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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
 Posted - 10/24/2007 : 21:49:17
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Timbukto to Tucumcari
Anybody seen the Sugar Plum Faerie?
Meeting of the mines.
Temporal lobe in Space.
Rave on, Planet.
Time-soon- to put out the candy and
Wait for the terrifying spectres
With their little bags of fat
To come walking thru the wildfire... |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 10/27/2007 : 07:49:03
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When I got home Lincoln was
Waiting for me...
He said, Where you been,
I've had supper
Ready for an hour....
Man, Abe, It's always the
same with you
Nag nag nag....
I know, I'm sorry, he said,
I've been thinking about
Gettysburg again....
Y'know, he said...
I never thought that punkass speech
Was anything
I even said it, I said that nobody
would remember what was
said here today....
But that's all they ever
remember....
That one sorry five minutes
I said, Abey......
Babey....
That Four Score stuff is what did it
Once you say that
you lose em for at least
two minutes
While they try to figger
out how much that is
By then, they figure that
Whatever you said
musta been good cause you were
talking about dead soldiers
And there's no better way to
get a crowd to cheer....
I know, He said,
I just wish that they
Would just ONCE
Remember
Some of my poetry....
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 11/01/2007 : 18:02:59
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Nightmare pieces. Broken streets. Broken songs. Newspapers on the dashboard. Ashes on the floor. Water to jump into. The great, gray waves steep escape. Cheeks of smoky children pressed against the screen door. Their tear-stained, cherub faces. Soot collecting at the corners of their cupid-bowed mouths. Ranch hands in smoldering Levi's. Frantic animals in east county corrals. The camel man with his pride of screaming peacocks. Singed horses and dogs. Headless chickens. Muck of blood in country-cruel yards. (Shh! Hold your breath 'til it's over. No, he can't hold his breath!) Yes, he was there to save her. Swimming against the tide. Running the wrong way on a One-Way street under eucalyptus going up like match heads. The Sheriffs in their dusty, licorice boots fast on his heels. The children trapped in melting canyons. Cyclone wind plotting their fate. No Divine intervention against aneurysms exploding inside their small heads. Smoldering graves on Starvation Mountain. Smoking cactus and the charred silver-black of new burn. A cargo of broken hearts in the harbor. All the "yea" and "nay" sayers sailing away under the curved, spindle bridge. "You've had wings before," he tells them, "you'll have them again."
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Karen Runk
Firefly
USA
4902 Posts |
Posted - 11/01/2007 : 18:32:30
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.......I assume all is well in the O'Rouke household. 
Karen Runk |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2007 : 07:12:03
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His raft had drifted for days
When he saw the lighthouse thru the fog.
The man that arrived on this new shore
Was no longer the man that had
Set off all those months ago.
So
Bang the drum slowly, mates,
For
The victory is hollow.
What's been gained has fallen short
Of
What's been lost... |
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Jonmark
Windchimer
USA
1762 Posts |
Posted - 11/03/2007 : 15:22:28
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For we are the same things our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, we feel the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.
Abe Lincoln ~ poet |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5390 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2007 : 00:27:14
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I used to sing a story and the story would be changing
Changing as I told it, an imperfect living thing
The giving and receiving in the moment that I sang it
But risks that are not taken make a task out of the telling
Then our wells go hiding water and our bells refuse to ring
What started out as kindness is turned into a duty
And keeps one from the beauty of chances never taken
Where expectation shaken might unlock a secret door
To mystery, discovery, the repair of spells long broken
Where the song itself is singing and knows who it's singing for
Good to see you here again, Ailinn.
I was worried about you, because of the fires.
http://www.myspace.com/mickeynewbury |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2007 : 20:34:27
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| In the darker light of Durrow they survived. Aromatic grasses she wrapped his fresh catch in. And so they thrived on fish and boiled potatoes. Biscuits were a Sunday treat traded with the baker. And fresh butter from the dairy lad who pedaled out from Baile. Aye, the winds were harsh against the grey flumed rocky coast. And seas were salt and slivers at their door. Still they prevailed. His blue boat afloat and cresting through high water. Weather fair and foul. A pinch of kindling. A bit of broth. A sprig of heather on the pillow. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 11/05/2007 : 21:36:52
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The same eyes...
