The smoking wreckage is where once stood
our humble family home.
I am the sole survivor.
Everyone else is gone.

As I wander through the ruins,
I spy a little shoe.
It is the only thing remaining
of my brother who was Two.

My family has been murdered,
by your mutual hate.
When slaughter is indiscriminate
Peace will come too late.

The holy land? What holy land?
From the river to the sea
This has become the ****** land
And I? A refugee.

Though genetically indistinguishable;
Semites one and all.
Ismael will ****** Isaac
Or Ismael himself must fall.

“Oh come, oh come my little ones
Come to the land of the free.
Cross mountains and deserts
Come on the run!”
said the Pied Piper of D.C.

“We’ll house you and feed you
And give you free treats”
said the schemer to these dreamers so young.
“Citizen’s rights are no bother to me,
I’ll get them to pay for each one.”

“A border so porous you never did see.”
said the Pied piper of D.C.
“Bring all your diseases,
We’ll treat them for free,
And find foster homes for each one.”

“Oh come, oh come my little ones
Come to the land of the free.
Cross mountains and deserts
Come on the run!”
said the Pied Piper of D.C.

Now well you may wonder
How children so young
Cross mountains and deserts to come
But if you should ask you’re a racist of course
Just shut up and pay for each one.

Now back in the day
When a pied piper played
The rats would depart and be done.
But, sadly, these days,
Once this piper’s been paid
(Democ)rats still infest Washington.

I must have been out of my mind-
vacationing in Palestine.
It was temptingly cheap to make the trip
And hotels on the Gaza Strip
Are affordable to all,
- Just three hours’ drive
from the Wailing Wall.
I’d rent a car but I’m out of luck.
No, I do not wish to rent a truck.
With streets so cratered I understand
Why folks call this the “holy Land”
This land where swarthy men in sheets
Hold daily protests in the streets.
This land where nightly rockets roar,
There are no bars or package stores.
I should have checked the Michelin guide!
For now I have to run and hide
Next year I will avoid this war
And stay back home on the Jersey shore!

When Ebola’s fever begins to rage,
The prognosis isn’t nice,
Monoclonal antibodies
are needed from three mice.
The mice must first become exposed
to a weakened viral strain.
Their antibodies harvested
and combined with those of man.
Strangely the proteins that we need
are grown best in a ****.
A modified tobacco plant
will do the job indeed.
The serum, that derives from plants,
had not had human trials.
(but eight of ten young chimpanzees
endorse  what’s in that vial.)
Our missionaries, sick unto death
were clearly in no position
to refuse to try the medicine
that might provide remission.
Their rebound was miraculous.
To Atlanta now they fly.
Man finds himself in debt to a mouse.
“Good job, little guy!”

An Aussie Couple in their middle years
had despaired of children of their own.
To fill that empty room at home
They would need a womb on loan.

A Young Thai woman without a mate
agreed to be their surrogate.
To spare them from a childless fate
Ten Thousand was the going rate.

Fraternal twins, a boy and girl,
were implanted in the Surrogate.
The little girl, a perfect child.
Her brother faced a darker fate.

A child with Down’s is often slain
before they see the light of day.
Identified pre natally,
They are aborted right away.

The surrogate, in awe of God,
would not accede to such a fate.
The “Parents” refused the “damaged goods”
and were “understandably” irate.

His “parents” wouldn’t take him home
Due to his mismatched chromosomes.
His surrogate who gave him birth
became his only friend on Earth.

One child accepted, one denied;
They say “He is no child of mine!”
The surrogate will raise him as her own;
Though he be less than kin she’s more than kind.

From every county of old
Ireland
The stones have come to speak again.
Joined together in these four walls
They tell the tale of vanished men.
One million dead, the Hunger’s harvest
A million more fled overseas.
The potatoes, on which they depended,
Lay rotting in the Irish fields
It was a hard death they endured;
Their sentence passed by
falling
yields.
The stones cry out, the stones remember
the shadows of the hunger slain.
They curse the British who dissembled
Who showed less mercy than the rain.
They cry out loudest for the children;
The bairns of that famished land.
Their mother’s arms, their only coffin.
their sole possession was their names.

