I wanted you to know we have not forgotten. What became of you is still a mystery,
but history is patient. Did they come for you as an example to all on some moonlit night? Would so many remain
silent, frightened in the afterglow. Can this be so? Are you imprisoned somewhere, a worker bee, with a kidney
stolen and sold for the profit of the state? Was that your fate?
We can not put a statue in that square, but
your image is everywhere. Accept these words as a small tribute to your bravery and your courage. They did not succeed
in erasing your moment in history. They tried. The newsreel hidden in a tank’s top got through though you may have
never known it. The world duly heralded you as new news. Newer news was that your comrades failed, sped on pedals
fleeing, running before one tyranny amongst to many in a world coughing to be free.
Are you in a grave somewhere or
are you the manager of a KFC? Do your ashes reside in a lacquered box hidden from the guard, waiting to be spread
upon that square where so many sang songs for liberty? Perhaps you escaped altogether, married, and had the prescribed
one child- a fat son? Nothing that followed, however, lessoned your heroism before that turreted, red star. You
have won your place in the pantheon of veterans reserved for all freedom fighters. You did honor to your country.
Ancestors smiled. Your message traveled the world over. One man can make a difference. Many can make a Veteran’s
Day. My county sets aside one day to remember its known and unknown heroes. Come linger with us today. You are not
forgotten. Let us play taps to your memory as well as to our own sons.
Winter moves forward leaving mounds of white top rolling hills that seem to billow
upon billow, under the clear moonlight of a cold, shivering night. Everything moors with reason to heed the certainties
of life and death, those inevitable, constancies of earth or sea.
Staying harbored and harmonious, worries put to
sea, wavy hair still full, though grey and white, reckoning no need yet to dwell too much on death; A belly fulsome
of life with more than one billow o’er my belt, there is no urgency to heed or hasten any welcome to that final night.
Think
that I have some foreboding fear of night, after voyage o’er this seemingly endless sea? I sound my measure, am content,
and I heed these last years as dogwoods dropping white and pink petals down in gentle breezes to billow in piles
with the wind’s push to feign a withering death.
Life is not surrendered so easily to death and a sunny day still
outshines the night. Children’s laughter, the sounds that billow O’er me like rinsing rain on sea, make a well worn
and wrinkled face flush white; postponing any forebodings to heed.
Concerning my sundry sins finally to heed, sums
the tally totaled to company that inevitable death, I’ve given over all, and raised white a flag waving, and I am as
ready for the night as any good fisherman returning unto the sea leaving nets lying rewoven, one by one, billow on billow.
My
life likens to a breaking wave, an arcing billow amist the many, leaving any who come near to heed a kindly and quiet
countenance, a gentle, wavy sea serenely rolling forward- pausing ever so hesitant at death, fore rushing fearless into
a waiting night where they’ll lay me gently down in ashes white.
And so evil
came to traverse the continents, and with it came the war.
A uniformed arm jerked back at the gentle squeeze, and
another yellow star methodically fell over a precipice it’s lapel had helped to dig an hour before. The bittersweet
smell of powder briefly masked the stench to perfume a new order.
Arias and choruses alike arose in screeching
screams; perverse serenades of the sons of the Rising Sun to the raped daughters of Nanking, dressed in dragon
embellished, ripped and torn, silk kimonos donned for their defiant death.
Time teeters on an edge of one
of many black holes, singularities consuming the particles of mankind; extraordinary formations descended of
that Big Bang that began it all.
What is this mercury, silvered back lash, staring at me, matching my every move? The aged player
there knows everything needed now except what is to come. All that went before is but a prelude to something expected, grand
and heroic befitting an all star, but tenuous and just out of reach.
Parallel fingers touch, exactly upon the surface
at a horizon that is unfamiliar landscape. There is no precedence. Eyes glaze over at the fog and steam of mildew,
stained, shower stalls, burning to the stinging images within minds made moody by the marching pills added
to the cubicle calendars that divide the remaining days. They feed a team held together with replaced organs and
body parts for the profit of companies cloning things disposable.
Everything is reflected in the rushing of
innings, piling one upon the other, tumbling into time. The score is kept in quarter time in a game whose rules
are made up in mid-play.
Starting in the end zone, I care less about the final score than the dignity of green
kept firm and level to the memory of my former glory. It is the principles of fair play onto which I fall back upon- that
fame that was and still is shimmering upon the silky surface of my retired jersey.
Rising now, to pick back up
the ball and hand it over to the rookies of the players who block, I hesitate at the flag upon the field hoping
for a call from some checkered judge who stands silent with arms down.
I do not know my way here upon this
field, but I am game for any meet, trained in the shadows of bulldozed coliseums, ever ready for another try at
one last kick for a winning goal.
Sign me up, again. I’m wrinkled but not too warn to walk in front of linemen,
tease the shoulder pads, and feign a foul. If they push me back too hard, I have nothing to loose. It will gain you
time to reconnoiter and regroup, stepping into shoes, as you do, of a benched generation; ill-seated on the sideline,
distracted before the scores on the silver screens, growing ever larger and better in resolutions that dim and
flicker when challenged by spare time.
Steady on, Shyaway;
We’ve a small trek yet, ‘fore the warmth of a blanket and a meal of cured hay, safely out this storm and nary so
wet.
Horsey’s spread is ‘ever an envy', with a sturdy barn, Amish built but reddish painted, with acres stretching
clear up to the sea in a hewed expanse felled and untainted.
