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WHAT WE DID
What we did doesn’t matter. I hardly remember what we did together except for moments filled with joy or despair. I’m a poet in the way I remember you and I was a poet when I was there. You—what you...
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WHEN THE INDOOR LIFE IS GLIMPSED
When the indoor life is harmlessly glimpsed in a lighted window against the dark the aesthetics of your life needs nothing more. You know the joy of being in bed, reading in a warm house during a...
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POETRY ENDS
My poetry ends where porn begins. The refined soul still sins. We are worse than our public selves, worse than our books. The poet sweetly writes. But then he looks. Yet ask his mistress—if Venus were...
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RUMOR
Rumor cost me my chastity and a noun became my name. A pillar scrawled. A poem accused. And poetry was initially chosen for opposite reasons, not for this soiling, not to be hounded with sorrow and...
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THINKING YOU ARE WEALTHY IS WEALTHY
Thinking you are wealthy is wealthy. Let the Chinese and U.S. economies become one! The suitor, his billion dollar haircut oily and perfumed, waits in the towering parlor, eyed by portraits of...
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I HEARD THE PROPHETS PREDICTING THE END
I heard the prophets predicting the end, but what I discern to be the greatest trend is the stupidity of the prophets. In the fearful speed of their prophecy, prophets confuse “what has been” with...
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NOW THAT OUR AFFAIR IS OVER
Now that our affair is over, and the mournful memory of our affair is over, all I do is ponder your name. You might be a god— in a mythology book. In the myth, what did the god do? Was she...
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MICHAEL CASEY AND THE ZEITGEIST OF THE YALE YOUNGER POETS PRIZE
I happened to meet Michael Casey at the Adastra Press table during this year’s Massachusetts sponsored Salem Poetry Festival, May 6-8. Shaded by Salem’s Peabody-Essex Museum on a gloriously hot and...
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SHE COULDN’T KNOW
She couldn’t know. The future, heavy and slow, presses down on her with this and that regret she won’t be able to remember yet, but will, when I drift by and catch her eye. How is it possible I look...
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5.13.23
The bright sun has relaxed me soand chased away my poetry;the mesmerizing music of my verse imploreswhen it’s dark and I’m trapped indoors.Anxiety is my muse.Alarm and black ink tremble before the...
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MAGIC
What happened to your magic? The dimension time has caused your flesh to fall, succeeded by my silly rhyme— silly but youthful. What I said in the bodily opinion of my verse will still be talking when...
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PROXIMITY
Nature’s flesh is all one flesh.Boiling garlic looks like fish;steal from nature if you need strength—your blood needs nature’s blood.A whole philosophy can liveon the wholeness of nature,but...
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ALL LOYALTIES BEND
Every last one gave you bad advice,was mean to you. Because of death.No one frightened is nice.Mortals are scared in every breath. Towards confusion all mortal bodies tend,and none are happy. Because...
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5/20/23
You won’t talk of this, a censorship that originates from your own lip. You won’t talk to the one you love. You cannot. The vital part of yourself loses eye and heart— in a contest to best see the one...
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A SMILE OF STRENGTH IS STILL A SMILE
A smile of strength is still a smile but an old person’s face is permanently sad. Scientists will fly into a rage when I tell them sadness causes old age, but what if it were true? Science is the best...
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THE LOVE-SICK OLD
I remember twenty, ridiculous in love, my own heartache from a love unreturned and bold, humiliated to the point strangers pitied me, even as I laughed, before the rhyme on it, put on a wall, sold....
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DEATH IS A SUNNY DAY
The summer has made the trees large; their fat leaves give tremendous shade. What has grown is our sunny loss. The house, the yard, the decks, are cool. In front of the bathroom mirror he starts a...
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KENT AND NIKI
Calendar dates, signs from the dead, and visits in dreams,almost convince us life is less realthan what almost seems more realbehind life’s curtain when it slips.Is this proof of immortality?Should we...
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BABY BOOMER
“That Whitsun, I was late getting away” —Philip Larkin Let it show how much I didn’t know. I traveled from here to there in my dirty underwear with very little money, no real plan, vaguely excited by,...
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TWO FIGURES
Two figures approached me from a distance whom I will call Mars and Venus. Mars had large upper arms which caused his hips to swivel in a military swagger; Venus’ slightly slower pace was rhythmically...
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