In Whitehall stands a monument,
A column wrought in stone.
Empty as that mother’s heart
whose sons did not come home.
It bears the dates of two world wars,
And three carved words I read.
A politician’s shibboleth
About “the Glorious Dead”
Standing in November’s rain,
No glory came to mind.
Perhaps that word held meaning
in another place and time.
They have passed from living memory
those soldier boys of thine.
Now bronze reliefs and marble wreaths
Recall their deaths to mind.

Imagine yourself a red ceramic Poppy,
placed with care into the English soil.
One hundred years ago you were a soldier,
a frightened teen in a chaotic world.
You’d been sent, by King’s command, into the battle-
A mindless melee John French thought he’d won.
Perhaps some yards of France had been reclaimed
at a mind numbing cost of mothers’ sons.
You were one of those shot, gassed or burned.
Hit by a shell and blown to kingdom come.
(In ‘fourteen they had funerals for the fallen.
Mass burials became the norm before Verdun.)
That’s how you went from the playing fields of Eton
to an unmarked grave somewhere in Northern France.
So now you are a red ceramic poppy,
a symbol of an Empire, now passed.
Placed in English soil by teenaged hands.
one of nine hundred thousand home at last.

I look  upon the Fields of France
and see her scars a century old.
The fading craters made by shells;
the trench lines where they fought and died.
No star shells now disturb the night
No need to fumble for gas masks.
No "No -man's Land" between the wires.
No butchery mars these fields of France.

In Nineteen Fourteen, in July
with declarations by old men,
A generation went to war
and most would not see home again.
In muddy trenches rats grew fat.
Whistles sounded the hopeless charge.
Machine guns made a mince of men.
At Verdun, alone, a million dead.

This is now and that was then,
but this is, in truth, a fragile peace.
Hatred simmers, oaths are sworn,
I sense the battle lines are drawn.
The lamp lights flicker now as then.
Will butchery mar these fields again?

Living a long lifetime without love,
I had forgotten what confidence was-
But confidence was reclaimed
by her warm summer rain.

Life in the desert can be hard at times.
I had my reasons but none of them rhymed.
but my desert was briefly reclaimed
by her warm summer rain.

When it rains in the desert the wildflowers bloom
And the night air is sweetened with hints of perfume
The desert is utterly changed
by her warm summer rain.

Wildflowers are fleeting, sand always endures.
I’ll choose to remember wildflowers’ allure.
I’ll always remember her name
And her warm summer rain

There’s a troubling trend in the land of the “Free”.
Many things go unspoken; they’re just not “P.C.”
Crimes are committed and no one is shocked
when they go unpunished and lips remained locked.
To speak truth to power is to risk mockery.
You’ll be labelled a racist; that’s just not “P.C.”
So much as gone wrong In the land of the “Free”
It would bore you to list the whole sad Litany.
If ever you wondered just what you would do
In a time when great evil was threatening you?
You need no longer wonder. You didn’t stand tall.
On the sad road to silence you said nothing at all.

These empty rooms
devoid of life,
behind a bookcase
in the hall.
This was, for a time,
our home
while the Germans
held the Dutch in thrall.
My wife since dead from huger,
my daughters in a common grave.
I, Otto Frank, the sole survivor.
Is there no one I can save?
Annelise, my dearest daughter,
Miep Gies gave me your book.
The Germans cast it on the floor
without a second look.
Here in your words I find
perhaps not all of you has died.
Here in print your words may speak
for all who suffered, all who cried.
Its small comfort for an old man,
broken, ready for the grave,
but my girl might be a symbol
for all those we could not save.

