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IF I MIGHT GIVE A LITTLE ADVICE WITH MY POEM
Advice has never worked in a poem unless the advice is profound; they also serve who only stand and wait; Milton, and other great poets, advise profitably in their poetry, but me? Angry in politics....
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CHRISTMAS POEM
I will not go over how Plato attempted to prove the existence of the soul. You are enamored of the body and this is not a philosophical poem. I’m a philosopher, but I know poems travel by way of...
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I DON’T WANT TO ARGUE WITH YOU
I don’t want to argue with you. Since the argument of the world began It’s always been short by one man. No job is quite complete. Every love triumphant at first, ends in defeat. Enthusiasm rooted in...
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ROMANTIC
Sexual intercourse and romance never align. Coffee is consumed with hope, satiety, with wine. Pleasures multiply and soon soiled and plain seems the cold moon. She was wise to make me wait. Romance is...
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THIS MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE
My poems are a translated love; you can feel the lover. This was written by someone who knows how to kiss. Byron, old poems, are safely dead; Rosalinda, I know, I know; analyze a prose poem, instead;...
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NOW LET ME RETURN
You make love to Wittgenstein, Tokyo and lichen in your blurbs for New Directions; the anxiety of flux is happy to spill on your carpet; impregnated by Cat Stevens and Syd Barrett, the uncanny reigns...
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THE RIGGED GAME
American culture and politics is the rigged game. We find out too late: leaders we loved or hated were the same. Americans like to believe losers are to blame. We are. We lost a rigged game. The guy...
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SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST
“Survival of the Fittest” is a phrase I hate; dog eat dog darwinism leading to nazism and war. I sang folk songs for years, “Gonna Study War No More!” Benign and happy; I did not write one line of...
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LOOKING BACK AT SCARRIET 2021
I’ve edited Scarriet since September 2009, when Alan Cordle, who I met on the poetry-contest-exposing website Foetry, created Blog Scarriet as an alternative to the Poetry Foundation’s Blog...
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SEX WITH MANY
“hey tom. guess who else sent me a poem?” Sex with many is the actual or implied state which wrecks us. Jealous frenzy beats wildly in the calmest breast. Gary Cooper was stabbed and shot; fortunately...
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IF YOUR POEM IS BAD YOU CAN SAY IT WAS A JOKE
“The book that needs to be written next is the The Hatred of Poets.” —Kent Johnson, reviewing Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry. If your poem is bad you can say it was a joke. If no one gets the joke,...
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THERE IS ALWAYS A PROBLEM
If you feel the truth and live it there will always be someone who will make you explain so you feel stupid or insane. You were secure in your honesty and it even brought you joy, but along comes an...
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A SERIES OF NAPS
Today on TV, life seems especially shiny, odd, and creepy but the scratchy, doggy, suitcase life goes on; we take a nap, life changes; moving, what do we do with all these books? How can we afford to...
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REMEMBERING HER AFTER YEARS
The skeletal beauty of winter is more beautiful than spring. Sticks stick out of the water. The cloudy harbor is remembering things dead in spring. Winter, warm and quiet by the shore, wishes to...
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OK YES THE CRAZY SHAPED ME
OK yes the crazy shaped me; dad was not only jealous of mom, but of each male child; this bound him to family and made the safe argumentative and wild. I was obedient to my parents’ wishes but I...
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THE REAL EXPERIENCE
The real experience is walled off from all other experience so it can be a real experience. The paradox of this enters our minds slowly: is being walled off what makes something real? When the United...
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TORTUROUS PARADOX
“The woke are asleep” —somebody Believing intelligent design would seem to make one conspiracy-stupid and naive. But we are intelligent, or not, based on what we believe. The atheist uses intelligence...
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HOW DIFFERENT WAR IS
In the 19th century, citizens would have lunch and watch a battle. Now, in war, citizens are for lunch. I cannot stomach tales of 20th century war. As an idle citizen, fragile, old, and full of doom,...
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ALL REVOLUTIONS IN LOVE
All revolutions in love were literary— until the sexual revolution (sex being a strong element of love) broke the mold— cinema, the Great War, the automobile, and later in the century, birth control....
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BREAKING: GOOD POEM PUBLISHED ON THE INTERNET
Without warning, a good poem dropped on the internet. It was right there to read for free. Rumors of this happening had been going around the internet for years: a good poem would simply show up, sans...
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