My director and producers names will roll up after mine.
My author will want credit too and His name is next in line.
My supporting cast was fabulous in this game of "Let's pretend"
Now,as the credits start to roll, my "show" has reached the end.
The Play?, alas, a tragedy; the hero had to die.
The Soundtrack? filled with somber notes; this was no lullaby.

I'd love to do a sequel and assure you I'd be back,
but the rushes weren't good enough to make me confident of that.
When the best boy's name appears; he who had the gaffer's back,
The word "Finis" will briefly flash



and all will fade to black.

Nothing lasts forever without ceasing.
For every laugh, somewhere a tear drops down.
When you lose someone your steps feel so uncertain.
No longer do you trust the solid ground.
For so it chances in the lives of men
That day comes when their fathers go before.
The flesh and blood becomes a ghostly presence.
The veil has dropped between them ever more.
When dialogues becomes soliloquies,
The things you meant to say mean that much more
because they will forever stay unspoken
save to his stone in moments spend alone.

I have bad dreams.

They come, unbidden, into my room at night.

They pass through the maze of my alcoholic daze;

They take me back,

Back to a dusty desert road;

Our convoy is headed towards Mosul.

But we never make it there:

The Humvee is upended by an eardrum shattering blast.

I am falling.

I see you are screaming but there is no sound..

Blackness.

I died three times on the medivac copter

But the Corpsman kept bringing me back.

I have bad dreams

In them I see the faces of the dead,

They are the faces of my friends;

My friends, for whom I mourn

Until this heart becomes a stone.

At the Nassau County Medical Center We nurses were put on alert;
A truck hit a small car on the L.I.E. leaving someone in a world of hurt.
Our “John Doe” was being air lifted and we heard the copter drone near.
One look at his face and I knew he was gone from this world of Love and Fear.
Yes, we all knew it was Harry from his unmistakable leonine mane;
The charts had him labeled as “John Doe” but we knew who it was just the same.
The doctors, like heroes, were fighting to bring Harry back from the grave
But his heart had been pierced by a sliver of glass; there was no way that he could be saved.
Had his heart failed him, there on the roadway, or had he been killed in the crash.
I couldn’t feel mad at the trucker who did what he could at the last.
We found a gold watch in his pocket. “Harry F. Chapin” engraved.
A man who had fought to save others but who himself could not save.

Your Randomness amazes me; you are the primal spark.
The Devil’s in the details for those of us who hunt the quark.
The particles accelerate around Cern’s race course track,
Then collide in a burst like fireworks that quickly fades to black.
One cannot really “see “a quark, those infinitesimal little things.
It is by their “works” we know them as they race around our ring.
At times it can be tedious, like counting angels on a pin
But finding basic particles is its own reward, my friend.
It’s hard to wrap your mind around the uncertainty within.
We can either know location or the direction of the spin.
Notions of causation must be checked at the front door
For bi locating particles don’t follow Newton’s laws!

In meadows, rich with clover, I have seen them here before;
those industrious little creatures at their pollinating chore.
Now the land is strangely silent, was Rachel Carson right?
Are we killing all the bumblebees? Have they made their final flight?
There are those who point to climate change as the source of all our pain.
If the bumble bee is dying, it is heat stress that’s to blame.
Others theorize a virus as the cause of their demise;
an illness ravaging the hives and emptying our skies.
I even heard one scientist make the hypothesis
that our overuse of cell phones is the cause of all of this.

Could it be that our usage of glyphosate is to blame;
As GMO spreads on our fields, our crops are not the same.
Monsanto is an Agri-Corp with bought friends in D.C.;
A “friendly Legislature insures profitability.
The F.D.A. is slow to act; Congress drafts obstructive laws.
It seems to me, just possibly, they already know the cause.

My son passed on in 95’; his cause of death was AIDS.
We hadn’t spoken for some years; we were then estranged.
I could not understand the love he had for other men.
Still, I admit my heart was broken that his life was at an end.

Decades passed and I grew grayer, ready for my final bow.
I wish I’d been a better Dad; knowing what I know now.
Then it came, the letter, one he’d written long ago.
A card he’s sent for Father’s day some thirty years ago.

It filled my heart with gladness to read of his love for me.
If he only knew I loved him too. We might have both been free.
Life cannot give him back to me, nor all my tears erase,
Still I pray this was a sign he’s in a better place.