Your King and Country need you, men.
Kitchener, glaring in full kit.
Khaki is the color of the day
and everyone must do their bit.
A mighty Empire girds for war
yet unprepared to bleed and die.
Then bands still played patriotic airs;
We cheered them as they marched away.
Belle France’s fields were soon entrenched;
protected with barbed wire fence.
A generation sent to war
will lie forever beneath those fields.
This was the cost too few foresaw
of this war to end all wars.
A cost paid many times since then;
paid in young lives by bad old men.

Think of it as a thirst for Truth
That can’t be quenched by dry Vermouth.
Those souls  who in the bottle find
a sauce of solace for troubled minds.

Because I can conceive of wine,
Somewhere there grows a fruitful vine.
Existence made certain by concept possible-
an essential premise Ontological.

From the grapes sweet nectar flows
To please the palate and charm the nose.
Its mysteries bring blurred speech and vision
At bottle’s bottom they find religion...

Some seek their Truth on distant peaks
From Fakirs dressed in linen sheets.
Some in bare ruined choirs dwell
With thoughts of Heaven spiced with Hell.  

Still others have declared wine evil
An attitude I find Medieval
Their wine grapes meet a sadder fate
reduced to raisins on a plate.

From Vine to press, from field to glass
A boon companion to Life’s repast.
Red or White, no cause for Schism
A sommelier hears your catechism.

Ten years have passed, Ten, to the day,
Since Cancer took her breath away.
We survivors, left forlorn,
consoled each other as we mourned.
That day a Father lost his child
and was never after seen to smile.
Faith was tested on that day
as each in turn would kneel to pray.
Time, inexorable in its way,
sought to efface our tears away,
as snow and rain and biting wind
efface letters incused in stone.
Time has failed, we can’t forget
the loss of our beloved Jeanette.
We who survive, recall the day,
It’s stifling heat, the lack of air.
The horror of that ringing phone
That brought the tragic news to home.
Ten years have passed, Ten years she’s gone.
Ten years we’ve had to soldier on.
This day we pause to think of then
And weep for all that might have been.

They were scattered, here and there.
Some were in pieces, some intact.
Some were strapped into the wreckage;
Others lay upon their backs.
These were staring, sightless, at the sky;
That place from whence they came-
They had been headed on vacation
when a missile struck their plane.
The Western World roars outrage
and Dutch folk weep their tears.
“Give us back our children
that your hatred scattered here.”
“The world is filled with churlish men;
Who stole our children’s years.
The innocents have been slaughtered
But no Savior yet appears.”

Pet Meds are expensive!
Chuck Schumer says it’s so!
So He’ll co-sponsor legislation
To make sure costs are low.
If kitty needs some birth control
before her nightly prowl,
the taxpayers will gladly pay.
If not then Chuck will scowl.
Why shouldn’t people without pets
Pay for those who do?
He’ll make them pay for strays as well-
It’s a Democrat’s World view.
You may think the world has gone to hell
as our border teems with trash.
The Ukraine is on fire.
Jews are fighting with Hamas.
Yet none of these disasters
has made Chuck’s passion burn.
Even Vets who fought our wars
are not Chuck’s main concern.
It’s Vets, who deal with cats and dogs.
It’s far too much they earn.
Why is this his main concern?
Why does he want it passed?
Because it deals with animal rights
And he’s a horse’s a

Were you climbing up the stairs when you heard the last alarm?
Whispering a desperate prayer to somehow keep you safe from harm?
When the towers were collapsing and that debt all owe came due,
Were you proud of your life choices as they passed in quick review?

Sometimes, late at night, when dreams, not nightmares, come
I’ll awaken with a start from sleep and once more speak your name.
Sadly, these days you’re nothing but a picture in a frame,
For your last alarm has sounded;a death knell for my son.

It is hard to keep on living when the son I loved has gone;
to face grey days of emptiness when Life has lost its charm.
The job you had to do that day, you did with grace and calm,
You were just a wingless angel rising to the last alarm.

