In the darkness of late evening,
Mark Chapman waited for his prey.
A born again Christian, incensed by Lennon,
Gun in hand, prepared to slay.
In cold blood he murdered John,
Never again would Lennon play.
Everyone knows where they were that day

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.

He was her only Rose,
and you might think it unkind
for Rose to have left Libby
so close to Valentine’s.
Still, Libby couldn’t hold him.
He felt that it was time,
for he knew in Libby’s cold embrace
So many men had died.
For Libby was a prison,
drafty, crowded and a hole.
A hundred Union men escaped
in a break daring and bold.
Under cover of the darkness
They broke for Union lines.
Like blacks escaping slavery
Polaris was their guide

She was scarcely twenty one
on the day the Reaper came.
A writer of great promise;
Toru Dutt was her name.

Bengali was her native tongue,
but only just her first.
She had conversed in German,
written French and English verse.

Now she lay silent, dressed in white
in the company of flowers.
A shame it was a funeral pyre
and not her wedding bower.

Her sister, overcome with grief,
Her Parents both the same.
Her sad eyed father lit the torch
and consigned her to the flames.

How quickly did those flames consume
the girl who lived to write.
Her dust was carried on the winds
from the sacrificial site.

The beauty of her verse endures
and will preserve her name.
That's all that could be salvaged
of the maiden from the flames.

The learn-ed scientist declared;
" The time has come that I,
by virtue of my own brilliance
will never have to die!"
"I engineered my own Genome
to keep me young and spry."

Indeed, by all appearances
the Doctor's boast seemed true.
His skin was supple like a child's
Though he was eighty two.
His pulse was firm and regular,
His body ripped and lean.
If not for his celebrity
you might think him eighteen.

" I am like the gods themselves-
Immortal is my glory"

The Fates laughed at his insolence
and chose to end his story.
Their Machina Ex Deus
was a drunk who drove a lorry.

Man may match Methuselah
if Science lights his way.
Still irony comes from above
and only Donkeys bray.

There are songs that I no longer play,
even when I’m at practice alone.
The lyrics are too painful to sing
now that I’ve reaped what I’ve sown.

There are places that we used to go,
where I haven’t gone in a year.
The barkeep must think that I’ve died,
As I no longer stop for a beer.

There are friends that I no longer see-
They would only remind me of you.
Phantom pains to an old amputee
Bitter leaves from my garden of rue.

There are songs that I no longer play,
Whose lyrics would stab at my heart.
These days, I’ve been drinking for two.
It’s my solace since we’ve been apart.

A Poet named Catullus
and Lesbia, his muse,
lived in a time of Civil War
when loyalties are confused.

Their field of battle was their bed
where Love and lust contend.
That place where all their passion
petered out and found an end.

It would seem Hades hath no fury
like a Latin poet scorned.
His Lesbia he would abuse
in prose, in Rhyme and song.

Where once he praised her beauty
and swore they'd never part,
he now condemns her deviousness
and damns her cheating heart.

The more things change
they stay the same
when Love decays to hate
They, who once coiled in adulterous sheets,
now despise each others name.

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.

The University where my friend teaches
has sadly forgot what Free Speech is.
Instructors are expressly forbidden
to use the name” Christ” in a greeting.
If you say “Merry Christmas” in passing
if non tenured,  it can be career ending.
If you bless in the name of the Lord,
be prepared for your Ox to be gored.
On the same Campus, on many occasions,
Folks speak freely of perverse persuasions.
Yet, Dean forbid, you should pray,
You’d be better off coming out gay.
If Supernatural salutations you savor
“May the Force be with you”- still is in favor.
So forget about Magi and Manger
or your teaching career is in danger.
If you lecture about Christ and sin
be prepared for what they did to Him.

How is it acquaintances
Choose to be friends?
Born in the same year,
but at opposite ends.
How do separate lives
form poetic book- ends?

I bore you with history,
You gallantly try
To grasp why the past
Fascinates this old guy
There are, certainly,
more prolific pens.
I view the great world
Through a limited lens.

We’ve dealt with our losses
We’ve buried dear dead.
We’re maudlin at times
When dusk signals days end
That's when we tend to dwell
on those dear to our heart.
We’re on the same wavelength
Just an ocean apart

Twenty five thousand Sunsets
Give or take, one more, one less.
(barring disease or accident,)
From birth to final rest

Twenty five Thousand Sunsets
from first cry to final moan.
A pittance of Eternity
We’re born and we die alone.

