a beauty, always smiling, a beauty markfollowing in front. To see such beauty was to die a little in the heart each day- Each day to give your heart away until there is noting left.Love…
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Juanito’s Dream
Juanito grew up with a velveteen rabbitin his hand and a gun by his side.On his sixth birthday his junkyard owning Dadgave him a clutch of rainbow balloons.He climbed the rusted skeleton of a Cadillac, held the beautiful Mylar to the sky and prayed to be taken to heaven.The answer was the sour tasting rain.On…
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A Desert Story
The desert scorched their lips,broke the heart of their embrace-a pink blister on their foreheadsthe sun’s reminder on how impossible it will be to hold on to these knowings.He will be left standing alone in the swirl of shadows and dust,abandoned by the mountains,living only in the patina of dwellings turning to relics. She will…
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America Seen
The pictures of their dead childrenare strapped to the chain link of the ball field they played on.A bullet holed flag waves raggedly from the outfield,dawn’s light filtering every hole. The cowboy and his horse have long since bowed in grieffrom the red pitcher’s mound.The children in the tenementsjust behind, live in fear that the…
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Under the Tree of Knowledge
Let me lie here and knowwhy over this ground this apple tree makes a long shadowand a light sound.For a moment death will wait,but this tree will not,nor will it mourn for me when there is sweet birdsong all around.My sapling moment has passed, my winter comes and I have climbed and shaken every boughand…
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Answered and Unanswered Prayers
Many are the mothers who cry to Godfrom the release of woe for slain sons.How mother and child, prayed innocently with pure heart, to be spared violence’s plagueBut from the high placesthe prayers that are grantedis for power, power and gloryand honor forever- and nothing more.
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Talking Away
I use to think about grief,building loss on loss, sorrow on sorrow,into a silent groan in my bowelsof ever churning lamentsmourning for the comfort of dead faces.All the sorrow and lost infused my words. It leaked out to the white spaces betweenunwanted vowels and syllables : to the house gone, parts removed,friends lost, the broken…
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Rivers of Tears
We cried when the surveyors came and broke up the land into lines unseen.What the prophet had said became true:this land will be taken from us.We cried the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas to overflowwith the waters of our sorrow, leaving behind trails of tears.We cried because you would not love it as we once loved…
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Opening Her White Parasol
With the push of a button, the delicate porcelain releases lace ribs from the handle- little dove wings- shading her dreams, memories of father, creating this object to protect her from the shriveling sun.
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Nostalgia
They would feel it, every new moment- the echoes of who they use to be and what was once theirs-now dirty sheets caught in a dark tree.Everyday, the black river rolls by in blue remembranceand lilies float and drown in the burning stream.Here, the air hurts in the light of a browning sunand the stars…
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Wooden Boats on the Water
Under familiar stars the water blesses this wooden fleet.The carvers shavings fall away, oak leaves in the wavesdrifting behind, until only jug beams remain- the last swayof city lights, torches yielding to sky, night and moon-until only water remains- water waving forever.
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Poetry
It has been said, by someone wiser than me,that poetry is a wind from God.Than why do I find such beauty in the rhyme of dirt—Why do I listen to the lonely voicesof dead poets—Why do I want to excavate their bones,roll in them until they break—or burn them in the crematorium of my soulto…
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First Snow
This is the gift the world has given him: snow in hallows on roofs, branches, streets, the long white candle on the window, burning to dusk while snow fills up the city— all these white contours filling his life— starlight behind daylight wherever he gazes.