Her skin may bear some marks
from the Sun she has faced,
but she still holds a beauty
that time can't erase.
The blonde hair of her youth
now is silver and gold,
but her scent is alluring
and she's tempting to hold.
She's a Woman well Lived.
She is sixty years old.
Her life isn't over,
despite what she's been told.
Her ******* are translucent.
Blue veined and full.
A hand full and more
and enjoyable still.
Her kisses still sweet
as the day we first met.
The time, passing quickly,
gave no cause for regret.
So come lie with me, Love,
ere the evening is gone.
Don't be the least shy
we can leave the lights on.

The Mongols swept down from the North
across the Persian plains
They massacred those who did not flee
and left their homes in flames.
The libraries that heretofore
were Persia's pride and joy
Were valueless as plunder
to the rapacious Golden Horde.
So that is why the buildings burned
and the rivers turned to black
as priceless volumes bled to death
discarded  in the Horde's attack.
A learned culture was destroyed
and never made it back
in the land that is a crossroads
and which is now known as Iraq.

Back when Bedlam was in full swing,
and faced with overload,
some lunatics who hadn't killed
were forced to hit the road..
Faced with no "room at the inn"
such persons were discharged
but were made known to the police
as "Lunatics at large"

Since Willow brook has closed its doors,
and Creedmore has downsized,
we give our mentally ill some pills
and house them 'neath the skies.

They mutter to themselves at times
as lonely they do roam
in search of a dry underpass
that must  serve them for a home.

How wonderful that modern drugs
makes zombies of our brothers,
and leave us blithely unaware
of how badly we treat others.

When Desmond Fitzgerald succumbed to disease

his hereditary knighthood expired.

He had fathered no son to take up his sword.

No heir means the title’s retired.

For eight hundred years and twenty nine scions

The grand clan Fitzgerald held sway.

Now with his last breath, no successor is left

So, with honors, he’s buried today.



The green knight of Kerry is still in the field,

The last Irish knight in the fray.

Not that he sallies forth swinging a sword.

He sits home and drinks sherry all day.

Torn away from his two loving parents,
And put on display in a zoo,.
Gus suffered from chronic depression
A white bear with black moods, sad but true.
He’d swim figure eight’s by the hour,
as if stuck in a Mobius strip.
Zoo officials called it a neurosis
But were worried their bear just might flip.
A consultant said Gus had depression
And collect a munificent fee.
Gus would be treated with Prozac
And be as happy a bear as can be.

The release was unintentional, the Public was assured.
No vaccines were available, not that they’d have cured.
For every ten infected, they knew that eight would die.
more lethal than Ebola, and the people wondered why?

It was born in a researcher’s lab, a variant of the flu;
the strain from 1918 that murdered millions too.
Why he was let to do this work, I cannot understand.
Sadly we can’t ask him as he died by his own hand.

It preyed on old and young alike, it slaughtered rich and poor.
The dead were left unburied, and the pestilence slaughtered more.
It was clear the Horsemen rode that night, we heard their banshee scream.
We decided if we were to die, that first we’d have Poteen.

Poteen is a potent brew, distilled three times by hand.
Its an old family recipe handed down by my old man.
As golden drops poured in each glass we raised a toast on high:
“We salute thee, Mighty Lord, we who are about to die.”

A Warmth of stupefaction went coursing through our veins.
When we finally sobered up, no pathogens remained.
Who knew my father’s recipe could put the plague to flight?
We saved as many as we could; no man went dry that night.

The Sun shone on a brave new world, the air was fresh and clean..
The rivers still flowed to the Seas and Eagles still took flight
The Politicians all had died; both the Left and Right.
We left the Cities far behind and lived upon the land,
And never was a jug of “dew” far from my right hand.

The day was dry and hot,
with not a breath of air.
His uniform was loosely fit,
The pinstripes, number 4.
Lou Gehrig was the “Iron Horse”
but an iron horse no more.

