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The Joint is Out of Time: A Journal of the Plague Year, Day 108

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History in the unmaking.

The End of History

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Well, I walked in on you, then you walked out on me And that was when it happened – the end of history And that should have been sufficient But I think you know it wasn’t I remember it was you who told me Dreams are only efficient when illusio

Stanley

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For some employees the job was simply a job, another day towards another paycheque towards another Friday night spent at the bar wondering just exactly when life decided to start with the kidney punches.

Blackballed

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When I was a small child, my father was just barely a man, and he was independently wealthy. So it didn't matter that he was an adolescent inside. There was never any mention of "working." No notion of career. Just the girl he knocked up and the amusing…

Annabelle

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Jess threw her books on the bed then grabbed a notebook from a shelf and slammed it onto a writing table. It made a hard pop gunshot sound. Flinging open the book, a page tore. Her diaries were named Annabelle. It was with a blue felt tip pen that she wrote: …

A salute to Poetry Month last and a hello to May

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Fleeting moments of tension free, Sensory glimpses of how it could be, A sweet easy rhythm in synchrony Is how it seems for you, too, to me. There's nothing really but memory, Yet promise of something's The world I see.

Kneecapping the Muse

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In 1997, I was exploring a used bookstore in Camden, New Jersey, when I stumbled across a two-volume hardback copy of The Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić, a book I had been meaning to read since it came out in 1984. At $10.00 for the set, I couldn't pass up…

Calm and Level

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The funeral grounds look level and calm. We leave the urban world behind for an instant. The other world has claimed someone. But we are in limbo. It is a terrible thing when a connection or breakthrough moment is not achieved or granted by the universe. …

(There) You Are(There Again)

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looking like you never once purposefully disappeared from our view. Like a river running clean through a fog's lying heart. Like standing thunder, suddenly gone solid enough, within a crazed hungry countryside, like a smile's radius, to be seen and heard …

the musk and the drama

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Shame must search the soul, broken, original, with its primitive juices stirred. Moved until now only by the musk, only the stroll you lived with, the worry, the sorrow, the drama – may I never conceal or recover from it! Yes, I might beg or steal the

How the Other Half Lives

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Most of life, it turns out, is pathetic. Very little is funny. We have to generate our own laughter. Canned laughter may have to do. Even if we have to carry the can around our neck like a Saint Bernard or strapped to our hip

Nascent Talk with the Gypsy

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She was having a laugh, but I didn't know what about. We were sitting in a big house that was on the top of a large incline. All these books were scattered around, and the walls and the kitchen, the doors and the quarter round and every other thing, was old and…

Good Grief

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Slowly slowly the veil is lifted

Thank God for Kids — by Comparison, I'M 'Adult'!

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[NOTE: PLEASE DEFER READING THIS UNTIL YOU'VE COMPLETED THE 'MONAD' (OR 'MILESTONE') YOU'VE NEEDED TO! THANKS! BE FOREWARNED!]

"Dial Back the Snark" Speakers Scramble for Limited Gigs

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“‘Dial Back the Snark’ is an attempt to fight the cynicism that’s corroding America’s social fabric,” Myers says, mixing his metaphors. “It’s spreading like wildfire."

The Cook

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“She said I hurt her and my father, the both of them.” Rose patted her round belly, carried high and in front, likely a boy. “I can see that.”

Your party invitation just arrived (guest poem by Carolyn Martin)

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"I’d rather move a word around a page than raise a glass or pass a plate or work a room immune to poetry."

On the Country Roads Tonight: I Don't Care - song

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Wheels are spinning On the country roads tonight I’m driving all alone No one else in sight And the wind’s in my hair And I don’t care Yeah, the wind’s in my hair And I don’t care

Women Meeting new Men

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WOMEN MEETING NEW MEN up suddenly from a new fire we each rose up suddenly columns of smoke wrapping around one another parts of us touching and matching fitting and twisting tightly becoming one over this poem…

keeping house

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This is the house

Holy Hell (a screenplay) (v.1)

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(and the teacher’s voice, which we realize has just faded in at a drone:)

Writing Poems

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We bring words together and set them up on blind dates. Watch them build a history together, get married and fight together. Make offspring syllables cradled warm in cribs of punctuation. Phonemes squeezed into existence by two parenthesis. Words…

For Colleen McCullough

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She was reading The Thorn Birds. Always on her side, in a pink cotton housecoat. The Buddha rested on his side. And drank milk. We drank plenty of milk, but, being Catholic, didn't know anything about Buddha. I would sit there. Piles of books were around. I…

unstoppable fire

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First of all, you should know an unstoppable fire made my panties roar for you. Maybe you will come to understand what effect you had on my life, my whole life, I mean. You should know the effect you had on people. Me, and Sharon too, both. And I’m sure

The Lightning

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IThe squirrels danced in the trees.They leapt from branch to limbto the struck down tree trunk,thick with bark.The creek was overfilled.Lightning had lasted for days."Just one more day,"she told herself"Just one more day,"before the sun comes out again.The lightning had…

Love Makes the Boundaries Disappear

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She was asked: “What would it mean to be in a great earthquake to you?” She said: “It would mean that I might never see him again.” Then she panicked. She came to me and said: “Do you mind riding in the other car? I have to ride in the same car wi

Feast

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His long black lashes stir, flutter a wink. His eyes catch yours through the dark reflection of your face, illuminated from beneath by wavering candlelight. Reflection obscures his features; they become yours.

icing on the cake

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The sexuality comes over us in waves. We need to hold things, someone. The women, the men, side by side, our features blending together. We notice the small curved lines at the corners of the mouth. We notice everything. And the animal is still inside m

The Light Of the Face

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We all have our place But it’s always there, isn’t it Streaming throughout our lives The light of the face Where most of the soul comes to rest We see it best when the hard wind blows Cause in the course of events The wind will know our

Old Soul

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She’s an old soul who was scattered to the winds like a thousand butterflies and a moth She has no center and flits from event to event and can’t miss out on a thing, because crikey, what if she missed something important? And the m