Telemarketers get a bad rap.
People call us impersonal drones.
We’re just trying to eke out a living,
armed just with a script and a phone.

My place is called “Cubicle City”.
It’s the dream of a lifetime for me:
Five thousand square feet of space underground
where the bowl-a mat once used to be.

Joey is one of my workers,
For years he’s been one of my best.
He knew how to deal with rejection
and make many more sales than the rest.

Just lately, his work has been suffering.
Last night he was crying on phone.
I see he’s been calling one number
far too often. I see that it’s his own.

Now I am a curious fellow
about all these short calls to his home.
I pick up my handset and dial it
to tell her to leave Joe alone.

Of course I would get a recording;
A woman’s voice, honeyed and sweet,
It seductively says “leave a message,
when you hear the sound of the beep.”

Puzzled, I asked his co-worker
To tell me, when Joe’s not around,
“What has been up with him lately?
I notice that Joe has seemed down.”

Judy tells me that Joe’s wife had left him.
For weeks he’s been living alone.
The calls have become his obsession;
Just to hear his wife’s voice on the phone.

I nod, but elect to do nothing;
I, too, had a wife of my own.
I recall when she left me- just four barren walls
and the sound of her voice on the phone.

Life is so precious
for look how we cling to it,
enduring all manner
of outrage from fate.

We soldier on
with spirit indomitable.
when life puts a little
Too much on our plate.

Our days are uncertain
Our term here is limited.
We waste precious hours
passive, asleep.

Time keeps its own pace
and its laws are immutable
It refuses to bargain,
no matter how much we weep.

Time, which costs nothing,
yet more precious than diamonds
We've no means to save it
for time will not keep.

A Blossom fell
To the breast of earth,
Not ever knowing
its true worth.

A blossom fell.
It made me weep,
That beauty
is not ours to keep.

A blossom fell,
and tears like rain
could never make
it whole again.

A blossom fell
from hand to bier
accompanied by
my bootless tears.

When is a Coup not a Coup?
When is there no Coup there?
It's not a Coup though me and you
might want a Coup declared.
President Morsi lost his job,
as his Generals decreed.
That might seem like a coup to you,
and it sounds like one to me.
Yet Obama said its not a Coup
for if it t'were we'd cut off aid
and it might just be disastrous
if the Jihadists don't get paid

Hands trembled but their hearts did not
on that Independence Day.

When they signed the Declaration
many signed their lives away.

Some signers died in prison
or sank in poverty.

Several closed their eyes on life
before final victory.

One man, Clark, of New Jersey
deserves a special nod.

He suffered much for Liberty
at the hands of Howe and God.

His two sons were imprisoned,
floating on the New York tide.

Deprived of food and water
what could they do but die.

The British were true devils
and said they'd be set free.

If their father would come out for King
and recant Libery.

If he betrayed his sacred trust
He might well save his sons.

If he recanted they'd be free-
what would you have done?

His answer echoes down through time,
Their proposal he denied.

Our document was signed in blood and thrones must be defied.

Brave men run toward the flames
when others turn and flee.
Without such courage all is lost,
there could be no victory.

From fire Station Number Seven
the men of Prescott heard the call.
"Go and set a fire break
near the town known as Yarnall.

It was a race against the clock.
Their team of twenty vied
to wall off the drought fueled flames
before a whole town died.

A stroke of lightening set the blaze
that would consume them all.
With the county suffering a drought,
the trees were tinder dry.
when wicked Western winds whipped up
the Granite Hotshots died.

In the town of Prescott, Arizona
in fire station number seven
A stained glass window commemorates
men who died deserving heaven.

Brave men run toward the flames
when others turn and flee.
Without such courage all is lost,
there can be no victory.

If you want to make a profit
(and the morality is grey)
Dehumanize the victim
and you'll be well on your way.
In a country that's divided,
and declining by the hour.
Your sins will be forgiven
by the Autocrats in power.