ALS had robbed him of his strength,
and now moved in for the ****.
Most thought, at first, he would not speak.
That he didn’t have the skill.
But all there remembered what he said
And I think I always will.

He considered himself “the Luckiest man”
Despite the” bad break” he got.
An immigrant’s son who hit it big
and shined in the spotlight.

Lou passed away within two years.
The Stadium, too, is gone.
We’re not the Country we were then
America has moved on.

But on this Independence Day
I’ll stand where Gehrig stood.
There used to be a ballpark here
and a hero kind and good.

The time has passed, too quickly,
since the years they served in war.
Some grow bald, others grey,
They are rounder than before.
Today’s objective is the restaurant
to beat the midday rush
When Retired Old Marines Eat Out
They usually meet for lunch.
At times like this, they reminisce
of D.I.’s they have known.
Speak the unused names of friends
who never made it home.
They give their time to charities;
Like Christmas toys for tots,
and package gifts for young Marines
who serve now they cannot.
They serve as honor guard for those
Who’ve reached the final post.
The few, the proud, who keep us free,
Have given more than most.
Perhaps not lean,
but still quire keen,
Semper Fi,
the Corps.

In the streets, broad and narrow, of Republican Rome,
when Cicero, togate, called the Forum his home,
there was sly innuendo and sarcastic wit.
Court was quite entertaining with those advocates.

In the Senate, gridlock was rampant those days
the Boni, content with conservative ways,
Would block legislation and seek to destroy
The populist leaders who held mobs enthralled.

The realm grew too large, the Republic too small,
And Civil War was declared and great Pompey did fall.
Then Caesar was slain and violence started anew
and the laws became silent as often they do.

Exhausted, at last, many principals slain,
Caesar Augustus the power reclaimed.
There still was a Senate in Empire Rome
But form is not substance, the Republic was gone.

Now Rome had an emperor to worship and fear.
Change happened quickly, the fruits of despair,
When the dust had all settled
a Monarch ruled there.

These two had parted once before
when he’d worked in Scotland’s mines.
Now he trekked to the antipodes
to live in southern climes.
He’d see the Emerald isle no more.
Would New Zealand be as fair?
He’d build a new life far from home,
Adventure waited there.
Yet, to never see his home again,
Or hear his mother’s voice.
To venture from the Troubled North
was his necessary choice.
Yet home will never look so fair
As when its left behind,
He’d live and die in a far off land
as part of God’s design.
“I never will forget you, Mum.”
as sorrow choked his throat.
One final hug and then he turned
to get upon the boat.
His ship made way down Belfast Lough
And he watched her from the rail
Til distance made her disappear
as if one  beyond the vale.

I lay down on my living room floor
Convinced that the world would end.
A crisis off Cuba with missiles  enroute.
Yes, I am a Child of Then.

A lady in pink with blood on her dress.
A President shot in the head.
I remember where I was exactly that day
for I am a Child of Then.

Police battle Blacks, Watts is in flames
Protests rage on without end.
King is dead at the hand of a bigoted man
Yes, I am a Child of Then.

Camelots heir sought to bind up the wounds
Then Sirhan Sirhan shot him dead.
Bobby bled out on the kitchen tiled floor
for I am a Child of Then.

Asian girl running, naked, on a dirt country road.
A Viet Cong man shot in the head.
Fifty Eight Thousand names on a wall
Yes, I am a Child of Then.

They monitor the internet.
They listen in on calls.
They spy on foreign Heads of State-
Believe me that takes *****
Their surveillance apparatus
Makes the KGB look LAX.
Omniscience is their stated aim
to “protect” us from attacks.
So put up with whole body scans
And show your papers please.
I believe the cure for terror
Will prove worse than the disease.

Eating Brussels Sprouts may extend your life,
but it will be a long life of eating Brussels sprouts.
Be careful what you wish for!

