MEET THE MADNESS A Providence twilight, late November, every man and woman dressed in gray, sliding in and out of panels or emerging from dark recesses, all faces plain, hair drab, eyes shut, tongues muted, and there, high up in the skyscrapers, mouths in windows pause mid-shriek, as, down by the riverside, water rats crack on scattered bones […]
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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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Fifty years ago Jane got on a plane and flew away without saying good-bye. Her parents took her, I know. She was only 14 but she could have said good-bye to me, the swain who saw her through our last three years of grammar school when she wore braces, the only girl who had them. Fifty years later at our […]
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I am guilty of skipping chapters stained with shadows Missing moments not composed I feel unworthy of your tales untold, reserved for me, while dust sleeps upon the page There […]
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Cliché Adumbration of authenticity is credible as credo of mendacity. Praxis of pigeonholing lulls us. Nirvana isn’t in nomenclature. In eschewing tracks of tenebrousness. Gnomes of knowledge must kindle their lanterns by lynching doctrines of divisiveness.
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THE LOVE BUSINESS (By Joseph Cavera) It’s never simple, This business you, you know Be it fading ripples Ebb and flow The rises and falls never cease To come, and go And yet…we persist We press on with what we are While the pain seems to insist That reality shapes a scar Not one we see or sense […]
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fading scars are fading Twenty-five years ago I unloaded a truckful of books. I’d done it a hundred times. Seventy-pound boxes into the back of the store, ten, twenty, before the bolt that jutted from the door handle caught my elbow. Three-inch tear extended the inner crease of my left arm. As the manager, what can you do? I […]
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A voice says ‘cry’ A voce says ‘cry’ And I said, what shall I cry? All flash is grass, For all the beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, When the breath of the God blows upon it, Surely the people are grass. The grass withers the flower fades, But the word […]
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Goodnight Sweet City Goodnight by Mike Matter Goodnight sweet city, goodnight Hold your evening close by and ready the mid-morning-missed realization of sunrise Fly your noise through the heights of the rich and poor alike then scatter your ash over the higher A dream lies filled with visions of height and glory seasoned with an agonizing challenge, joy, grandiose […]
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Wasting Time I’m sitting on the bench, and time is passing me by. I’m waiting for tears to fall, but it is the rain that never comes. I’m waiting for love, but there he goes again. My life, my world is the glass window of happiness, and my family does not see the woman that I am. I’m just […]
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