As, once upon a time,
in our then divided land
Slavery was acceptable
because a black was not a man.
Then black people were possessions
and very few were free.
They knew the lash, they knew the rod,
They knew not dignity.

Now fetuses are parasites-
not considered human beings
Abortion is big business
the cash cow of their dreams
Fifty million have been murdered
with no end on the horizon.
(******, it appears, is acceptable
as long as it's not you dying.)

Someday you'll be old and gray-
and have an awful cough
Please don't be surprised or shocked
if they opt to write you off.

The weak and the disabled,
those feeble minded or not spry
can blame our liberality
when it comes their turn to die.

Eighty years its been since
Adolf ****** rose to power
Little children sang his praises too-
and darkness had it's hour.

Note:**** eugenics were **** Germany's racially based social policies that placed the improvement of the Aryan race through eugenics at the center of Nazis ideology. Those humans were targeted who were identified as "life unworthy of life" (German: Lebensunwertes Leben), including but not limited to the criminal, degenerate, dissident, feeble-minded, homosexual, idle, insane, and the weak, for elimination from the chain of heredity. More than 400,000 people were sterilized against their will, while 70,000 were killed under Action T4, a "euthanasia" program.[1][2]
(They will call it choice until the choice is there's alone)

Funny but many will call me a reactionary racist for my position against abortion but there have been millions of black Americans aborted, just as planned parenthood's founder intended.I would not make all abortions illegal as I believe that I shouldn't legislate morality. I think they should be rare, legal and safe.

My friend is gone.
No longer will she feel
the warmth of the sun
upon her face,
the chill of Winter,
or taste the Beaujolais Nouveau.

Still I will remember her;
in the warmth of the Sun.
in winter's chill grasp.
and in the crush of the grape

until I, too, forget,
and am forgotten.

There is a place on Goree isle-
It's call the house of slaves.
A port of call for slaver ships
whose crews no saint could save.
The captives of defeated tribes
here caught last sight of home.
Borne down by chains on
feet and wrists, crowded yet alone
All would pass one portal-
the door of no return.
Into the holds where many died
and more wished for the same.
They'd lose their language and their kin
and any hope of home.
They'd find a place beneath the loam
they'd work a lifetime long.
Stronger than the Indians
whites worked until they died
Their labors built a Country
in which they took little pride.
Yet they knew the day was coming ,
in the year of Jubilee,
When the shackles would be stricken off
and once more they would be free,

A cowboy in love with his horse
was convinced they should marry, of course.
They’d spent quality time roping cattle
And he was happiest when in the saddle.
“Love is Love, the high court has opined,
So why should folks deny me mine!”
The neighborhood blondes he found silly,
So he went for long rides with the fillies.
While he flirted with Pintos and Roans,
the Palomino he loved as his own.
Such idylls they spend in the bower
That he threw her a nice bridle shower.
He rented a barn as the hall
and invited his friends one and all.
While Mendelssohn is favored by most
He chose the “Call to the Post”
For their first dance he hoped they could play
“The Run for the Roses” that day.
All his plans came to naught, sad to say
When the love of his life answered” Neigh”
If an animal is your “one and only”
Better make it a sheep, not a pony!

Too long we have denied the truth
of our sad situation.
We needed to pay down our debts,
not spend like party nation.
Now our debts are coming due
and we resort to printing payment-
We've kicked the can down the road
but we're running out of pavement.
The great Pablo Picasso,
with great flourish, signed his checks.
He knew they would never be
cashed at his expense.
We are not as fortunate
with those trillions held abroad.
The Chinese could buy Canada
and barely dent their horde.

Nothing in life
was as sweet as your kiss.
So soft, so yielding, so fine.
Nothing so warm as your
cherry chapped lips.
That I savored when,
once, you were mine.

I paid my respects
at Your wake yesterday.
The morticians are good at their art.
You, sleeping princess, beautiful still,
through the decades that we've been apart

Except for your lips
which so oft I had kissed;
The beautician left them
grim tight and dry.
Both of us know they were
nothing like that.
That's when I let myself cry.