He was the bard of Avon,
I hail from Flushing, Queens.
I labor in obscurity,
His fans were Royals it seems.
In portraits he’s shown with little hair
mine stood the test of time.
His spelling was atrocious
But spell check fixes mine.

His talent was not of one age
but meant for all of time.
My poetry is dated
And best performed by Mimes.
Its years since I last wrote a play,
Of Will that’s also true.
But players are performing his.
Mine, they never do.
So if my output pales to his
And sadly lacks his wit
What do we have in common?
Not a single manuscript!

Just a simple scrap of paper, stained with his blood, dried red,
It was picked up by a passer- by. It’s author newly dead.
The victims in the towers had been pulverized by stone.
And now could be identified by DNA alone.
For about a decade after, his note was saved, unread,
The M.E. was too busy, bones took precedence instead.

Reflecting pools, the well of souls, are where the towers stood.
There’s a garden of remembrance and that’s all well and good.
His widow and his daughters hung his picture on the wall.
It was like a wound reopened when they finally got the call.

She thought he had died quickly; the second plane had struck his floor.
He worked in the South Tower way up high on eighty four.
“We identified this by the blood, it matched his DNA.”
She stared numbly at the note he wrote that sad September day.

You may view the blood stained note and the message that he wrote
In the Nine Eleven museum in Manhattan
When he'd spent the time we're given,
paper saved him from oblivion.
Now his tragic end will never be forgotten.

Operation Meetinghouse was launched and underway,
Each Super-fortress stripped of all but tail guns for the day.
We came in fast; we came in low, let darkness shield our flight.
Within our bays the bomblets lay to set the Nips alight.

I heard them at a distance, a large incoming flight,
Inexorable and frightening; like Death approaching Life.
I awakened my old mother, took my small child by the hand.
I fled down towards the river, as the first bombs shook the land.

The night was clear and windy and our bombers cut a swathe
of death, fire and destruction through their capital that night.
Their homes of wood and paper were quickly set alight.
We could smell the people burning. We flew so low that night.

Shitamachi was on fire and the high winds helped them spread.
The fire crews were overwhelmed and quickly joined the dead.
The thick smoke made it hard to breathe, old mother couldn’t stand.
The horrors that we saw that night were like tales of the dammed.




Our fuselage of silver reflects their dying light.
Our losses are acceptable; few planes are lost this night.
Flying in formation, we bank right and turn to go
The skyline of the city flickers with a hellish glow.

I walk the ruined streets of home in dawn’s uncertain light.
I hold my small child by the hand, old mother died last night.
We have no home, nowhere to go, I stare in helpless shock
At charred cars and blackened corpses on what used to be our block.

The General is ecstatic and enjoying his cigar;
our losses few, their suffering great, the fortunes of the war.
Tokyo lies in ruins from the fires set that night
How fortunate God is on our side and we are always right.

Solstice stirs my Druid roots.
Those roots entangle with my dreams.
A language, strange and musical,
celebrates the world unseen.

The druids issue from the grove,
solemn in their robes of white.
The doors of time are open wide
on this, the long year’s shortest night.

Ovates divine and bards will speak,
Singing in the Cambric tongue,
The Druid raises arms on high
to praise the power of the Sun.

She lies upon the altar stone.
The victim of the gods’ caprice
Sunlight pours between the stones
where blood was shed and breath has ceased.

Stephen Hawking is of the opinion
this all came together by chance.
No need for an unmoved first mover
while electrons and protons can dance.

We’re adrift in a sea of dark matter,
loosely bound by invisible force.
Spheres orbit without any music-
background static is all per his thought.

Stephen is bound to a wheelchair,
but blessed with an insightful mind.
Surely God will forgive him for doubting
the intelligence of his design.