Twenty five thousand Sunsets
to laugh, to love, to sin.
To bow our heads in wonder
at how splendid the day has been.

She took my breath away
just by her being near
Her long red ginger hair
Her dangerous curves, her sparkling pair
of eyes that chanced to look my way
Just as the wind snatched my toupee
(That knocked the wind out of my sail)
That left me paunchy, bald and pale.

I guess I might as well inhale.

The old red car
sat alone in his garage
pondering his likely disposition..
Odometers don’t lie
and his said he’d
seen some miles.
There was some body rust
defacing his red paint.
He was out of warrantee
and as he could plainly see
there were newer, flashier
models now about.

Still, his battery was strong,
plenty tread left on his tires
and his CD/stereo still
sounded great..
Would he be sold to another,
less considerate owner
who would make him
spend his old age
on the street?
Would he be towed off to the
dump?
his parts salvaged by some chump?
Would he end up crushed and
melted by the man?

If so, when the metal cooled,
would he find himself retooled
in a showroom ready
for the road again?

Mtu mweusi mweusi, katika mwezi mkali wa moto,
ameketi katika kivuli cha mti wa Baobab.
Majani yaliyomo mara moja
walikuwa kavu na ukame,
waathirika wa upepo wa mabadiliko.

"Wazee, wananiita zamani." Alidhani,
"Majira ya joto ya sabini yanigeuka kijivu,
lakini mti huu wa Baobab ulikua mrefu na wenye nguvu
Wakati majeshi ya Kirumi yalipitia njia hii. "

Mzee huyo alitafuta matunda ya baobab
na akaingia kwenye hali kama hali.
Alikuwa katika hali ya akili;
Sio usingizi, sio macho kabisa.

Aliposikia sauti: "Nina kiu." Ilisema,
Ingawa alikuwa na uhakika alikuwa peke yake.
Ilionekana si sauti ya binadamu:
monotone kavu ya ubongo.

"Kwa vizazi, wanaume kama wewe
Walitaka makazi yangu kutoka kwenye jua,
Lakini sasa imekamilika; nchi imeharibika
Na mimi nina kufa, mdogo. "

Mtu mzee alilia kusikia maneno haya
Kwa maana miti hizi zinapokufa, kama lazima,
Wao huanguka juu ya ardhi yenye ubongo
Hivyo haraka kurudi kwenye Vumbi.

"Dunia imebadilika kwa wewe na mimi,
Upepo ni kavu chini ya jua.
Ninasamehe ulimwengu wa wanadamu
Kwa maana hawajui waliyofanya. "

Mtu mzee aliamka na mwanzo
na akainua na miwa yake.
Alilia kwa kufikiri mti huu utafa

lakini machozi hawezi kuchukua nafasi ya mvua.

He was younger than me.
He was a Prince of the “Street”.
Folks would all stop and listen
whenever he deigned to speak.
To him profit came easy
And with it came fame,
(while I cursed my bad luck
at the Powerball game.)
Yet I’m still living and breathing,
while he’s stiff as a board.
His heirs all lining up
to ravage his hoard.

It’s said he had millions,
yet, as you can see,
they could not buy him health
Or even longevity.
He saw the sun set
But did not see it rise.
Was it pangs of regret?
-Of Thrombosis he died.

First they’ll hold a grand funeral
with much mindless palaver.
Then, like other such maggots,
They’ll feast on the cadaver.
They’ll Jet here and there
To Paris or Rome
Drink fine wines and whiskeys
but seldom at home.
Their meals will all be
Five star and five course
and all at the expense
of one excellent corpse.

Rights are inconvenient things,
I’m sure you must agree.
Why guns remain in private hands
is quite the mystery.
Felons will turn in their guns
I’m sure, without a peep.
(Tyrants always take the guns
Before they slaughter sheep)
Once you cannot defend your rights
Who cares what you think or say?
Harry Bellefonte thinks
You should be locked away.
Wouldn’t trials be quicker,
Would not be justice served,
If truth serum was administered
Instead of oaths with words?
Your guns and your religion
are quaint relics of the past.
Sharia law is coming,
Beheadings ought to be a blast.
You clamor to give up your rights.
The leftists are amused.
The ****** of the innocents
For their purpose will be used.
Quite soon you will be powerless
before the Almighty State.
When you fall ill some bureaucrat
will sign off on your fate.
A land without the Bill of Rights-
It ought to give you chills!
Your birthright gone, your children slaves
of the Marxists on the Hill.

