Category: Poetic Narrative
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That Old Car Still Works the Best
We found ourselves living in something real good but, we didn’t realize it at the time. Isn’t that they way it always is? There’s this whole thing about living in the “LIGHT” or living within” TIME” like, the two are mutually exclusive of each other which, they are for most, if not all of our…
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Ultimate Rot
A picture couldn’t do justice to Arctic wind’s ferocity blowing across the great lake thirty or forty m.p.h. white caps rushing toward shore water, trees, sand and leaves … combined Shhsssshing relentlessly, my hoody inflated into a reverse parachute pushing my head and body backward. Dots of rain prick my face the occasional snow…
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Hideous Nature, Life
Hideous nature, life … Ghastly in its death bed/its beseiging compass run its course. Bewildering with its struggles/ writhing in its pain/ desire seeking fire/rifting terrorism’s claim. Severed thinking/ thoughts of creepy crawlies/ struggling through fright’s night against all reasoning. There’ll be no full moon tonight to guide the single masted ship sailing saw…
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He Gave Us the Freedom
She looked with cold indifference at his efforts to teach the connection between our lives and nature. Bridge parties, the daily routines of life and an afternoon nap, were the essential components of her life. He gave us freedom to explore the sandy beaches, dunes, trout streams and the Great Lake where he had fished and…
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How the G Note Gave Me A Neck Ache
continued … maybe I muttered something like, ‘’well, you know how it goes,” blah, blah blah, when suddenly the woman named Linda (who’s pretty aggressive) says rather forcefully, “Why do you think phones were invented?!’’ continued … The first thing I thought was, what the hell kind of bullshit attitude is this? Was she trying to put me on the spot to test my mettle…
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For tribalmysticstories: A Tribal Mystic Story; Poem For My Father
– Poem For My Father – One day he took me to a copse of trees where we sat under a canopy of newly formed leaves above us a clear blue sky where he gave perspectives to me different from anything I had learned. Thoughts from the other side of what we think we know.…
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FaKakda fakakda
Heard today downtown: “Fakakda this fakakda folker spoiling far a pongha fakakda, the fakakda fun a Yiddisha fakakda? that’s me! I’m the number one fakakda fakakda best fakakda there is by far! Fakakda Me! Wooh woohwhoospuke spoof woof …. Oye veigh …. so If you don’t think this is funny then I probably need to see…
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A Time For Sleeping
A Time For Sleeping Saturday was a cold, gray day. I lit the fireplace for a quick warm up. Before leaving the warmth of the cottage I wrote a little more, donned my hoody and coat turned off the gas grabbed my camera and entered the cold but beautifully pure, refreshing northern air. I walked…
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London Broil: the End Again
continued … “she’ll just have to eat her goddamned popcorn with butter tonight … ! he wondered if she’d know the difference … but, he knew better … ) Two hours later when he got home she was fast asleep in bed. “Hmmmmm”, he thought. He figured that, since the next day was Saturday (and she’d be sleeping in) he’d leave early for his appointment at Peter’s Quickie Loan Place (across the…
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London Broil
They had meat for dinner almost every night. But for months he had been eating tomatoes and feta cheese each night even though he hated feta cheese! He couldn’t stand the taste and it made him sick! She insisted all along he become a vegetarian and she insisted he eat feta cheese even though he loved meat and potatoes.…
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Maple Sap
Maple Sap Something Discovered I Thought I Had Forgotten We took turns gathering sap from the big maple trees along the street perpendicular to my house before sunrise/during late winter and early spring. What’s the world like at 4 a.m.? Not a sound in the world but for my felt lined boots, scrunching over…
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Serenity
I told you yesterday that spring had sprung and i knew because i saw a fly and a bull ant on the floor by the fireplace, a tickling on my arm as i wrote this piece not fifteen minutes ago a tiny spider had invaded my space! There are gnats and mosquitos and other tiny…
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Second Birth
See the angry acts of many rich too proud to bond with mother earth their caskets bulge with stolen goods, no thought to share their riches with generosity given freely their greedy souls never searching their habits deadened, never knowing thoughts worth thinking. Some people care within demise their envy keeps them living their thoughts…
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Fred and Ethel
By late stage marriage most men want to spend their days talking while most women just want to be left the fuck alone! … Oh jeez! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that. Speaking of being LEFT ALONE I’d like to tell you a story but, may I prefix my blabber with a…
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I Was Just the Postman
