It was cold for early June; a pause between two storms.
The surf –rough, the water-cold, but the reception would be warm.
Our Higgins boat made steady speed taking us to shore.
For some it was the Longest Day, for many others the last they saw.

The scene awaiting us was surreal; a muck up like the worst.
The Germans kept the corpsmen busy- if they didn’t **** them first.
The leaden rain was constant as we struggled towards the shore.
Our platoon was decimated; many saw the end of war.

There were acts of heroism. Our leaders proved their worth.
We took ******’s Atlantic wall; thought impregnable at first.
I looked from the high bluff at the grey Armada just off shore.
I lost a bunch of pals today, but we’ll even the score.

We are a band of brothers encamped above this Norman shore.
I will never tell my parents of the horrors that I saw.
The air stinks of sweat and iron, and the stench of cordite from spent rounds.
The chaplains collect the dog tags from the still forms on the ground.

There was only one question on their final exam.
“Are you a Christian?” The perturbed man inquired.
The Buddhists were wounded, the Muslims were spared.
To deny Christ; so easy, to bear witness; so hard,
What would they answer; those about to meet God?
Would they lie to be “saved”? or lie down in the sod.
Nine souls were dispatched with a shot to the head,
before police shot their interrogator dead.
Nine people bore witness to the Cross at their death.
They wouldn’t deny Him with their final breath.
American Martyrs bore Him witness, you see.
If you took this exam what would your answer be?

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.

There is nothing to be done, nothing anyone can say
that will salve old Pedro’s heartache and take his grief away.
Three generations of his girls died in the tragic crash.
Their tickets all read “Dusseldorf” but they all died in France.
The old man sits dejected with his head hid in his hands.
A senseless act has claimed their lives, this much he understands.
A church bell tolls the call to prayer in Barcelona Spain.
They pray for all the victims of a pilot gone insane.
He forms their names upon his lips. It is a soundless cry.
His loved ones fell to earth they say out of a clear blue sky.

This cave held secrets, of that he was sure.
It was filled with ages of debris.
Already they had found the bones
of two australopithecines.
He squatted near the latest find,
A flake of stone, stone that had been worked
long before **** sapiens’ time;
when our precursors walked the Earth.
He felt the stones weight in his hand,
Cool to the touch, the well-made blade,
Sharp enough to skin a deer-
a treasured heirloom from this grave.
His mind wandered, in the cool dark of the cave,
to think of those who worked this stone.
They were driven from the Eden of the trees
and struggled to survive on the grassy plain.
In a night without fires’ comforting glow;
In a night full of sounds; roars whispers and groans.
He grasped the stone tool tighter still
He had never felt so all alone.
Then he was rescued from all such thoughts
By the vibrating call of his I phone.

My hands are spotted, marked with age.
I feel the cold more keenly now.
I have seen some good friends pass.
I’ve lost at love but kept my vow.
I’ve seen beloved parents’ dead
and held their bodies in my arms.
I’ve watched as youth and beauty fled
from the mirror before my eyes.
Yet through it all I’ve no regrets,
No thoughts that it’s been wasted time.
Hearts will break but they will mend.
Those hearts that don’t are most unkind.
Those who do have had good teachers
Though never one as good as mine.

A simple kiss upon your cheek,
A gentle, loving kiss.
Not amorous or passionate,
Not connoting love remiss.
Thirty years ago
we were an "item" as they say.
I broke your heart
with my callousness
when, hurtfully, I strayed
I'm not proud that I hurt you.
Sad that it comes to this-
To kiss you like a stranger
feels like the Judas Kiss.

Back in the age of faith
when most lived in homes of sod
There lived a humble man
They called the juggler of God.

He was just a simple juggler
He could not read or write.
He performed his simple tricks
for children’s laughter and delight.

In return for food and shelter-
for he had little use for gold-
He travelled from town to town
until he at last grew old.

When arthritis swelled his joints
He grew stooped, his fingers cold
When at last his gifts had failed him
He turned attention to his soul.