The girl from New Delhi (Limerick)

Did you hear of the girl from New Delhi?
How she turned any guys knees to jelly?
She'd wiggle and jiggle
she'd laugh and she'd giggle
while shaking her **** and her belly.

In London, a statue of Neb
is constantly turning its head.
Despite being placed behind glass
The statue keeps showing its ***.
Revealing to all who are near
its demands for Bread, beef and beer.

An explanation had yet to be found
for why it keeps turning around.
As for its demands for some grub
It requires a lift to the pub,

There once was a girl from New York
and boy, could that little miss talk.
She'd chatter all day
I heard her beau say:
" Please, God,
someone give me a cork!"

I was younger back then
than my youngest is now.
(Impossibly young, it would seem.)
There I first did encounter
the fig newton girl
so lovely, languid and lean.

I fancied myself a writer of tales
back when I was fresh from my teens.
Blank pages taunted me
right to my face..
They haunted the sides of my dreams.

I remember fig newton girl
reading her poems.
(Bee stung lips
and bare minimum clothes.)
She had our attention -
so sweet was her sound.
while I fought my
struggles with prose.

" Close your eyes
You could be anywhere.
Even next to one
whose eyes are also closed."

Those were her last lines
and they've stayed in my mind.
(Impossible though it may seem.)
When I close my eyes
she is next to me yet-
the fig Newton girl of my dreams.

In the presence of the enemy
He split his force in two.
His red coated invaders
displayed contempt for the Zulu.
How else to explain their failure
to fortify the camp?
Twenty Thousand warriors
Put them in a deadly clamp.
It was a fearsome slaughter
redcoats falling by the score.
Thirteen hundred swept away-
No prisoners of war.
assegai thrusting spears struck home
The Sun would shine no more.
The Thin Red Line was broken,
each man fighting his own war.
With ammunition running out
They fought with blade and ****.
Until knobkierrie clubs struck home
And stabbing spears found gut.
The officers with horses,
without honor, fled the fray.
Escaping only with their lives
No storied heroes they.

A Lover, cloaked in sorrow,
knelt beside his woman’s stone.
His Ann was only twenty two
when Heaven called her home.

Their love affair was secret
to all but her closest kin.
She had been pledged to marry
one of their long absent friends.

Those were dark days in New Salem.
Typhoid claimed her life.
Lincoln thought to end his own-
perhaps with rope or knife.

In those days friends feared for his life
So dark his mood became.
Some thought him suicidal
whom dark depression claimed.

A figure cloaked in sorrow,
deprived of a life with Ann.
Embraced his life of martyrdom
when the moment met the man.

She’d liked their life the way it was;
their Pied de Terre above Broadway.
Now her lawyers indicate
It must be sold, there’s tax to pay...
His daughter seldom ever calls.
since her father’s burial day..
She would be someone to share the loss.,
But motherless she prefers to stay.
Jane sits before her mirror and
brushes back a wayward strand.
He used to love to brush her hair.
back when she still had her man.
She’d thought herself the luckiest girl-
She was his angel, heaven sent.
Photographs and memories
Now are all that she has left.
Gone two months, not even two,
Shrapnel killed her Marathon man.
He never reached the finish line
And now she’s living
Après Vous

Christ and his apostles
had but bread and wine to share.
At that Last Supper many came
to a table nearly bare.

Gandolfini came by honestly,
his girth and double chin.
The mayonnaise he relished
May be what did him in.

He enjoyed a glass, or two, of beer
He liked his King Prawns fried.
He downed a pint of Morgan’s ***
with foie gras on the side.
Two Pina Coladas for dessert.
But surely that’s no sin.
Some speculate t’was the massive tab
That led to Tony’s end.

in the High School cafeteria
there was horror on the menu;
A loner with a pistol
seeking victims and a venue.

Three times the pistol fired
and kids began to fall.
It might have been a massacre
if not for old Frank Hall.

Frank Hall was the football coach
with a short and stubby frame.
While others fled, he charged towards
this criminal insane.

