Marshal Gebbie

Jul 2021

CK Baker

Wildfire

A salute to the heroes
who battle the blaze
of raging infernos
with billowing haze

they drop into combat
in smouldering heat
a ****** forest
holds little retreat

brothers* in arms
who forge the attack
scaling the landscape
with 60 lb packs

down in the valleys
and up through the hills
hectares burning
as time stands still

bombers and copters
descend from the air
as dozers dig trenches
with no time to spare

the enemy rages
and embers rush
the firestorm flames
consume the brush

an evening ignited
in blood orange sky
candling trees
with tinder dry

may we always remember
the fighters of flames
who battle the burn
without any fame

saving families, and cities
wildlife and ward
a charred streaked face
their quiet reward

*and sisters!

🔥…ignited by sparks
of a discarded roach,
when using the forest
mind your approach! 🔥

Jul 2021

Thomas W Case

Cor Meum,Caput Meum (My Heart, My Head)

Pages turn,
chapters end,
books are finished.
With resolution, and head
held high, I'll
fly away to somewhere
safer, where there's
less pain.
I try to love you,
but you just
push me away.
The heart is a
silly dreamer.
It sees life as it
should be...could be,
and not as it
really is.
The head sees what
the heart doesn't.
Emotions can be as
treacherous as a
rabid dog or a
razor blade.
I wish I were a
redwood or a rosebush,
or even a dandelion
just
swaying in the
breeze.

#heart #head #emotional #rational #pain

Marshal Gebbie Jul 2021

The Pregnant Pause

Patience in the pass of time
Resurrects the need of mine
To ponder why, the where, the when
Mankind's courage tends to bend.
Be it in the space of fear
When a threat, perhaps, is near,
Be it in when a smarter man
Outwits with a sharper plan?
What the odds when she who smiles
Condescends our lesser wiles?
Painful should we all rescind
To insecurity's foul wind.

Why the quickened, racing pulse
As faster challengers convulse?
When hesitation in the heart
Circumvents the courage part?
Where that moments damning pause
Kills legality's last clause?
A gathered sweat on worried brow
Nervous twitching reveals, now,
Courage fled on wings of steel
Crystalizing what is real...
Hollow symptoms, (plain to me),
Timidity's complicity!.

M.
18 July 2021

I see more and people standing back, not wanting to get involved while
the heavies walk all over them. Timidity seems contagious in that most won't stick their neck out and back themselves. Whatever happened to the pride engendered by a performance involving courage and self respect?
Whatever happened to self esteem?

Marshal Gebbie Jul 2021

The **** of Hope and Promise

She runs through the street
In terror, distraught,
Bloodied knees bleeding
Mad eyes, contort.
The ones with the guns
Are hot on her trail
Mercilessly manifest,
Rapaciously male.

Windows shattered
Shelving laid bare
Unruly rioting
Careers everywhere.
Fires are burning,
Dead bodies in heaps,
Maniacal screaming
Killing Cops in the streets....

South Africa burns
As atrocities' flail,
Shotguns blasting
Lethality's hail.
Black men fleeing
In blind panic's fear,
Cowering whites know,
**** well, death is near.

Disorder splits
Through street and town
Causing Judges gavels,
To pound up and down.
Good hope and promise
Both strewn and escaped,
Caste out amidst filth
And callously *****.

Hope now beyond
The very ken of man
Seeing hate and fear
Has taken command.
Balance now tipped
Across the scale,
Hurling Africa's carnage
Beyond the pale.

M.
Watching Africa burn.
13 July 2021