midcenturyman February 17, 2018 at 11:29 pm Edit A comment I wrote about the poem titled, “When I Was Born.” This is one of my favorite pieces not just because it describes what childbirth might be like but, I think it’s beautifully written. I like how it flows and trips along with cadence and…
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When I Was Born
That summer hot and sultry mid month mid year mid way past midnight bright lights shining blinding hands grasping fingers smashing through the air i did not really care it was not my problem i was their’s for the taking …!! i heard the pain that wasn’t mine explode into my space, the air, the…
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Bluegills
Bluegills We bought two cardboard containers packed with 15 or 20 corn bores covered in loose black muck, at a farm five miles from town before turning off the black top then, another three miles along a gravel road, snow plowed high on both sides, past farmers fields barely visible stretched white to the gray horizon,…
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What I’d Write About
I stay up all night and write. Then I sleep, get up and start over again. I take a notebook and write when I go to the mall or when I go to restaurants. I listen to people and write what they say. I write what people say when I talk on the phone. I write what flows through my…
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They Have Paid; They Are ‘Us’
A man who by his actions does not care about the citizenry of our country … got me wondering as I do … the amount of taxes paid by the 700,000 during their lifetime jobs well done and voluntary support and building of communities and passing on the best qualities … that the 700,000 have…
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Making, Making, Making
It’s ok to feel good every once in a while! Life’s treasure doesn’t come along that often! It lies in wait for the right trigger. Or is it time, and we all run on cycles? For me the treasure never lasts as long as I want it to. (which would be most of the time)…
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Reflection: The Web of Time
We are a travelers moving along a web of time within the mist we call life. We see with light given from somewhere, outside, within, in-between, seldom seen at best, reflected. We make decisions; where to go, how to get there, what to think and feel; assuming truths, affirming movement we’re not sure of, through space most…
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Savoring the Melt
Snow covering the ground at 8 by 1 had disappeared. By 5 newly formed powder flakes/bigger than cotton balls/floated downward, /so light they rose and fell a second time/as I passed /turning my world white once again crystal flakes given form/from clouds high above/each its own and unique world/alive within the tiny gales/and silent currents forming/atmospheres above, …
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Excerpt: Strange World
Excerpt After the nurse left his room he thought about what had occurred and in a drug and pain induced brain fog, pulled the tubes from his left arm and, using the food cart as a walker made a half assed attempt to escape the hospital for some unknown reason. From that point forward the…
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I Wasn’t Even Trying To Be Funny … Part II
if I had the balls to say ” … hey, i’ve gotta go, i left my car running … “i’d probably be just as capable of saying, ” … hey, i gotta go, I’ll see you guys later … ” continued … Part II So anyway, the first thing I did when I got into the office was get stuff out of my message box. Then, I sat…
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Purple Words
Purple Words – One late Spring day, my students and I walked to the Dairy Queen with the thought in mind that we would capture unique experiences and write about them when we returned to the class room. After lunch, we formed a single file line crossed Monroe Road to the sidewalk, walked west for two blocks,…
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Becka
Earlier, she ate chips and salsa off paper brought to swimming pool’s edge, earlier than earlier. Later, he came with hot coffee sipping looking beyond ahead in front, silently. ‘I bet you can’t drink that whole thing,” she said her voice behind. ‘No. But I can take a really big gulp.’ Chugging, eyes closed vision;…
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The Runner
I watched the runner from where I stood at the forty five yard line in front of the opposing team’s bleachers while on the opposite side of the field at the 20 yard line the runner caught the punt, took two steps backward, tucked the ball into the crook of his arm, lowered his right shoulder and began running a looping arc…
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Stooley …
They told me to take a stool softener since Roxies make you constipated; I decided to try … those little gel caps; gray and burgundy (pretty colors that go together … ) that slip down your gullet pretty easily, so I tore off a chunk of Matt’s homemade all grain bread, started chomping, looked down, saw…
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Miriam
Further adventures of Gile Steel. So, there he was at the hospital exactly a year later at the same time, same place having the same procedure in the same room, next to the nurse’s station, by the same SURGEON where, a year earlier several factors came together in the middle of the night causing an…
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Miriam