Her fingers are good, she can sew, she can thread.
She has time on her hands, now that her husband is dead.
Lillian Weber is past ninety nine,
she’s on her last mission in a race against time.
She makes dresses for young girls that she’ll never meet;
colorful frocks for the African heat.
Her goal is one thousand dresses, so fine,
by the day that she’ll celebrate for the 100th time.

For years we've consumed
far more than we grow-
preferring to reap
what we disdained to sow.
Our savings outstriped
by the sums that we owe.
Sooner or later
we ride to our fall
the banquet of consequences
awaits for us all.

Published today 10.01

There’s safety in numbers
I’ve oft heard it said-
Unless there are ninety cows
stuck in a shed.
Those numerous ruminants
Munching on hay
Produce mucho methane
in the course of a day.
Ninety odd bovines
Snacking on grass
Take in the fuel
And produce moos and gas.
Those flatulent heifers
Many cow pies produced
Until a stray spark
blew a hole in the roof.
It was shocking to the farmer
And a blow to the farm,
But at least we take comfort
That not one cow was harmed.

His wife had always been afraid
of death, disease, decay.
So she made her husband promise,
before she passed away,
That she would be cremated
not interred and hid away.

Their children were against it;
Cremation they abhorred.
They much preferred the customs
of those who’d gone before.
Her husband, old and feeble,.
her two sons proud and strong.
They took over the arrangements
and felt sure he’d go along.

Instead he brought a lawyer
to the Simmons Funeral Home
with an order to cease and desist
from the plans they’d made alone
Mom was refrigerated while the case
hung in the court
Her husband’s strength and wealth
were spent quicker than he thought.

It was decided in her favor
in the civil court of war
She was retrieved from
her cold storage and
at last the flames would roar


When the deed was finally done
and the urn placed on the shelf.
His love’s last labor finished
He drifted off himself

The preying Mantis
said to her mate
“You think too much!”
and bit off his head


The *** was great

You would think it a dream
to be forever nineteen.
To not age a day
to let youth and strength hold sway.

Still you never count the cost
of all you might have lost:
The sunsets never seen
because you always stayed nineteen.

Just yesterday we got the news;
a positive ID of your remains.
It seems that you died on a foreign shore
when you were just nineteen

Your parents are gone
your siblings dead or dying.
Your nieces and nephews themselves grown old
and yet we all are crying.

My uncle Joe is come home from the war
after Seventy two years gone past
He is forever just nineteen.
That birthday was his last.

Rattler

I lay, languid,
upon the rocky
outcropping.
Basking in the early
afternoon Sun.
Just then
a furry vole
wandered past me.
I slithered over and said
“Let’s do Lunch.”

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.

Her love proved insufficient,
or , worse, illusory.
So you struggle bravely on alone
towards your Calvary.

Remember One who, too ,faced death
abandoned by his friends.
He, too, felt forsaken,
and cried out at the end.

We prisoners all face one fate.
It is our common link.
We all will share this cup of pain
that you are forced to drink.

Yet In this charnel house of Earth
another lies alone.
One, like you, that a
lack of Love has struck a fatal blow.

An evil illness stalks your days
but Love lives in your heart.
bring Love to an unloved one,
and you will have played your part.

Once his kind were ubiquitous; Men and their ponies herding live beef
from the prairies of Kansas and Texas to the slaughterhouses North East
It was a hard life, but good, nights out under the stars; amusing themselves with a song.
There was beans and good coffee shared at the fire; The prairie wind blew sweet and long.
Then the trains came and life wasn’t the same and the cowboys all faded away.
Old Tex was the last of that vanishing breed; He’d tell me tall tales of those days
when he and his crew battled rustlers and snakes to see the herd safe to their doom.
His skin was like leather from the wind and the sun; his big hands arthritic and gnarled.
A roll your own cigarette drooped from his lips and his speech sounded more like a snarl.
Tex passed on last night, a blessing they say, to die in his sleep with no pain.
No churchyard for Tex, he will rest ‘neath the sod just out beyond the old grange
He was the last of a vanishing breed; a man to his quarter horse wed.
The land that he loved will keep changing above, but the wind and the stars never change.

A man on the cusp of One Hundred
found letters that proved beyond doubt
that Rosa, his bride since his twenties,
in the 40’s had “catted” about.
Some German had tickled her fancy
and perhaps a bit more its believed.
The statute of limitations doesn’t apply
when an Italian husband’s aggrieved.
Did he stop to think of the children?
They’re at such an impressionable age.
They may go and spend
their whole pension on drugs,
join a gang, or go out and get laid.
Antonio’s mad at his Rosa
He’s just about called her a *****.
It matters not to him that her transgression
dates back to the second world war.
We don’t know what he read in the letters-
Perhaps his whole life’s been a lie-
but as he is on the cusp of one hundred
why not wait for the children to die?