In the order of Saint Benedict
The kind Abbot gave him place
Though he barely knew the prayers
His simple mind was full of grace.

In the chapel of Our Lady
The Juggler prayed there in the Aisle
Bemoaning his inability
to entertain the holy child.

He felt warmth in his fingers
A quick release from pain
He reached into his leather sack
for the objects of his trade.

There before the altar
The brother juggled for the Lord
It was to be his last performance
with a heavenly reward.

Back in the age of faith
when most lived in homes of sod
There lived a humble man
They called the juggler of God.

The two of us, both friends,
were both interested in the same girl:.
A slender slip of a miss
with bold red hair and wonderful eyes
eyes a cerulean blue.
He hesitated and was lost.
I drove that angel home.
I parked across from her parent house.
We were finally alone,
It was a night in springtime
redolent of magnolia.
I leaned in for that most memorable
first kiss.
For we were not yet lovers.
I think she liked my confidence.
I adored her upturned face,
as we shared a long and loving kiss
in an affectionate embrace.

Some forty years have come and gone.
I've long since been replaced.
Still I have not forgotten her;
Those eyes, those lips, that face.

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.

These woods are strangely silent now.
No star shells burst to light the scene.
The earth has binded up her wounds.
No rats feast here, no wounded scream.

I walk upon the souls of men
They were sent here for the fight.
They lived like moles entrenched in earth
And rose to fall upon first light.

I still can hear those whistles shrill
My minds eye shudders at the sight.
I saw my friends, my brothers fall
While somehow I survived the fight.

My fingers are gnarled like the Hawthorne’s branches
My eyes cloud over in bright light.
I alone of that brave company
Have seen a century of nights

Forgive me now my brave companions
That I remain and you are gone.
Soon enough I’ll come and join you
The last of those who fought the Somme.

In widowhood, Mom lived alone
in the house that was her pride.
Though a faded glory to others 'eyes
it still held her dreams inside.
Still, Mom was growing feeble
in terms of strength and mind.
Assisted living loomed ahead,
just past that Christmastide.
So all us children reconvened
to bide our home farewell.
We decked her halls with garlands,
Her doors with Christmas bells.
For years she'd had a tiny tree
placed on a table stand.
This Christmas saw a Douglas fir
which made her home look grand.
We gathered round the Christmas Tree
and raised our voice in song
After a cup (or two) of cheer
not a single note seemed wrong.
Evening came and that tree shone bright-
lights twinkling in the dim.
There were hugs and kisses all around
to all my next of kin..
That was our last Christmas in her home
The last that we would share.
In Memory it is evergreen-
so let me linger there.

In widowhood, Mom lived alone
in the house that was her pride.
Though a faded glory to others 'eyes
it still held her dreams inside.
Still, Mom was growing feeble
in terms of strength and mind.
Assisted living loomed ahead,
just past that Christmastide.
So all us children reconvened
to bide our home farewell.
We decked her halls with garlands,
Her doors with Christmas bells.
For years she'd had a tiny tree
placed on a table stand.
This Christmas saw a Douglas fir
which made her home look grand.
We gathered round the Christmas Tree
and raised our voice in song
After a cup (or two) of cheer
not a single note seemed wrong.
Evening came and that tree shone bright-
lights twinkling in the dim.
There were hugs and kisses all around
to Margaret, Clare and Jim.
That was our last Christmas in her home
The last that we would share.
In Memory it is evergreen-
so let me linger there.

The bearded man in the forager’s cap rode in on little sorrel that night.
Lee had called a council of war to game plan for the coming fight.
The Northern aggressors were on the move but they might be vulnerable on their right.
It was a bold audacious plan to divide in the face of the foe.
The Calvary screen was key to the scheme to find where best to strike the blow.
The battle would be called Lee’s masterpiece; ******’s men broke and they fled.
but the battle would also be Jackson’s last; in just a few days he’d be dead..
In the dark of May second, men rode the plank road, Jackson rode at their head
Did they ignore the Sentry’s challenge? Or did the sentry mishear what they said?
They took Jackson arm, the saw-blade did sing, but alas it was to no avail
He crossed over the river to rest neath the shade of the trees in the hero’s vale

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.