Frank Hall didn't stop to think
he didn't have the time.
As he charged towards the gunman
His life was on the line.

The gunman fired once at Frank,
the shot rang high and wide
It caught a fleeing coed,
put a flesh wound in her side.

The gunman turned in panic
as the first responders came
He fled into the nearby woods,
just some kid named T.J. Lane.

Three teenagers lay dead inside
one more would never stand.
Many more lives had been spared
by the courage of one man.

He comforted the dying
as the ambulance came late.
The moment found the man-
was it providence or fate?

There once was this maid in Gibraltar
who was proud of the ******* in her halter-
so she flashed them around
to the boys of the town
who all took her to bed, not the Altar

An acquaintance of the deceased,
Hernandez was quizzed by police.
If charged, he'll post bail
for a tight end in jail
cannot even shower in peace!

Somewhere in the blackness of you
hides the light of a young Sol.
Sometimes you are liquid, viscous,.
sometimes you are shards of coal.
You heat my garret and light the night.
Somehow your darkness
has been made bright,
But, even as you
make night to day,
I know they’ll be a price to pay.


-My meter was read yesterday..

At the present we've a POTUS
who is of a "sharing" mind.
He'll "share" whatever I have
with his  voters of like mind.
So it strikes me as peculiar
that wealth disparity still grows.
That the fabled one percent
keep looking at us down their nose.
The Banksters stole our Billions
yet not one spent time in jail.
Do you think they told the President-
"The check is in the mail"?
Those high hogs keep getting fatter-
the buffet has them in thrall.
Just like hogs they'll be surprised
when the slaughter starts this Fall.

The scientist was first on stage,
Then came his Geminoid.
The family resemblance-
impossible to avoid.
An android in his image,
That seems to understand.
A body that is ageless
in the shape and form of man.
An android body could survive
The void of outer space
without the need for oxygen
Or food that looks like paste.
Manufactured Hominids
Could roam the plains of Mars
Explore the nearby cosmos,
Travel to a nearby star.
Then when, at last, they journey back
to Earth, their cosmic home,
will they embrace their distant kin
or find they are alone?

He was at the hospital
until he learned it was a girl.
That fact was just in-congruent
with his model of the world.
Don't look to him for child support
for he will give you naught
He'll delay, deny and threaten
and you'll spend your life in court.
He's devilishly handsome
and can complete a forward pass.
If asked to put a ring on it
he'll look at you and laugh.
He was last seen in the minor leagues
but he never got "the call"
There are "Baseball Annies", hangers on
prepared to bare their all.
So today is not his day
He never has and never will
considered Fatherhood
as more than just a passing thrill.

“She cannot live forever!”
We told each other more than once.
Still, she had all the Deutschmarks
and to her I was a dunce..

My wife and I were servant/slaves
to her every wish and whim.
It was just after the Armistice
that she ”allowed” us move in.
Germany was a hungry place
As Weimar came into being
What happened after Wilhelm fled,
few could claim to have foreseen.

No, she never spoiled us,
her grandson and his mate.
I cut wood, my wife drew water
For that shriveled old ingrate.
Other than a pittance
and an attic bed of straw
she gave neither thanks nor praise
to her only heirs at law.



Thank Gott, the morning finally dawned
we didn’t hear her ring her bell.
In sleep she had departed
to Heaven or , likely, Hell.

We hugged each other gleefully.
Our servitude was done.
We were rich with Deutschmarks!
The year was Nineteen twenty one.

The eightieth lash had found its mark
when the prisoner crumpled to the dust.
Her hide, a mass of welts and cuts,
the lash, cruel as her ******’s touch.
What was her crime, why did she die?
This young girl had reported ****.
Religious courts reject such tales
when no males will corroborate.
Adultery, her **** was called.
One hundred lashes, her public fate.
For blessed is the prophet’s name,
The law is holy and God is great

Each day I drive the Belt to work
with a million other slobs.
We pilot cars a decade old.
We're lucky, we have jobs.
Being stuck in traffic is no fun
so my eyes search for distraction.
Your bumper- stickered Civic
offers motorists didaction.
You've no shortage of opinions,
you're a child of hope and change.
gay women for abortion rights?
forgive me, that seems strange.
You're all for education ,
and it seems you're down on God
Your promotion of vasectomy
strikes me as rather odd.
We creep along at walking speed
in the misnamed morning rush
I smile at one old sign that reads:
"Lesbians against Bush"
I change lanes and creep up beside
this most amusing creature.
Shock and awe is what I felt-
She is our children's teacher!

