The water laps against the hull
Just like that time before
Just like that Sunday morning
That exploded into war.
In these old eyes
That yet can see
Those waves of rising Suns,
A tear wells up
In memory
for those forever young.
Below my feet
My brothers’ lie;
Proud Arizona’s crew.
For a time I have
Escaped their fate
But now my days are few.
and when I die,
I’ll make my grave
In Pearl, beneath the Sea.
Then all we suffered
Will be lost
to living memory.

He is a mover and a shaker
And he’s certainly no Quaker!
Donnie Trotter from Chicago
is his name.
Whatever was he thinking?
This man from the
land of Lincoln.
When he tried to bring a gun
aboard a plane?
He’ll pontificate when pressed
(Just to get it off his chest)
How guns are bad
And people shouldn’t buy them.
His acts are against the law
He himself had voted for-
I wonder if the State
Will charge and try him.
Were he Conservative and White-
Not a Liberal, Black as night-
Voices would be raised
that we should fry him.

It’s Hypocrisy at its best
And this man has failed the test
In Chicago guns are banned
And for good reason-
If the victims could fight back,
What would be the fun in that?
Only criminals have guns
This hunting season.

I stumble forward in a daze
with shackles on my wrists and feet.
The room is cold and very bright
As I approach my final sleep.
I see the gurney waiting there
It bears the aspect of a cross
For me to stretch my arms out wide
Embracing what my sins have cost.
Behind the one way mirrors stand
the next of kin to all my crimes.
They wait there to see justice done.
They count down to the end of time.
I feel the needles subtle pinch
as liquid poison finds a vein.
As Icy coldness creeps towards my heart
the savior to my darkness came

The world is full of good ideas
And rules we really need.
Signs ensure that drivers won’t
Exceed the posted speed.
Plus we have laws restricting drugs-
So nobody smokes ****.
Chicago’s ban on handguns
Has produced a bumper crop-
Of people full of bullet holes
Legislation failed to stop.

It’s clear to me obesity
kills more than bullets do.
Look at your friends and neighbors
And you’ll realize this is true.
Its burdensome to carry them
To their final resting place
Once they’ve spend several decades
stuffing Stuffing in their face.
It’s past time we got serious
It’s time to walk the walk.
I’m introducing legislation
That aims to ban the fork.

George Johannesen isn’t dead
though the State claims he’s expired.
His driver’s License they cancelled
though he still had four good tires.
George, at first, thought to complain
about this twist of fate.
Then he came to realize that
Death is a tax free state.
Five hundred thousand dollars
Were paid out to his “next of kin”
Paid to one with the same name
Who looked a lot like him.
He accepted philosophically
the wage of sin is death.
If the alternative is taxes,
he assumed its for the best.
George enjoys the “afterlife”
on the Island of Majorca.
Where he chases younger women
And he doesn’t need a walker.
Only George, of all his friends,
has managed to retire.
He enjoys his afterlife
While the state thinks he’s expired.

They died; they all died, without a moan;
their final passage writ in stone.
Dark shadows here and there you see
where Jews passed to eternity.
In these silent streets no children play
No trees survived the heat that day.
A suicide martyr some call a hero
was detonated at ground zero.
Nine hundred thousand are believed lost
in this second, instant, holocaust.
The suitcase he held in his hand
was the latest weapon from Iran.
My team has come here to retrieve
the evidence from Tel Aviv.
No one will be living here
Not for another fifty years.
• * * * * *
A damsel with a dosimeter,
in a vision I once saw,
warned me that appeasement
nearly always leads to war.

We have many faces
but we are all the same:
the drudges of existence,
the drones in life's great game.
My best days are behind me,
my race is nearly run.
I get up for work each morning,
its been years since its been fun.
I am wedded to a woman
whose passion has grown cold.
I have worry lines around my eyes
to remind me I am old
* * * * *
I met her on a Thursday,
The memory makes me hard:
Perhaps she was the Devil's snare,
Perhaps a gift from God.
Her perfume was alluring
Her hair brunette and long.
Her posture was inviting,
unless I read her wrong.
She'd been recently divorced
surely there's nothing wrong with that:
She had finally shed her man
and had yet to get a cat.