The same eyes...
The same eyes I said to her picture...
It took the pictures to remind me that she has
The same eyes...
As who's? The picture said...
She has the same eyes as the
woman I've been waiting for...
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 11/07/2007 : 20:48:57
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I always write
my love letters/white pumas
that jump on my shoulders
and bite my cheek
*
The moon is something
you can trust.
The sun is someone else we
all trust,
that banker at his window every morning
behind bars.
Now I've moved
like bees
into your hair
*
~Diane Wakoski~
The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 11/08/2007 : 17:28:56
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"...the spell is what I'm left with..."
~Doug Lang~
...back in Durrow.
The chilled mists rolling 'cross fen and bog. The sulk of sunless days. The sullen weather. The wet sway down the aisle of alders. The damp smoke curling up the chimney wall. The young man, already consumptive. The woman, determined, but frail. How the cold honeycombed their brittle bones and plundered their pale energy. Blood in his handkerchief. Frost at the door. Angels nodding in reverie.
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2007 : 20:26:50
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Eighteen.
Heading west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in my Dodge Dart [with the
pushbutton shifters]
going back to Indiana to reclaim what was left of my possessions
[after getting thrown out of college and breaking my parents heart.
Then my friend Jimmy had sailed his VW bus off a mountain near Colorado
Springs and I had the feeling I would never get to enjoy 18, but I wasn't in
Vietnam, so there was hope...]
Sleepy at 4 A M, I had pulled into a rest stop.
I woke two hours later not knowing who or where I was, but having a sense
that I was in a hurry.
It was not light yet and I pulled out the way I came in.
As I accelerated onto the highway, I saw a truck pass me at 80 on my side of
the road, blowing his horn.
I thought he was a nut.
The next one, in my lane,
shocked me into the realization that I was going Eastbound on the Westbound
side.
It was not a good way to start the day...
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 11/09/2007 : 20:53:47
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New Year's Eve in New York City, 69-70, was the end of the beginning.
Jimmy and I were together for the last time.
But, what a nite!
We saw Al Kooper at the Town Hall,
[and he did Everything:
Blood, Sweat and Tears, The Blues Project, he even did This Diamond Ring]
Then we met Melissa and saw 1970 come in in Times Square
With John and Yoko's billboard screaming
THE WAR IS OVER
[if you want it]
Then we took the subway to Columbia
where Jimmy's older sister had a room
and got high and then we almost got mugged
in the subway station in Harlem, but
I think he saw Jimmy's fitness
[he went to the AirForce Academy and
was on the footnall team, I was so proud]
and our muscles and changed his mind...
Then we walked across the George Washington Bridge
at 4 AM cause the busses had stopped running and my car
was in New Jersey and it was zero degrees
and the car was stuck in re-frozen ice up to the doors...
Looking back now I never had a better nite...
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 11/11/2007 : 15:45:35
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| "...you must trust me with the whole story," he said. He belonged to the happiness of her soul so she never spoke of the past. And it was such a long time ago little was remembered. "Episodic," he said, and she said, "...hmmm... Well, I'm not even sure I'm telling you the truth or what really happened." "Keep talking," he said. Now the brilliant colors of her past flashed kaleidoscopic. "Not a sad story," he said, "just a different one." |
Edited by - Ailinn on 11/11/2007 16:07:11 |
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 11/11/2007 : 16:01:57
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| The stippled path through the park. The resinous trees. The sky alive with shore birds cries. He has her by the hand, now. Running. Past tall houses poking up out of the hill. Under the bracelet bridge with fog wrapped around them. The hazel rain pouring down from Heaven's divining rods. Arcane Eden. The seduction with apples. The Ark already in shallow water. The marine mist infused with the blush of almonds. His waving hand... defiantly alive. |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1797 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2007 : 16:51:57
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Ailinn,
Have you had anything published ?? Like, a whole and complete story.