In Italy, a 99 year old man has divorced his wife aged 96  for a affair she had with a German officer in 1942
He found their letters in a drawer.  No he not longer has to wonder why his oldest boy was named " Fritz"

When last I lay with you my Love-
lay with you in your narrow bed
in your room, off campus, near the mall.
in your last semester of Pre- Med.

That day I’d helped you move your things
And after our feast of pie and beer
You were loathe to let me go
In your narrow bed you held me near.

Your hair was then a fiery red
Your milk white ******* had known no sun
I kept eye contact as I inclined
to worship Venus ever young..

I held you in your narrow bed
hardness in softness intertwined
about a thousand kisses worth
yes, the name you called was mine.

Sweating in a chilly room
Your landlord didn’t give much heat
I held you then for the last time
Both knowing and not knowing that.

You moved away, we grew apart
I met the girl who’d be my wife
You had your practice in L.A.
We both got along with life.


Thirty winters passed me by
I heard that you were back in town
I hurried out to visit you.
To see your face for one last time.


Your brother met me at the door-
The one who used to be a priest
He led me to the open casket
Where your body lay at peace

Streaks of grey were in your hair
The strain of cancer marred you face
But though the battle had been lost
Were you not now in a better place?

Laid out in a pale blue dress
A rosary wrapped around your hands
if they were warm and capable-
Could they make me feel young again?

I left you, Ellen, one last time
Feeling overcome by tears
I clutched my coat against the cold
That reached for me across the years.

From long time friends to bitter foes
From boon companions to friends estranged
The cute little redhead accomplished that
but it was nothing she'd prearranged
So delicate, so beautiful
with eyes a deep Aegean blue
Of course I made a play for her
She wasn't going home with you
Yes, her kisses were as sweet
as you imagined they must be
The reality was better still
warming an autumn evenings chill
I was the first to take the risk
that’s why I was the one she kissed
My actions weren’t the least bit shady
but faint hearts never win fair Ladies

You are Dark, my Dove and sweet.
Like Eve, you tempt me, and I eat.
Oh! Dark Deliciousness!
Oh! Bittersweet!
Your taste- like heaven!

but I shouldn't cry out
here in Seven-Eleven

My Liberal pal, named Sunny,
And I were quite the pair.
He was redistributionist
while I was laissez faire.
We always argued politics-
about welfare or day care.
Each was convinced the other
was deluded past repair.

“We are our brother’s keeper!
On poverty, make war!”
I said poverty was winning
if he’d bother to keep score.
And so it went, as time was spent
Until one night in Queens
When I espied a beggar
looking frail, quite pale and lean.
“Sunny, quick, give me a buck.”
as our car approached the light
I quickly rolled my window down-
I think it made her night.
“It’s sure fun being liberal!”
I said to my pal, Sunny.
“It’s pleasant being generous
with other people’s money.”
Published today 11.03

Ascot - Race Course 1910-20 by daib0


King Edward the Seventh,
was dead.
With him, hope died also, tis said.
At Ascot later that year
his mistresses, I hear,
all favored blacks over reds.
Black hats with black feathers
they wore
in mourning for Bertie, they swore.
Black dresses, of course
for their dear love, now lost,
who, often, had honored their beds.

King Edward the Seventh,
was dead.
With him, hope died also, tis said.
In uncertain blue twilight
Dark shadows were spawned
as the glow from the
lamp lights had fled
Kaiser Wilhelm now free
of restraint from
  his Uncle Bertie
with reckless abandon
chose war.

There was a man who was a fraud.
Incarcerated, He found the Lord.
“I am here for my dereliction,
But why are you in this situation?”
“I heard a soul call out my name,
a spirit in a world of pain.”
“Tonight he dies by lethal injection.
I came to hear his last confession”
“He killed a young girl”, Charles Colson said,
“Surely, it’s just when he, too, is dead.”
“I see that Justice in your mind
is of the eyeless, toothless kind.”
“On you, the irony is lost,
But his gurney is shaped like my cross.”
“He bears the cross known as regret,
His crown of thorns awaits him yet.”
“Forgive me, Lord”, the Felon sighed
“my rush to judgment and my pride.”
“ Let me be reborn this night,
that I might show the world your light.”
He spoke this as a humble prayer,
to a man no longer there.”
The Lord had moved to the bedside
Of the one who would be crucified.