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Night Cat
Mine, mimes the black cat putting out his paw to her darkness. Let’s walk in the wood, black eyes imply,the scent of shadows rising from him.The snow, the city, the night dissolves. Mornings to come he will purr to her face.She hears a word of fur and thinks it’s love.Nights, he will slip out like…
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Dust
I find it easier to collect dust than move it around from feathery place to place.Dust is history. It holds the flavors of myself.Dust contains my words.It sits on my mantle adding more specks every year,life upon life on death.I see God in its ashes—He is dust and Dust is everythingIt swirls in endless ribbons…
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nocturne in pastels for hibakujumoku
they fall like a strange red bird in a old snare they fall like a strange pink koi in an old net like a shadow of a Cherry blossom on a stagnant pool like a dying pearl in the depths of the East China Sea like Akiko Futaba singing forever beneath her casement these hibakujumoku…
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In the realm of twilight
the wind is dying in the umbral night all aroundthe small bridge becomes the canal’s umbrella weaving a shy blue garment for the waters,a silvery gown across the imponderable blue the moon glides free, an argent shadowthe rain dove purls a plaintive lay, drenching the darkening streets with a drowsy kissin these hours of tears
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Tell Me Why
Who can tell me the name of all my lost thingsthings so small not worth rememberinglike coins gone through a hole pocketgiven by mother father to buy the sweet things of life back then my ignorance was eternalmy world my own private thoughts not ready for the mourners hymning their dead all the walking apart…
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The Many Shrines of Mama Cruz
This is not a story about my mother,not even one about your motheror grandmother. It’s about Mama Cruz,someone else’s mother or grandmother.Mama Cruz believed with all her heart that Jesus shouldn’t wander far from her sight.At her small church she was the first to communion, confession and contrition.Her only sin, she knew of, was an…
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An Endless Telephone Call
I knew this pulse had traveled thru spacewith a shivery speedto reach this felt sole,these five yards of ancient twisted wires that gave it sound-striking its bell three times in mournful bursts.it was too early to hear the good news of friends.Yet, even not quite awake,I knew between the sounds of hello and goodbye my…
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Stranger Miracles
“There are two ways to live your life – one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.”– Albert Einstein Nancy was a dancer until her toes crossed.Forty years later she met a salsa teacher.“I admire you. I’m going to teach you.If you try hard you can…
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An Old Poet
The old poet walks downs the streets of his dying city.The ancient tenements, stories upon stories of them,rise up before him. He thinks he may have inhabited them. He remembers- he built them but never inhabited them. He looks closer and the bricks are in the shape of his mothers teeth-square and right and just;the…
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We Dream Our Babies Dreams
Mother’s? Father’s? Which dreams will you acquire ?Heritage will whisper them to you. The universe its others.What you choose will steer future mothers/fathers.Just know, you will cry before you hope, will grasp for tomorrow and maybe catch a star or just dull sky.Throw the best out to the universe, the worst bury far.For now, sleep…
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Fireflies
The spark that comes from their belly denies the darkness its dominion and reminds the rest of a shining worldhow lonely the light really is. This light is brief in a darkness vast,an echo of the quick flare of tiny planets and suns filled with the enveloping night between. These bugs spend themselves and then…
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An Approaching Train
You’ll hear it, long before you feel it, feel it long before you see it.The train whistle is a glorious shriek, full of choral bass and tremble, Something that startles your skin— an unexpected scream from a well-known space. Train steam splits the sky, its wheels sunder the earth. The water in its way parts,…
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Kisses from a Dark Piazza
From shadows he blew a kiss. It blossoms, rises to my lips.“If you’ll come back, kiss my walls.”North, South, East, West, he kisses them all. His peppermint teases my tears.I ache for this soldier once near.I am now his shadowy grace.Outside, there are geese returning to their mating place.Spring soon nears. Each new footfall brings…
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Taking Orders at the Caffe Florian
For Goethe, a Decafe to help him dream.For Lord Byron, a claret in his Abbott skull mug,spiced with a tuff of pubic hair from a girl he loved.For Marcel Proust, a Corcellett with milk, a croissantbrought to him at the brisk ring of his bell. For Charles Dickens, espresso shots, next to notes on Great…
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The Smoker
As is his habit, he smokes the rolled cigarette down to ashes before taking up the brush. He waits for the smoke to linger over him, for its aroma to stay in his hair— the cue to push the first arc for the grey stones on the hill he so desperately wants to capture before…
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Travelers
The train takes them, these sleepless travelers, from a land known to them, to a land unknown. from a familiar sunrise to a foreign dawn. They are moving to a new country where the roads are not filled with shadows, the skies are not thatched with rain and shattered metal doesn’t block the sky.They notice…
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Mirrors of Her Self
It’s the exact opposite of herself she sees,the cast away light she can’t cast away.the ugly reality that lives in her unrealitya reverse Narcissus drowning in her reflection.The things she hates are all there- and also all the things she loves.All she has to do is look awayand it will vanish from her sight.Yet, she…
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Down Swing
I’m too old to swing in the air,let the wind blow my hair wild.I have grown beyond childish things. Gravity-time has chained me here.Now, I hold all of my fears dear,huddled in all my tears to care.This cheap pipe playground has rusted,lasting just one trusted summer.Childless, I’m not my mother’s peer. She exists all dead…
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Sunflowers Flash Bye
In my car, I speed by a field of sunflowers following the light as the sun follows them, their life with me over in the flash of an eye, leaving only remembered halos in the shadows of buzzing bees whose journey, like mine, will be over by day’s end.