The moans and screams of dying men;
a scene and sound surreal.
The flower of French Chivalry
cut down by English steel.
English Harry has won this day
on this wet and muddy ground.
So many high born men laid low,
but I am still around.
It was my blood that ransomed me
when others’ blood was shed.
I am the Duke of Orleans.
A poet, some have said.
In the aftermath of battle;
wounded, left to bleed.
Sir Richard Waller found me
and attended to my needs.
So today I am his prisoner,
we’ll become friends in time.
Now I am bound for England
as a “guest” of the English crown.
We’d had the numbers and the strength
to bring proud Henry down.
His Yeoman archers  turned the tide
on this awful muddy ground.
Beset by woods on either flank
No room to strike or move.
It was our Constables’ worst mistake
and the last, as time would prove
Like a dark and deadly rain they fell
out of a clear blue sky.
Here on the field of Agincourt
where Princes came to die.

Her little black dress is by Ralph Lauren,
her complexion is Lancome.
Estee lauder blushed her lips
And Apple made her phone.
She loves the feel of Hermes’ silk
upon her naked skin.
Her shoes are Gucci,
her bag by Coach.
Her perfume is “my Sin”

Lady Clairol turned her hair
the color of ripe wheat.
She’s a devil wearing Prada
who looks good enough to eat.
I ponder on this vision
And a stray thought makes me laugh:
My fiercely independent woman
Has been “branded” like a calf.

Beneath "the Blue Room" of Picasso
lies a mystery long concealed;
It is the portrait of a man
which only infrared revealed.
Reusing canvas is a trait
that struggling artists understand.
Concealing one work with another
masking the efforts of weaker hands.

We too are canvas of a sort
drawn in the culture of our birth.
Then, painted over by other masters
of uncertain provenance and worth.
Beneath the layer of the cynic
lies the young child's trusting eyes.
The image we are shown, world weary,
concealing where true beauty lies.

It’s the battle of Baghdad all over again.
Shiite versus Sunni, it’s them against them.
The push for a Caliphate exacts a high toll.
ISIS marches on the capital and, I fear, heads will roll.

On Potomac’s fair shores the politicos dither.
Are we going to help or just let Iraq wither?
We created a vacuum too big to ignore
And ISIS has filled it with ****** and gore

The blood of the innocent washes the streets
as the Iraqi government stares at defeat.
Feckless, our leader, abdicating his role,
is making a putt on the seventeenth hole.

Was it part of his plan to incite revolution?
Is he evil or clueless? What is the solution?
Does he take a position not based on a poll?
We have paid, blood and treasure, and heads ought to roll.

I can recall a simpler time
when just spelling was the problem.
But now D.C. has doubled down
and is really scraping bottom.

What did the humble Potato do
To draw Pelosi’s ire.?
Why are white potatoes banned
From school lunches I inquire?

Sweet Potatoes are welcome still
on school kids’ lunchtime plates.
But Idaho’s may not be served-
That makes Michelle irate.

Baked, mashed or fried There’s good inside
the humble white potato.
Potatoes of color are welcome too
upon my dinner table.

The Tuber is a starchy treat
with vitamins and fiber.
Whatever will the Irish eat
If you toss it in the Tiber?

I spoke no human language.
I never put on clothes.
The sum of my possessions
was ten fingers and ten toes.

My mother was too rich or poor.
Too scared, too old, too young,
So many reasons for her choice,
by which I was undone.

I never felt the sunshine,
or sailed the wine dark sea.
I had a heartbeat just like yours
until they murdered me.

There are those who would protest my death
But most here are nihilistic.
To some I was a child of God;
to others, a statistic.

I have no death certificate
I have no human name.
I was terribly inconvenient,
but I was human, just the same.

Remakes of old foreign films
Frankly fail to thrill.
Comedies are too predictable,
mistaking flatulence for skill.
It’s time to think outside the box.
Turn a genre on its head.
I’m working on a thriller
About folks haunted by one dead.
They must learn the ghost’s identity;
He’ll ***** them til they do.
The working title of my screenplay?
I’m calling it “Boo-Who?”

