The murmur began at the slow invasion of night
into a restless household, waiting for the sun to pull
the cloak of darkness over their depressions. The sky
pulled in tight and covered the suburbs with yellowing
memories of bygone days when streetlights lived
in small pale pools of circles under a twilight
of energy. Bellies full and bursting with new harvest wine
cuts of roasted pork and dark baked potatoes
there was no need to switch on the misery of political
misbehaviour. Contentment was written on cherub faces
and swollen bellies even as the noises from the street
amplified and grew bigger with every extra child added.

Then it happened. This disgraceful division between beliefs
that tore the street into pock marked holes of pain
Brother fought  brother and all of the Holy Books
were burned and everyone got out their pointing fingers
and looked across the street to lay waste to blame.

The first sms reached out beyond the barricades
and poles and farm implements were sharpened
for the hunting season. Anger drove people into strange
exorcisms and each side ran to the other to ferret out those
little children, huddling in frightened corners and mothers
breaking blood to lose the unborn brutality that followed.

Scattered amongst the ruins lay the dreams of happiness
and plentiful. The walls of economy imploded and the suited
smiling faces of politicians smeared across the highways were torn
down and used as fuel for bonfires. Everyone who dared died
within a week as the rubber bullets, water canons and plastic
armour plates ran out of production. Funeral pyres lit up the nightsky
and the wailing and weeping mingled with the river of rushing
humanity. The mountain paths were strewn with bones
and even the animals hesitated to eat the hungry.

The division of beliefs tore everyone into shreds of arguments.
Those in the front seat blamed the back benchers but those
in the left over seats were out on the street fomenting hate.
The world watched as the numbers climbed and all of the giant
pyramids and majestic pharaohs and ornaments could not stop
the need for power.

The lone child picking paper on an impoverished street
cried quietly and turned every stone looking for
mama.
Author Notes

A few years ago this happened, exactly as depicted. The land had plenty. Power was cornered at the top. Money and mystery flowed. Then one brave man sent a text message asking for change. The population exploded into belief/disbelief and chaos.

Even today the street battles rage and the pyres burn. The end is not in sight.
The Revolution will continue on.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The lines were drawn in zigzag
just as energy ebbed and flowed precariously
balancing between coming and going
clocking only forward to waiting.

All the prayers cannot change the course
of the final calling
the trumpets sound in single file
as the last post plays
a melancholy tune and the brass cymbals bounce
up and down
in synchrony with the shifting lines
a drip drop slow chipping away at life
will stop soon for sure
as the tears roll down and the wailing
rises to meet the silence of forever.

As those unspoken memories
and connections into  world where
umbilical cords attached to people
are now broken
the body remains  back as the soul
dissolves into an unknown dimension.

Waits there the history of belief
you can report back
the truth or untruth
Its best to go unprepared.

Author Notes
That one last minute.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The invisible hand that stretches across
Oceans and  barbed wire boundaries
has more fingers than the streams of light that cascade
from the heavens into the darker recesses
of your magnificence.

There are moments when all seems lost
but the shadow of darkness is dispelled
and replaced by this glimmer of hope
that softly and subtly invades
your magnificence

Even as we explore the faint avenues
that wound their way into our consciousness
we clearly seem to understand how our journeys
criss-crossed over exotic landscapes
and stark desolate realties
to merge into a moment of  mystery.

We have finally met.

Now more human than before
the pages  of our past turn slowly
the notes we compare are cryptic and careless
but what we share seems to have been sculpted
by the same pen filled with the same ink of wisdom.

Author Notes
for MJH. Thank you.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The finite yet infinite atom obeys
a decision made by a ?
wherein lies reason to be
existing for one nano second sliver of time
and not the next

we cannot see this ?
because our journey is locked
forever in the same meaning
of everything and yet in nothing.

The attributes we render to swirls
and circles
cannot explain the swirls and circles
themselves
so they cannot be attributes

The majesty of ?
comes together
to prove that he does not exist
when we  ?

Author Notes
Don't ask me  to explain. I don't know.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ag

You were made in March when the groundhogs sensed shadows
and the wine chilled itself in its glassy embrace
I was on whisky, watching late nights, and oh
The wires crossed and we did too near the fireplace

Winter shut the windows with its icy blast
and my rhythm quickened at Scene 4
where the door opened and the lady emerged
in a birthday suit and settled on the floor.