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.

He’d offered her his hand to dance
Politely, she’d declined.
“I have promised many others,
-perhaps another time.”

He accepted this with all good grace-
“Perhaps another time,
When your dance card is nearly full,
The last dance shall be mine.”

The night was young and she was fair,
Men clamored for their chance.
In some eyes she saw routine lust,
In others- true romance.

Her card was signed by many
There remained a single line.
She stopped back at her table
for a final cup of wine.

The dark and handsome stranger
was waiting for her there.
She took his hand without protest
as he rose up from his chair.

He led her to the dance floor
as the band played one last time.
The music was a stately waltz
done in three quarter time.

His arms were strong and masterful
as he led her in the dance
Her will seemed to desert her
as she fell into a trance.

In the half light she looked up
And searched his face and eyes
The eyes of Death looked back at her,
In lust for her demise..

Swept up in her dance with Death,
She uttered not a sound
for she was in his power now.
and destined for the ground.

He flew with Doolittle against Japan
on the eighteenth of April in Forty two.
Eighty brave volunteers made that flight.
but their numbers dwindled down to you.

In postwar reunions these men would meet
And toast the fallen gone before
From silver goblets with their names inscribed,
these heroes of that distant war.

Then, when there were only two,
A vintage bottle was opened at last.
You gave the toast to vanished friends;
The faces and names from your storied past.

Now you, too, have been laid to rest
In old Marse Robert’s hallowed fields.
Once more you hold the bombers yoke
And lift off Hornet’s pitching deck.
You rise toward grey shrouded skies
upon a fearsome enterprise.

Once, on a Sunday morning, we were 1500 strong.
Then the bombs began to fall and the world we knew was gone.
Our ship, the Arizona, was among the first to sink.
A thousand men, our brothers and friends, perished in a wink.
The war years took too many more, old age has claimed its due.
Now, at this last reunion, we are seven surviving crew.
Old and weak and wheelchair bound, nevertheless we come
to raise a toast to fallen friends long hidden from the Sun.
Our ship became a graveyard on that day in Forty one.
One day we’ll be interred here too when our enlistments done.
With tear filled eyes we drink a toast with vintage dry champagne.
Then pour out a libation so our dead may do the same.

“We have no need of “Heroes” from our “so-called” storied past.”
So they pulled their statues from their plinths, while we looked on aghast.
The generals and the Presidents; the finest men we’d known,
Consigned to History’s dustbin until one remained alone.

Grant’s tomb was desecrated; its plea for peace ignored.
His opponents’ visage shattered; Lee reduced to shards of stone.
“Thomas Jefferson was a ****** who had children by his slave.”
Despite some feeble protests, his statues weren’t saved.

“Churchill’s bust, be gone from us!” They tossed it on the heap.
“Consign him to the flames!” they roared. It was not his first defeat.
Paintings done by Trumbull joined busts made by Houdon
Until nearly all reminders of our country’s past were gone.

Once Washington and Jefferson had joined Lee and Longstreet;
Their Paintings and their statues gone; their names expunged from streets.
They pulled “Old Glory” from its pole and consigned it to the fire,
and danced like Satan’s children as the flames leaped ever higher.

At last, they came for Lincoln to unseat him from his throne.
Of our pantheon of heroes, he, till now, was left alone.
“His fine words and speeches shall not save him from this fate!”
“He was a white supremacist too; he wished blacks would emigrate.”

What he thought of these barbarians is known to him alone.
Like Athena of antiquity, when the “Christians’ razed her home.
They went to work with relish until Abe’s statue had atoned.
For all sins, real and imagined, they left no stone upon a stone.

From age to age we gather, and we pool our ignorance.
At things we think good and moral,, our forebears would take offense.
Tolerance- the last virtue lost, as we approach a darker time.
Our civic altars desecrated; our civilization in decline.

