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You'll know who I am,
I'll be wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt, Lucky Jeans.
I am 6'-2", 205lb slim build, with light brown hair.
At a distance you see me and think, this guy can't be 61,
but as you get closer the lines begin to show.
I give you a hug that says thank you for being a friend and it is all OK now.
It may be a bit awkward at first,
but being a master of making small talk I make us feel at home.
There is gray and silver, entwined amid the subtle hints that I am from a totally different era.
I am like a time traveler.
I flit from topic to topic, and you strain to understand me.
You think this guy is either high, or he's..... High.
I'll talk incessantly about me until I realize that I am doing so,
then I'll shift it on you.
I'll watch as the poetess weaves her words like sandalwood incense curling through the air.
She'll take me on her rides and rhymes, reading to me her latest poems.
Time will fly as it has never done before.
I never wear a watch, so I'll fumble with my phone to see what time it is.
Closing time.
****, and I was just getting to know you.
But wait it is Friday.  No, work tomorrow...........

*.......as the last of the Spring rain falls, two old bikes lean against the bricks of the old pub.
Harrogate, TN June 2013
Do you ever feel
Like the words are stuck,
So much you want to say?
But you allowed someone
To break the connection
Between your soul and fingers?
Do you ever feel
So pushed and pulled
By other's emotions
You forget which ones
Are truly your own?
Are you so compelled
To give and give to others
You whither in the drought
That's left behind?
Boundaries, boundaries are
So hard for me to find.
They're invisible laser beams
Protecting a fine jewel.
I can't see them.
I clumsily make my way through.
I allow others to determine my path.
Where is the strength
I felt two years ago?
Will it ever return?
Until then, I swing from here to there,
Tripping, slipping along the way.
Searching for the strength I knew
Before my world was turned upside-down.
The sky falls at such a fast rate.
The ground crumbles beneath the weight.
We can't go
       p
     u
We can't go
     d
       o
         w
            n.
Our feet cringe
With anxiety.
Where to go,
We'll surely never know.
and here we'll have a magnificent view
off a moon in fullest array
in the vastness of the open skies
its luminous silver face
shall stream with torrential beams
throughout the night
it will sail over the black sea sky
on a voyage
of majesty
such a grand display
this lunar show
astounding the eyes
with its mystical glow
the stars shall dance
dance all night
in accord with the brimming
moonlight
wonder
shall dwell in the celestial plains
as the moon
on this night
shall regally rein
one's muse is very very naughty
she has become quite illusory
without her there's no creativity

she buzzed off from my locality
her bad behavior has me deflated
she has become quite illusory

her actions have left me frustrated
not one single word can I pen
her bad behavior has me deflated

she has decided to quit my den
I needed her to stick around
not one single word can I pen

maybe she's gone to ground
I'll not put up with any horseplay
I needed her to stick around

my muse went wandering to-day
I'll not put up with any horseplay
one's muse is very very naughty
without her there's no creativity
Waking in darkness to brainstorming moments
Warm under covers on this freezing morn,
Recalling the instants of yesterday’s sequences,
How they developed and how they were born……

“Moving with grace in a form fitting garment,
Curves in the shadow light tauntingly near,
Beautiful lines in a moment of weakness
Titillate senses erotically clear.”

“Watching the mouth of the bigoted warbler,
Watching him spout his idolatry spiels,
Rhetoric of mind bending, **** licking garbage
Image of self is the place that he kneels.”

“Urgency now with insurances deadline
Making provision for payments now due,
Juggle the baksheesh for paying the piper
Or the cruelty of bankers will cauterise you!”

“Laughter arouses the happiest moments
Merriment opens the faces so well,
Emotively gracious the giving of laughter
Contagiously, wonderfully ringing the bell.”

"Uncomfortably caught in the midst of an untruth
Unconscionably really, can’t call it a lie,
Got caught in momentum of tale in the telling
Upsetting me now to the point where I cry.”

"Can’t recall why, but I know there’s a matter,
Ripping my britches to try to recall….
Something importantly, now to be dealt with
Frustratingly lost in the fog of it all.”

"Harmonies rise like a mist in the temple
Delicate cadences rise and they fall,
I wonder why God allows this unbeliever
To sing with the Angels in his Holy hall?”

“Running my fingertips over her curvature
Feeling the ***** line plummet to fall
Knowing the thrill of elicit collusion
Anticipate promise of wanting it all.”


Sudden alarm in the midst of a waking
Urgency calls at the dawn of the day,
Heaving my soul into frost waiting fingers
Leaving my dreams in the warmth where they lay.

Marshalg
“Pukehana Paradise”
Auckland NZ.
22 June 2013
Wandering through tracks of life
Remind me of a play
Where the hero played his present scene
Then cancelled out each day
Where the memories of yesteryear
Just fade into the mist,
Where the joys and tears and ecstasy
Dispel, and nothing’s missed.
Where time consumes the very thought
That occupies each part
And leaves you with a vagueness
And a sadness in your heart.

When you walk and crush the daisies
When you strive and build the day
When you lead a child to laughter
With a funny face display.
When you deal with things of consequence
And guide the ship of state,
When you choose your favorite ice cream
And avoid the food you hate.
When the building blocks just vanish
And the structure disappears
When the moments flee like moving silk
And evaporate the years.