The battle did not fare well, and lucky were we
to survive that rout. This war is like a rung of hell. I’ve no more stomach for it. We’re out!
The Deserter’s Sonnet
[Shakespearean Form] Steady on, my steadfast, quick Shyaway; We’ve steal enough and a small trek yet, ‘fore
a blanket’s warmth and some tasty hay, safely out this storm and nary so wet.
Horsey’s spread, is ‘ever an envy', with
its barn, Amish built, reddish painted, with acres stretching clear up to the sea, hewed expanse felled and untainted.
The battle bestrewed did not fare well, and lucky were we to survive that rout. This war is like a rung of Dante’s
hell. I’ll stomach it no more. We’re out!
Her mother lovingly turns down her bed each night, chooses the story to read in the dimmed,
cozy, light. The wooly jams-jams still carry an unspent smell, an innocence mixed with girlie sediments that dwell in
the crevices between the floorboards where they settled to perfume that tiny cell that hoards a zoo of safe, soft,
stuffed animals each named for people that to her seemed famed.
Rarely had she ever been to a movie let alone
a play especially with her Daddy who was too often away kept there by grownup things, she had learned to respect, knowing
not the word but aware there was no neglect. That morning, she put on her prettiest dress for a Broadway play, the
name of, she could only guess. Daddy wouldn’t tell her details, not even the play’s name, as the whole day was to be
one, long, guessing game.
I’m Dalhart’d depressed tonight- black
blizzard’d! I listen to Al o’er the air out the truth; ten years to save the children from a wrath fast blow’in
down on’em.
What good is a poem to’em, hunh! Christ! It’s Easter all o’er again. One clan again another, all
hoard’in the little left. A decade, only a decade, you say?
Wars waged win wastewater and starvation bloats the
bellies. Religions ferment discord and hastily ‘rected crematoriums soon sweet sicken the stink’in air what’s left.
"Remember
upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.” - Alexander the Great
Boom!
Words, like hanging chads, hang loose over our
catwalks; feeble attempts to recapture some moment.
Even a flash cannot suffice to fix an instant. The instant
depends on time, and time does not hover to be netted.
The pictures and words configured into works of art are
inadequate substitutions. We call them art and disseminate the pieces, but nothing suffices a moment.
She
was speaking of a duopoly, the particulars peculiarly bertrand. Her brown hair faint with false highlights fell
flat, meeting the lapels of a bespoke pinstriped suit.
Botoxed badminton eyes, the lids wizened, were worn
weary bespeaking years stylizing her sex. Curried by decisions culled all her own, she'd arrived at this moment in
the spotlight; a few clipped minutes of views aired on the morning news.
My universe was created with a loud, commercial
Bang! advertising rich elements and resources spiraling out to serve you. These are very profitable if you’ve a stomach
for commodity puts. Everything living feeds off of something living; dwindling crops, more manna from Heaven for me.
Eat your fill this holiday season. I’ve options on the grocers. The goose is very plentiful and reasonably priced. Everything
dies to be sucked into a Black Hole. Yes, there is a fee for this as well. Everybody serves somebody. How do you do, my
name is Scrooge and that somebody is me.
This insignificant orb is dying quickly. Only greed can save it…..that’s
me. Goodie, goodie! You’re back is to the wall. Worry, then worry some more. I’m directly between you and ruin manipulating
markets until I send you happily skating and sliding for a fall. Make it profitable and I’ll dip into my many, moneyed,
market funds. I’ll clean up the coal for you at a variable rate. Nothing is fixed. I’ll gas you up, naturally, when
I’ve had my spoils from the rich fields of black oil you guzzle daily- choking until due to the holiday you come up
short, then, self righteously, calling on me, that greedy, greedy Mr. Scrooge.
Stop griping. Everybody’s got a job
or a dole check-some have two! “The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor…'' I’ll have my mortgage or my rent
or you’ll feel my boot.
Children don’t want to go caroling in the cold singing archaic songs. They’re whining for
the latest iPod and insistent for the Nintendo Wii. They text you with their lists; you know, like everyone else, they’re
busy. So is Granny and she isn’t baking pies, not anymore. Get with the program. What would you have, a real tree?
Put the cookies and milk under a facsimile. Bah, humbug!
It needed patience and trust- faith to wait
for the void to be filled. After a year of grief, one miracle had occurred and I set sail again.
Then “Kitty”
up and died suddenly; she’d always had that murmur in the heart. I rushed her to the vet in vain listening to her pain- pushing
peddle to the metal. The box became so still and quiet. I bent and kissed her goodbye in some vet’s office. She had
died in the van.
I’m a man. I cry in public and expect that recognition when breaking this taboo. Intruding rudely
on my grief they wanted me to buy her ashes. I’d had ashes enough, thank you. I left her remains there, for them
to do what they would do,but I kept ‘Kitty’ in my heart. My heart is near filled up now. I’ve of a healthy heart.
I
seem to lose those I love in early spring and then spring back as the rains end. I’m a gardener and I understand the
need to mulch and patiently await each resurrection. Love is forever a perennial thing. It will rise up, again. The
planter awaits his mark. I can not love annually. Commitment is unconditional and everlasting, at least for me.
Come
that Easter morning, I went to climb up into the van when what brushes the leg but a bit of fur no bigger than a bunny? This
is courage and desperation, the things miracles are made of. I’ve no fear left. I pick her up, this meow crying out to
me.
I named this new kitten “Easter” and she sleeps here at the foot of our warm bed made warmer by mutual consent.
Three of us occupy this safe and resurrected place.