The cat scan showed your wiggly bits in May
and Momma smiled  about the vortex of the man I made
growing plump and rich in a warmer climate inside
For nine long months the case of scotch disappeared

as you grew stronger and bulged out beautifully.
You were born in December when the  lights went on
and Momma cuddled you chillfully!
In Jan you went to Nan. My impulses returned.

Feb came around rather quickly. A year gone
and a son born unblamed of the winter chill
or lusting whisky and late nights surging
outside/ inside wherever. I didn't name you
Jack Frost Junior for nothing.
There's a story behind every name, son!

Author Notes
Ha ha Ha.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Sob wrecked agony as the knots folded into themselves
and caught in between a burst of emotion
spilling out onto the sheets of pain
as life ebbed out and the heartbeat stilled.

For one
last grasp at life she burst to beauty
eyes closed to a heaven only she could see
and left  a legacy of what could be
a ray of light, in a blinding moment of hope
when all we wanted was a little finger to grasp
in glory, but never. She just came to wish us a goodbye
and she was gone, her mark on our memory forever.

Even today her spirit grew its wonder
in our own fertile minds as we questioned why
she lived for such a whisper of hope
in our hearts.

But we gave her the love she came to collect
and left us her love to carry
all our lives.

I named her Maria.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

At first, pimply faced and shy to look and touch
you took the stars from the sky and implanted them
into my crisp clean English Essay as if the words
were silhouetted in the embroidery of the night.

I was struck by this teacher who lived in a space
that filled his skull cap with beauty in everything.

Soon the floodgates opened and my own words
mingled with ecstasies and rituals of writing,
danced across the page in rhyme and reason
and spilled over into vast tracts of books and
writings and thousands of printed pages
all with your signature hidden in the prose
and poetry of teaching me to search for meaning
in every single word. What a journey.

Today as I shift some words and visuals
into subtle pictures I remember the first ones you spoke
to a shy little boy, afraid of others seeing his writing:

" Go dance with the delicate, spin magic with
every sentence and dress those pictures in tailcoats
and ties, so others may know that your pen is
dipped in poetic polish of a special kind"

Thank you Bro D'Arcy.
Author Notes

A tribute to Bro D'Arcy, my English Teacher at St Josephs College, Coonoor, who first recognised that my writing was different. The good man never ever made  a negative comment and each time he looked at my schoolboy writing, he would delicately carve his calligraphic handwriting suggesting how better I could improve the language.

Sometimes, I would write and re-write a poem dozens of times until it merged into the best poem possible.

"Every word spoken or written with part of you in it makes you a better person"- Bro D'Arcy

I owe Bro D'arcy, a lifetime of learning to write better.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Gold plated taps
dispense gold plated water
baths with gold plated soap suds?
yet producing the same
**** of green back arrogance
and shine.

The blue black lambhorgini
controlled by road signs and speed limits
but the ego driving the wheel
cannot understand
four wheels and an engine
bursting its brain in the undercarriage
collecting accident  cold hard stares

All those lovely women
don't love you - lover
its the cars and the feeling
the shades of pink and purple
that drive their own ecstacies
up the wall of your waiting

Tonight
you will sleep alone
wondering where your woman went?
Don't ask  me. I don't know.
a ******* from a man-eating tiger.

Author Notes
OK.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ag

Thirty years from now
no one will know the colour
of your eyes the car your drove
and the sound of your voice
or the house you lived in
Even the times you swore
you denied bread
to the outstretched arms
milk to the baby
wine to the wise
and love to the unloved.

Unless

you make a mark of man
in the footsteps to the temple
where lives an invisible being
resplendent in mercy
forgiving
and infallible to all
and accept
that your own universe
was crafted by this creator
with your name
scrawled in calligraphy
on a special page with your name
and number embossed
b?
d?
who am I?
What should I do?
to leave behind the best of Me?

Author Notes
Recognise this reflection?
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ago

I came from nowhere into the sunlight bright
staring harsh at the way it looked when released
from the thick of dark  dank  open spaces
of the mind like skyscrapers
looming in awe at unopened alleyways.

Writers and Poets with dark and dense language
lurked on every page offering
wisdom and wonder at all that existed
and I was taken aback by the grit and gristle
of their tongues in torture and bonehard
determination to say things real and true.
My first lesson was obedience
at the citadels of learning.