How beautiful is the voice of my Beloved!
She makes music of words the most mundane.
When we need milk, its like the Siren's song:
She bids me to go and how can I refrain?
If perchance, the trash o'er flows the pail,
she commands I take it out and I comply.
Like Circe, her voice bewitches still,
and to resist her, I no longer try.
Some fools gainsay the power of her voice,
but I so love to hear her lyric line;
" Honey, will you wash the dishes, please?"
in tones so sweet how could a man decline?

Its Mother’s day today and flowers, in their bright array,
are popular gifts to give to Mom on this her special day.
While they still thrive the air is sweet; redolent of both rain and Sun.
Eventually their beauty fades though a Mother’s beauty never does.
They are a small enough return for the gift of a Mother’s love.
They are symbol and remembrance too, for those whose Mothers rest in peace.
In their petals, soft like her cheek, lurk remembered fragrances
Stirring memories which make us weep

When I was a child of five I bought a flower for my mom.
It was a fragile little thing but I was glad that she seemed charmed.
The years of our shared lives flew fast, like decades of her rosary.
She is resting now beside my Dad; for now and all eternity.
Some photographs and books are all I have of what she left to me.
Imagine how I felt today when I found this in her breviary-
Pressed petals of that long dead rose; a cherished gift from her young son.
It made a grown man weep for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

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.

The sides are drawn and chosen,
Neutrality has been lost.
Dread war is coming upon us,
Caring not if we can bear its cost,
For the Strong will work their will,
And the weak suffer as they must.
The weapons we’ve forged will be used
The red on the blade is not rust.
The losers are put to the sword.
Their women and children enslaved.
Only there will they find what they sought-
The peace that awaits in the grave.
Of Justice we no longer speak.
Might, naked, commands the stage
Melos fought bravely, alone,
Not a stone of their city was saved.

I’ll admit that it was different, and something of a strain
When our troupe was performing “Hamlet: for the criminally insane.
It was some do gooder’s notion to expose them to the arts.
and I saw that they accepted it when boys played women’s parts.
Some Prisoners thought the ghost was real and they were sore afraid
Their minds could not distinguish it was just a role I played.
Each line meant to gain a laugh fell silent with that group,
But as the death toll mounted, they thought that was a hoot.
They were the strangest audience, those prisoners out there
When Hamlet mused on suicide, they’d hoped he’d end it there.
Poison, ******, suicide; they were thoroughly entertained!
To thunderous applause we bore Prince Hamlet from the stage.
The warden was so gratified the Bard was loved by all
That we’re performing Titus Andronicus for the prisoners this Fall.

Wallace Hartley nodded
and the band played on.
The lifeboats and collapsibles
by then were launched and gone.

Futile flares lit up the sky
A chill borne of despair.
What was the last song that you played ?
A waltz? a Hymn? a prayer?

The violin I hold in my hand
was Wallace's all right.
What will be bid for this memento
of that remembered night?

Some survivors after claimed
you played a hymn of praise.
The wireless man McBride recalled
a mournful waltz was played.

You were the gift of Wallace's love
A girl who never wed.
The last memento of these Lovers
who rest now with the dead.

Now all Titanic's complement
are muted dead and gone.
Yet all survivors testified
that the band, indeed, played on.

When he returned from Vietnam
it was in part, not whole.
Something akin to jungle rot
has seeped into his soul.

He was not fit for steady work
or the company of man, and
in his dreams lurked demons
only liquor could withstand.

The streets of San Diego
are more hospitable as most.
You'll find him sleeping on the grass
in the Corps of the lost hopes.

His final battle rages here,
more desperate than in Nam.
this veteran fights for dignity
in a cold, uncaring land.

It started as a bit of grit stuck in an Oyster’s craw.
In time, through suffering, bit by bit it became the Pearl you saw.
Translucent pink, a perfect orb, no polishing required,
You alone possess this gem which many have desired.
It cost you dear, this perfect pearl, as the bid grew steadily higher.
You’d have gladly given all you had to possess its inner fire.
Time and suffering produced the Pearl, it is immutable law.
Forget that at your peril for the Pearl would be no more.
The Pearl is not a bauble meant to dazzle others’ eyes.
It, like wisdom borne of suffering, is its own reward and prize.

****** Smily Face by billyraines08



This one, to her, seemed different.
She seldom met artistic Huns..
She thought his little mustache cute,
his smile, a winning one.
With charcoal he made sketches
when his duties were all done.

