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A Helpful Reminder
Never leave a drink unattended, Because drinks are like people, They can get lonely, Especially around this time of year All they want is to find someone And make them happy, listen To their problems and promise With a bitter kiss, to make them go away. Pause and look at that glass, So full and…
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upon arriving at the bingo hall on a Tuesday evening in Nowhere
“Sheeit”, she says to me, “you better give me a muthafuckin winner tonight, or I’ll take ya’ outside, y’hear? Take ya out to the lot and shank you with a Swiss Army Knife–put a little hole in your kidney, yo, cuz’ I NEED that money, dawg, you know? I NEED that muthafuckin money”…And I do…
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a barbershop on flatbush
it was if I had walked into a coup d’état a tribe of elders a cri de coeur old men sabotaged by blue baseball caps money green windbreakers thick creole accents old men eyes welling up with distrust checkerboard fingertips developed lips disapora line running across their forehead libations are given for the earthquake dead…
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War Crimes
Their faces distorted, Masks contorted to fit the shrunken bones. The final humiliation to be so alone And trapped in a cell of arrogance. The senseless deaths occuring From bravely spurning questions Asked not from curiosity, But animosity. How did these doctors not bleed From their believed stigmata, Surely they bartered with the devil For…
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The Grim Parade
This man slowly marches among men And they march in single file He is greeted by his homeland in great cheers But he is cheered only for what hes defiled They love him because he bore the mark of their nation Because he is part of the warriors creed But as he is cheered by…
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In Passing
All the wisdom culled from passing freight Cars was a pastiche of countries Dreamed of as they slid away. Portable gang graffiti and hobo mumblings From distant villages in the hinterlands. Does Jill really blow and is Ned a freak? Half a journey’s stories subtracted, Placate the mind’s conjuring additions. I’m walking the tracks over…
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Bring It On for Ron Padgett
The different ways music comes on Is suddenly here holding sway In tiny sponge earphones trying to keep The roar of a airplane’s engine at bay. And, the late evening quiet broken by The rumble of a car With thunderous bass ebbing, flowing Away. Here Sibelius is washing The walls of the room with Subtle,…
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Everything but, Anything shown
Can you explain? Washed away in a legacy, never cleansed in lakes. Baptized or Bastardized? Never no mind. Either, I was sent on my way Can the bear minimum be cultivated into infinity? Or can something I don’t remember really take a part of me? And if this really is just a game, can they…
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Doubt
Suspended above my body, I watch and await Counting the seconds till I make my great escape Late since birth I haven’t arrived for my own scene Criticizing my own rights, I’ve ambushed my dreams So quick to doubt when my gift needs no holiday Recognized religiously, daily no matter how they pray On their…
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Improvisation
It was open to conclusions, Drawn possibly in crayon to perplex The unwilling to willfully look Beyond conjecture of a previously tired Diffusion of text and message. Never sure of the spin that evolves, The take of the respondents, their addition To the running the changes, carrying The melody through forests of release, Bumping up…