Soon the words began to form and fix
in the minds eye, each picture drafted
in the souls eternal fire of seeking solace
from within a lone slim space of knowledge.
We were wild then, travelling in jungles
where beasts roamed with hookahs and chains
and belted the night with rabid beats
of rhymes and rhythm bongo drums
that cascaded through waterfalls of lust
and loneliness.

woodstock soon came around with a growl
from Hendrix and a soulful guitar solo
that lifted our energies beyond mud
and music into higher ground where
love and peace co-existed with boundaries
and lines of policemen with batons.

Soon we loved each other on the streets
of shame uncaring for the masses that lay
strangled by traditions of the old
and battered regimes. Our music carried
us into a universal song which started
then and never stopped four decades gone.

what we started in those freedom years
still parades the streets of our individualism
today with a different costume.
The shackles that we unchained
were replaced by those who felt burdened
by the guilt of freedom and excess.

Even today the Capitols burn with angry mobs
tearing political fences and building barricades
of stone hard determination and raised fists
in defiance of subjugation and slaughter
as they race towards a wide open gate
where walls and ****** windows do not
get them down fast enough.

The cities will continue to burn
to mark the decades  we bled loose
the power from dictators armoured carriers
and concubines of greed and injustice
as we ourselves built shells of steel
around our embattled homes and liberties.
Freedom is a right. It will be fought.

In every continent there burns a bonfire
lit by few that smoulders and shudders
in the rubble of military might
but that will not deter the protection
and peace. The bonfires are fed by the few
who boiled their blood in their thinking
for all the others.

Over the radio and tv promises will
echo hollow and insipid as the faces
of the masters who seem impervious to pain
and unwilling to smear the ashes of their own born
against their foreheads of power.

A time will come when peace will settle again
and the rousing reception of rain bearing
clouds will cool the tempers of the trusted
and the untrusted.

We will soon be gone but we leave a legacy
of will that will course through the veins
of our children and grandchildren
and for years to come the poems
we write will stand testimony to the demons
we locked back into the cages of the past.

The power to pen will return to the people.

Author Notes
I come from a generation that tasted freedom from traditions in the best way possible. Four decades on that unshackling still unfolds.This poem talks of that transition. It is long and will continue on and on until that bonfire subsides!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Through the waterfall cascade of hope comes
a misty spray of miniscule memories
of the a time when we surrendered to impulses
and walked through a 3 phase electric shock
of departures.

I never saw you again
although I looked through every window pane
for a brief reflection of a time we understood
as our own. Decades blistered past us
and now a number, a recollection arrives
unexpectedly
and I am unsure, if I should call
or just forget that you would even remember
how I longed for your touch
of a long ago moment.

The words you now speak still tingle
and tease as I collect all the pieces of a past memory
and my solitude reaches out for your  laughter
and laissez-faire as a reminder of how much
I missed in these intervening years.

Author Notes
A fragment of the past.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The petals are plastic
the hearts oh so  sweet
the ribbons elastic
the feelings entreat
catch me a girl
in a heart shaped swirl!
I'll claim as my own
for Love to be  shown
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The skill through which you maneuvered
between skyscrapers of lust and longing
through dense forests of future dreams
through intertwined hands and hearts
and picnic pantomimes and love letters
dinners and dances
were all a mirage being built up
to elude the truth manacled in the mystery
of what you really wanted.

When you left you sliced a part of me
wrapped it all up in pain
and vanished into the thick night of excuses

How foolish I was to believe that you would
return to claim the territory you conquered
and cherished for so long, defeating contenders
to their kingdom through wily ways.You laid waste
a landscape of emotions and vanished into the mythical
realm of external attractions.

You have won. I lost
my sanity for a short while until I awoke
one morning to find that you really won nothing
but an artificial heart with no heavyweight
knockouts.

Good luck. I am free.

Author Notes
Bile and beauty co-exist. Figure.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ag

The air was thick with brothers arms entwined
in a fence that stretched beyond the battery lines
of police men, in truncheons at the ready to crack
and bleed any radical  dream of freedom.

The lines advanced at each other, one
sheltered in sheet metal solid while
the other hidden behind worn woollen masks
with holes to see freedom beyond the barricades.

The firecrackers split the screams wailing
as rubber bullets tore out advancing flesh
and spilled red roses of blotches on the snow
of yesterdays mourning for the dead.

The lines at the face of the glare
and all hell stopped short of shouting
The silence crawled in between the ready
boots about to burst through the ranks.
But no one moved out of position.

You could their hearts pounding in fear
of death and freedom. The first shot
never fired was whisper over their heads
as the deep breathing misted their misery
One side commanded, the other demanded.

