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THE NEVER INSULTED
The insults, both accidental and intentional, pile up. The Insulting Animal defines humans best. Embarrassment in labor is our lot. The never insulted are happy and blessed. Animals and children...
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MOTHER
Mother, your absence makes me ask, of what do I subsist? Increasingly it feels the past did not really happen and only I exist. My strange fate within— laughter in a tunnel of doubt— is coming to...
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NATURE PAINTS BETTER
for Ben Mazer Nature paints better than the painter (strange cloud against a sunset sky) but the poet writes poetry alone. Nothing helps the poet write poetry (motorcycle whine, slang, laughter) or...
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GREAT POEMS SCARRIET FOUND ON FACEBOOK NO. 6
This is actually the seventh in Scarriet’s Great Poems Scarriet Found On Facebook series. Scarriet’s number 6 was worked up into a longer piece and handed over to Outlook India, who asked me for some...
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BUT MY EGO IS TOO BIG TO ENJOY THE WORLD AND MY POETRY MAKES NO SENSE
“How best the mighty work he might begin Of Saviour to mankind, and which way first Publish his godlike office now mature, One day forth walked alone, the Spirit leading” —Paradise Regained, Milton I...
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BEFORE THE FIRES
Who you are not is more important than who you are. You are not the universe; you are a singular star. This is not who I am— you guessed—but you were wrong. I am already dissolving in song. She chose...
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POLICING FICTION
I have written to you again and again the words not for a letter. Not to you, have I written, but to the poetry that wanders away from me, as casually as an unpublished poem. Anything more formal...
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ENDLESS AUGUST
Endless August sought an element in us that was using us to be endless. The good in us wants the endless, for what is “I” doesn’t want this to end. You endorsed what we did under the moon at Dead...
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SEEING AND POETRY
We are told that “poetry paints a picture” and the early 20th century saw a poetry movement—“Imagism”—flourish to some degree, on the back of haiku, a poetry practice which is said to resemble a...
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TRAVEL IN THIS ANTHOLOGY AND FIND
The English had two great advantages; they were neither so learned nor so Court-bound as the Italians and French. —Richard Aldingtion, from the introduction to his The Viking Book of Poetry of the...
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GREAT POEMS SCARRIET FOUND ON FACEBOOK NO. 7
The poet is Joshua Michael Stewart. FOR MY BROTHER ON WHAT WOULD’VE BEEN HIS FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY His greatest joy was to pin my armsto the floor with his kneesand fart in my face.The day he pushed me...
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IF YOU HAVE NO FAITH I CAN DEPICT
If you have no faith I can depict how delicately the sensitive turns to sin— or make a world with verse and fit the pieces in— and get the shadows right— by going beyond black and white, even getting...
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I WON’T LIKE IT THAT WAY, EITHER
I won’t like it that way, either— when I forget and you love and you do not let me forget. I do not love you that much yet. But there is something that I read: “When the one we love dies, remember...
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THE DASH
Mather, a Facebook poet friend wrote this: A dash indicates a sudden, unexpected shift in perspective, a “lightning bolt” of awareness, not as gradual as a comma and not as normative as a period. The...
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WAR IS OVER?
“War is over” —The Unknown Soldier, Doors, 1968 Waiting for the fads to end— and what really matters to take hold. But when all this nonsense finally ends will I be too old? Miss Sexy, you look the...
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IF YOU ASK ME, I WILL LOVE YOU
Love is mostly in the asking— and seducers know what lovers know: if you ask, you will be loved. There is pride which resists love— cold pride and the judgment which is cold, and little understood....
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THERE ARE MILLIONS OF CHILDREN
There are millions of children now old enough to know— large stadiums as far as the eye can see filled with those who can now understand my poetry— telling what you and I did when we did it. Yes,...
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THE MODERN
Since I am so sensitive, fear makes me sick. To remain well I am ignorant as hell, hidden from everything that might make me sit up in the middle of the night thinking and worrying. The slightest...
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THE IGNORANT WHO WORK HARD
The ignorant who work hard hate the smart weirdos who don’t— but work, like water, finds its level; work always gets done. Necessity takes care of itself. The miserable who make themselves sick...
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MEIN LEBEN, OR THE U.S.A.
My life has been simply this: a series of disappointments in which friends and family members have let me down and this seems to be the experience of everyone. The labor of strangers has made us rich....
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