my neighbor's cat
its sandpaper tongue
scraping away the remnants
of an owl chick's down
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your poppy
it lives to lure bees
its colors are false to you
yet you must pick it
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puppy love
on an afternoon of ball chasing romps and rollover belly petting
my nearly adolescent child is discovered earnestly measuring
the love between my convalescent bachelor friend
and his year-old golden retriever
overhearing the proud owner whisper gently
to me that indeed he'd had her spayed
on the verge of her first season
the child does not appear
in the least to have
found it wanting
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shudder to think
what soldiers learn isn't how to play
the daily bullet lottery well
it's how not to worry so
about who will win
and who will lose
when first i saw a lottery player catch metal
i wretched with pregnant expectation
of my own embrace of ordnance
and wondered why the steely veterans around me
weren't mourning sick with guilt-edged
death anticipation like i was
now i am a true soldier and can stride around
or if necessary over the fallen so numbly
i don't even shudder to think
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grounds
to be where the talk
is of catches
and squalls and women
especially women
left behind in spite
of promises
so sincere at the time
of their making
left behind in spite
of the expectation
of longing
left behind in spite
of the fear and the doubt
perhaps expressed
perhaps unspoken
but always present
in the one leaving
and the one left
the fear and the doubt
of ever returning
to be bound for places
as far from land
as from love
to be bound for places
far too deep and cold
and wet and forbidding
to be destinations for anyone
not crazed for the capture
of wild sea creatures
places these seamen
lovingly call grounds
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how poetry 1
in the beginning there's a large collection
of loose lexical particles
each one gently bearing
its slight negative charge
and then all of a sudden
out of this electric lexicon
a nucleus of positive thought emerges
and its invitingly empty orbital shells
attract and capture the most available words
until their capacity is reached and
everything settles into balance
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