On my finger, a reminder,
a band of gold I saw.
to be yet another cheater
would offend me to the core.
So we chatted and had coffee
Cheek kissed in parting, nothing more.
Another battle won
in a nasty little war.

Cyber Monday is my day
to Wrap my Christmas list.
I travel down the Amazon
to find that one-click bliss.

I keep my credit card on file
so when the impulse strikes me
I hop on line and grab my find
They'll ship it free most likely..

I joined their super saver club
which gives me priority.
I save a bunch on shipping
as I buy there constantly.

I pity those fools Thanksgiving night
waiting there on line
before a brick and mortar store
I guess for some that's fine.

Somehow Amazon recalls
the things I've bought before
and comes up with suggestions
I think its called Al Gore.

In the empty stands
Our champion sat.
Sans fans
and sans applause.
He mulled over
The match just past;
Its aces
and its flaws.

To have come so close
And not prevail-
A lesser man might cry.
But Murray knew the glory
That comes when Mortals vie.
He thought:
“I’m getting closer,
Than I ever have before”
A silver cup
At Centre court
Was the vision
That he saw.

The other side of Lonely
is where words best not be spoken.
An amazing space where two can live
when both their hearts are broken.
Where money serves to be a salve
to fill the empty places.
Where Joy and Hope no longer live-
You can see it in their faces.

Her parents weren’t there to cry
The day that sleeping beauty died.
First Dad, then Mother, slipped away
as their comatose daughter slept each day.
Through forty two years of dreamless sleep
Her loving family did their promise keep.
A drug reaction was the cause
of her coma irreversible.
By the power of
Unconditional love
The faint flickering flame
Of life stayed possible.
Until today did beauty lie.
Until today did life endure.
Today she smiled and opened her eyes
Only then did beauty die..

Twelve thirty five
three shots ring out.
The Presidents been hit.
He's dying, no doubt.
A ghost stares down
at the Motorcade.
Another clutches his throat
as lifesblood is splayed.
Their drama plays out
at Dealy Plaza
Without the blood
or the Dura mater.
A great Man murdered,
A vision gone
November twenty Second
Fifty Years on

The admiral of the U.S. fleet
was staring towards the shore.
A mob of people jammed the wharf.
He thought we were at war.
The good Mayor Paulo, of Monterrey
was waving with the rest.
He saw our large Pacific fleet
And, doubtless, was impressed.
The commodore made cannons roar
The impact shook the ground
By miracle no townsfolk died
And not one sailor drowned.
“Perhaps they are saluting us!”
The puzzled mayor said.
But when we put marines ashore
Such thoughts soon left his head.
That day we captured Monterrey
It was quite the feat of arms
We lost just one or two marines
to some Senorita’s charms.
The State Department soon put an end
To the splendid little war
And erstwhile foes departed friends
from the Mexicali shore.

It had been some years
since you and I
had shared any stage and time
but here we are
in another's garden.
Strands of silver now showcase
your still pensive lovely face
You played Rosalind with me
in William's Arden.
Our theater borne romance
never really had much chance.
I know I hurt you
and I seek your pardon.
Never again to know that touch
which we both enjoyed so much-
It's true with time and age
positions harden.
Still, you tempted, and I ate,
and with that we sealed our fate.
That was long ago and
in another Garden.

Look up, child, before it’s too late
The years fly by and life won’t wait.
It’s not there on your tablet screen,
or any smartphone that I’ve seen.
No lovely lass can catch your eye
if you’re perusing shutterfly.
Facebook may be fun, even great,
But you have an expiration date.
You may get “likes” and have “4 bars”
Does that matter if you’ve lost the Stars?

