Tag: poetry exercise
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Sanitarium
she asks if I suffer hallucinations.no, I suffer them nothing; I do, though,enjoy them much more than most other folks—I mean, I like my imaginaryfriends better than my real ones, not that Ienjoy hallucinations more than otherfolks enjoy hallucinations; I mean,your average jo either gets caught up ingames of denial and confusion between,or among, realities—how…
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Nighthag
she’s followed me home every day this month,lurking in shadows, just out of sight. firstI laughed at my own conceit, my own sadparanoia. but then a friend asked meabout my shadow, so I watched closer,more surreptitious, and there she was, coyas moonlight and insidious as night.last night, I heard her panting outside mywindow, her heavy…
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Salmon’s Envy
I was talking to a salmon and thesalmon was talking back, he’s a friend of mine,about the value of oxygen andthe problem of gasping for breath once you’vestepped out of your element to walk inanother’s shoes . . . it occurs to me thata salmon speaking of sneakers is quiteabsurd, but there it is .…
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From the Peak
snow falls on the mountainside among stonesancient as the earth, patient as stars, coldas the ice eating their skin inexorablyaway year after year into millennia.just as these mountains creep along their slowpath to oblivion by way of wind,water, and time. water falling from the sky,melting from sunlight on peaks high above. snow falls on the…
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Alzheimer’s
lost to himself he wanders . . . awayfrom himself trying to find what was lost,but having no memory of that, he searcheshigh and low with eyes blind to all meaningsave what’s seen in surfaces. there are timeshe picks up objects simply because someimpulse demands it, a moment passingand he stares in consternation at whathis…
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Antemeridian Monday
eyes too fatigued from letter and allergeneven to dream, bloodshot and weeping airwhere no tears will form for sloth and ailment,even the brain is hazed, dazed, sluggish toform, frame, interpret image . . . here the worldmelts away into pools of abstraction,not only meaning but the compulsiontoward meaning slips away, absents, escapes. here, in the…
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This, Too, Shall Pass
There!Did you notice?Did you hear it?The worldChangedin a heartbeat Sssshhhhlisten It did it againFocus:It happensAround usDespite usEvery heartbeatContinuously This worldIs not the sameAs when this poem began. dmpitchford
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Cafe
a conversation you’ve wandered into;that’s what this is all about, he said. It’ssitting back in your booth in Ed Hopper’sdiner and listening in to the three orfour conversations around you and graftingthe disparate threads into a cogentconceit; there may not be a natural thingabout it, but, seriously, art andnature certainly have their separation.god loves diversity.…
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Our Lady of Needless Tears
she weeps night after night into cupped handsbecause she never learned how to pray, hersadness and misery have an authorwhose name she refuses to think or speakswearing “I’ve moved on” or “I’m in a new,a different, chapter of my life now.” Thismorning she swore to her well-meaning sistershe would start mass next week, but she’s…
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Edward and Lisel
today I’m stealing poems from LiselMueller’s Alive Together. my copyriddled with small book marks: six neon greensticky flags and one hunter orange, onereceipt dated 2004 from Barnes& Noble, and two rogue Yahtzee score sheets,completed without dates. Thirteen pagesare dog-eared. Rare as it is, I have scrawledmarginalia alongside several poems.I recall now that it was Lisel…
Fringemonkey Scribbles 