You drive me crazy with a little of this and a little of that. Your writing is just wonderful.
barbraG |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2007 : 18:55:18
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When Buckman wakes up he feels strong again, like he can do anything; like his whole life is just about to burst open and reveal what it is he's here for. He thinks he might try to find a way north, to visit his friend Ralph, in Nyack, on the Hudson River. He doesn't know how he'll even get there, but, hey, he can do anything, right? he had made it to 1817...
He thinks back to the night he first met Ralph, before the war, in New York City, at a little be-bop joint in the Village [sure they had be-bop in 1812, didn't they?] Saw this guy in front of
the stage, glowing like a local hero, long white hair,just in front,
whipping back and forth, perfectly in time to the throbbing beat of some ex-slaves with their hair all processed and slicked black, shiny like a pair of new Sunday shoes.They were speaking a language without words that Buckman had never heard before in Texas; a language only they and this bopping white madman seemed to be in on; a driving, pulsing, sexual thunder that seemed to make the rafters in the bar sweat with the heat and emotion that emanated
from them; three men was all it was making this thunderclap of noise; one with some skins stretched over a barrel that he was beating with some kind of strange sticks; one with a long piece of wood, with four long strings attached
top and bottom, plucking, caressing, popping, coaxing, pouring out the throb over top the other man's thunder; but the best part, oh boy, the best part was the black giant at the front of the stage, with his back to the man he would come to know as Ralph, and he was, uh, uh, just breathing,hard,then easy,then hard again, without seemingly ever coming up for air, into some magical nickelplated looking thing like an upside down question mark.Talk about
caressing and coaxing. Man alive, it was like this "thing" was one of the farm girls he had known back home; all squealy and shivering, both with fearand exhilaration, hot and cold, talking to him in that low, throaty, raspy voice
they always got when it was time, when it was That time, when it was when they wanted it like he wanted it and nothing in the world was gonna ever be able to make them stop now,not now,not now,not ever if they could help it, until they collapse in the heat and joy of just being young and close and discovering the world together like pioneers looking out over the Rockies for the first time. Man, oh Manischevitz, Buckman looked around to see if
anybody noticed him, embarrassed like he was suddenly naked or on his Grandma's porch. He was so flushed he could hardly breath, but at the same time there was no way he was leaving this, this, this magical sound now. Maybe he could talk to this other white boy,this "bopper" and find out what this was, who he was, what was Happening here; trying hard to remember his life before he'd walked in this place and finding he couldn't and knowing that he had reached a crossroad of some kind and that
everything would be a little different from now on....
~*~
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3701 Posts |
Posted - 11/13/2007 : 15:00:07
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"We were dancing a macabre dance as our nerves just vibrated to the thousands of shells and machine gun bullets... whizzing over. I felt that if I had put my finger up, I should have touched a ceiling of sound."
~ Corporal Gus Sivertz
2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles
Battle of Vimy Ridge
March 25, 1917 |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2684 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2007 : 17:36:17
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Do your eyes always dance like that
or is it just me?
I said to the empty space where she belonged...
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Ailinn
Swinger
1440 Posts |
Posted - 11/15/2007 : 18:15:50
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| On some shore where the tide is rising he waits with his warm cup. The candle of mischief alive behind his closed eyes. His lit cigarette. His granite hair. His treatise on days gone by. His love of unforeseen horizons. O, the stones turn and murmur, don't they. The gulls wheel and cry. The ships slide across the wide ocean. He's aware of an air of enchantment. The amber lantern moving like prophesy through the trees. What else can he do but save her? |
Edited by - Ailinn on 11/15/2007 18:25:20 |
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The Nightly Vigil