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Parrots Call the Colors of a 1000 Names Remembered
They meet everyday in the vermillion walltender colors of viridescent and lapis lazuli thatcaress the blood before it stains then fades,calling the colors of a thousand names rememberedThey drop their cracked seeds to be mashed into the mud of the cobbled street belowpreening each other’s feather to a quiet array,moaning softly, butting heads in ritual…
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Be Anita and Not Maria from Westside Story
All the Puerto Rican girls from my neighborhood, way back in the early 1960’s wanted to be Anitafrom West Side Story- a chica, with caliente legs,red Cutex lips, golden earrings and suave dance moves.To be Maria, the heroine, was to be their mothers—boring, white dresses and crucifixes, Ave Maria’s tied up in a simple demure…
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Van Gogh’s Last Self Portrait
He lost the battle in the cornfields when the sky gave the crows a victory.“What will be left of me,” he thought.“My sorrow will last forever,” his last words.He walked the starless streets of Auver a pencil, sketchbook in hand and drew nothing. The rows of lamplights receded, becoming walls of yellow clay.At home, he…
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An Old Couple Happily Waiting
They’ve been evicted, this old couple sitting outside, watching tv through the open window of the house across.A mystery is on. They’re waiting to be murdered, or so they think. Their son will be there soon, maybe.He’ll bring them food, hopefully. They sit, waiting happily for the ambulance’s arrival.
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Battling Moby Dick
White whale, white demon you go down, yeah.Dive down, till the Ocean cries, “Stop!”But yeah shall not stop, not even at hell.Fire be jealous of flame. Alit it must reach higher.Yeah will beat your head against the jagged rocks until that dead man’s itch leaves yeah thoughts,blinding everything until all above yeah is blind,until that…
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Masks Strolling Venice’s Square
A rogue with a stitched mouth steals bye,swiping a pearl from the porcelain womangazing adoringly at the moon-face lothario. The false Pope blesses the crying baptized child that Godfather death holds in his hands.The masks float along the Venice squaresinging dead languages, hiding their selvesin the faces of gods and goddesses sighing.
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Rain
I have known other rainsRain destroyed my world (once) and will end it— with other rain I am a man in rain beyond home The name of this is not mine but the rain’s My world is called rain It’s the distance from home Yet, after each one after removing colors it resettles my world,…
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Autumn Leaves
The leaves gift an elegy to the earth below.The generous winds scatter them afar.Old berries fall for the new buds bloom.Silence yields to the rattle all around.The poetry of spring is being written, re-vised with each withered branch renewed.Silver fringed hope is pushing through.Autumn is passing with each sunbeam.
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Walking Her Bicycle Back Home, Alone
Oh, child of mine, I’ve come back toreclaim your most precious thing from that blue ravine off the stone road.I lack the steadiness and pulse of movementto ride it home.So, I walk it back totally alone now,remembering those first unsteady lessonsuntil you found the perfect balance to peddle this silver dreambeyond my steady support.I will…
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Amidst the Whiteness All Around
They came lighting up the white pasture once green— the bagpipes of their bleating filling the center, until the snow is thick with sheep, the sun shining over their plump bodies in the winter mist.
