These hands have done it all
They're tough as wire rope
They've fought to defend freedom
They've carried flags of hope

They've wiped away the salty tears
Of a mother, full of pride
They've folded up our nations flag
For a son, with honor, died

They've held a newborn really close
They've birthed a newborn calf
They've taken down a hundred men
And a hundred more, by half

These hands don't represent me
But, these hands have done it all
They've done eight seconds on a bull
And they've broken through a wall

These hands are soft as leather
And as hard as Georgia Clay
What they did so long before
They can not do today

These hand are all arthritic
Crippled up, and full of pain
But,you know these hands would love just once
To grab that rope again

These hands are full of memories
Built for strength, and not for speed
These hands are built to hold you
Even now, that's all I need

These hands, they tell my story
My life, is in these hands
I don't look at them as crippled
I just look and think....These Hands....

Dark green urban tumbleweeds
Roll on up the road
Bouncing off the passing cars
Dispensing their rotting  load
Garbage bags full of waste
Full of the remnants of the week
Don't let one ever hit you though
They all have quite the reek
Urban, plastic, tumbleweeds
Put out early for the trash
They blow in all directions
Not knowing where they'll crash
Blue boxes trail them on their path
Leaving plastics  in their wake
It's only one plastic bin
But, the mess that it can make
Blue and green, like bulbous flies
Full of garbage and the dead
meat, and tins and paper
decayed food stuff and old bread
Urban plastic tumbleweeds
Every week blow in the wind
Scattering their insides on the landscape
Things that should be binned
It doesn't matter where you travel
But I know you're sure to find
Urban plastic tumbleweeds
holding garbage as designed.

I didn't grow
A beard and stache:
I'm replacing hair.

Even in my seventh decade
enough remain:

impatience, ****, whiskey,
too many cigarettes,
lust (eternal and bright),
driving carelessly, laziness,
not being Buddhist enough,
preferring my own silence
to the chattering of humans
and others that come and go.

I once hoped to die pure,
but I know now these blemishes
will stick to me like true love
and follow me into the grave.

Such terminal devotion,
so rarely to be found
in this fickle world.

Friends to the end,
womb to tomb.

From the innocent time of twenty one
All the way now over the fifty mark!
I've realized,
Fifty plus, just enough
Perfect timing
Age stay's defining.
The moment's
The grand kids
The hellos
Goodbye's
The life's that we live
Every last second is surely a choice
By which we must
Make the right choice
With our Hubby's
It's only us who matter
Our voice.

Gone is the wild unbridled passion of our early years
Hands, lips, bodies in constant embrace
Now, as we grow older yet
We are being overtaken by a deeper love
An early morning caress, the brushing together of lips
The smile in your eyes reflecting the smile in mine
This is real love
When the health of Mollie dog and the cats (our boys)
Are the topic discussed over breakfast
This is the time when we become comfortable
With ourselves and with each other
The time when we can reflect on the good times and the bad
The time to reflect on how lucky we are
To have and to hold, real **love

I like cussin’
I even researched the word.
It ain’t cussin’
There’s an R that is not heard.
We’re talking of cursing,
The taking of God’s name in vain,
Back when it was blasphemy.
Those days will never come again.

It ain’t the same way
Like it was back in those times
When spitting on the sidewalk
Was a jailing crime
And black people had to walk
Down in the gutter.
There were words back then that
Decent folks didn’t utter.

Well, I ain’t religious.
I don’t go to any church at all.
It ain’t that I am evil;
I’m not riding for some fall.
But there are times
Like when you hammer your thumb
That saying “Oh fudge!”
Sounds just plain old **** dumb.

I am not sending
Anything or anyone here to hell.
It’s just helps
To say hell or **** or fuckaduck
When you have to yell.
A shuckydern don’t fit the bill like
A shouted “****”
When you are *******, raving
Ready to spit.

I totally understand
That some words have a place.
Calling people *******
Can be seen as a huge disgrace.
But I still insist
That many times in a conversation
The word *******
Just fits the momentary occasion.

So, scoff if you will.
I’ll try to play by your nicey-nice rules,
But there are people
What are nothing but ******* fools.
I do hope you pardon
My not liking any more pleasant words
When someone says
The dumbest **** I have ever heard

It seems I’ve always been dyslexic
But, I really didn’t know.
I just discovered this about myself
About a year ago.
It was a matter of some bedevilment
To deal with left and right
Up and down, on and off, and more
Excepting day and night.

Opposites like yes or no, black or white,
Were never easy or fun.
Then the days of computers came along
With their trials of zero and one.
It’s a basic lack of understanding things
At a minimal kind of level.
It always seemed I was forever lost
Between the sea and the devil.

I began to realize how deep the effect
Ran within my learning curve.
It was more than just a simple matter
Of which way I would swerve
When riding a bike or driving a car;
I could never drive in Kent.
I would invariably choose the wrong way
When the road was forked or bent.

I don’t take any of this in any light way,
It helps me to understand
Having problems in my studies long ago,
To piece together strand by strand
The insults and the teasing I underwent
When I made the wrong choices.
I can now put to rest my sense of doubt
That stems from chiding voices.

It was such a subtle thing, and back then,
In the methods of long ago,
The parents and the teachers muddled on
Because they really didn’t know
That many of us were not ignoramuses
We just had an uphill fight
We had a dilemma in equal opposites
Like in and out or left and right.

It’s becoming clear
Old fashioned romance is dead
I want an LTR
But they want to hook-up instead.

I want long term dating
Not short-term flings,
I want tight and secure
Not something no-strings.

At my age I never considered
Meeting someone for a hook-up
This is a crazy situation
I just couldn’t cook up.

This casual dating I find
Is just making me frantic,
Somehow it doesn’t jive
With an old-school romantic.

For a writer
It’s like committing libel
To a true believer
Like speed-reading the Bible.

Now I sit here wondering
Should I accept the latest fashion,
And let them satisfy
Their hot-blooded passion?