‘O, SKELETONS’: An Investigation Into What Lies Beneath Us All
Wait. What is that thing that hangs out with you your entire life, but which you hardly ever see — and then has the audacity to exist far longer than you ever will?
Read MoreTag: Poems
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Still essential after all these years, especially now in America
Lawrence Ferlinghetti forever spoke truth to power run amok, as did his poetry, while also capturing the ineffable core of what it means to be a human being fully alive in a universe that is by turns confounding and breathtaking. This 1995 interview I did with him remains as pertinent as ever in America's maddening Trump-Musk Era.
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A feather, A poem, An old quote, A call-for-help, A foggy photo, An election video & Some sundown advice
In which our interlocutor works himself out of a pre-dawn funk by fashioning an illustrated poem; seeks advice a few centuries old; re-directs attention to an Appalachian catastrophe; snaps a feather and a fog. And also offers up for your 60-second inspection an election video which, really, deserves more than an audience of zero.
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One Poem, One Tune, Three Photos and Several Turtles
Are we headed 'Hellward' or do watermelon-loving turtles show a better way. Plus, my new band plays one of the saddest songs ever written.
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PROSE-POEM: ‘Lost Girl Elegy’
He digs into his wallet. Hands over a $20 bill. God bless you, she says. But where's the god for lost girls in a squalling storm? She turns to go back into the Taco Bell. He shuts off his car. Gets out. Do you have a phone? No. She says. Anyone at all to call?
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PRE-ECLIPSED: When it all does not add up, and yet it still all goes on
And, so, we light up our smokes. Then, ponder the / shape and proximity to clouds of what escapes / our lips. Passing the time between the next / befuddlement, the fresh intoxicating despair, / the blindside moment of sublime wonder ...
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Easter eggs and baskets, plus a sermon by some trees
I think that I shall never see, a tree sermon lovely as this one by some trees. A video-poem in honor of Easter Sunday for those of us without Easter bonnets.
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FOUR|THINGS: One Photo, One Video, One Meme & One Epigram
Four things for your consideration: A rainy photographic street; a 'Gladiator Song'; meme on how grief abates a little; and an epigram of remembrance.
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Five Short Poems and Then You’re Done
Five short poems to consume on the run: 'A Poem About All Poems About Trees'; 'Something for Nothing'; 'Platitude-lessness' (brief, but essential writing advice!); 'Mission Statement' and 'Wait a Moment'
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Don’t talk about it
I toil mostly in obscurity. But which writer does not? / Except for those few who are feted, adored, and / lifted so high. Until they pass from favor & are knocked / back to the second-rank, never to return to / the heights from which they sipped / the better champagnes ...
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What I could be
I could be the man the boy / dreamed of being. I could be the / boy the man dreams of remembering. / I could be the man who saved his mother. / I could be the man who fought his father, / who finally and everlastingly / thrummed some sense into / that thick Latinate, hot-blooded, / black-haired head…
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Mr. Brainwash & Friends at Auction
Who, pray tell, / was Mr. Brainwash? / Did Andy Warhol know? / These questions / agitate my head, as / my light goes red to green ...
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ONE POEM: ‘The Masquerade’
It is a forgetting, for one. / Dissolution into physical bliss, / which, as the head is so troubled, / so often, feels like a blessing ...
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When the mic opens and the poetry flows
I am walking past the multi-culti shops and through the lively streets of Ann Arbor after dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, living the good life. What's that flyer say? 'Open Mic Poetry'? And it's tonight?!
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“Signal 23,” a very old cops beat, print-out poem
I wish I might resent you, or Fate or / my itinerant Guardian Angel. Yet who / indeed might I blame? / Your world has failed, I say. / But it goes on, rotating beneath / the feet of that gesticulating man ...
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