Category: Poems
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My Time
A corpse in the road to Judah. A seated lion and a yawning ass. The locusts chant one systole a minute and I thirst. Too long, and trust won’t do; I need the Holy Ghost. As men mark time I shouldn’t mark, I’m told, but martyred souls enjamb the very Throne with metered stops. …
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Sonnet To The Holy Ghost: 1
Some say they’ve seen you, seen a maybe ghost, a shred of stranded autumn fog at dusk among autistic trees, inert, at most so mildly touching, and never being touched. Some say they’re heard you, say you hum and brood like pigeons wait out rains beneath the eaves rehearsing unimportant coos, till shooed by bb…
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Sonnet To The Holy Ghost: 2
The Baptist sees you wing from past the sun, from off the waters where the world had been but now where worlds lie drowned, where none but floating dead are all you’ve seen of men while searching for a solid dock for God — but now, regale the Father’s ark with news! Like daring buds…
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Sonnet To The Holy Ghost: 3
Apostles heard you rumble like the gospel caged: a thrum like fourfold beasts in martial ranks or Jordan bound a mile upstream, enraged, and thrashing to and fro against her banks. Apostles felt you set their hair on fire, flash down provincial brainstems to their lungs then up again as sermons sweet like lyre but…
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Aaron’s Lament
Both fire and water rear erect to hail the march of God. They quiver like Egyptian horses in a sudden rein and prance like circus lions, balanced by a biting whip. Plumb line stretched and sighting down the string, Yahweh trims the extra sea and piles it by our aisle. The desert, steamed and pressed,…
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Auld Lang Syne
Traditional lyric adapted for my siblings We six have run about the hills and pulled the daisies fine, but slowed to grey and weary foot since days of auld lang syne. Though we have waded in the creek from morning sun till nine, the seas between us swelled and cried since days of auld lang…
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Beatitudes
Blessed are the poor who work hard to avoid the riches which pursue the frugal. Blessed are those who are silent while knowing the precise words to get their way. Blessed are those who, while languishing in God’s desert, refuse to cross one dune to find their own oasis
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Elizabeth
Elizabeth, your ears were far from dull for in the first word Mary spoke you heard her silent child. (and so did John.) Elizabeth, your eyes were far from dim; you saw young Mary ripe with news and witnessed to the fullness of her womb before she told her secret. (so did John.) Elizabeth, your…
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Inner Voice
Every son ends up alone impounded with an inner voice which is the echo of the virtues that his father loved. Or nothing.
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Orgies With The Wind
This meadow clambers up the hill toward the sun: it marries, gives in marriage, praises marriage — until it joins in orgies with the wind.