Miriam He told me about the time he was at the hospital a year ago at the same time he would be at the same hospital this year, in the same room where last year he suffered the same procedure as he would be suffering this year .. exactly a year later. He told me…
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The Third Epoch
Did you hear about them coming? yes i did. they said, ‘in droves’ but, what does that mean and where will they be coming from? they’re already here! they’re INSIDE MY HOUSE! they won’t leave me alone. they keep sucking my blood. good God, face facts. it’s what we’ve ALL been suffering from for…
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Within the Fractures of His Mind
He lived with Her until she couldn’t stand it so she relocated him to a room in an old house next to a gas station … ….. that house was consumed in flames one night in defense – he said – of the FBI lurking outside his window … ….. the court said he did it on purpose … “Why would the FBI be…
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Deadbeat Amputee
Deadbeat Amputee Oh! Hi! … OH! Jeeze. Hi … Hey, you know what? I’m a bad person! I was tied up for a whole week so I couldn’t send you the money. My wife finally came home from Borneo and untied me from the hose I got wrapped up in when I fell hosing the back porch…
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Voyage: The Flatlands of Ohio
*Photo above: Dayton, Ohio from I-75 Across the Border: Into the Flatlands Across the border into Ohio hard to keep my eyes off the furrowed fields, sprouts of corn, wheat or soybeans lines of green velveteen beckoning my eyes to distant silos and barns … beautiful country given as secret knowledge to those of us…
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Voyage South
After the Departure; The Road South And so the voyage goes … Uneventful miles rolled beneath the balding tires of The Explorer … along the Huron coastline over the Zilwaukee Bridge past Fisher Body in Flint a skeleton of what it used to be when time was ‘LIGHT’ where i used to be when all…
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Voyage
My tasks complete i rose before the early dawn, gave one last listen to the great lake and the wrangling sound of ten thousand migrating geese and mallard ducks closed my eyes and breathed the last purest air i’d breathe for months to come, turned away from the tree i’d lived within and walked away…
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When Love No Longer Is the Object of Your Affection
I’ve been to the monument and the inland sea .. the land that time forgot. where I walked between the rising sun and the trees of blackest night with diesel’s mournful wail beneath star filled nights the midnight sun reflected the moon and stars along the rails of time the trails of tears I walk along…
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The Day the Month the Hour the Minute the Second the Time That I Was Born
That summer hot and sultry mid month mid year mid way past midnight bright lights shining blinding hands grasping fingers smashing through the air i did not really care it was not my problem i was their’s for the taking … i heard the pain that wasn’t mine explode into my space, the air, the…
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Trump Card Takes the Pot
Trump Card Takes the Pot Trump card plays his hand knowing how the game will end He’s a big game hunter now he has his own guns ! the biggest guns in all the lands! the power of Life and Death held firmly in his hands … ….. Trump card plays his hand … ….. Friendly…
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More Lake Magic: Morphing Sparrows
I sat and watched in peaceful trance water cascade toward me, it’s white caps reaching for the shore where purest water and land meet in perfect balance. A half mile off shore men fished in the trough between shallow water colored tan and deep water blue that extended to the horizon then further where deepest knowledge lies…
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A Day In the Life III
continued … So i grabbed the shop vac went into the bathroom and and sucked it up … While I was sucking I noticed how lousy the baseboards looked so I decided I’d tape them off and paint them … BUT NOT TODAY .. ! I had enough on my platter! (and the list was growing ……
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A Day In the Life
continued …… I HAPPENED TO PASS BY THE LAUNDRY ROOM ON THE WAY TO THE BATHROOM, I SAW SOME JEANS THAT NEEDED TO GO INTO THE DRYER … … so i put them into the dryer then I started to move the furniture back to where I wanted it. When I finished I remembered I was going…
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I Know … It Knows … I Love … Her So …
Pretty soon i’ll be flyin’ the big bird to the northern climes, hitting the ‘motor city’ around eight to ride with the Explorer … Three hours later i’ll be on the sunrise side in big pine country watchin’ the sun rise up orangery/red shining’ low over big lake water; glaciers child/pure and fresh above the eastern plane…
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The Eternal Mystery: 10/01/15
The Eternal Mystery: 10/01/15 Great Lake pounds the shoreline with fury. More power than i’ve witnessed before. Extraordinary the only word to describe it. The rushing sound of an infinite number of wavelets one continual line of white caps breaking parallel to the shore , a mile in each direction Mirrored offshore a broken surge crackles with fluid…
Tales From A Midcentury Boy / Growing Up in Michigan 
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