The day is still and foggy
There’s a tremor in the air,
I can hear a blackbird singing
And the sound is sweet and fair
As I sit in my seclusion
And quietly pass the time
I attempt to recall peoples names
And I can’t remember mine.
There’s a mistiness in being
And a sameness everywhere,
There’s a lack of expectation
And a drollness in despair.

Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
8th March 2008
Weather Advisory: A long one*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Be not fooled,
by the evening-tide,
be not deceived
by the quietude,
tis not a reprieve
of day before dark.

Be guarded,
for the easy transformation,
a tranquil shedding
of the day's husk,
into the faded light of dusk,
just one of nature's machinations
to delay the inevitable.

Evening-tide,
a colored compilation
of a few mischievous hours,
when sunlight is invaded by
streaks of pink, azure and gold,    
just before the
palette is plunged
into a stainless steel can
of gothic black,
skyied glory rendered into
common house paint.

Evening-tide,
an alleged easy calm
surfeits some souls,
supposed easy passage from  
the day's contusions to
a relaxation from humankind's regulations and rules,
but not for me.

Evening-tide,
when appetites unsated, simmer,
the in between hours when
humans transform themselves,
from day laborers to creatures
desiring, aroused, hungry  
for night time pleasures,
searching with false courage for
boundary lines to sever.

Evening-tide,
it was at evening-tide that
David espied, desired and
stole Bathsheba for his own,
with a King's arrogance
rent a kingdom,
murdered for profit,
birthed an Heir,
a prince, who wrote,
by evening-tide:

I have seen all the works
that are done under the sun; and,
behold, all is vanity
and vexation of spirit.


Evening-tide,
fear closes my throat,
confusion reappears,
a low grade flu infects
deemed persistent, incurable,
revisits, medicine resistant,
my insights, my speech,
to blind and bind  

Am I Gloucester,
blinded, but faculties
possessing vision,
the future to clarify?

No, no, it is to a king,
Lear,
to whom I am
son and cousin,
kith and kin

Sunset visions of
ultimate demise
ours eyes behold,
but plainly put,
at Evening-tide,
our dementia -
a precursor,
a periodic but hostile guest
in the hostel of our memories,
cracks and fractures us,
spirit first, body second.  

We are bound helpless
by a knotted tongue,
slow dying malingerer,
inside a head of ill repute,
unable to locate our knowing,
and every word selected,
a battle galactic, oft lost

Evening-tide,
I am cold,
and the issued command
is bring an umbrella
to warm and cover.  
What an old fool am I,
tis not blanket or a
Bathsheba I seek,
but at Evening-tide,
Babel's nefarious treasury of words
unlocked, for tis closed,                    
the gatekeepers,
drunk and absent,
drunk on absinthe,
and creme de mentia
and I have no key

Evening-tide, prithee,
I beg of thee,
consideration please,
check this hideous amusement,
that makes this
King's speech confused,
odor of smokeless cordite ignited
where the synapses have burnt,
injured, beyond repair
injured, by mine own aging.  

Reverse the diagnosis
of the panel of wordsmiths:
Alas, weep and be comforted...

Evening-tide,
a reverie of colored tears,
downward sloping,
arrive to tingle my tongue,
warming comfort for an *****
willing but unable,
a wounded soldier,
a veteran of poetry,
now prone and pained
beyond repair,
beyond healing,
immunized to the
heat and solder,
drugs and salves,
that heretofore
might have closed
the cracks of rack and ruin

Evening-tide,
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and
all the king's men couldn't
put Humpty together again^

Evening-tide,
my hair, the color of old age.
Irony, my skin yet smooth,
unwrinkled, not in need of the
toxins that are employed
to fill crevasses on
the outer banks of age of comedy

Alas, the toxins natural from within
have seeped from their
latent resting place and have
contaminated the groundwater
that lubricated my mind,  
from siege engines poured,
a contamination of
mine own making.  
After a life long battle,
my Jericho walls have fallen.

Lear and I faint recall the love
of our beloved Cordelia,
but try as we might
her name escapes our grasp,
******* by bite of aging's asp.

We grow drunk by night
on a drink not of choice,
unhappy fury,
the residue within
the imprisoned poison
of our polluted tears,
that come only after our
misspoken and misshapen
guttural croaks
of our Eveningtide prayers
are both
unintelligible and unrequited
Written 6/01/11, after seeing Derek Jacobi as King Lear. This poem is about my fears of dementia which people close to me suffer from, sadly.  Now, I struggle to recall names and places. Poetry, not so much because I get to pick and choose words at my own speed. But someday, who knows....the time between day and night, is a metaphor for a beautiful slow, slipping away but
be not deceived
by the quietude,
tis not a reprieve
of day before dark.


^ this rhyme, purportedly a child's view of siege engines that could not break the walled of the City of Gloucester (how ironic!)  in 1643

An abbreviated version of this poem goes like this:
Nat went to see King Lear,
Then went down to the beach
To watch the sun set, the evening arrive,
They both reminded him, of his fear
That someday he'll probably sunset like Lear
And end the play, the eve, mad, his mind deceived,
De-worded, defanged, his poetry retired, but not relieved
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