From high above the roof tops the cross hairs
closed on the opposite heads near the ears
which would spill  their protest forever.
But fear has a way of withdrawing into
pockets to crack open masked skulls  another day.

The voice on the walkie-talkie crackled
"Withdraw. Withdraw. Slowly. Slowly
the World is now watching". The lens have closed
and captured the commanders eyeballs
for the world press. "Withdraw slowly
we will return when we clean out the parapets
of all these ******* photographers
who don't know what real  "peace" means".

Let the tyres burn and squelch for today.
"Dinner is ready in the barracks
You are all brave men. You love your country.
Guard it with all your might. Withdraw today.
Return tomorrow. We have a job to do!"

Author Notes
The revolution continues.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Tyres and trash climbing to four long stories high
burning the dynamo of governments made
from variegated beliefs in sharing seats
unspent people divided by calculated fear
and farm implements from backyard fences
to break the back of steel helmets and
rubber truncheon policies.

Piled high on the side-walks of history
they gather in tight knots yet untangled
before water canons and formations
of advancing barricades of brutal regimes
seated around, round glossy tables
of disagreement.

Nothing works right if a lone spanner
finds its way into the giant machinery
that rolls over people down a roadway
of dissent. Freedom is not plugged
into any powered source if unaccepted
in the lone man's spark of will.

Soon the doorways of flight
will open and haste will chase
the suited gentry of harsh cross-hair policies
into pockets of safety within
other brutal regimes.

Fly now while you can
the plugs will be pulled shortly
and the day will descend into darkness
Hellfire will close in around you
if you wait to cling to power
that is not yours. Run now. Run.
Fly. Disappear. Kaput. Finito.

Author Notes
We go West now. Just coming from deep South.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

“I like cars with big butts’ she said.
“The ones with soft interiors and big joysticks
That you hold while racing down at 70 mph
Down straight highways swerving through bylanes
And bursting into breeze and wide open spaces!”

Spent. The exhausts thunder . Throttles down and grazing
Hear the sound of engines purring?

“I like the old Mustangs” she said
“They growl back at you throttle deep,
Crunching up the pussycats
Mewing on the slow lane”

“I like tequila that’s naughty
No aftertaste, a coupla shots
A hot bonnet to warm you back
And a piston that does a six stroke
Slow ride
As we race to a finish on the salt lakes”

“ Don’t you like Mercedes?” I softly queried
“ Nah” she replied curtly.
“ But it starts with an M too?”
“Oh yeah, its got no twang in it though!”

I surrendered to the sound of giggles.
We pulled up near a parking lot
And she slid into a  vacant slot
Both **** and front touching.

Menagerie of cars parked perfectly.

I admired her driving skill.

Author Notes
Yeah, its about cars. Get your mind outta the gutter will ya?
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Look quietly at the journey you have taken
the road was never straight never easy
along the way many travellers returned
and you stood and watched as the fatigue
built up and you were gasping for breath
to take the next step forward to a place
fixed on your mind. But stopped short
because you were not sure the journey
would end at the sunset or you would
see the sunrise again. Stay still as you walk
slowly into that lonely night taking your fears
with you, as you stumble forward again.
Be patient with the cobblestones and dense
traffic whizzing past. Don't feel alone
for in the waiting you may have missed
many accidents.
When you reach the end
Now look back and stare in wonder
at what you have achieved.
You are a star traveller with no ticket
to no particular place. The destination
is always unknown.

Author Notes

Don't we all look back when we should be looking ahead?

A certain poet on this site asked me a question the other day. I gave him the best answer I could. The answer may not have been the best, considering that his own journey had taken him only part way to mine. But age has its advantages. You have to live life to its fullest to know what it has to offer. Guessing is no good. Its the road that we all travel on.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The years are numbered on the measurements
at your waist like a palm tree with rings
the tyres driving nowhere sane
but hugging you firmly round and round

sagging at the knees the weight
brings you down
to the next level up
as you puff your chest out
and **** your guts in
to no avail. The tyres collapse
when not properly inflated
and being unable to meet the racetrack
of a wife head-on.

The crisis looms when the *****
slumbers you to sleep early- alone.
The deep snore is not a jet engine whirring
but a dream dissipating.

Come another ten moons and thick glasses
of fruit juice and health tonics
still keep the tunic tight
as we all battle a world without walking sticks
and false everything else.