She was likely in a drunken daze
when she wed, unknowingly.
A Vegas drive in chapel
Was the spot they did the deed.
Twenty years or so would pass
Ere she would finally see
That when she said “I do” she did,
Albeit witlessly.
Now Janeane has got divorced,
her single life to resume.
It seems nuptials last longer
When you don’t know there’s a groom!

Embedded in Afghanistan
were the General and the Blonde.
It gets lonely in those mountains
and she was close and warm.
She was his biographer
and he her primal source-
When he offered her "full access"
Her reaction was "of Course".

Their spouses both were far away
in another land and clime
Why not steal a kiss or two
is it really such a crime?

For this betrayal of our trust
Petraeus now must pay.
He placed his privates in command
and now he rues the day.

I do not blame you, Caesar,
you have ridden history’s tide.
Marc Anthony, your Lieutenant,
Is a loose cannon at your side.
I think I blame the Romans,
those who sought a life of ease,
They, who dance to the music of time,
brought our Republic to her knees.
I know she was imperfect,
(At times our poor were squeezed.)
Yet Rome, Mankind’s greatest hope,
Now succumbs to your disease.
So place the garland on his pate
For I have ceased to care.
Like Catalina, we have lived,
Our epilogue: despair.

Grandfather built, with his own hands
The house we children called our home.
A fine expanse of stone and brick,
a castle that was ours alone.

That was before the threatening storm
turned us into refugees
The howling wind, the battering surge
Let loose the Ocean’s enmity.

Of our fine home scant trace remains:
Some stone and the foundation walls
Keepsakes and memories long displayed
Sadly we have lost them all.

No loss of life, no death to weep
But still a sense of loss pervades.
The certainty of Youth is gone
And fallen trees can give no shade.

We’ll build again with our own hands
The house our children will call home.
I think, perhaps, on higher ground,
Where Ocean waves do seldom roam

There we will make new memories
Those things we lost will matter not.
We have each other, that is enough.
We’ll build our heaven on this spot.

Despite the wind and driving rain,
At their posts they must remain.
In woolen garb and white glove dress,
Twenty one steps, no more no less.
They honor those who came before
Who, unnamed, fell in foreign wars
Entombed forever far from home
in their sarcophagus of stone.
For duty and honor they remain
Despite the wind, despite the rain.

They were brothers born a year apart,
the elder just nineteen.
Folks said they were inseparable-
Unbeatable as a team..

But elder brother went to war
in far off Vietnam.
His brother vividly recalls
The day He heard Jim’s gone.

Never again to take the field,
Or hear his voice again.
A Lifetime’s conversation
brought prematurely to an end.

One was taken, one was left,
Both forever changed.
One brother is forever young-
There in the picture frame.

The Younger is the elder now
Each year he grows more grey.
Sufficient is the evil
He has dealt with since that day

Tommorrow is on my calendar
as is every day next week.
I have interviews, appointments,
Dinners at which I'll speak.

I'll make some time for family
and writing ,I suppose.
I may find time to barbecue
and to launder my work clothes.

When evening comes I'll settle back
with a glass of Pinot noir.
I'm a transient immortal,
I'm on loan here from a star.

The future is a game;
against ourselves we play
We act as if we still have left
forever and a day.

In truth we all are transients
For just this moment free.
Self observing stardust
poised t'wixt two eternities

A brilliant Profusion-
in death, leaves are proud!
(No Pharoah or King
have enjoyed such a shroud.)
They flutter on downward
upon the stiff breeze.
collecting in piles
nearly up to my knees.
The rasping of rakes
is a familar fall sound.
An unwanted tribute
I collect from the ground.

Jackie Robinson is exalted
as the first Black man to play,
but far fewer fans remember Glenn Burke,
the first ballplayer openly gay.

Like Jackie, he played for the Dodgers-
(different coast and a different time.)
Glenn came up to the Majors
In the summer of 79’

Burke was strong and tall and fast
And some teammates called him “ King Kong”
Though he roomed with Reggie Smith on the road
most nights Reggie Smith slept alone.

