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KEIR DELANEY<xmp>
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........The Poetry Of
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Keir Delaney ..............
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The Heart Bends In ..............
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Her name was ..............
Helen. ..............
Had a child ..............
out of wedlock. Sent away at seventeen to a town ..............
twenty miles downstream ..............
where the nuns were closemouthed. ..............
Prayerful. Rumor was ..............
the child was offspring to an uncle, but another ..............
rumor had it he was queer, so no one knew. Uncle Luther ..............
took to walking railroad tracks, singing down the valley ..............
all the darkie hymns he could remember from the Baptist Camp. ..............
Singing, picking chips of mica ..............
found in beds of slag; something shiny to hang onto. ..............
Addle-brained and lisp-tongued, ..............
poor old Luther ..............
bore the handle of a 'spoiler', while Helen drifted north ..............
to take a factory job. ..............
No one heard a word again ..............
until the news about a fire in Philadelphia. Someone ..............
sent a pair of little burnt up baby slippers ..............
to her mother, ..............
who had a heart attack ..............
and died a few days after. If you looked real hard ..............
through char, slippers had some squiggly scrawl ..............
there on the soles. Slippers said: Lovely Luther ..............
Baby Mine ..............
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Now's The Time
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Now's the time for ..............
stocking up ..............
the perishables, ..............
rationing out ..............
the luxuries and praying hard. ..............
America loves her wartime. Gets to grind out ..............
patriotic films; red, white and bluesy songs, another ..............
Johnny come lately ..............
marching home in rags and glory, sand in teeth ..............
and hollow eyed. Just perfect ..............
for some statues ..............
in the park. So even now, ..............
they're clearing away the baseball diamond, shifting trees and ..............
shrubberies, nailing down a sculptor who'll make it ..............
USA homogenized; not a flat nose, nor ..............
Hispanic sleepy ..............
feature in a ..............
one of 'em. ..............
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April Fool
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Don't know why ..............
I like ..............
spring.
Every ..............
flower has a little bomb of pollen ..............
waiting to torture me. I'll be a mass of itches, ..............
sneezes, pink-eyes running riot ....................
through the ....................
daffodils and pain. I must be ..............
a happy idiot- ..............
God's own ..............
Soupy Sales. Lay me down in a vale ..............
of purple, ..............
..........let me swell ..............
to a glorious red--- then pop my snot-filled ..............
poet ..............
head. ..............
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