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.

He itemized his medical bills,
Maxed retirement deductions.
He's given cash to charities
and Democratic functions.
This scion of the one percent
knows its his cash they're after.
Manipulating tax returns
will keep him the last laugher.
A death this year is profitable
before tax cuts expire.
While he'll probably miss his parents
Still he set their house on fire.
He hates to see the old place go
but still he watched it burn
while thinking of deductions
for the Estate tax return.

My Leah was lovely
in her pearl bedecked dress.
as she circled the chuppah
seven times , not one less.

In the presence of friends
I gave Leah my ring.
That how we were wed,
it's the nature of things.

Our party was loud
and in truth seemed a blur.
My bride filled my vision,
such was my love of her.

At some point, the Steward,
our wine sommelier ,
grew concerned at the drinking-
Running out was a fear.

As we both have large families,
and they like to drink wine.
your supply may run dry
at inopportune times.

Cousin Jesus was there,
with Mary, his Mother,
a studious soul
and devout like few others.

When they heard our plight;
learned the shame we would face.
That's when cousin Jesus
got up from his place.

I don't know what transpired,
I'll just say what I heard-
How he made wine from water
by the strength of his word.

A superior vintage
My palate proclaimed!
The guests were all pleased
and the party was saved.

Even our wine Sommelier
was impressed
He wondered why we
saved the best wine for last.

These three years that followed
filled with sadness, not mirth.
Jesus died on a cross,
Leah died giving birth.

I sit here alone,
as the last of my line.
Now sleep only comes
with the last of the wine.

Jessica lay quiet on the floor
as images still flickered on the screen
One of a dozen murdered in their prime
when the silver screen became a ****** scene.

Just last month she had narrowly escaped
a shooter loose in a Toronto Mall.
As in the movie"final Destination"
Death came back to pay another call.

We never know the moment or the hour
when we'll be called to render our account.
Arbitrary fate selects the victims
from both doubters and the hopefully devout.

Parents still wait anxious by the phone
for any word about their children's fate.
Ten dead at least lie scattered in the aisles
The ****** harvest of a madman's hate.

They buried him at Calverton,
the sky provided tears.
His mourners were the Few, the Proud.
No next of kin appeared.

For years he’d wandered City Streets,
a casualty of war.
The V.A. patched his injuries,
they couldn’t bandage what he saw.

The State had little use for him,
once the Peace accords were signed
His tiny pension was just enough
to purchase anodyne.

The blessings of a dreamless sleep,
He sometimes found in wine.
Otherwise he was on night patrol
With friends he’d left behind.

It’s hard to live civilian life,
His haunted mind was too far gone.
His body slept in Central Park
while his soul patrolled Khe San.

Then one night, more cold then most,
that solider finally yields.
She found him, dead, beneath the bridge
That he’d called “home” for years.

That kindly New York City Cop,
who knew he was a Vet,
arranged a simple funeral.
-That’s more than many get.

Present, aim, ready, fire!
They fire three quick rounds.
Accompanied by a tape of “Taps”
They commit him to the ground.

It’s a sad, sad scene on a Saturday night;
a lady sits  at the bar with no lover  in sight.
Stirring her drink with the straw in their hand,
bemoaning the lack of a suitable man.
She’s long since been abandoned by her ”Mister Right”,
Now the magic never lasts for more than one night.
She’s a leftover lover on the wrong side of thirty.
Feeling sad for herself; not the least bit flirty.
She has a good job and a place here downtown
But a true mate and friend is nowhere to be found.
No one to go home to, except for her kitty,
A sad denouement for one once thought to be pretty.
“Either they’re momma’s boys or they’re gay”
She thinks of the “talent” she sees on display.
She knows all too well that, in a drink or two,
She’ll be stumbling home with Mister He’ll do.

I lay down on my childhood bed with a bottle, half empty, in my hand.
I raised my pistol to my temple; feeling lost, hopelessly dammed.
I flicked the safety off my forty five and took a pull from my Jim Beam.
I was ready to be a sad statistic, another tortured Ex- Marine.

