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The Last Days of Summer: 1968
The clay soil here is ironware-hard. Dad, nevertheless, muscles and thrusts a long steel spike into it. It bounces like a pogo hopper. To break it up, he says. This, on the hottest day of any that I can recall, and he’s weighted a yellow sheet of grid paper under a stone that maps out…
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Dverse Lists
It’s Never Just Black and White Grey is a shape a mood to sleep to dreama blank canvas a precursor to black the colour of hope pressure-washed motes in light a eunuch’s cloak a mushroom huntmorels and caps is gray for some is a cloud a vapour a spirit a far-flung hill is never just black and…
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dVerse Gloomy Ballads
Where Music Stops She stood in the lee of heavy grief,as if lashed to a mast on a craggy reef.Sirens howled in her ear,and a month lingered to a year. Swallowed, some say, as she bedded gloom.Took herself to her darkened room.Took her heart, and buried it deep,and then fell into a long cold sleep.…
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for Visual Verse: October
Through a Fine-Tooth Comb I look out the kitchen windowand mutter, I’m done with rain. Such are my thoughts, as hot watershowers coffee grounds, and I pulla fine-tooth comb through my hair.Have faith, I say, as each white follicleholds miserly against grating abrasion. My dust is everywhere. Skin dry anditching, even the air grates. Comes…
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dVerse Quadrille #113
THE SKY, THE LIGHT, MY BRAMBLES Octoberis autumn’s landscape. Early,its dark blanket covers night. Slowly,comes morning sky. A flaming jewel.Rolling ruby rivers of light. I woke,and sat on the edge of day, watchedthe black kettle night shy away. Shadows lift.Away my down-trodden brambles. Dverse Quadrille “blanklet” 44 words sans title. © Misky 2020
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Poetic Bloomings’ What’s Your Line
Le Consulat de Belgique His arms were too shortto proceed his belly.His desk, wooden,and soaked in the aromaof spiced rum. Mahogany,I think, nearly black ashis moods were often.The Belgium consulate.I was his secretary. for Poetic Bloomings “What’s Your Line” © Misky 2020. Image from WikiCommons CC:00
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The Sky Holds Blue
But Not in This Life I kept hogs,grew my food,and kept the sky blue.That was another life. Process: This is a soul-destroying year. It’s brought out the worst in some people, and not enough of the good. Written for Twiglet #196 “The Sky Holds Blue” © Misky 2020 Image Flickr Commons, Royal Danish Library, by…
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for dVerse: A Vatic Poem
A Long Story About Nothing Maybe what I say seems commonplace, but rules are a self-audit, and I hardly suppose that any confession is too late, or that a germ of good might never growMaybe no one speaks with purpose,no single sentence is a human progressAnd I hardly suppose this life is a long story…
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for dVerse Poets: A Haibun
Vanessa Redgrave is Cleopatra with her face white as winter, and her neck exhausted from the weight of thoughts, and she begins from a place of rooted pain, a rattling thunder, and then she speaks — … his face was as the heavensand therein stuck a sun and moonwhich kept their courseand lighted the earth…
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dVerse Quadrille #112
From Somewhere In My Childhood Winter airwaitsbehind the sun.It comesfrom somewherein my childhood.Hear leaves crumblebelow my step,September’s sharp tonguestings the air.Mulch and scruband skeletal limbs thatstab the sky.No direction.Without intention,approaching gloomsings to me. dVerse Quadrille #112 (44 words, excluding the title, including the word “sky”) © Misky 2020. Image from Flickr Commons Courtesy of…
It's Still Life 