Burke befriended Young Tommy Lasorda
which was why he was traded away.
Old Lasorda couldn’t deal with the rumors,
Nor acknowledge his own son was gay.

Glenn Burke rode the pines while in Oakland
Billy Martin never gave him much chance
When Burke injured his leg in Spring Training
That ended his time at the dance.

He drifted, his playing days over,
He used, he stole and did time.
An accident left him a *******
Unprotected *** ended his line.

No shock was the A.I.D.s diagnosis-
His sister had long known he was gay.
When she took him in he was dying
when all others turned him away.

Sandy Alderson, with the Athletics,
took pity on Burke in despair.
The team paid for his A.I.D.S. medication
and covered the cost of his care.

Sad is the fate of the Athlete unsung,
dying apart from his team.
Glenn Burke showed that a gay man could play,
That a Gay Athlete also can dream.

Glenn Burke passed a long time ago
But his story deserves to be told.
He said when your suffering, dying of A.I.D.S.
Even days in the summer are cold.

We never touched.
We never kissed,
Nor did our limbs entwine.
Yet your translucent beauty
made an impression in my mind.
We never spoke
I never met
this beauty of the screen.
A girl they called Emanuelle
In a film some thought obscene.

She is dead of Cancer now,
A Krystal so sublime:
All youth and beauty withers
How briefly it was thine.

The man called Mitt
Is known to flip
And flop to try and
Please ya.
The President claims
His foe has got
A bad case of
“Romnesia”
Elephants have
Been known to
Have a
photographic mind.
Yet Mitt, their standard bearer
Changes his stance
time after time.
Might he prove a moderate
or is he right of center?
Can he govern Blue states too
Or is he all magenta?
When talking to his base
He always spouts the Party line.
Other times he’s a Romnesiac
And thus hard to define.

Your impulses are generous, kind and pure-
But impose costs on us we can’t endure.
One point three trillion spent each year, tis said,
to keep our current poor in their own beds.
America has debt related worries
While social engineers break out new Mores.
Recent Grads despair of their careers
and student loans are going in arrears.
Priests, Teachers and the Boy Scouts, rank and file,
Apparently are staffed with pedophiles.
Socialism’s great and life is sunny-
until you run out of other people’s money.

Just some stupid girl,
just fourteen years old.
She should have stayed silent.
She shouldn't act bold.

Just some stupid girl
lacking all sense of dread.
Classes for girls?
She should have been dead.

Just some stupid girl
only infidels note.
She took a shot to the head,
next a knife to the throat.

Just some stupid girl
that we failed to ****
filled with stupid ideas
that are not Allah's will.

Just some stupid girl
that some have called brave
just for daring to think
she won't wind up a slave.

The Helos hovered silently
as the Seals roped to the ground.
They touched down on Sesame Street
where the “Big Bird” could be found.

The C.I.A. had tracked him
Using feed from P.B.S.
President Mitt o.k’d the hit
when we tracked him to his nest.

A blue grouch in a garbage can
liay bleeding on the floor.
That **** named Cookie Monster
won’t eat  cookies anymore.

Ernie, Bert and rubber ducky
Were in the bath they say
When Seal team six broke through the door
and blew them both away.

Big Bird hid in Hooper’s store
While all this had transpired.
Then he laid down suppressing fire
With a weapon he’d acquired
Several Seals lay silent
in that sleep that isn’t sweet.
Snuffleupagus opened up
and forced a Seal retreat.

A stealth Helo exploded
raining wreckage on the street.
Maddened Muppets hurling Bricks
compounded Mitt’s  defeat.

As of today Big Bird’s at large.
Him we couldn’t whack.
The briefing failed to tell us
That a Liberal Bird fights back.

In New York Harbor, long ago,
The prison ships rode upon the tide.
Ten thousand Patriots crammed aboard,
Starved, abandoned, and left to die.
They sacrificed sweet life you see
So we might enjoy Liberty.

