The candy filled hearts pile up unsold, and roses go on sale.
A state of deep distrust divides the female and male.
Would-be Romeos instead watch **** and take no lover to their bed.
All complements are misconstrued and hugs become a source of dread.
It’s all too easy to lose your job for posts you made or words you said.

Our human nature is demeaned; each overture imposes risk.
Males are viewed as predators. The zeitgeist changes can’t be missed.
Before you kiss your Tinder date- get signed consent, you must insist.
If not, she might have second thoughts and your name gets added to the list.

It reminds me of McCarthy’s time when left of center was a crime
Actors and artists were dismissed; their names were added to black lists.
Another witch-hunt has begun; this time it is a war on fun.
Flirtation may lead to citation. Romance is a risky proposition.
To risk your heart seems a suicide mission.

The scene at the graveyard in Louth was a circus;
The press was out in force with their cameramen there.
The grave, freshly dug, covered with a green carpet.
The smell of wet, fresh turned, earth filled the air.
As for the deceased: there were varied opinions.
Some called him a sinner; some thought him a Saint.
He was politically savvy but yet had done ******.
An angel corrupted by a simian taint.
None could dispute he had made his life matter.
The head of his party; His words carried clout.
Nevertheless, he died here in hospice.
His brothers in arms have carried him out
The power and glory he laid down and exchanged
for a plot and a stone in this graveyard in Louth.

We met, quite by accident, at the concession stand.
Some forty years or so have passed
since last I was your leading man.
Those years have dealt you kindly; Just a touch of grey.
Surely it was fate that had us attending this same play.
I see in your face your mother but with kinder gentler eyes.
You are, its true, still the girl I knew, just in a mature guise.
When we were closer to birth than death I thrilled to hold your hand.
In our beginnings are our ends; I thirst to understand.
It brought a smile back to my lips when you touched me on the sleeve.
Time, sufficient to heal all wounds, has passed, I do believe.

It happened in a darkened room where many strangers sat nearby.
The ceiling was a field of stars, an image of the Fall night sky.
along the walls, in bas-relief, minarets of a Moroccan town.
I crunched my Popcorn and slurped my Coke, impatient for it to begin.
Now all grow quiet as we gazed in wonder at the

Technicolor


Storybook of dreams

When the body politic, long fleeced, begins to understand,
I believe that local weathermen will be in high demand.
Our politicians will all be seen as having feet of clay;
Venial types who sway according to the winds each day.

Weathermen are truthful; weather girls the same.
They tell us when it’s going to snow and when it will turn to rain.
Their forecasts aren’t perfect but I believe they try.
They consult the Doppler oracle and gaze into the sky.

They, daily, take the auspices like some archaic priests.
They prophesize the temperature for cold snaps in the East.
They are the only public voices who do not spin or lie
They don’t fall back on talking points or dare debate the sky

So if we now choose presidents from their appearance on T.V.
I nominate Bill Evans for president and Storm Field for V.P.

Like a hungry Bear beset by bees,
with its paw caught in a honeyed trap.
The pride of the Japanese surface fleet
Reeled from the Americans’ attack
The Yamato lurched and began to list.
The Americans closed in for the ****;
Torpedoes were set for Twenty feet,
They gave that ship a belly full.
Like Arizona, in Forty one,
Fire spread to her magazine.
A pillar of fire: two thousand feet high,
marked the moment the Yamato died.
Three thousand souls had been aboard;
Three hundred fought the oil slicked waves.
Her captain went down with his ship-
Only a relative handful of men were saved.
The battleship had seen its day
Yamato was the last to fall.
Now she sleeps two thousand feet deep
And colorful coral covers all.

When days of future pass
and cannot come again-
Half a century seems a moment.
A loved musician meets his end.

The haunting notes you played on the flute;
those somber moody blues-
will echo through eternity
though you, yourself be through.

A treasured disk of Vinyl;
A loved, remembered song.
I played it first when just a teen
living in my parents’ home.

A Sculptor’s work melts in the rain
It’s lines made indistinct
An author, once thought popular,
may  soon be out of ink.

A film made in the golden age
is faded acetate.
The beauty of white satin nights
I hope escapes their fate.