How cool is this!
New Year's Eve AND a blue moon!
Just in case it slipped your radar.
Happy New Year to You All.

CBT

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 Like castanets his knees chattered together;

 His skin grew veiny and glazed.

‘Oh, my cock!  My cock!’

Cried the masturbating music master.

‘Only look at me with those enchanting eyes.’

And up and down he rubbed a silly little pretty

Pink penis peeking through the hole in his pants.

‘Only look at me with those beautiful lips

And I will come … I will come!’ cried the

Ma...

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 What do I want? What do I value?

           What do you reject?

 What matters to me? Whose opinions do I heed?

           Whose do you ignore?

 I no longer care what anyone thinks of me,

Or my actions.

           You realize, of course, that you have fixed

           The anomaly of your state:

           You are trying very hard not to care;

           But you do, ...

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Along the dark street the group moves sporadically -

talking earnestly together - gesticulating - laughing.

A wry comment bares bone.

Excited, I toss back my head,

Caught up in the argument, eager to temper the point.

The brilliant stars snap me off-guard.

Arrested, I pause, the rejoinder forgotten.

The stars are magnificent!

I have never seen so many - so close - so a...

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           The Christmas Tree

Queen of festivities, proudly she stands,

Glowing with glimmering shimmering strands,

Brilliant and beautiful, Belle of the Ball,

Bowed to, admired, and feted by all.

                The night is for laughter,

                The night is for song!

                Let us Dance!

The old clock tolls midnight.

The music is sof...

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Letter in a Drawer

Into what impossible role have I forced you?

A creation of my own desires,

Unknown to you, unprovoked by you,

Existing only in my fantasy - unreal -

But not necessarily unsatisfying.

That so small a moment could evoke

So great a regard

So fervent a need

Is not your responsibility;

You did not seduce with vacuities

Too quickly ...

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A Wonderful Day

One Saturday morning

When I was not that young

I woke to find icy rain sluicing down.

Through the steamy windows

The pelting clouds looked  relentless.

Thunder grumbled in the trolls’ halls,

And I growled with sour temper.

‘Oh! What a rotten day!  

I plopped on to my chair at the table

Without so much as ‘...

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A     Fly in the Butter

I love a word

            Whose position can

                            Confound the sense

                                                            Of syntax plan

 And leave a phrase

            On its fine sound preening

                            Quite ambiguous

                                            As...

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Girl in a Lake

on heavy eyes the full moon cast gilded shadows

swan path shafting seductive to the shore where

she dropped her clothes and entered liquid light

jewelled feet icy lustrous pale arms high uplifted

now wide eyes of unwavering clarity enraptured

dream-wooing  dream-possessed  she sank gleaming

to her knees in the bi...

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Esther

            Why do you stare at me so, little one?

What has your soul seen before it came to me,

            that you should regard me so gravely?

            I wonder where you have come from;

            you watch me

            with such distrust.

Within my arms you have not smiled, nor

            glanced about disinterestedly...

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         Thinking

Thinking likely makes

more problems than it solves but,

if that is your bent,

know:  the deeper the abyss

the higher the apogee.                

                                     Cynthia Buell Thomas

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The Sage

Why do you lament, fair maiden?

I mourn the loss of my innocence, sir.

You have forfeited your chastity, my dear?

Ah, no, sir, that is of little importance to me.

What other innocence is there

To cause such grief, my child?

I can now see, sir.

The dead live all about me.

Cynthia Buell Thomas

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                                          Six-fifteen on a Rainy Evening

You turned -

In your nakedness

So beautiful

Trumpets flared

And the forest young mewled.

Earth cracked open

Casting up buried civilizations;

All Art

Converged

On your curving

Thigh.

Cynthia Buell Thomas

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Falling Stars

At my auntie’s summer cottage

When the moon was black

The purple sky blazed with stars.

Star-gazing was a ritual.

‘Look!’ cried my aunt one night as we lay

On the cool stones by the lazy water,

‘There’s a falling star! And another!’

She gasped like a child in delight,

Pressing her fingers to her throat.

‘We must make a wish.’

‘Oh,...

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The Painting  

            Bloop!

Black paint splotched against the canvas:

            Thick glistening globs

                        Stuck on red welter.                  

                       Blip!

White goo spat from the flung brush.

            “Cows?

                        he offered,

                                  ...

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Under Revision

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The Rustle of Autumn

With fine dark limbs alluring shadows

Through the rags of sallow summer,

The shy trees

Are whispering restlessly,

Anticipating

The fretful winds of autumn

To strip away their shriveled leaves

And shower them dryly

Gliding

         Whirling

                     Twisting

                                 Down

                    ...

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Three A.M. on an Old Computer

Instead of stars and ‘tygers bright’

A winking cursor’s burning right

            Through my head,

Flashing - laughing in frenzied flight

Amuck in these cells of graphic site.

Will no one pity my manic plight?

            I’m dead!

And the computer obliged.

            It died.

Oh, bloody hell!  I was o...

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Wishes

I wish             I could read every book ever written

                            I spoke every language on earth

                            I lived everywhere at once

                            I could touch every living thing

Sometimes

                            I feel

                            as though I were every living ...

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After a Holiday Affair

God damn distance!

Hurl a mountain into the sun.