I’m not ashamed,
Nor should I weep.
Sometimes, into dreams,
Old memories creep.
Photographs will fade with time
sooner than these dreams of mine.
Yes, you taught me how to love
And yes, it was a precious gift.
I am the child of your old age.
Now, of your presence, I’m bereft.
I kneel here by your stone today
And think of all that I have lost.
To pause a moment, reflect and pray
And wish you happy Father’s Day.

Without the wind, without the rain
The stone of Earth would stone remain.
Did not the breath of Boreas blow
to form the canyons here below?
If not for Kymopoleia and her waves
Would there be underwater caves?
Imperceptibly, drop by drop,
The tears of heaven can conquer rock.
Turn stone to sediment by degree
And make its way back to the sea.
So too, my tears will work their art
Upon thy adamantine heart
And, in their final victory,
carry back your love to me.

My calling patterns are rather dull.
I’m a sixty year old man.
I get phone calls infrequently
almost never from Sudan.
Then one day I received a call
From some fellow called Abdul.
I thought it was a prank at first,
from students at my school.
He talked of pressure cookers
and praised his foreign god.
I said “it’s a wrong number, Bub.”
And I thought “that was odd!”
That didn’t stop him calling here
Oh, once or twice a week.
I explained I’m not the party
To whom he wished to speak.
(It seems my number was one digit
off from a certain Chechen geek).
After Tax day it got interesting-
all this clicking on my phone.
One time my placed was ransacked
while I was not at home.
Eric Holder, if you’re listening,
I am not the Droid you seek.
It seems the fourth amendment
Must be null and void this week...
I might be your perfect villain:
White, Catholic, and a man.
I know if I made videos
I’d be rotting in the “can”

I knew nothing about the plot,
I’m innocent, you see.
My knowledge, like the President’s
comes strictly from T.V.

The image is indelibly
Engraved in my mind’s eye-
Like the black and white
photography
of the night that Bobby died.
Bobby, lifeless, bleeding out
upon the kitchen floor.
Is there a doctor in the house?
Where is the rule of law?
There were then two Americas
They too were black and white.
Evil times bred evil men.
Do you recall the night?
That summer there was rioting
And violence roiled the land.
It might have been much different
with a Kennedy in command.
The saddest words a poet writes
And lets escape his pen
Is that sad speculation
That asks what might have been.

It seems, today, a peaceful place,
a sandy beach, a wine dark sea.
The grand assault, the thousand ships;
It rivals Troy in myth-story
.
Fate often hinges on one day-
the moment when the dice are tossed.
Here they breached the Atlantic wall
Here many a Mother’s son was lost.

One sixth of June was such a day.
And on that day the sea ran red.
Mine is a tale of butchery;
of many wounded , many dead.

One sixth of June, the storm now passed,
From out the fog, our fleet, they spied.
The heavy guns commenced to fire.
In a fearful rain of lead, men died.

What was in the souls of men
who breached the wall and turned the tide?
The Tommies and Americans
faced odds so close to suicide.

Some lived to tell of that longest day;
the sixth of June in forty four.
So many others fought and fell
and sleep in Normandy evermore.

The President assessed the scene
and gave a terse command.
His caddy grabbed his putter
and put it in Obama’s hand.
The breeze as not a factor
The air was hot and still.
The hole, a dozen feet away,
blocked by a small windmill.
Barrack needed this putt for par.
to help him tie the score.
Boehner got a hole in one
in the clown face just before.
Obama gave his ball a stroke-
it veered wide, an inch or two.
It’s a pity folks are watching
Or he’d lie about that too.
That he should be reduced to this;
Playing at the “Pirate’s cove.
The sequester is a right wing plot
likely dreamed up by Karl Rove.