A man, she thought, of courage.
He wore the iron cross.
It was a time of hell on earth-
so many young lives lost


Perhaps her judgment was impaired
by the alcohol that she consumed.
The sixteen year old French girl
took Adolf ****** to her room.

In time she gave birth to a child,
a ******* if ever was one.
A boy they named Jean Marie Loret-
The Devil’s only son

After lengthy calculations, the aged cleric stood:
“This Saturday, May twenty first, those up to no good,
will find themselves abandoned by those who bless the Rood.”
The blessed and the Chosen will be caught up in Mid- air.
Evil-doers will suffer, the Righteous will not care.
It’s been a long time coming, the new Heaven and new Earth
But by my calculations, the four horsemen are at work.
“A time of tribulation will descend upon the land.-
It s’ past time for repentance by the legion of the dammed.

“If I’m perhaps a little off, (as I’ve been wrong before)
Keep those contributions coming, while I check to see the flaw”

When Whitman wrote his "Leaves of Grass"
he was a man before his time.
Just ten years - the span of his career-
before he wrote his final line.
He never asked to have the gift
he could not un-see what he saw.
His sensibilities were formed
in the crucible of civil war.
He wrote beautifully of loss
in words that he was proud to sign.
Now I too know how he felt
as he approached the finish line

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.

We met for drinks and music
in a quiet little bar.
A singer, Reno Sweeney,
was the evening’s featured star.
Bob and Shelia never showed,
throwing us together:
You, a dark eyed beauty,
loquacious and quite clever.
I, your unexpected swain,
With eyes an emerald treasure.

Later at the Piper’s inn
We sat before the fire
You sipped on your white Russian
I drank my Pinot Noir.
I could not know, did not foresee
Our future in my glass:
Our sensual adventures
On rooftops and on grass.
Our joys, our sorrows, and our end
Which then could not be guessed-
Just your sweet face upturned to me
anticipating to be kissed.

“Number Two, Derek Jeter, Number two. “said the disembodied voice.
A man on second, one man out, It was Showalter’s choice.
He could walk Derek Jeter, choosing to pitch to McCann.
The choice would be unpopular, not that he gave a ****.
With no one warming in the pen, Buck chose to roll the dice.
Derek had two R.B.I., another would be nice.
Antoun danced off second base, Meek delivered fast and low.
Jeter punched it to right field, where else would it go?
Antoun raced around third base and dove headfirst for home.
The crowd roared at the signal “Safe “and they were not alone..
The Captain leapt up in the air, the moment we’ll remember,
our pleasure in an otherwise forgettable September.
He will not take the field again; his time at Short is done.
A handful of at bats remain before his race has run.
Bob Sheppard will go silent now, that voice beyond the grave,
The night that Robertson got the win, and Jeter got the save.

He showers each day,
and he takes out the trash.
He works in the garden at times.
Mostly he sits in his cell and he reads.
He has never admitted his crime.

He seldom gets visitors
and hasn’t made many friends.
He sits by himself at mealtimes.
He serves a life sentence-no hope of parole
Until death he’ll remain here inside.

Conjugal visits? It’s been several years.
Since last she was seen by his side.
At lights out, sometimes,
you can hear gentle sobbing
as a little bit more of him dies.

A horse to Ride, A sword to wield,
an ocean of grass to tame.
The Seventh was out in the field
to make George Custer’s name.

The village stretched before them,
Custer split his force in three.
Reno’s men struck from the south
and were taking casualties.

Did Custer reach the river
before the natives struck?
This hero of the Civil war
had just run out of luck.

Major. Reno sensed the trap and fled
And found a place to stand
Benteen brought his men to Reno
to lend a helping hand.

A horse to Ride, A sword to wield
An ocean of grass to tame
The Seventh was out in the field
to make George Custer’s name.

Out upon the greasy grass
George tried to make a stand
Two hundred men surrounded
There was a breakdown in command.

Outnumbered and surrounded
Some men simply broke and ran
But death was not to be denied,
Their blood fed thirsty sand.

Custer, mortally wounded,
with a bullet near his heart.
did not live to see the rest.
His troopers hacked apart.

The position held by Reno
And commanded by Benteen
survived several furious assaults
before the natives fled the scene.

Relieved by General Terry’s force,
They sought their fallen ones-
The bodies hacked and naked,
decomposing in the sun.

No horse to Ride, No sword to wield,
an ocean of grass untamed.
The Seventh lay out in the field
That was the cost of fame.