THE DOGE’S PALACE – By Ray Gallucci (in Venice, Italy) The bones remain, but flesh is gone, The lungs that breathed, heart pumping strong, The ruling brain that made it great – The Doge’s Palace, left to Fate. Amid the fossils, can you feel The power once it dared to wield, Controlling trade through maritime Predominance of Venice prime? […]
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AN OPEN LETTER TO GOD Dinosaurs lived on this planet for 165 million years and God was patient but then He said “This ain’t working out so good,” and He threw a big rock at the earth. Man has lived here for less than 10,000 years and we’ve done far worse than the dinosaurs did and God’s losing […]
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And so the roof began to leak And they all began to tremble in panic To each his own Clenching to whatever they stole “The roof is not beyond repair” “We can fix it if we all shared “ Yet none of them truly cared Instead they raised their soiled fingers And began to point at each […]
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Tequila (V5) By Michael Lee Johnson Single life is Tequila with a slice of lime, Shots offered my traveling strangers. Play them all deal them jacks, some diamonds then spades, hold back aces play hardball, mock the jokers. Paraplegic aging tumblers toss rocks, Their dice go for the one-night stand. Poltergeist fluid define another frame. Female dancers in the […]
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It was an ancient city. All the young people left as soon as they could but the old remained in their mortgaged huts surrounded by evergreens that offered a haven for cardinals and jays, robins and finches. No matter the season birds flew from tree limbs to feed on seed and suet put out by too many widows […]
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Shattered ambitions litter the roadside of expectations, ignored by parents, neglected by school, yet filled with all the yearning that are youth made vulnerable, so when a kind man paid attention, told of the blessings of Allah, the kinship of true believers, it was an easy task to reveal the afterlife, the promise of fulfillment for servants of Islam […]
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within those man stone walls promoting their god bringing us to him i told the priest- you tell us to be content with poverty while you live in this big house throwing us scraps begged from money lenders. this is not what Jesus asked his disciples to do. this is not what he died for. he said live amongst […]
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Dear John (the Sophie to Der Rosenkavalier) By Frank De Canio Just like the Marschallin had been resigned to cede her lover to the ingénue to whom his heart would later be inclined, so Marietta’s mistress bade adieu to her so that her “Quinquin” could pursue no younger woman but a different sex than formerly she’d been accustomed to. Perhaps […]
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Untitled In a chow hall In a prison Hangs a painting dressing the back wall Of wilderness facade A lake to brood upon its frown Promising freedom with pale-crowned mountains Creeping land and dismal clouds Mocking me…feeding hope (one would think) But I see only imprisonment of […]
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HOTAND COLD Perhaps 100million years To rise from naught, then disappear Above the Hot Spot in the Earth That to Hawaiian Chain gave birth. The oldest now perhaps just stumps, Once mountains proud, now merely bumps Long passed from magma cauldron where They first broke through the surface there. The youngest rise majestically For miles above […]
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