The sky grew dark
and the wind full voiced
so I furled my single sail.
I battened down the hatches
fearful of the coming gale
the clouds were low and threatening
They oft are this time of year.
They made me wish I could be somewhere,
anywhere, but here.
Random bolts of lightening streaked
across the sullen sky.
Waves took and shook my little boat.
I thought that I might die.
A tingle of anxiety
I felt it in my gut
Imagine how relieved I felt
when the director hollered "Cut!"

We all have heard of Lady Jane,
A Queen of England who briefly reigned.
Then Mary Tudor took the town
And soon thereafter took her crown.

There’s been Queens like Liz
whose reigns won’t end.
Disposable Queens like Anne Boleyn.
These days, with thrones in short supply
It’s the crown of Beauty
For which girls vie .

Denise Garido had thought that she
had won cosmetic Royalty.
They gave her roses
and placed her crown.
Then one day latter
It all came down.

“A error in math!” the pageant proclaimed.
A drunken judge had misspelled names.
Far from being Queen as thought
Ms. Garido had come in fourth!

It’s Humiliation of a sort
To find out one is an afterthought
To be named Queen just for one day,
Then have the honor stripped away..

The actual winner was quite buff
and had gone to Vegas in a huff.
At least Denise, you needn’t cry
You beat out the Transgendered guy!.

Summers by the Jersey shore
Have always called to me,
As though a Siren lived beside
our cottage by the sea.
A place where wave
and wind and sand
conspired perfectly
to make a simulacrum
of what Paradise might be.

This will be my last summer
coming to the Jersey shore.
My medications manage pain
But they can do no more.
The doctors say I have six months
before I cease to be.
So I have chose to spend that time
in my cottage by the sea.

I walk alone at Evening tide
beside the golden shore.
The tide erases every step
I take forevermore.
For I am not eternal
Like the deep and restless sea.
In truth I am ephemeral
More than I’d like to be.

I cannot bargain with my fate
I cannot buy more time.
This vintage, strictly limited,
is dying on the vine.

Too soon it will be Labor Day
And time for you and me
To close the place up one last time
our cottage by the sea.

What if Eden and Gethsema!ne
were in the selfsame place?
Then, in the spot where Adam fell,
knelt Christ to take his place.
Perhaps the tree of knowledge stood
where Peter fell asleep!
He lacked that night the stamina
his holy watch to keep.
The Via Dolorosa starts
where Peter struck the slave.
Passion cancels passion out
when there are souls to save.

She had been condemned to silence
since the stroke, two years before.
The lovely lyric voice I loved
seemed vanished evermore.

Locomotion came back slowly.
Just this spring I saw her smile
Still, my girl remained in shadow,
sadly silent all the while.

Her new therapist was hopeful
That she could be taught to sing.
I doubted it was possible-
She couldn't say a thing.

Two hours, nearly every day
the girl who wore my ring
with her therapist accompanist
keep struggling to sing.

I never thought that
"row your boat"
could be my favorite song
Until I heard her sing it,
for the first time on her own.

When all my prayers were answered
I no longer felt alone.
That day the girl who wears my ring
made it all the way back home.

Like a treasured heirloom painting
dulled by passing time,
its colors, sadly faded,
this tricolor of mine.
Once crimson red, now cinnamon,
The blue an aqualine,

When Liberty was naked
We draped her in its folds.
The boys in blue held this high
in times that try men’s souls.
Let not the flag of freedom drop
nor linger in the dust.
Let faded glory be restored-
In Liberty we trust.

Once upon a time
There were two giants
on our Island.
They were tall
and steely strong,
these twin giants.
They stood firm
on the ground
and their crowns
touched the clouds.
Then, on a crisp, clear
September day-
The world changed
And the giants were no more.

