Carnival That peacock opulence, Swarming on strutting grime; That massed ecstasy, squeezing itself, Short-breathed, near suffocation; That sound-abandonment, seeming to plunge To deafness’s peace; Yet keeping those maimed faculties alive, Ever denying their last fulfilment. Maybe it’s only I and it, I, starting in the middle And it, commensurate with my idea Of my own size? Maybe I […]
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Dead, a Viking walked over the Rainbow Bridge. If he (and it always seemed to be a he) died in battle, then he had a 50% chance of going to Valhalla, ruled by Odin, for drinks. The other half went to Freya’s Field. I’d have liked the field. After an hour of snow followed by summerish sunshine, my partner […]
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Young Priest, Old Priest Everyone in the neighborhood was surprised when Bill McIntyre entered the seminary to study for the priesthood. He had been dating girls since early in high school and had been engaged since graduating from college to a lovely young lady. He often spoke about wanting to have a big family since he himself had been […]
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Why Are the Dead So Still – By Fern G. Z. Carr Arms crossed, lying motionless in an open casket, he gazes upward through closed eyelids. Maybe if I look hard enough I’ll see him flinch or wriggle his nose at the acrid smell of incense rising from the censer; holy water is sprinkled on his body – it […]
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NEVER TO WANDER Hell smoke has gone to rest And gradually I condense Like caged cloud in a fist of steel Bubbling in a helpless circumference The rope to winch is strained to shreds But in my sleeping wings Am sure to find Healing capsules for my nasopharyngitis Bang I cry Please heed the call Kindly enclose me in Else […]
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CLICHÉD Beggars can’t be choosers, For there is no choice for losers, And as paupers we must stand with open hand. Seeing is believing, But can also be deceiving When you’re grieving that you’re down and out again. Cruising for a bruising, If you’re thin-skinned, makes excusing Your intrusions not so simple of a chore. Striking while […]
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Night of labyrinth VI I never intended to die in my dreams again With a staff of anguished of pain In a broad day hour In a sit of castled crown of devastation Weakly the hours of seeing in discrete manner Hope not to witness or see again in hours of failure Turn our thinking into waste garage In […]
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I bring a milkshake every other week to an old man in a nursing home, a refugee from Germany who paid me 50 cents to cut his grass when I was a kid in Chicago after WWII. I couldn’t understand him then and I can’t understand him now but 50 cents was big money in 1950, 10 candy bars, 10 […]
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IN THE BRUSH (By Joseph Cavera) In to out is unearthed and free description, encryption form friction as fiction is subdivided into purest Soliloquy Silver screens form the veil that shrouds as memories and processes slowly deride senses that tried to confide hazy screams and dreamy clouds Sometimes we create our own destruction the fabrications we devise […]
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SMALL BEFORE THE SEA We have only pictures, A journal and rubble From what was a fixture To keep ships from trouble. A lighthouse, built sturdy, On Unimak island Around 1940, With Coast Guard as client. Five Guardsmen were manning The station that morning, Both horn and beam spanning The sea with their warning. At […]
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