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Old Stagecoach
I came upon it almost hidden in the grass,leaning against bluff, amongst fallen boulders,prideful and wizened in the fading sunlight, easy to see how it once thundered plains, prairies.The boy who drove it is dead, no longerdreaming of the new town at the next stop,no longer seeing wonder in the buffalo dustingall around him, knowing…
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Waiting Boats
Two boats nested close to each other on the shorewait for those to sail them outthe tide to feel their steady hand the wind to love their backto love them backto turn with the wind and turn them back to the waiting shore
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Blasted Oaks in the Snow
The oaks split into shaggy specters.Until it snowed again, they stood. They came, cut them down,limbs yielding to their will, the thinner branches whittled to finely crafted switches,to beat the children who live in the puritanical world.
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Brute Force
The blood wiped from her face evaporates into red smoke that always trails behind her. The first inhale before it fades awayattaches to all her memories.Her walls are now painted in crimson and white stripes.She looks upward and heaven drips blood drops.She looks downward. Hell’s crimson river flows.The accusing arrows have her eyes as points.…
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Devil’s Marbles
Karlu Karlu “Round Boulders” the Warumungu people say it,becomes “Devil’s Marbles” when the Aussie folks pray it. Millions of years these stones crack balancing earth-sky in their stack.
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Why She Only Wears Louboutins
Goat skin, satin in a silk embrace, red soles sexy as the devil’s smile, requiring adjustments of posture for the right walk.
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The Squirrel Holds Tight the Acorn
When I looked again, the squirrel with the acorn was gone, perhaps vanishing behind the trees.Minutes later, I noticed her gray shadow.She moved to me then ran the other way.In her fright, she did not notice the car, and the car did not notice her. For the driver, the squish could of have been another…
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Putting Marbles Away
Oh, I wish I could hear the sound of marblesbut my world exists in silence and sight. So I watch my Grandkids collide and scatterthem on the old wooden floorboards.When I put them in their jar, I delight in their smoothness and coolness.They form layers of iridescent swirls, rainbows that light up my worn world.
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Cup of Light
I watch the light filter through the sky, touch the grass. It moves thru the window forming a yellow light in the glass on the table. Barely glimpsed, it moves again, almost touching the room where you are dying.
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Fragile Fleeting Light
It’s the weak light that remains in memory— the fragile fleeting light that stays an ephemeral moment behind gray storm clouds, rosy dawns, rainbows, streaking like a meteor— and is gone…
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Raise the Red Lantern, Take Down the Blue Lantern
The wooden shutters must be flung opento scatter the doves on the ledge to the sky.Hang up that red lantern long reserved for all.Put it in the brightest spot to release the most joy.Take down that old blue lantern put up on the eaveswhen Mǔqīn (Mother) flower began to wilt in winter. for today, she…
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Reflecting on Where She’s Going
She thinks of Questions of Travel,caught in her green box of reflection.More of the gold palms of a Sydney Beachor again to Sri Lanka to see her mother?Her work, just like her past, is a neat stackof books, in earth and ocean tones.She must turn her back to being Down in the City, The Lost…
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Rain
The rain creates its own ballet starting with a lone figure holding an umbrella in the fog splashing teardrops with her feet . . .
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The Bridge
The bridge hides its sorrows.The daylight dilutes the fear of falling.Underneath the river flows,no one seeing its blackness,nor the mixing and depositing of everything that has cried.
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A Not So Beautiful List of Beautiful Things
Nothing is more beautiful than beauty that is gone:the unknown side effect that leaves blue stitches in the cheekthe moment that Marilyn Monroe stops playing the dumb blondeto Dougherty, DiMaggio, Miller andallows her beauty mark to be memory,roses wilting in the sunand melting in the snow,the purple flash among the green that leaves sun spots…
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Kekkon hirōen no shashin (the wedding party photo)
Hahaoya: The red Camilla/ living the noble death of love/ amongst daughter’s sky. Chōjo: Red spider lily/ lives in the web of neglect/ to eat butterfly. Ichibanshita no musume: A chrysanthemum/ blooms amongst all the flowers/ that have turned black.Hanayome: The cherry blossom/ hopes her short bloom will not wilt/ in the red string’s cutting.Japanese…
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He Creates the Sax for Her
She brings his instrument all together: a reedy tongue golden viper that fits his fingers. She is his night. And she dances for him, caressing him until the night is jazz and he is jazz— his only music.