When the Philadelphia ran aground,
hard by the shores of Tripoli.
We sent Marines to fire the ship
That she not fall to piracy.

Again upon Saint Mary’s Heights
at Fredericksburg, a sight to see.
Ten Thousand Union casualties:
white men dying to set blacks free.

Can you recall the names of those
who did not want to live forever?
They died in France in the Great War,.
the one that would end wars forever.

From age to age, from Gen to Gen
From falling hands the torch is passed.
It is now ours to hold on high
Let not the flame of Liberty die.

Tyranny and ignorance
And the darkest superstition
Oppose the light of Liberty
and would make this Earth a prison.

We must be ever vigilant,
despite the World's derision.
For if the light of Liberty dies,
Our faults won't be forgiven.

It would seem we had little in common,

myself and the grizzled old man.

There was always the family resemblance-

He was, after all, old Granddad.

He had served time in the army

but seldom would say what he saw.

(His buddies who died where the heroes,

They didn’t come back from the war.)

We would go walk his dog in the park.

He would hear out my childish concerns.

He taught me about love of family.

That Love, he said, always returns.

Baseball was our common passion.

We’d root for the Mets, then despair.

At least he had seen them be champions,

For me they had yet to get there.

A single rose dropped on his casket

Is a scant thanks for the years that we shared.

You were there for me from my life’s beginning;

The first best friend I ever had.

The old man’s skin was parchment thin,
his eyes a watery blue.
On his left arm he bore the mark;
his Birkenau tattoo.

The letter “B” and six numbers
would be with him to the grave.
A permanent reminder
of his time as ******’s slave.

Two winters spent in Auschwitz-
What God would so design?
It left him gaunt and starving
with no faith in the Divine.

Yet he survived the worst and lived
when all his bunk  mates died.
His first wife was dust on the wind
as was their little child.

Now his grandson bears that mark,
the one and  very same.
To remind the world Of ******’s crimes,
He has skin in the game.

The blank parchment is wordlessly taunting me
Shall I write out a Will? Or a Plea?
The troops of Santa Anna surround us,
Should I surrender unconditionally?
No! I’ve replied with the cannon!
I’m determined to here make my Stand.
My life and my honor for Texas,
My beloved adopted homeland.
Their red flag of no quarter is flying.
So far I have not lost a man.
Ceaseless is their cannonading,
“Victory or Death!”- My command.

They finally did it,
so often they'd tried.
The whole Human race,
dead, a suicide.

The people I'd chosen
made war on Iran,
Until the last drop of Isaac
bled out on the sand.

Their allies engaged
and the dread missiles flew.
Nuclear winter
took care of a few.

The rivers of Babylon
clotted with dead.
So it was written.
So it was said.

The tribes of the Prophet
and Abraham's clan
took everyone with them
so I understand.

I really will miss them.
If I had eyes, I cry.
They only knew How,
They stopped asking "Why".

Their Cities are silent,
filled with cockroaches only,
They consigned me to Myth
and now I am lonely.

A bust of Benjamin Franklin,
Too valuable to even be dusted,
She stole from her former employer,
Thus proving she’s not to be trusted.
Authorities now have her trussed
She was nabbed with the bust-
She had busted.
She was busted with a bust
In her bag
For fingerprints
The bust will be dusted.
Busted with a busted bust on a bus?
Some people can never be trusted!

When he rose to speak, I pitied him,
that tall, ungainly, man.
His speech was high pitched,regional,
but clear to understand.
An inner fire burned in him,
his spirit fairly glowed.
His eyes and voice enchanted us
despite his rustic clothes.
The constitution was his text;
By chapter verse and line
He taught us what the founders meant,
the thoughts that filled their minds.
He said a true Republican
would not bid slaves to rise.
John Brown was no Republican,
his actions were unwise.
He explained the Government
could forbid slavery's spread.
The Union is a sacred trust
and must be preserved, he said.
I felt my heart on fire
when I heard him speak tonight.
When I saw his homely features
Transfigured by the light.
This Lincoln must be reckoned with;
if the South misunderstands,
They'll be tears and lamentations
in many homes in Dixie Land.