The slide from here on
is slow and steady
to a quick finish
at the doctors clinic
and mounting medications.

Soon gone.

Author Notes
Happens like this all the time.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The hawk nosed general in the grey suit sniffed
out his enemies, labrador like, nose to the noise,
chest beating, bleating, blaring in the thunderous
applause, that made his ego bloom amongst the corpses
of the shrunken heads and hands reaching out for bread,
in the shut down quarter of the empire
where the eagles flew in/ out dropping mustard,
caught between a  deadly sandwich of
closed escape routes.

"Burn them all" he said, and turning to his sidekick,
he smiled a thin smile, devoid of the god he worshiped
in the minarets on the mosques that stabbed the  blue sky
with their sharp bulbous  needles of  attention.

At twelve the muezzin called the faithful to prayer and
moaned for mercy on the unbelievers.The call echoed
and reverberated down the streets.
The mustard closed the eyes of  the city where the
gas cannisters jangled on thin nerves and let the
people  sleep forever.

The grey suit, now eau de cologne  scented handker-
chief  
hawk nose sniffed
wiped his forehead and walked
spritely to his armoured vehicle, to call his wife
and enquire if the kids were enjoying their summer swim.

"Yes, darling!" she tingled with excitement.
"How's that part of the city
where these rats live?"
"Good love! Just need to smoke 'em
out some more!
By tonight I'll be home for dinner. Bye for now!"

The line went dead
with twenty others, fried in the concrete
pan of a bunk buster bomb dropped from a drone
with butterfly wings and a sharp upside down minaret
nozzle of spray now stabbing the earth.
Earth to sky, sky to earth?

The barbed wired brains circled the city.
Children soon crunched cockroaches,
mice and rats and grass salads, autumn leaves on wild spinach
thousands  died eating succulent poisonous roots.

Even the carrion claws refused to descend into the darkness
of carcasses that lay down in the streets to pray forever.

The water turned green with envy as lichen,
clogged with blood and ***** and bones rotting
under bridges, ****** up the blue river
and sent the beavers into burrows of omerta
The world watched and waited.

?

Around the dinner table the grey suited general
tucked his napkin under his red,wellfed face and smiled
at his lovely wife in a designer outfit.
" Pass me the mustard please, darling!"

Author Notes
The revolution shifts elsewhere. Follow it.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Behind the gate that pretended to be locked
lurked in the half shut window
a sage
solitude soaked and driven by impulse
to look away when questioned.
He was a lone man with lifetime wisdom.

Patch on  lakeside worshipped the ****
grew in grace and abundance
tendered tenderly, as if, the soul
invested in the soil  spirit would
rise through  pipes  produced to ****
lungfuls and sit back and watch
the sky bend in ecstasy.
The surge climbed  nerves
settled  pumping heart.

He said he saw the Christ
cry on  the cross stifled by the nails
and thorny weeds akin
to smoke and sustenance he now bequeathed
to silence.

The greater sorrow
nursed being unable to float
free from the injustice that lay  thick bark
on  magnificent tree. He ran as fast as his conscience could take
him to the outer reaches of society
where nirvanas  quiet life of contemplation opened.

an evening listening to him profound
the lectures the worlds knowing
learned his talk of the next kingdom.

Quiet in the night of haze
and damp sweet smells
he dreamed a patch in afterlife too.

Author Notes
We all know this man.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

No need to flick the **** out of this monster
standing on a podium above our heads
looking down in distaste at what we, the poor, can do
or not do! Fodder, we are, trampled into stacks, rolled
into wretched bales and stacked skyhigh
on machines that run through  precision.

Once done, they stand above and lord
over their handiwork as we
the minions, muscled in on our lives
struggle to keep the factories going
feeding the fat bellies and guns
that will silence others across the thin divide
of territorial useless wars

Once in a while the fucktories will open
and spew many newborn into the guts
and glory for the motherland where birth
and bread are numbered and named with
berets and bonhomie, pretend play
at camaraderie. We perish unwept
at the crack of dawn and gunfire in long lines
on a battlefield where ideals are shouted
and gas chambers await dissent.

Driven like oxen to the national abbatoir
hair, teeth and nails collected, bones crushed
for gelatine soup and flesh shredded
for fertilisers to grow more cattle
to be fed more hay
to man the factories and fucktories
to make more children
to polish the forces
to line up and lament our lot

Switch off the power.
Switch off the power
Switch off the power
Switch off the power..........

