The old man, grey, bespectacled, with difficulty, rose from his chair.
If he’d come to plead for mercy, I doubt he’d find it here.
He struggled to stand steady with his Zimmer walking frame
As he gave his testimony we all felt his sense of shame.

“I was there when all this happened; I saw the smoke rise to the sky.
I saw the piles of ashes that were once like you and I.
I counted stolen valuables; Money, watches, gold.
I dared not speak objection. I did as I was told.”

He asked for a glass of water; this much he did receive.
He testified an hour without asking for reprieve.
He spoke about those distant days we see in black and white.
Of a Germany destroyed by debt and burning for a fight.
He then was young and good with numbers
He was the bookkeeper of Auschwitz;
He can’t un-see all he did see.

Although he never shot a girl or stabbed a sleeping child,
He’d tallied up their worldly goods to add them to the pile.
When the Russians over-ran the camp, he and the others fled.
They left behind warehouses full of the possessions of the dead.
The Jury must deliberate about what punishment is due
For this ninety year old **** who kept track of baby shoes.

“Sweet Kiss” was the horse and Frank Hayes was his rider,
Both destined this day to gain fame.
Frank was a stable boy on his first stake horse;
The horse too was a novice, but game.
This pairing went off at 20-1, but was well worth the risk of a “fiver”.
Sweet Kiss won the race and the bettors were stunned
for his jockey fell off, a cadaver.
Frank suffered a heart attack on the last turn
and the horse was the only survivor.
Frank Hayes, undefeated, was interred in his silks.
“Sweet Kiss”, undefeated, retired.
Jockeys are short but have memories long-
None were willing to be her next rider.

This cave held secrets, of that he was sure.
It was filled with ages of debris.
Already they had found the bones
of two australopithecines.
He squatted near the latest find,
A flake of stone, stone that had been worked
long before **** sapiens’ time;
when our precursors walked the Earth.
He felt the stones weight in his hand,
Cool to the touch, the well-made blade,
Sharp enough to skin a deer-
a treasured heirloom from this grave.
His mind wandered, in the cool dark of the cave,
to think of those who worked this stone.
They were driven from the Eden of the trees
and struggled to survive on the grassy plain.
In a night without fires’ comforting glow;
In a night full of sounds; roars whispers and groans.
He grasped the stone tool tighter still
He had never felt so all alone.
Then he was rescued from all such thoughts
By the vibrating call of his I phone.

Wilmer McLean had seen war in the flesh;
Near Bull Run he had purchased a farm.
When rebellion broke out, Stonewall Jackson came up
Causing Wilmer distress and alarm

So McLean sold his farm, moved his kin far from harm;
-kept them safe to the very last day.
Until Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant
chose his parlor for the end of the Fray.


From Fort Sumter’s surrender to Appomattox Court House
Through five Aprils, ****** war had held sway,
It began in his back yard, ended up in his parlor
From fate he could not get away.

Michael O’Rahilly was leading the charge, a hopelessly wasteful foray.
The English were waiting behind barricades as the Gaels made their desperate play.
Rifles at the ready; they charged up Moore Street, the O’Rahilly leading the way.
Like paper consumed by a flickering flame, their manpower melted away.
O’Rahilly lay dying, but the British just laughed, no aid would they give to the foe.
The cobblestones reeked of the blood on the street as the bodies were laid in a row.
Heroes perhaps have a touch of the poet, a dram of unreason besides,
but everyone knows of the charge of O’Rahilly; Everyone knows how he died.
It was, he well knew, a magnificent gesture, the English be dammed and despised.
He lingered, tis said, for nineteen long hours, immortal or not, he expired.

A comfortable rocking chair, a woven shawl upon his lap,
Lincoln sat in the Presidential box with trouble lurking at his back.
His guard had a terrible thirst-which he quenched at the neighboring bar.
The war was over after all-Who expected an attack?

Booth stealthily climbed the stairs, with ****** on his mind.
John Wilkes spotted his prey, through a hole he had drilled in the door.
The South must be avenged! He would salvage Southern pride.
He unloaded his derringer in Lincoln’s head; the last Union dead of the war.

Clara Harris was screaming in terror, as Booth slashed her Beau to the bone.
“Sic Semper Tryrannis:” Booth shouted, announcing the deed he had done
Booth’s spur caught on the star spangled bunting as he vaulted toward the stage.
Booth limped across to the door- His leg broken, bad luck for a man on the run.

It raged across five Aprils, killed 600,000 sons,
but now, there was a chance for peace, if Johnston wanted one.
Some urged a guerrilla war, a game of hit and run,
but Johnston saw a suffering South and knew this must be done.
He called a truce with Sherman to surrender his command.
In truth, I think he would have rather shook the Devil’s hand.
The defeated kept their horses, and were paroled back to their homes.
This land once more united, its prior sins atoned.
For every drop of blood that had been spilled by blow or lash
had been matched, drop for drop, in every ****** clash.
On the ninth of April 65’ Rebels tore their battle flags
and little strips of colored cloth were given to each man.
The flags were not surrendered to become the spoils of war.
They fraternized with men they would have killed the day before.
Now all who had survived the war, all but one, would live.
Good Friday night would claim the last that Lincoln had to give.