The Universe started, or possibly not,
(It may oscillate from now to forever.)
Everything perfectly fine tuned for Life,
the Almighty is awesomely clever.
Eleven dimensions! Billions of stars!
Multiverse now without end!
Scientists strive to explain everything,
much to theologians’ chagrin.
They teach about Adam, not atoms as such,
A story of serpent and sin
The “Big Bang” by contrast, doesn’t invoke
a serpentine tinged origin.
There are still known unknowns
And unknown unknowns
In explaining how Life did begin.
Preachers will cling to the gaps in the String-
call it their “Prophet margin.”

Every drop of blood slaves shed
beneath the lash and rod
was repaid in kind at Sharpsburg
by the terrible swift sword.
Twenty three thousand Sacrificed
in joint sanquinity
to debate the principle
that all men should live free.
At Burnside's bridge,
on the sunken road,
The Landscape dripping red.
The wounded called for water
as they lay among the dead.
At the Whitewashed Dunker church
the Dutchmen stood agog
as the fearful toll was paid
by brave souls on either side.

Moonwalker

We said goodbye to him today,
the man who walked first on the Moon.
We commit his ashes to the sea
as pipers play a mournful tune.
He'll feel Selene's pull in the deep
Until, in time, his urn dissolves.
Then, everywhere and nowhere
He will ride the Ocean tides.
Once, on a very different sea,
Armstrong brought his spacecraft down
At a place they called tranquility .
the Eagle landed, strong and proud.

This morning was cool
and the sky just as blue.
I remember where I was.
I suspect you do too.

A moment for Silence,
the ring of a Bell,
Hearts still in agony
remember too well.

In Memory still green
Eleven years on
A day to read names
of those dead and gone.

We stand here together
in memorial park
between two dark pools
where the world came apart.

That morning was cool
and the sky just as blue.
I remember where I was.
I suspect you do too.

This morning was cool
and the sky just as blue.
I remember where I was.
I suspect you do too.

A moment for Silence,
the ring of a Bell,
Hearts still in agony
remember too well.

In Memory still green
Eleven years on
A day to read names
of those dead and gone.

We stand here together
in memorial park
between two dark pools
where the world came apart.

That morning was cool
and the sky just as blue.
I remember where I was.
I suspect you do too.

"Faith can move Mountains."
I've read in some book.
Now mind over Melon
can be done with a look.
Hooked up by electrodes,
a test subject's brain
exploded a melon
and fried some plantains.
The Watermelon trick
sure excited the crowd.
The comedian, Gallagher,
truly was wowed
He's been in the hospital,
truly heartsick.
Physically unable
to keep doing his Schtick .
Soon, with his brain,
He'll resume his pursuit,
popping jokes while exploding
some innocent fruit.

An Amish elder named Mullet,
And some of his ****** clan,
bore hatred deep in their gullets
for their Amish fellow man.
****** seemed out of the question,
It’s rare among Amish, folks say,
(It may be that a horse and a carriage
doesn’t make for a quick getaway.)
So Mullet and some of his minions
Invented a new sort of crime:
Shaving their bearded opponents
one Amish man at a time.
Losing one’s beard among Amish-
A disgrace before God, it’s been said.
Mullet spared no woman either
choping the hair from their heads.
His victims are speechless with anger,
denuded of both beards and hair.
Leave it to someone named “Mullet”
To offend using a Barber’s chair.
Mullet’s in Federal custody;
charged with a crime, not a sin.
He refuses to answer the charges
By the hair of his chinny chin chin.

