AS I stare down the bottle
deep into the murky past
I see the home I used to own,
the love that did not last.

I think of the two little ones
we had before my fall,
but I'm too drunk to be with them
and they no longer call.

I miss the man I used to be
before I fell in love with drink.
In my rare sober moments
I'm amazed how far a man can sink.

I mourn the loss of wife and home.
Its painful to recall
Back before I was a drunkard
You might think I had it all.

It's Just you and me now two buck Chuck
We've had a real good run.
I am the wine Traveler;
my goal? Oblivion.

This place is a museum now; this great hall where my father stood.
Here he waited on line with all the rest. He waited for admission.
He was dressed in his best with a few dollars in his pocket,
and the address of his sister and her husband in New York.

There’s a lady in the harbor here who holds her torch aloft for all.

My mother, Helen, was native, first generation born upon these shores.
My father was a laborer; the quarries and mines had made him strong.
His years in Scotland plus his native Irish brogue
was baffling at first to those Ellis Island clerks.

There’s a lady in the harbor here who holds her torch aloft for all.

My Dad found work building a bridge high above the waters reach.
He started out a near illiterate but slowly learned to read
From discarded copies of the New York Daily News.
He met my mom at an Irish dance.

There’s a lady in the harbor here who holds her torch aloft for all.

My mother’s voice was all New York; a dialect of English speech.
She loved her numbers, and clerked for Met Life, but she may have longed to teach.
Instead she sat with me in our small kitchen
Teaching me my numbers as our dinner was prepared.

There’s a lady in the harbor here who holds her torch aloft for all.

For those of you who have heard me speak
And found my own accent hard to place.
I am a little of old New York and a little of a fair green place.
My American voice is but the echoed music of my race.

The boys he had known were now men dressed in suits
of conservative hue and tone.
Except for those few who were painfully young
and attired in  uniform.

The girls of his youth who had been ,mostly, aloof
were adorned with some glittering stones.
He noticed one young girl with a dusky complexion
who was sitting apart all alone.
He saw upper class men, the jocks and the freaks.
then he noticed how grey they had grown.

His friends shook his hand and pounded his back.
"You are the last  to arrive.!"
The final Alum of a school long since closed
with no graduates still left alive

Consider the quark both charmed and strange,  
From which all matter has been arranged
If position be known, momentum cannot be
That’s a certain uncertainty.
For if we knew both speed and spin
We’d have no notion what place it’s in!,
    It can be puzzling, tis true
    And two quarks can be entangled too,
    As I would wish for me and you..

OH, at some distance I have admired
The secret object of my desire  
But though I orbit at close distance
Our opposing charges cause resistance.  
Though you are up and I am down  
I’m strangely charmed and hang around.
    When you are bottom, I am top
    Our entanglement must never stop.

For to abandon my rotation
would be the source of our damnation.
For if we twain should ever meet
We’d dissipate in light and heat.

There was a quiet, then, between them
as if neither one dared speak.
One wished to be decisive
out of fear of being weak.

The tension was unbearable
The stress was off the chart.
Her crystal dream was shattered
by this Rogue's unfaithful heart

Let there be no tears in this-
time ,later, enough to weep.
We both know well whose fault this is;
Let just admit defeat.

She walked away in silence
with nary a glance behind.
He sentenced to do penance
for all the rest of time.

Two hands, one heart
a band of gold.
It was my mother's ring.
Redolent of emotion,
the last of all her things.

Two hands, one love
a heart of Gold.
A Mother's tender care.
Though parted in the present tense
in Memory, ever there.

The path to Suribachi’s top was paved by brave marines
But the first flag that they planted there was too small to be seen.
The fight to take this vantage point had seen so many die.
To rouse the spirits of our men a larger banner now must fly..

From the fleet came the flag that we would raise this day.
A star spangled banner visible to  the ships at sea.
Six pairs of hands bore her up on high.
(Three of those boys were shortly to die)

A photographer from the associated press
Took the photo we love best.
Six pairs of hands would forever raise her high.
Our flag was the object of all eyes.

More than another month would pass,
ere Iwo was pacified at last.
The image now lives on in Bronze
to honor those brave souls, now gone.

By crises, character is revealed.
Their courage overcame their doubt.
So long as men would not be slaves,
So long our flag will proudly wave.