Hard rubber plate there in the dust
and just beyond, a mound.
With difficulty Catfish turned
and paced the muddy ground.
Even with the walker
these few steps were hard indeed.
Shoulders weak, steps faltering
from Lou Gehrig’s sad disease.

The blue sky stretched above him
so infinite and vast.
With difficulty Catfish reached
back, deep into his past.
He did not think of trophies
or recall his perfect game.
Not at all about the millions
he once got to sign his name.

He was pitching for the Yankees
against men in Dodger Blue.
The World Series game on the line
some whispered he was through
His mind recalled each move he’d made
Each strikeout pitch he threw.
In Memory the fastball’s song
still sang out loud and true.
Like an old dog fast asleep
might dream that He’s still young.
Catfish thought about the night
His last Series ring was won


Soon, too soon, he’d be relieved
of ball, of life, of game
He’ be a plaque upon the wall
down at the hall of fame.
A few more weeks
and he’d be gone-
a casualty, nothing more.
The object now of whispered prayers,
This man fans once adored.

He's nobody's hero,
never wanted to be.
Just one of a million
who were sent overseas.
He dropped into France
on a long ago night.
Near Mere St Eglise
where he joined in the fight.
"These are the real heroes"
and he points to the Stones
of his friends and comrades
who never came home.

The  same folks who regulate soda size,
and cheer as our youth turn to ***,
Just passed a law in the Golden State
Let me know if you like it or not.

On the college Campus in Cali
before couples can couple you see
both parties must sign a consent form
as state bill 967 decrees.

No matter if she's your fiancee,
They don't care He's  your steady or not,
It's **** if you have no  consent form
There's no excuse if you forgot.

The people who championed Liberty
for the gays and the transgenderees
should stay out of straight people's bedrooms

but will they?- there's no guarantee.

The shadows creep towards the mound.
The late September air is crisp.
No bunting will be hung this year,
Our team is old and in eclipse.

In the box the batter waits.
His knees are sore, his bat grown slow.
In his time he was a champion.
In his heart he knows it’s time to go.

How quickly do the seasons change
from youthful promise to aged despair.
You start out as a diamond star
And end up in a rocking chair.

Baseball is an old man’s love,
each Spring bringing hope of glory.
Yet it is not an old man’s game.
That’s quite a different story.

The stadium this day, half full,
and ready for the wrecking ball.
Mickey Charles Mantle has flied to right
and joined the legions of the Fall.

When eyesight dims and hearing fades,
when even memory wanders,
then the griefs and pains of age
might prompt one to fly yonder.
Our sister, Maya, was great of soul
and wears this cage no longer.
Her wondrous words still sing to us
if we but stop and ponder.

Consider a planet the mirror of Earth,
a place that is nearly our twin,
where Cannabis is legal
and sugar is banned.
Where you can have “coke”
But not gin.

Would moonshiners distill
sour mash in their still?
Would junkies  there “jones” for some “Cane”?
Would addicts have shakes
due to no frosted flakes.?
Would they ****** and steal
for sweet sin?

There, those who like smokes
Would be left free to “****”
While the sweet toothed
were facing hard time.

To rehab they’d go
And be fed sweet and low.
To keep sugar
Off of their minds

Little children will monitor speech
for the hint of a racist remark.
Veterans cannot be trusted with guns,
there’s a risk that they’re violent at heart.
Is healthcare a tax or a fee
in the land of the formerly free?

Old white men to the back of the bus,
Check your privilege, leave the driving to us.
Barbarians encounter no gate,
freely enter and live off the State.
They‘ll vote Democratic, you see
in the land of the formerly free.

Our President, a liar and phony,
doles out largesse to all of his cronies.
While our roads and our bridges need work
We’re distracted by some twit that twerks.
It’s all misdirection you see
in the land of the formerly free.

Taxpayers are only half free,
constrained by demands of the State.
Despite their Utopian schemes
Inequality grows to extremes
They divided to conquer you see
in the land of the formerly free.