At the foot of the Cross stood the Magdalene
with Mary, his mother, and John.
Jesus was now in extremis-
the curious people had gone.

The mark of the whips were upon him,
an ugly bruise under his eye.
Blood filtered down from the crown made of thorns.
dripping down from his face to one thigh.

Mary watched as her eldest was dying.
Bore her pain with incredible calm.
She wished that, his agony over,
She’d hold him once more in her arms.

With breath that was labored and shallow
He spoke with his life nearly gone
He commended young John to his mother
And commended his mother to John

He looked at the Magdalene sadly
With a love that’s ineffably rare.
Then with loud voice he cried out to Heaven
A fool might think this was despair.

Joseph of Arimethea
came with a ladder near dusk
With the help of the Priest, Nicodemus
He took the crucified Son from his Cross.

Mary was silently weeping
at the body of Christ in her arms.
She looked at the King Pilate murdered.
Whom the people had greeted with Palms

The onset was a subtle thing;
a clumsiness, a loss of grace.
She who had been strong and proud
was, suddenly, listless, out of place.
A weakness in a muscle here.
A spasm in a tendon there.
The prognosis, like a hammer strike
to the unsuspecting steer.

First came the cane,
Then came the chair.
Long before them
Came the fear.
The loss of strength
And motor skill
Lou Gehrig’s illness
left just her will.
Yet with that will she loved her man
Wrote a book with just one hand
Saw as much of the world she wished,
left them wanting one last kiss.
Then, when breathing became a chore,
She didn’t do it anymore.
To be surprised by death, she felt
Was the best way to manage
The hand she was dealt.

There are loves that are inseparable,
loves that never leave.
Loves that can define us
This much I do believe.
I remember well my own first “love”.
A Love I brought to bed.
I brought along a flashlight too
To discern the words Love said.
When all my family was asleep
from my pillow I’d retrieve
My treasure from the Library
And I’d begin to read.
That was my first chapter book,
A mystery, I recall.
Of all the words I’ve read or writ
It was the start of all.
I like to find that book again
and hold in one more time.-
and in the touch and smell of it
Recall a simpler time.

For every aging boomer
There are one or two they've known:
Heroes of the battlefield
Who never made it home.

Some classmate who was butchered
in a fire fight in “Nam.
A sibling who had perished
in the standoff at Khe Sanh.

Perhaps the Tet offensive
left some friend's blood spilled and spent.
Politicians speak of glory-
It’s the grunts who pay the rent


From the walls of Hue to Cam ranh Bay
from Tonkin to Saigon.
there is a wall in Washington
with their names inscribed thereon.

The lucky ones who did come home
Recall the name and face
of some heroic eighteen year old
who perished in their place.

Dappled light through sheltering leaves
on a perfect summer’s day.
My lady love lies on the grass
Alas to pray, not play,
For I am one who gave his all
And have no more to give.
O’ to be anywhere but this,
I wanted so to live.
To hold you close,
and feel your kiss.
To let you have your way.
Honor’s call was
cruel to us both
on this Memorial day

I used to have the names and facts
right quick at my disposal.
It helped in settling arguments
and in drafting work proposals.
Now names and dates elude me.
Appointments just slide by.
Were it not for my Blackberry
you might see a grown man cry.
Yet deep in the recesses
of my bicameral mind
my neural Librarian,Norman
strives not to fall behind.
He's peering into synapses
and looking into lobes
He's hoping I can temporize
till the name he can disclose.
If I relax it comes to me
though too late to save face
Long after she has left my bed
I recall her name was "Grace"

Back in the days of Vietnam
We said: “Make Love, not war.”
No matter how many Cong we killed
Like Doritos, they made more.
Walter Cronkite helped keep score
as the toll grew ever higher.
Foes relentless as the monsoon rains
They made Nam a quagmire.
We killed them all three times at least
Surely all of them were gone.
Then shortly after we had left
They turned up in Saigon!
Now we’re in a forever war
without a likely winner.
A pity we can claim a draw
And bring the boys home for dinner.