The great man was in great pain,
beyond the purely physical.
The old lion sat and watched the waves
feeling bereft and miserable.
His mind kept imagining, over and over,
His son, Quentin, in a second rate plane,
turning to dogfight with a squadron of Folkers:
an act gallant and brave, but in vain.
His son’s Nieuport went down behind enemy lines;
The body retrieved from the flames.
He was buried with honors by his erstwhile foes
Who well knew the young pilot's last name.
His aged father wept for the loss of this son
He repeatedly whispered his name.
They say that the father’s spirit died with the news
Afterward he was never the same.

“Be silent, dear child, make not a sound,
lest by Herrod’s soldiers we’ll be found.
No whimper, cry or any small noise;
They have orders to ****** boys.”
I’ve heard your playmates’ mothers scream
as their sons were taken from their arms.
And heard their helpless piteous cries
forced to watch as their dear ones die.
The streets of Bethlehem run red
with nearly every male child dead.
All lie victims of Herod’s fears
Of every prophecy he hears.
I hear a brute’s fist pound our door.
He’ll still my heart ere he strikes yours.”

Five days a week, she dons the mask.
It targets the radiation.
Together with her oral chemotherapy,
it is touted as her salvation.

Perhaps it will buy some time
in the battle against the enemy of her mind.
A forlorn hope is better than none at all.
Perhaps they are being kind.

A beautiful life; she should have sailed bravely on
through the decades and left on her own terms.
Instead, she bravely dons the mask
and suffers while the cancer burns

My Facebook friend does not like Trump,
While I despise Chuck Schumer
We post opposing clever memes,
Insults, innuendoes and rumors.
He’s not a bad soul, I suppose,
(Just terribly one sided)
There’s no convincing him or me
That our opinions are misguided.
I see him daily in my feed
He’s never been “unfriended”
Our “arguments” will continue on
Until one life is ended.
So we agree to disagree
And that with me is fine.
I will not to the choir preach;
That’s the ghetto of the mind.

The table is set and the guests are arriving.
Tom Turkey is brown and your uncle's imbibing.
"Please pass the biscuits." my Aunt Edna said,
while blithely ignoring my drunk cousin Fred.
Don't talk about politics, Religion or Fate.
Don't wear a red hat; keep your eyes on your plate.
You can survive this; I'm certain you will.
Just pile your plate high and eat what you will.
There are six types of cake here and Nutella pie.
If you don't take your statins it is likely you'll die.
But should you survive and avoid your demise
We'll send you home weighed down with three kinds of pie.

You'll have gained fifteen pounds and you're not very tall-
The folks at Weight Watchers are expecting your call.

In every human life there are some aspects of regret:
The chances that we failed to take, the places we will never get.
Now, as we approach the end of our ‘pas de deux’ with time,
I whisper softly in her ear “you were never one of mine.”

Guitar practice was always down in the school basement.
I would show up for practice, my guitar case in hand
And carefully place my sheet music on a metal music stand.
There were just four of us would-be musicians that year.

We dutifully tuned our guitars as our teacher played a single note.
We progressed to practicing our chords, my fingers on each string.
I was a mediocre player; what I liked to do was sing.
I did love the cherry wood scent of my guitar.

That afternoon turned dark in the heart of this fair land.
There was a muffled announcement; then the sound of some girl crying.
“President Kennedy has been shot; they say that he is dying!”
Our class was canceled abruptly, for a reason we understood.

I never went back to Guitar class and I never played again.
For months my guitar waited, patiently, with its sweet scent of cherry wood.
My mother finally persuaded me to sell it; I said that I understood.
Camelot had vanished in the mists, and Johnny would never be good.