There was only one question on their final exam.
“Are you a Christian?” The perturbed man inquired.
The Buddhists were wounded, the Muslims were spared.
To deny Christ; so easy, to bear witness; so hard,
What would they answer; those about to meet God?
Would they lie to be “saved”? or lie down in the sod.
Nine souls were dispatched with a shot to the head,
before police shot their interrogator dead.
Nine people bore witness to the Cross at their death.
They wouldn’t deny Him with their final breath.
American Martyrs bore Him witness, you see.
If you took this exam what would your answer be?

The room was dark at midday when Yogi breathed his last.
His brain, now starved for oxygen, went searching through his past.
Did he recall the shores of France back when he was nineteen?
Or think upon those rings he’d won with those great 50’s teams?
Dying, his mind searched frantically, jumping from place to place
Here was Larsen’s perfect game where he jumped and they embraced.
There was that heated argument when Robinson stole home.
Then the pain and anger when Steinbrenner sent him home.
Yet as these memories dissolved within his dying mind,
He finally found the peace he sought; his Carmen, good and kind.
He took her hand and they embraced on the shore of a moonlit sea.
Yogi’s gone. Now the future isn’t what it used to be.

I lay down on my childhood bed with a bottle, half empty, in my hand.
I raised my pistol to my temple; feeling lost, hopelessly dammed.
I flicked the safety off my forty five and took a pull from my Jim Beam.
I was ready to be a sad statistic, another tortured Ex- Marine.

I pulled the trigger, this much I know. What happened next, I can surmise.
I passed out from the alcohol, the pistol jammed; I didn’t die.

My friend had died at his own hand, just one of six from my old team.
We’re tortured by the ghosts of war; in flashbacks I can hear the screams.
We buried my friend yesterday. The flag was folded and Taps was played.
A detail fired blank salutes as his family wept and his mother prayed.
I bowed my head and turned to go; His mother stayed me with her hand.
“I hope you will not be tempted- to do the thing your brothers do.”
She pressed a spent brass casing into my open hand.
I looked down, dumbly, in surprise.
“I know you are a soul at risk.” I’ve seen that look in my son’s eyes.”
“If only I’d known how to help; only too late do we grow wise.”
She made me promise, then and there, that I’d not put my mother through
the anguish and the agony that other keening mothers knew.
.
Today I face another day; the journey will be hard, I know.
I poured the bottle down the drain, and turned to face my shadow foe.

She was found there, by the shoreline, hidden in a plastic bag,
where the ebb and flow of Ocean beat upon Deer Island’s sand.
A little girl, just two years old, in a bright jumper clad
A little beauty beat to death by some brute of a man.

No one could identify the body they had found
so police employed an artist to help them solve the case.
His rendering of “baby Doe” went up all over town.
Soon it was on the internet. “Do you recognize this face?”

They broke the case last Thursday, they finally had her name.
Her Mother and the boyfriend were arrested and arraigned.
Each condemned the other for the ****** of the Babe.
A bronze fawn now commemorates the spot where she was slain.

He was there at her bedside when the light left her eyes.
Speed was essential if her brain were to survive.
Cryogenically frozen, her head stored away,
She awaits resurrection, he longs for the day.

She was taken so young; she was just twenty four,
when her glioblastoma resurfaced once more.
He had made her a promise; he spent all they'd raised
In hopes she’d return to him some far off day.

Science has made great strides in perusing the brain,
In mapping the paths by which personas are made.
In time, with more study, it could be arranged,
for robots to house in their digital brains
the essence of all that his love was and knew.
Could it possibly work? Could a thing become you?

Imagine that reunion some sixty years hence;
when the Love of her life is old, tired and spent.
She will have been digitally remastered;
Her body now perfect, her “skin” alabaster.
She might even her old self resemble,
Provided they have the right parts to assemble.

Would the spark be rekindled? Had the flame ever died?
Could he resume where they left off; his love by his side?
Or would he be like an Alien to the ghost in the machine
having lived long apart while she slept with no dreams.

An Academic (with too much time) deplores our use of him and her.
“These gendered pronouns give offense; to transgenders, they are a slur.”
“So at our University, “Ze” shall stand for “He” or “she”
And when crowds gather now and then, “Zey” shall now be known as “zhem”.”
“Old style pronouns must not be used when the student body is so confused.”
“Gendered bathrooms, were so unkind, now the doors bear equal signs (=)”
We must not judge or interpose when boys dress up in women’s clothes.
Nor should we act with prejudice if Zey decide to make a switch.
For what you may have been at birth may not be what you had in mind;
Hormonal treatments can, in time, make a drab boy look Divine
Though Ze went to an all girl’s school, Zee’s now packing all the tools
With the surgeon’s skill and care you can lose or grow a pair.
“Though Male and Female He created them, surgically we have updated zhem.”

The day was clear, a touch too hot. Summer’s end was drawing near.
Sidewalks vendors were making their pitches, selling their artisanal wares.
That was when I saw my girl, a vision in a pale green dress.
Blood red lips, a fair complexion and long black tresses framed her face.
Where and when could it have been that I had seen her like before?
Thought took me back to Hunter Mountain, late in the summer of Seventy four.
Back then I saw one just like this, a beauty with a special grace
With blood red lips and fair complexion and long dark hair that framed her face.
She wore the tartan of her clan as she competed in the dance.
Pipers played and tenors sang; it was the substance of romance.
A rare beauty, ripe for taking, if one was brave enough to chance….
The memory was broken then, my daughter touched me on the arm.
“There you are Dad, where have you been? I was sent to look for you by Mom.”
We had lingered at the fair, wandering separately among the stalls.
It’s Time now to sit down to our meal and share good wine as darkness falls.