Poetry
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Justa Grata Honoria Writes to Attila the Hun
“Here is my ring, I will not marry him. Come and take me away Attila, you strong man save me from this run-down world this cesspit of censer incense and lace. Take me away from middle managers and scheming mothers. Away from mosaic gold and lapis. I want to ride your pale horse through the…
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Virginia Poe
We had no portraits of her we had nothing in our heads but her face alive and well dining and singing and laughing and sometimes sinning with Edgar. When she coughed up the blood the crimson stained her lips and her cheeks would flush looking like a painted lady out on a holiday. Edgar stared…
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The Plunge of Pryce Lewis
“You ever seen a view like this one?” The cold December air holds up snowflakes and then lets them fall gently upon the dome with its lantern lit for ships far from home. The newspapers printing in the basement cause subtle vibrations in the iron railing that my fingers feel as they squeeze and below…
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Marguerite Bradbury
Who ends up with the memories of a love when one of a pair passes away? Surely they will last forever in the skull of the survivor: The ring-ding of the door bell in the bookstore where she stood organizing shelves and watched in suspicion the strange man overdressed for a warm LA day when…
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Bradbury Makes Pulp into Paper
Most people want to be shiny quarters Just punched out of the mint Jingling in cattle-like surety Marveling at the cleverness of their security. Stick a pen in their hands Paper under their digits And watch the ink make potty Pooling on the paper like a child Losing their sobriety. Its panic plain and simple…
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Woodrow Wilson Said
I need a Southern Belle like the damned need water in hell dress her up in white lace put some rouge on her pretty face and let me go to town Let Edith come up to my room tell the maid to drop the broom I want her to sit on my face put my…
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Christmas – 2020
It’s Christmastime again. A Christmas set during a year of profound sorrow afflicted by plague, political unrest, and change. Many of us, too many to count, have faced this last year as a trial with the jury still out deliberating our fate. I know that I have prayed to God for help and guidance, and…
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Arecibo Elegy
He stands overlooking the vast white dish like milk poured into a jungle-covered bowl and thinks of radiowaves reflecting into the receiver. “How many billions of stars are hosting worlds where life has figured out how to talk across the lightyears?” But to talk in our galaxy means to wait. The speed limit of light…
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The Voice
I can feel Murray Wilson smacking Brian upside the head the ringing in his ear drifting up the scales to a pitch just at the edge of human hearing a tuning fork stuck on On. How he translated that pain into stacked harmonies grabbed a thousand year old palimpsest filled with holy roundels and turned…
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Demolition City
They sterilized the land the art deco department stores and the stumpy roots of the buildings of the Pacific Southwest Exhibition have been buried under concrete and rubble. every timber and brick that once shook during the earthquake of ’33 every roadside diner every steepled church; flop-houses and mansions torn down for mini-malls. the Tongva…
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The Whales
Barnum brought some beluga whales to his Museum across from City Hall hauled them behind a belching steam engine from up near Canada 700 miles across the land of America he was told they were a male and a female perfect white oblong shapes bathed in a bucket of salt water. Oh dear God, when…
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The Apotheosis of Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury is 100! I can still see him, larger than life, when I close my eyes – he has never died. He existed on the planet of his birth for over ninety sweeping orbits of its sun. Transitory was his life, specular, reflective, but also burning with his own light like that sun. Doing…
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Nixon Works Himself into a Frenzy, April 18, 1994
I’ve played these cards close to my chest anchored my feelings to a one ton weight and left them sitting at the bottom of the sea. Chairman Mao once told me “you need your own cult of personality.” Picture that, rallying students hoisting my face printed on huge banners chanting quotes from my Little Green…
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Howard Hughes
It hurts in ways I cannot explain a broken body imprisoning a healthy mind I have my papers confirming American citizenship but I am late for the ceremony out there on that last island off of Florida I can fly away there at 400 miles per hour in a steel cage like an autoclave killing…
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New Book “Plague Songs”
My new poetry chapbook “Plague Songs” is now available through Amazon. Poems about plagues ancient and modern, sorrow and loss. Buy your copy now! Plague Songs
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Observing Comet Hale-Bopp, Summer 1997
Every evening during the summer I had to water Grandma’s stunted Colter pine it grew out of a wine barrel that was slowly falling to pieces its rusty iron flaking off to mix with dried red pine needles and pitiful pinecones half-cooked on hot asphalt I would stand there with a green hose looking up…
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The Solomon Islands Campaign
The natives have taken to hiding in the dark under the spreading palms to watch us as we march through their muck we can see their eyes shinning there like little white candle flames nothing seems to startle them even the sound of gun fire in the distance. They are…
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Lyrics from an Unreleased Beach Boys Album*
Lyrics from an Unreleased Beach Boys Album *Songs with (B) are written by me, all others by the listed writer Right Time to Say Goodbye (B) B. Wilson, C. Wilson (Cascade of undulating vocal harmonies mixed in with a subtle countdown from 10) This time is the right time our last words echo in…
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Napoleon’s Last Words
There is a panorama somehow unfolding before me like a landscape painting on an infinite canvas all of you look as little dots crowding and clustering in armies of barely distinguishable colors smoke is rising from cannonades, and here and there blasts of dirt tinged with red blossom and fall back to the earth. How…
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Phenomena
There are phenomena we cannot explain dating back thousands of years: like ball lighting which would dance through open doors and burst through fireplace pits into unsuspecting living rooms or strange, glowing balls of plasma cruising low over the ground silent like a stalking cat manipulating our neurons with electromagnetic fields altering our perception before…
The Numinous Cosmos 