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Words are Words are Words

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On My Honor

Thrown Away

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I am brokenJust a sliver of what I used to beNot used to missing youStill.After months,You don't think of meAnd it breaks me.Every morning...by the time I've hit the closetI've thought of you.Throughout the dayI think of you.It is my hard place.I can't get over itOr around…

It Always Comes So Close & Then Disappears

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It's all down to you. To every new morning's baby crying. Down to your blank notebook, all sides opening at once, hands like an ocean of birds.You standing there looking back at me from behind your chosen wall of love's newly made flesh. Your smile like blood…

Intro to Rock Poetry 101

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He was the Elton John Distinguished Professor of Lyrics, the last man over the drawbridge before they abolished tenure; he didn’t have to do any original thinking for the rest of his life.

you see?

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The river is there inside, the liquid living inside like light, moving rapidly over unknown rocks, approaching, and intimate. As if the source of all is inside me. Someone, anyone, says the word “available” from 3 tables away, as if it’s the only word o

Beginnings

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Sharpen your nails.

The Swan On Earth

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I saw God sobbing in a wheelchair. I saw God on the ceiling of your bedroom on Illinois Street while you were inside me the first time. (I remember so many things… Do you remember who I am yet?) I saw myself, far away in a window – the swan on earth

The Optimist

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If people were more loyal to me we wouldn't be having all these problems.

civilization

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is this the end of civilization is this what i've been thinking of

Pebbles

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On weekdays the two walked,The man in front and the boy always behind,Away from the borrowed house and the kachina dolls inside.Neither of them said anything.The boy thought of things that just wouldn't come out,and the dirt road was always just wet enough thatThe man's…

down to the beast league

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Savor the whistle.

nothing special on a night in february

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as i stepped out to cross west 163rd, the grey, icy sludge in the road looked almost like ballpark mustard illuminated by the streetlights, and it felt like walking through a recently emptied movie theater.

LOL

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LOL? What does that mean? It’s showing up like everywhere. You make me LOL? Is that equivalent to puke, do you think? But no, they would have said: you make me want to LOL. And I’m like HMB, you know, Holding My Belly, To Keep From Puking. TKFP.

I'm a Bohemian-American

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My first and so far only visit to my homeland of Prague was first described to me by a tourist guidebook, which laid out many of the fundamentals one must follow while travelling there. It was pointed out, for instance, that we would be “unlikely to encou

My 250 lb. Dog

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to accomodate my 250 lb. dog

is it a visible, or invisible thread?

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In another dream I am you and I am giving birth and the pages you have written are flying out of me one after another and appearing like speckled moths near the ceiling of your bedroom, and they have my eyes and some of them have yours. A soft singi

A Drive

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Society in all its former glory had been taken back by nature in this place

Summertime, NYC

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We would walk to the gallery opening along the Highline, looking in all the windows in the evening, hoping to see life as it’s lived in the moment, the flesh, the mystery, with all the clothes of unreason removed, hoping to see the exposed nipple and the

Monstrous Thing

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It's only just a poem. The good that's in us is us. There's a monstrous thing trying to get out and ruin things. To unbalance everything standing on tiptoe. To end the dance. To grab the moment and burn it down flat to the ground. They are…

Rivers Start As Threads

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Dissonance is indispensable Observes Marcel Proust in a rowboat I hold in my hand a fire

The Ringlet: Part III

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The sand was covered with shards of mirror glass, which reflected the bright sun in myriads of twinkling daylight stars.

The Naked Shadows Inside Her Dress

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When the truth is spoken, we don’t know Where to look, as if we only know someone Has gotten away with something big Or stolen someone’s heart, knowing how easy It was, how fragile, how true to itself So open and weightless, without guile

The Pre-Game Show With Al and Chris

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Al:In the contest for the Worst Century Ever, the Twenty-first could be a real contender. Chris:The Twentieth looks unbeatable, sure, what with the War to End All Wars, the Great Depression, Hitler, Spain, the Second World War…Al:…Stalin, and Enola Gay. The genocides alone…

dancing in the theater of the soul

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It’s the audacious testicle dancing in its theater, isn’t it? Carrying the legendary names. The bad blood, the jealousy the heart retains, living again under its skin, rarely enlivened by one of its own. There was enough angel in you that we would g

A Worthy Caws

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It started with crows. I'd walk the switchback trail to the top of the park with its outlook of the city and if I didn't see any crows I'd whistle and they'd come swarming from everywhere. I'd give the peanuts a toss and the crows would caw their heads off and peck at…

food-cheated muscles recalling their sex

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What a world I imagined! Lacking organized armies, resting at noontime under a canopy made gentle by passing, natural creatures with large warm eyes, set afire by the influence of constant lust and destruction. Turned to marble by love. Who wouldn’t wan

The Rag & Bone Armada Breaks Rank Upon the Barrier Reef like the Torpedo It Really is and Sinks Its Target with a Wink and a...

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When it's over and done the dangling skeleton walks away in one direction and the rushing wind pours itself into the other. My concern is always to be by your side. Most people probably think even that is giving it way too much of a movie plot,…

Drummers

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My mother loves Phil Collins. When my brother and I were young, she told us she was his back-up drummer, that he'd send a private helicopter to pick her up whenever he needed an extra hand. Though we never saw her leave, we decided drumming was in our blood, and…

Willie

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It must have been twenty years before I first heard Willie Nelson’s voice without the accompaniment of my mother’s crying. She liked to listen to country music on the radio while she cleaned dishes, ironed shirts, watered plants, and whatever else the hou

From the Plague Year 2020 Part 2

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So today was basically mellow. The blue jays argued over who would bathe first in my fountain. When a squirrel showed up, the birds left, but the doves took their place. Our local woodpecker, apparently recovered from a day long headbanging session, returned to the…