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  Dec 2021 Marshal Gebbie
Don Bouchard
On a desert plain, wind blown, mirages boiling,
Dusted, parched beneath an angry sun,
Silent heat unending, withering, bending...
So many loves behind me now have fallen.

Walking first, I tried to run;
Standing now, my trudging's done,
At battle's end; the desert's won,
On the plain of despair, I am undone.

I wait for the chilling night to fall
I wait for the chill of night to fall
Night to fall....

Far off, the mountains stand,
Slopes of trees lined in black,
Beneath celestial snowy caps.

There's water flowing there, I know,
Beneath those icy tips of snow.

Were I to lie here on this ground
I might not wake,
And though rest's a tempting sound
I will not take my end in lying down.

The ones who left me far behind
Have flown to rest ahead,
And if I linger here to pine,
My heart knows this is not my bed.

These winds, this heat, the churning air,
Are only for this place; solace awaits up there
On the mountains' rising *****,
I inhale the wind and muster my last hope.
2021, a year of loss...
Marshal Gebbie Dec 2021
Myopic the media swaying the mob,
Sniveling fantasies, coaxing the slob.
Co-opting response from opinion-less types
In fashioning rainbows for homos and *****,
Rampaging racism's silver, sharp teeth
Whilst prodding the vulnerable's spongy beneath.
Slipping the knife deep into the flank
Whilst the loud ostentatious are flaying for rank.
Slaying the leaders why ever they stand,
Assassins deployed in a leaderless land.
Spreading black lies for the diet of fools
In cognitive misuse of our media tools
Then blatant superficiality flares
Causing apathy rule, where nobody cares,
It all resolves to a meaningless blah
Where disinterest abandons all truth, as bizarre,
The narcotic dysfunction in media sway
Is tragically mauling humanity's way.

M
10 December 2021
  Dec 2021 Marshal Gebbie
Wk kortas
There were a surfeit of items
Sufficient to raise eyebrows or cause comment
Among the few staid members of the Mulligan clan:
The appearance of siblings or cousins assumed (or at least hoped)
To have preceded Thomas to the choir invisible
Two or three women genuinely surprised
To discover the existence of one another,
One young man with an extremely disconcerting resemblance
To his “Uncle Tommy”,
But the entire affair carried on with something akin
To the requisite solemnity
Until such point that a couple bottles appeared
(The consensus being that the good Mulligan
Had somehow found a way to secret them in)
The end result being the proceedings
Subsequently devolved into an Irish cop wake-esque teleplay,
And in the midst of this fol-de-rol, Tippy Phelan,
Who had framed walls for generic bank buildings
And grunted and swore while cobbling together
Unnecessary cupolas and wholly superfluous cornices
On the McMansions of the small town well-enough-to-do
With Tommy (as well as, on Friday lunch-times
During the slow season, sharing a thermos
Containing a mixture which drew narrow-eyed stares
From lenient if still unhappy foremen)
Stood the final toast for the good Mulligan,
Intoning There’s a land of the quick and the land of the lost,
The trick being to build a sturdy span between them
So it’s only proper that Tommy was a ****** fine carpenter
.
  Dec 2021 Marshal Gebbie
L B
I need

...but have been too long alone
untouched by desire
the presumption of love
in joints of dust –the lame of lust

So...

Unseen
Years creep by
Silent, numb

No one remembers
who I was

Raising my eyes
to the window—
–a flock of sparrows rise as one
into a gray sky
of mind

Beauty left by the back door of day
unnoticed in fading light

A dull ache
is all
  Dec 2021 Marshal Gebbie
Nat Lipstadt
Mark Twain to Helen Keller


“Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that “plagiarism” farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul—let us go farther and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances in plagiarism.

For substantially all ideas are second hand, consciously or unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them any where except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.”

Mark Twain
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