I pulled the trigger, this much I know. What happened next, I can surmise.
I passed out from the alcohol, the pistol jammed; I didn’t die.

My friend had died at his own hand, just one of six from my old team.
We’re tortured by the ghosts of war; in flashbacks I can hear the screams.
We buried my friend yesterday. The flag was folded and Taps was played.
A detail fired blank salutes as his family wept and his mother prayed.
I bowed my head and turned to go; His mother stayed me with her hand.
“I hope you will not be tempted- to do the thing your brothers do.”
She pressed a spent brass casing into my open hand.
I looked down, dumbly, in surprise.
“I know you are a soul at risk.” I’ve seen that look in my son’s eyes.”
“If only I’d known how to help; only too late do we grow wise.”
She made me promise, then and there, that I’d not put my mother through
the anguish and the agony that other keening mothers knew.
.
Today I face another day; the journey will be hard, I know.
I poured the bottle down the drain, and turned to face my shadow foe.

The day is grey, the clouds hang low, and, in the air, a winter chill.
Upon the beach called Omaha an old soldier stands; a promise to fulfill.
Full Seventy years ago this man, weighted down with gear and kit,
raced across this wet grey sand, and, by some miracle, remained unhit.
Friends who’d survived that longest day, and all the long days after it,
had purchased the bottle held in his hands. As the last man standing
he had charge of it:

His eyes, watery from the wind, Looked at the bottle in his hands:
A Dom Perignon Brut Champagne, the 47’ vintage year.
He thought about his comrades gone. Surely they were heroes all
Who spilled out from the Higgins boats to breach the ***’s Atlantic wall.
He felt the presence of the ghosts, all those who fell upon this shore.
Boys, really, almost all eighteen, who’d died
answering Freedom’s call .

He tore the foil with old gnarled hands; His Arthritis made a chore of this.
Thin wire held the cork in place and was so difficult to untwist.
Once free his placed his thumbs upon the curved underbelly of the cork
The cork shot free across the sand and bubbly foam
chased after it.

He was not a religious man, it seemed impious for him to pray
Though he recalled so many had, that day they bled their lives away.
How best to honor these fallen men? Who had pledged their lives, each to each.
It was then he turned the bottle down and poured the contents
on the beach.


Some would declare it sacrilege to let that vintage go to waste.
The old soldier smiled and felt at peace.
He’d seen the vintage of 26’ poured out in buckets
In this very place..

The earth eclipsed the moon tonight
and turned that orb blood red.
The Sox just swept the Cardinals
and Bambino's curse lies dead.

Old Da had rooted Eighty years
but never saw them win.
Of Buckner, back in Eighty Six,
he never spoke again.

So first I went and bought us beers,
I got Sam Adams best.
Then I crept into the graveyard
where old Da takes his rest.

I poured his drink upon the grave
and raised my bottle high.
We beat the hated Yankees,Da!
Next year our banner flies!

All around me here and there
were Red Sox fans, my peers-
All celebrating with their Dads
and wiping back the tears.

The earth eclipsed the moon tonight
and turned that orb blood red.
The Sox just swept the Cardinals
and Bambino's curse lies dead.

Old Da had rooted Eighty years
but never saw them win.
Of Buckner, back in Eighty Six,
he never spoke again.

So first I went and bought us beers,
I got Sam Adams best.
Then I crept into the graveyard
where old Da takes his rest.

I poured his drink upon the grave
and raised my bottle high.
We beat the hated Yankees, Da!
Next year our banner flies!

All around me here and there
were Red Sox fans, my peers-
All celebrating with their Dads
and wiping back the tears.

We imagine Life sequential-
from birth until we go.
Yet, being fraught with memory,
I protest it is not so.
Our hates, our loves, our prejudice,
all build up over years.
Before we face the precipice,
we face our sum of fears.
My passionate kiss upon your neck
was learned with other lovers.
Even in the here and now
I'll speak some phrase of mother's.
Even when all my cutaneous cells
have shed and been replaced.
I continue to show the world,
what appears the selfsame face.
Every moment of my "Now"
betrays this underpinning
Only in my final breath
can I put paid to my sinning.