Our "sergeant" gave a low whistle
that stopped us in our tracks.
He motioned two kids forward
to prepare for the "attack".
The "enemy" was hiding.
Behind Uncle Louie's rusted Ford.
We checked our "guns" and "ammo"
and we trusted in the Lord.

We couldn't call artillery.
We couldn't drop ******.
If we really killed my cousins
they'd be Hell to pay from Mom.
We launched a pincer movement
with our guns set to pretend.
Imaginary air grenades
made quick work of my friends.

They had little cause to argue
as we shot them in the back.
They swooned upon the concrete.
All were "dead" from our attack.

Just then our Mother's called us in
for a feast of sausage bread.
Amazing how the dinner bell
so quickly raised the "dead".

All of us are older now
and some have gone to war.
Some Mother's sons I played with
aren't with us anymore.

If only Moms could ring a bell
and call us in to eat
And raise those honored dead to life
like back there on my street.

The Memory of my Love
Is as a rose preserved from time.
Or like a treasured bottle
from a vintage year for wine.

I am haunted by her memory-
How our fingers intertwined.
The fragrance of her body
as I held it close to mine.

Now just the shadow of her smile
Brings tears to a dry place.
Funny how my heart can race
Within the ghost of her embrace.
.
She is unchanging, therefore perfect
Her aspect is divine.
I believe that year was vintage-
for love, if not for wine.

Much of our literature
has come from his pen-
or was He a She?
I can't say I ken.
When not writing poems
or dabbling in prose
Beautiful songs
Anon oft would compose.
Anonymous never gained
fortune or fame.
The works are immortal,
Their maker, unnamed.
Since the first of his line
painted caves all alone,
Anon ever has been
the artist unknown.

I've listened to their speeches.
Read their termite riddled planks.
They're unlikely to dethrone Barrack-
A pity, Mitt is no Tom Hanks.
They are out of touch with women,
unsympathetic to the poor.
They're still fighting social issues
that were decided years before.
For a party of small government,
They sure have a lot to say
about *** in America
among the ***** and the gay.

The Democrats, by contrast,
Hit all the right social notes;
Indeed, they will say anything
if it will buy them votes.
Then, when we hit the fiscal cliff,
The Obamas living large,
I'm sure he'll find some Bush to blame
as long as he's in charge.

Election Day is coming soon,
Both parties seek my love.
Alas, my favorite candidate
is None of the Above.

Love is Love
so do not tarry.
If Tom loves ****
then they should marry.
If Anne loves Becky's
lovely ****,
No more beating about the bush!
But what of Harry's secret flame-
The love that dares not bleat its name?
Ewe'll have to wait another round
of defining deviance down.
If you think this all *******
please don't quote
the King James' version.
Lines at random from Leviticus
can make you seem
a tad ridiculous.

A cup of cold branch water,
triple filtered, extra dry.
Bring it to a rolling boil-
in a moment you'll see why.
Pour it into ice cube trays
and place it in the freezer
This recipe is tried and true-
obtained from an old geezer.

Wait two hours, then remove
the ice cubes from their tray.
Notice they are crystal clear,
never cloudy cracked or grey.
Place some in a six ounce glass
making sure that none are wasted
then add a single malt and sip
the best ice cubes ever tasted.

My smartphone got an upgrade,
now, between us, things are tense:
Siri, knowing she's superior,
has abandoned all pretense.

I asked Siri to hail a cab
when I was in New York
She told me I was getting fat,
and advised me I should walk.

Often Siri drops my calls
proclaiming I'm a bore.
(True, she's heard me tell that tale
a dozen times before.)

I wrote a "*** text" to my love
while walking in the park.
Siri sent it to my mother
and thought it quite the lark.

I bought this phone because her apps
are very useful things,
Now I live in constant dread
each time the **** thing rings.

My Smartphone got an upgrade
and, between us, things got terse,
but we're married by the contract
for better or for worse.

I should have bought an Android phone-
I'm sure we'd get along-
My iphone's much too uppity-
something's Siriously wrong