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Golden Lanterns
Golden lanterns created under fluorescent lights are manufactured solely for this lucky night- the twelfth day, the first month of Buddha’s delight- to escape tungsten binds and be decaying satellites.
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She Supposes
She supposes a life beyond this wooden bench,this windswept summer day, this clear blue bay with fur seals mewling on the distant rocks.What will her husband, father, kids do if she dies? Nearby, a boy and girl are playing in the sandy grass.Just watching, a father and son, on another bench,we’re talking sports, memories of…
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Fathers and Friends
He cradled her from birth, first steps.And he carried her to death, last steps.One was once her father. The other was her life mate.After her funeral , on this bench,they talked and commiserated.Ever since, their bench talks grew tomore kids, sports, small memories of her. This poem has a mirror poem- She Supposes. https://themoyaview.com/2023/01/20/she-supposes/
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Walking the Dead Beach
1The beach evaporates into the clouds and on sandsbeyond hourglasses, I walk—under a dry and empty sky,a blue that doesn’t exist, a white that has died inside.The dark and light hereare not things. The beach is a negative of souls. I try to imagine a life before the dry,perhaps a lover,someone besides me,to sleep in…
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Walking the Living Beach
Past:The sea foam grants me gifts of pink, blue, green:a man-o-war, a mermaid’s purse,brine shrimp,sea lettuce. With each step, I feel my feet uncover and burythe beach’s cycle,the grit and stingof warm sand caressing my soles.I wish to stay to watch the purple evening come,long enough to witness the loggerhead turtlebury its eggs in the…
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Green Elf Children
Little green elf childrenwith rings on their fingers and bells on their toeswill, if you let them,follow you wherever you go.Through the wild maze of lifethey will lead you to and fro,if that is where your heart desires goes and grows,or the simple life of man, if no. “But, what if I want to go…
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Dust Devil
It rose from the dead and sand, a thick yellow-gray gale full of the stink of alkali and tumbleweeds, a demon following the road.
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Their Feather Dance
When she danced he knew his hope was a feathered thing.In the moonlight, she shone,a blue smooth watery rippleof ostrich wings that made her seem his Cleopatra in bas-relief.She raised her hand to the sky and up high, six feathers flew up.And just as quickly returned toearth a billow of floating down.His twi-night met her…
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To Know Guernica Is to Fall
He saw Guernica in front of him and knew what falling was in all its gray grace and white horror. “Jesus, how they huddle together like close trees in a savage wind,” he thought, noticing his phlegm falling into the acid of his stomach. By the time he left the museum dusk…
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The Cosmic Princess and the Frozen Peas
The ginger cosmic princess slept on ten rainbow bright beds.Under the one for seventh heaven,just under all the amethyst haze a pea stung her into faux dismay.She felt her back and knew this malaise was a diamond in hidden displayjust needing frozen peas to allay.
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The Boat Awaits
Silent boats await to take us all to distant shores.
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Just One Rose Is Enough for Love to Bloom
A lonely rose in a bottle on a hill- first gift from Beasts to Beauties.
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A Crush of Light All Around Them
A crush of light all around churned the still waves into cumulonimbus clouds. Behind them, the grass withered to molten gold. In front, the sun exploded to a yellow mushroom, hiding all the green in between from their fearful eyes. in these moments, they knew their life together was over.
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Ark
Two by two they all came into the ark, shut the door. The rains came. Forty days God stood on their roof.