Every woman has one in her closet,
Although some are loathe to confess.
It’s perfect for many occasions.
It is known as the little black dress..

For Women who seek to entice,
or have men they want to impress.,
There is nothing terribly virginal
concerning that little black dress.

Its of Spidery inspiration and,
oh, what a web they can weave.
They use it, some say, ensnaring their prey.
It comes out again when they grieve.

In Wedding, our Ladies wear white.,
A Little black dress when they keen.
They dress in subtler shades of gray
on all the days in between.

When his heart stopped on the table, and the nurse pronounced the time,
Graham was surprised as any that his consciousness survived.
He was a lifelong bureaucrat; venial, unrefined,
with all of the complexity of a soured table wine.
He was not meet for Heaven. He wasn’t good or kind.
He thought he’d join the Devils, but his option was declined.
So he wandered as a lonely ghost in a world gone monochrome.
Surely there were others like him but they did not make themselves known.
He grew envious of his ashes, resting silent in their urn.
His mortal flesh, consumed by flames, was at no risk of return.
One time he tried to say a prayer, to stir the mystic Chords,
But no one heard a syllable; he had forgotten all his words.
He wandered like this countless years until he lost his mind.
It had been his choice to live like this when he still had world and time.

Like the ancient wanderers
This orb of gas and stone
Travels through the Universe
But this one is all alone.
It hasn’t a companion,
No star to circle round.
If it formed around a gaseous disk
The others are all gone.
It wanders lonely
Deep in space
Off to parts unknown,
Perhaps to find a willing star
and finally find a home

Here by the shore of the swift flowing Boyne
Where the Jacobite cause bled and died.
Here the piper had come to find his dead sons
that their loved native soil must soon hide.
What chance had they here against William’s cannon
Armed with muskets their grand sires bore?
Why had they been drawn to the sound of the guns?
A call they will hear nevermore.
While he searched he still harbored the faintest of hopes
That one of his sons still might bide.
But no, then he saw them as if they both slept
by the shore of the Boyne, side by side.
Beneath a great oak the man buried his hopes
His ***** turned the red clay aside.
His strong hands worked the earth for all he was worth
as a trickle of sweat stung his eyes.

I have heard that man play, on the cool evening’s breath,
Such a dirge as would make angels weep.
It’s a cry from his heart that escapes   from his pipes
to the place where his two heroes sleep.

The thing that killed her has a name

It formed the plaque that scarred her brain.

She embarked upon that one way trip

where names elude and memories slip



This disease is most unkind

It slows the step and clouds the mind

Her daughter daily watched her fade

into a lemure, a ghostly shade.



She was not frail at eighty nine

She’d cold cocked nurses in her time

who came too close with an I.V.

and paid dearly for their ministry.



The heart was strong, but not the mind

Ten years passed, as we count time.

She couldn’t hear or speak our names

How silent then her world became.



She couldn’t eat without an aide,

Or walk without a metal cane.

At the last- the chair with wheels

And we all saw how helpless feels.



Some say death is most unkind

Perhaps, for those before their time-

But for those who linger at his door

There is no gift they wanted mor

The last few customers looked, but bought nothing.
At this rate I can’t pay the rent on this place.
It’s Time to turn out the lights, maybe give up my dream.
Sales are only at half last year’s pace.

Who buys books anymore?
Who bothers to read?
They stare at their cellphones.
They chill with Netflix

If I lose the store what will become of my treasures?
These are magical portals to all time and space.
The words of the Prophets the poets and dreamers
will wind up in a dumpster, their memory effaced.

Who buys books anymore?
Who bothers to read?
They drink Mocha lattes
They live for WIFI

Today I received in the mail the dread notice.
I will be evicted; the Marshall will come.
Shakespeare and Freud will be tossed to the gutter.
The tribe of the verb is forever undone.

