Long Catfish Poems

Dad hit me only once, an upper cut to the solar plexus. It nearly lifted me off my feet. I was 17 then and already fairly tall, 6’1.” He was 48 and of medium height,...

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7. Playing With Fire
My mom IS quite clear on the dangers of fire,
But if boy'S hooked on flame, then it'S hard to obey,
There'S a longing for “MATCH GUN” (6) that most boys acquire,
Small'S the chance...

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A prawn masquerading as a peanut can be quite disturbing. So many times a peel is a garment used to shroud. A tentacle hidden. Here and there. Then to reappear with an often violent burst...

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©  Artimus The Poet  Susan Manley 11/11/20.24  All Rights Protected

[Verse]
I log in every day to get my fix (my man!)
Your voice in my mind, the perfect elixir (Yep)
You’re encoded into my dreams,...

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For each gift that you make to a man’s spirit,
Servant gift, not the kind that dishonor brings,
There’s a peace that comes soft. (Can your ears hear it?)
And the heart of the man soon forgets its...

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O to my generation

What happen to the days of imagination, when did we get so lazy? I give it to us we address the problems of bullying small kids, fat kids, poor kids black and...

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Heard my grandchildren the other day,
“We’re bored to death” is all they could say,
There just isn’t anything for us to do.
That got me to thinking about how,
the troubles that these youngsters have now,
would go away...

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I walked in and was hit by the familiar smell of fear and disinfectant 
then wrapped my sweater tighter from the cold and discomfort. 
I glanced fleetingly into desperate, tearful eyes
bruised egos, painful cries and...

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A perfect radiant day of golden complexion infused the Jefferson brothers to travel down the narrow path, a mile from their home to the Ebb Water Creek.
Their goal to hook a line of catfish was...

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As the sun sets
A hot wind like this
Does not belong in downtown Lansing
But here it is
Speed-boating down the Grand River grinning and wearing Ray-Bans

My wife and I
We hold down our pouncing bouncing patio table
At the...

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Herons fragment the mist,
appear and disappear while remaining motionless.
The skiff rocks as a coal barge trundles past.
A dewy sky shivers.

Nowadays he just sits in a boat looking at Ohio.
This morning the sun reached the top...

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ONE DAY BEFORE FATHER’S DAY

I stopped by the park today
Pondering
One day before father’s day.

In the deep corner of my mind
My father’s memory opens up.
Year 1905 he was born
In a third world country
Where the farms, the...

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Beneath the city the river fishing is good.

I roam with tackle and pole below those wiggling tapeworms
Wound around the cement underbelly of bridges
Devouring the guts of the city’s glamour
Down here where shadows are long as...

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Muddy Water's Gramma gave us licorice

I walked the old Kenwood neighborhood with my twin little brother and sister in tow,
'hold there hands and look both ways before you cross the street'
No use trying to talk...

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No, I wasn't taken away by a giant storm to The Land of Oz,                     ...

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It was in the early dawn of December especially       Roosters began to crow in the farmer's huts repeatedly They welcomed the first light of day indirectly.   ...

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I've never had a one-night stand,
with me it always was the family plan;
I thought I found Mr. Right 
seems I only saw him with blind eyes.

Faithful till the day I die
Yet he has a...

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There were ripples of the sparkling stream.
The crystalline water was mirroring the blue sky.
That befriended with the sun’s wonderful beam.
Beams of the dazzling looking golden eye.

The background was overflowing with mountains.
Mountains with snowcapped peaks,
Their attainment...

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Because just like frilly and free curiously whimsical the recently enlightened-yet-quietly-
struggling-humble butterfly, resilient-grasshopper... daintily-grazing-dragonfly's locusts hung 
precariously low dangling-in small but honest-groups-spread-out-all-over-on-the-side and-
cellar-door back-yard and front-porch-door... . Swaying gratefully on-the-ever-defiantly-
flopping-innocently-broken-screens-that-again I tell-you... I thought, I...

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Poe was always revising his prose between publications. Here are the longest extended versions of sentences he shortened for their final publication in his lifetime:

"We loved each other with a love that was more than...

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"Sir" want me to call something --
A name? 
Well call then what you can.
Am I worth naming "sir" !! call any name.

My mother said, I was blesses by rain water
through our thetchet roof first day...

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The bayou sky flies a catfish moon over swamp gators 
And cottonmouth vipers. Accordions, fiddles, and rub board vests 
Make their ramble through the undergrowth hot on the trail
Of a sultry midsummer house party in...

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I love your acsent' it makes me want to kiss you!

16 fillet catfish/ or seabass

1/4 cup of McCormick seasoning
2 Tablespoons of garlic powder
2 Tablespoons of onion powder
3 tablespoons of cayenne pepper

mix well and set aside
...

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WHO IS THE GIANT OF THEM ALL

Animals or humans, who is the giant of them all?
Bearing a two sheathed wings, the Hercules Beetles
crash the Titans (beetle)  growing more than six inches.
Down the dirty waterways...

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wow i've never seen such a small city with so many curves and hills
till i moved back down south to the town of coffeeville
alot of you might not have heard of it for it's not...

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