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Ulysses Plea to His Crew
Sail with me, into the the siren song, swell. Let us hear life’s perilous sweetness unroped, knowing what will wholly happen when its sound kisses our thirsty and wanting lips.Go to this Wikipedia page regarding the background story of Ulysses and the Sirens;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_and_Ulysses
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Mermaids
There they where at sundown, half women and half fish, shifting in time and air, sunning themselves in slow light where lilies and leeches tangled beyond all their casting nets.
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My Happiness Is Defined in You
To see what I see as beautiful. and not ever hide your little joys, knowing the sun rises, stars don’t fall, and all our Chinese meals are poems.
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Aquarium
Contained in this glass world that is of the sea, but not it, fish swim blindly from end to end,kissing the blue bottled fog.
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Caress
She stops her motorcycle and takes in the beach grass blooming all around her.She once saw her life in a dirty puddleand the black tenements blocking all light.Now, for the first time she sees a horizon.In the breeze she feels her mother cupping her face in her palms telling her everything will be alright.
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Times Square, January 1st, 3am
The old year has dissolved into the next.The dropped ball has been dismantled. The ghosts of life have left their white tracks.The Square in breathes in white abandon.At first light, after the exhale, the feet and faces will return in bewilderment seeking what they thought was impossibly lost in the night crush.
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Secret of the Queens
The Queen of Sheba knew that power was not in the prides of men one keeps but in the pride one has.
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Taking a Train Ride
An old fashion steam train ride together is the only good way fathers know their young sons and sons their old fathers.
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Death and the Maiden
She gathered lilies to her— Held them to the Lord of Sky until she fell away and he granted her eternal night.
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Pedestrian
The broken man emerges from the subway. The metallic vapors of manhole covers penetrate his chest. So many insignificant defeats, disappointments, broken and hidden hopes trail him— ones that keep him awake all night. Exhaustion keeps him downcast, unaware of a horizon. From corners, blind alleys leading in and out of hell emerge the others…
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Driving the Night Road
Headlights slip over the asphaltgoing from grief to grief as the road ghosts rise.Like us, they are lonelyseeking lost dreams as the road goes on, forgetting us.
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Jigsaw Puzzle
Slowly the pieces come together,the edges of paradise first:grapes, golden flowers, oranges floatingin a cerulean sky forming sleeves of clouds, skirt, top until the goddess is revealed.
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Black Dress
When she wears the black dress against herself and sees her every reflection in the mirror she knows it will fit her better than even her mother ever wore it.
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Magnolias
The Japanese Magnolias lean into the cicadas chirr,into the every shadows of the day,before returning back to the very open airthey keep to themselves before they die.
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All the Peacock Is, Is But a Jest
To hear the peacock’s shrill is to know that all beauty is a jest.(It is easy for eyes to deny the truth the ears hear.)Look closer, all those eyes are really iridescent stormsor blue-green cometsrushing to a solar collision.A light halo of black makes themind see only beautiful eyes.The peacock spreads its tail to keep…
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The Bottle All Around Her
Her life now is a message in a bottle. She sails anywhere, somewhere, nowhere,it doesn’t make a difference . She’ll never break free of the glass all around her.She will remain anchored to past lovers. Her thoughts will never get pass her memories of them. Their gaunt faces will pull her back, warning sirens lost…
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Thomas Mann Watches Venice Fade Away
The green city decaysinto beauty—the stone lions facing the sea,the gondolier’s drift, the Five Domes beseeching the immigrantstars.
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Love’s Kiss Is a Parisian Night
Love’s kiss—a Parisian nightatop the Eiffel Tower. The world below—boxed macarons on a blue boulevard. All lovers- Louvre exhibits knowing only Giaconda smilesbefore la petite mort.
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The Musician
Inner torment plays his face. He prays that the music will come when he strums the guitar’s strings. The sun plays on his hands, serenades his face,whispers the sounds.
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The Fairground Closes for the Night
The whirligigs above will stop,fold and rest their metal wingsfor the night.The cars and those in them will not collide.Gravity returns, granting peace and stillness from the movements of the day. The weary attendants will slump their shoulders,sighing in relief.So too, will the teddy bear in the claw machine once the current shuts off. Bullets…