Once they spot me All my bakoki disappear Like dew in the morning sun Pledging to see their halves Or take children on rounds Leaving me desperate. I too shall marry because I disgraced not my uncle To curse me die a bachelor Neither did lust lure me fuck a donkey and have my testicles smashed. I can’t stand […]
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Plain Girl Pretty Rose was a plain girl from a small town. She sang in the choir, never missed Bible study, left for the big city after high school. She worked nights in a shanty diner next to a bar where working men gathered. Depending on how much the men had to drink Rose looked appealing but she ignored […]
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Overpass In the gravel hole slumbering in cold fatigue open and open is tomorrow never arriving. But pale and pasty sickness in my mirror is all I see when I look at my changing body, changing again to form a great wonder. Weak as a broken limb, my mind is empty of inspiration and I am drifting with this […]
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Everybody Don’t Have Somebody The man in the ER, sutured and bandaged, told the nurse there wasn’t anyone she could call to give him a lift home. He said he’d take a bus once he had a chance to check his wallet and see if he had any money. He didn’t have much to begin with, he said, and the […]
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AGE HAS ITS PRIVILEGE – By Ray Gallucci When you are old and prone to mold, It matters not if you they’ll scold For skipping meetings by not heeding Platitudes they keep repeating. It’s right you’ve earned to choose to spurn What management claims you should learn. Once you have heard it all before, Their tired words are just […]
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Notes Upon Viewing The still-frame, captured eye, I do not ask permission to see. When I enter the theater, I simply view. The camera takes me where I want to go, high in the air where I have never been. Up and down the side of a skyscraper. Into the mouth of a problem. Image, sound, life, deformed, resembled, […]
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HOW TO BREAK SNOW – By John Grey Something foreign helps, armored vehicles adorned with unfamiliar grim-faced eagles rolling down white slopes, and explosions in the distance, close at hand – loud red, even louder black, instant thaw. No tool more expedient than soldiers pounding on a door, the path more hob-nailed print than even sheen, roof and eaves cascading […]
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A grey, blustery day And the sun breaks through More of a wink than a smile Reminding me To savor such moments For much is fleeting And often passes Unnoticed In the busy-ness of days Where we are pushed ever forward But when the wind has changed And the clouds linger It is the memory of such times That […]
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Cremation I’ve always believed in cremation; Flames bleach the world, unclutter living things. Let scum survivors, grasshoppers Leave cemeteries a mess Of living impulses dismembered. Not knowing fire’s totality But sickly honouring it stunting In tortured carbon stench. I’ve always believed in cremation Ever since I read of great skull mountains; Those potash handfuls are so clean […]
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AT A DISTANCE Gently rolling, runneled hills, Colored like a daffodil. Rivulets to ocean spill Under cloudy skies. Atmosphere of shrouding haze Rising from the surface waves, Where beneath lie ancient caves Never brought to light. Yet this sky’s a different hue From what we’re accustomed to B Yellow, not a trace of blue, Dares to […]
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