For those who view abortion different;
As the ****** of an unborn innocent,
There’s a Newtown massacre every day
with nameless victims for whom they pray.
Not wishing to gainsay the law
of privacy or woman’s right to choose.
Praying more for a change of heart,
for children not to be refused.
For there are songs that might have been
That never will be sung.
Blank Canvases, devoid of paint,
That never will be done.
In truth, a generation lost,
As one was lost before;
The first upon the fields of France,
the next on Clinic floors.
No firearms employed this time
but the carnage is the same;
Helpless bodies torn apart
Their blood poured down the drain.
I’ve seen the people up in arms
When Madmen use their right to choose,
But abortionists grow fat and rich
Please understand why I’m confused.

Love is a connection between two people.
When one of them hangs up you get dial tone.
Followed by a little voice saying:
"There appears to be a receiver off the hook."

“The grief therapist will see you now.”
the perky redhead told us.
Her rolling hips then led the way
majestically before us..

Final arrangements must be made.
as our loved one is gone;
Melvin joined the choir invisible
singing his swan song.

He had been fading badly,
and we knew the end was near.
Now he’s a mortuary client,
pausing  for his final bier..

Thank God for prearrangement
or we truly would be gored.
It gets to be quite expensive
when you’re sleeping with the Lord.

He’s shuffled off this mortal coil
and brought the curtain down.
Soon he’ll be checking out the grass
from six feet underground..

Melvin has given up the ghost.
He was snuffed out in his prime.
He cashed his chips in early,
passing on before his time.

“Your loved one’s in a better place.”
The Undertaker gravely said..
“His ancestors have embraced him
in a place of light, not dread.”

Some will say he kicked the bucket,
checked out early, bought the farm.
The religious say he’s with the Lord,
The perpetual light is on.

Melvin, were he here with us,
more likely would have said
a better place for him would be
that redhead’s poster bed.

They briefly loved who sheltered here; the beautiful Sarah and her cousin Will.
They fled the City to this place in England’s north wild rolling hills.
Her husband had neglected her, visiting stables and not her bed.
By that wild summer of Sixty- eight their estrangement had come to a head.
To this old country house she fled; to linger in her Lover’s arms.
Their close sanguinity proved no bar; she gladly yielded to his charms.
They summered here and oft were seen, together, on the Lover’s walk.
A place where blackthorn trees entwine; but you know how people love to talk.
He left her then, alone, with child, as coloured leaves began to fall.
Divorced, disgraced, abandoned thus; She sheltered in another’s home.
This famous beauty with Stuart blood there would raise her child alone.

Such is the history of this place; their romance played out in these halls.
Their scandalous adultery was consummated within these walls.
Modern beauties visit still and stroll with beaus the Lover’s walk-
A place where blackthorn trees entwine and old ghosts whisper in the dark.

They briefly loved who sheltered here; the beautiful Sarah and her cousin Will.
They fled the City to this place in England’s north wild rolling hills.
Her husband had neglected her, visiting stables and not her bed.
By that wild summer of Sixty- eight their estrangement had come to a head.
To this old country house she fled; to linger in her Lover’s arms.
Their close sanguinity proved no bar; she gladly yielded to his charms.
They summered here and oft were seen, together, on the Lover’s walk.
A place where blackthorn trees entwine; but you know how people love to talk.
He left her then, alone, with child, as coloured leaves began to fall.
Divorced, disgraced, abandoned thus; She sheltered in another’s home.
This famous beauty with Stuart blood there would raise her child alone.

Such is the history of this place; their romance played out in these halls.
Their scandalous adultery was consummated within these walls.
Modern beauties visit still and stroll with beaus the Lover’s walk-
A place where blackthorn trees entwine and old ghosts whisper in the dark.

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.

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

He was a shadow of himself, the man I came to see.
Time had robbed him of his strength; sapped his vitality.
This man who rode the badlands, this man who’d hunted game,
leaned on his cane to greet me; In fear of why I came.