Swallow the sea.

Turn the earth inside out.

Stomp on clouds!

Kick the planets out of orbit -

Do SOMETHING!

Be cool, fool!

Smile, converse, concentrate.

Debit: credit:

Add a splurge of madness;

Subtract a little loyalty.

Balance the impossible.

H...

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Do Not Lay the Burden

Do not lay the burden

of your happiness

on me,

that wild full flower

of unguarded content.

The power you give me

to use as I choose

will be remembered only

for its cruelty.

Cynthia Buell Thomas

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Old Woman in a Corner

Heavy boots hammered down

The empty hallway.

Fists  thundered on the wooden door,

And it fell back easily

Well-oiled.

In the sparse room

Three people sat at a plank table

Their veins rigid, blank eyes fixed

On the opening door.

In a corner of the cell

Crouched an old woman

Her warped spine braced against the wall.

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Singing to Grandma’s House

Oh!

Barreling down the dirt roads

To Grandma’s house was exciting!

Thumping up storms of dust

Under the wheels of the old grey sedan

That had to hold four kids in the back 

All squashed and squabbly

Until Dad started to sing.

And our dad could sing!

He taught us the best songs ever.

We sang l...

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Moon Month

This month my body is tuned to the moon -

The tide of blood flowing hot and heavy

On the fullest night of the lunar cycle.

Under the brimming moon my loins grip,

Throwing out rich red tissue,

Sour membrane dark and odiferous.

The relief of the blood flush!

The tension in my womb!

Like an orgasm in limbo -

Never waxing - never waning.

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Last Night I Heard a Squawk

Last night I heard a squawk of death

From the tree outside my window

And I thought -

A pigeon in the fox's jaws.

But … can a fox reach a roosting pigeon?

Not likely.

Was the pigeon low in the shrubbery?

Not likely.

Must have been an owl.

A pigeon in an owl's claws

Gagging for life.

But … the screams were strangled abruptly.

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          My personal eulogy delivered at my mother's funeral some time ago.   This explanation preceded the reading of the poem at my mother's funeral.

"

'In the closing hours of her illness, within her personal reality, my mother had a revelation about the meaning of life.  She called me urgently to her bedside, clapping her hands and crying out joyfully: 'God is wonderful! I never underst...

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The Virgin

Be good to him;

Be sweet and tender and kind.

With his careless fumbling be patient.

His experience is academic.

All the books - titillating photos  -

Sly whispers in the locker room -

Self exploration -

Are as nothing.

In the exposure of his true ignorance

He will be shy.

Use your expertise with judgment.

He will be as beautiful a love...

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Oh! Daughters, My Daughters

Oh! Daughters, my daughters,

See that old woman.

She moves through her life

Without any focus,

A shadow in clothes

No mind in her eye.

The fat silly dog

In her arms is her baby.

She buys for it steak

And feeds it by hand.

This isn’t the transience

Of illness or grief.

Defined by her family

She knows no...

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Letters and Chops

If a woman visits a gentleman friend

And finds on his obscenely cluttered

Dining table,

 An open-faced letter

Which she herself wrote many weeks ago,

What is she to think?

 Is it at his elbow for regular reference

With chops and chutney?

To muse over with a midnight brandy?

Or is it, in fact, simply

Of no more moment

Than y...

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Women

In so

Many ways we

Are still the elephant

Tethered to a blade of grass with

A thread

Cynthia Buell Thomas

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Television Moon

                       ‘With how sad steps, O Moon …’

Oh, author of such a line,

Do you watch me these hundreds of years hence

With kind eyes?

Where are the ages between the ancients and me?

Spirits are pacing the night.

And do they walk, too, on the moon,

Like jesters,

Ballooning across its scarred face

In seven league boots

Mumbling folksy information

Through inv...

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The Piano Concerto

the friend who perseveres

snared me

with words - weed - wine

and music -

the notes unfettered

flying  across the ceiling

running up the walls and

swinging from the light fixtures

dripping

falling

cascading over my consciousness

in a delirium of sound -

the melody was lost

each crystal note caught its own life

and leaped...

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Come, Run With Me

‘Come, run with me,’ I cried,

Extending my hand to a blue-eyed boy

Blond as flax weed full of sun.

Five little fingers slipped into mine,

Silken, warm and trusting.

The chain of infants grew on either side

As we trotted around the yard,

Giggling and puffing and pink.

One by one the children dropped away

And again I ran alone,

Wa...

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Connotation

into the pool

of your mind

a poet

            drops

                        each

                                    word

like a cut jewel

full of inner fire

spreading

            its own

                        many-faceted

                                    meanings

                            ...

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                                into the morning’s droplet hours I danced

mesmerized by the flogging beat electric

colour strobing my brain through the pulsing

fog pungent with nicotine in a press of bladed

elbows and steel heels cadaverous eyes

obscenely painted purple lips pursed and

polished with sweat jerking around in the fumes

of stale beer and Prince Matchabelli I was

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My heartbeats measure the night.

How many weeks now has sleep mocked me?

How many months?

Late in the breathing hours when

My blood’s rhythm drowns my mind,

When I softly touch oblivion -

My hands betray me.

Through my fingertips pulses

The feel of you;

My treacherous hands throb down your body

Until their aching need perva...

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