We long had been acquaintances, I wouldn’t style us friends.
He was a politician, I’m a newspaperman.
I bore bad news to Sagamore Hill; He wouldn’t take it well
It was ill tidings I’m afraid, that I’d been sent to tell.

He had four boys in Khaki clad, all serving then in France
His youngest, Quentin, was a pilot, a fair haired figure of romance.
I think he knew before I spoke the reason why I came.
I saw it **** the boy in him as I pronounced the name.

The “old lion” died months later. He had so long been ill.
After Quentin’s death his father seemed to lose his will.
He was a shadow at the end, a soul adrift at sea.
I prefer to think of Teddy as the man he used to be.

I cannot see the man upstairs, but yet I know he’s there;
He plays his telly very loud, he must be deaf, I swear.
I hear him stomping to the loo several times each night.
He’s either back to drinking coffee, or his prostrate isn’t right.
He pays his rent on time each month; he puts it with my mail.
He leaves for work before I wake, and his trash is in my pail.
I know that he loves mallow mars and the beer he drinks is Schlitz.
So by these sure and certain signs I know that he exists.
I know some of my neighbors must harbor secret doubts.
The man upstairs is an introvert, you never see him out.
Every night at 6 P.M. when he plops into his chair,
His presence is revealed to me; He’s the man upstairs.

A kind word and an autograph
were the sort of things he did..
He always had a winning smile
The man we called “the kid”.

In Victory; magnanimous,.
In defeat: A stand up guy.
He was the newsman’s hero
with deadlines looming nigh.

With his Mets down two games to nil
and a must win game to play.
He drove the ball to Lansdowne Street
and showed his team the way.

He hated making the “last out”-
In game six he never did.
His single brought us to our feet
The man we called “the kid.”

Now the opposing pitcher, Death,
has slipped a changeup by.
That Gary went down swinging
will cause grown men to cry.

But somewhere, in some little league,
There’s a kid with curly hair.
Who loves the game like Gary did,
He’s the answer to our prayer.

He’ll play the game the right way,
just like Gary always did.
Then, when he smiles, we’ll think about
The man we called “the Kid”.

While climbing near mount Nevis
A Scotsman dropped a dime.
He leaped off to recover it
So fast he dropped his line.
He seemed to fly upon updrafts
And glanced off lumps of rock
He made it safely to the ground-
The rescue squad was shocked.
He had some bumps and bruises
And was sore in both his arms
But at least he found his coin
and didn’t lose his “Lucky Charms”.

Most folks who drop a thousand feet
Would suffer death or worse.
He rode a helicopter home
Most folks would take a hearse.

I remember well his spirit
on that warm September day.
Al Quaida had attacked us,
Tom enlisted right away.

In Operation Phantom Fury,
near deaf from the cannons roar,
He manned a Marine battery
in November of 04'

He was present when Fallujah fell
proud of his unit's aim.
Then he saw his best friend die
After that, his letters changed.

He came unscratched through tours of duty
both there and in Afghanistan.
He was strangely quiet when back home
like he was a different man.

At night we would be awakened
by his screaming in his sleep.
He was haunted by experiences
of which he wouldn't speak.

The V.A. couldn't help him
escape the horror of the war.
Wounds so deep opened in sleep,
unbound, unsalved,and raw.

I thank you for the folded flag,
The honors of the field.
We lost Tom several years ago,
only now is it revealed.

The Yankees took the field and we heard the anthem played.
The air was thick that August night.
Louisiana Lighting placed his cap upon his head.
The stadium lights were burning bright.
Ron Guidry turned to face home plate
With a feeling akin to  despair
He searched in vain for the Catcher’s sign
From the man who wasn’t there.

Eight Yankees took the field that night.
The Umpire stood alone.
Collectively we felt the pain
of Thurman Munson gone.
Jerry Narron caught that game
The Yankees rallied late.
Yet all felt the vacancy
That had happened at home plate
Upon this sad anniversary
I solicit your thoughts and prayers
For the Yankees fallen Captain;
the man who wasn’t there.