Author Notes
The revolution takes a step back to WW11.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Between the coming of day
and the resting of night
lies life to take control
and grow within
the short space provided.

What will we do if
the roles reversed and there was perpetual
darkness
or permanent light?

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The manicured lawn behaves splendidly all summer
never pushing its way through the throngs
of flower beds and razor cut edges.

How pleasant to look at a tempting golf course
in my backyard with no nine holes in it
but a coffee club sunk just out of sight of the lawn-mower blades!

I guess that's  a way away from the lady of the house
who cannot always see how men must tamper
with manicures and pedicures with brazen coffee cup
tricks to catch a bit of practice on handicaps and nine holes!

I like those Sundays, especially, when she goes off to bombard
the saints with a litany of rosary beads and complaints
on why I bring the outdoor golfing into her indoor lawns!
I don't want to talk about how poor my putting is though!

If I had all the money in the world tucked into my bank account
I could go off and buy me an 18 hole ecstasy
but that's not possible. So until my numbers show up
on the one dollar ticket, I'm happy to build my dream
on this one hole, 10 sq yard coffee cup implanted
retirement plan. How about you?

Author Notes
Mini golf course at home.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The endless sands bulging over and breaking
in undulating form
shifting in the winds language of low wolf whistles
and sensual whispers
stretches as far as the minds elasticity
into a sheltered cove where sits,
a desert prophet dreaming of strange rituals
in the mirage of waters and wastelands.

Come time and temperament he will rise
in the chill night to gaze upon the stars
moving within the spangled galaxies
between The Milky Way and Cassopeia,Andromeda,
with  Sirius suns rising in a another world
where secrets lay buried in the papyrus
of ancient astrologers who understood
how the earth was born and
other peoples left their mark
for a discovery  of millennium  future.

The prophet was here once.
Twelve feet tall and striding
between giant obelisks and pyramids
walking oceans, crossing land bridges
and land masses escorting
his forbears to seed the earth.

"I will return in time
ten thousand years after the Aztecs
Machu Pichu, Indus and Empires
built on carved  gods and seven headed hydra,
to rule again unquestioned, as before. Think.
Till then -leave what I have left behind
for you to caretake. Stay still.  Understand.

Author Notes
Return?
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ago

The ground appeared level, but no
minor bumps eroded the sanctity of evenness
at odd pockets where the soil sustained repeated injury
there lurked creatures of all sorts.
Few were long nosed, impervious blood suckers,
others like two horned underground creepers that snitched
and larked on fellow mates found solace in company.
Further down racists blended with the beautiful
and both white and dark temperaments moulded
together, as if, sustained by a creed and greed.

Further afield there were hangers-on who ruefully
were iron-****** and aplenty, lurking amongst the poor
and wretched, ******* solar power from the weak,
fiddling with the filth and holding back on sustenance.
These were the parasites of the field.

Turning to the left of centre, the holy melted in the crowd
of doomsayers, prophets and penitents, preaching
a word distorted to draw attention to themselves
under the guise of royal purple robes and stolen sceptres
pompous idiots who claimed to own the field, but
wore egoistic hot air and lead balloons of pride
and prejudice.

On just the one small section of the field you could play
delightful soccer, kick the ball or backsides and feel proud
you played a fair game, in spite of the pale bellied creatures
that roamed the tunnels and turrets of the level playing field
ready to draw you in for dissection. Of course, they smiled
benignly, when you passed by them, watching you slyly,
but all the time with hands at the back of them
clutching razor sharp daggers to shed your dignity
and lay waste to your humanity.

All of us are listed on this game. Some play, some referee, some refuse,
mostly spectators, watching and cheering, unaware
of how the level playing is set out in layers of deception.

Have you purchased your tickets for the next game?
Author Notes

A huge metaphor for injustice and greed. Play the game as you are expected to unless you want to be part of the underground network of deceivers. Pick a part in this game, which involves everybody. The colour of your skin dictates the price of the ticket to the game. Please take part. If you are a spectator
in this stadium with bright lights and pom-pom dancing girls, you will know what I'm talking about.

The game begins everyday at sunrise!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

In every sequel to the barstool sits an evening philosopher
chugging beer and crisps dreaming of a damsel
in distress to recue and carry over the raging waters
of a lonely evening. The froth in the next glass
confirms the frenzy of waiting patiently.

I suspect beer drinkers are adept at making plans
to snare the right woman with catchy bylines
and brisk one-liners. Mostly recycled ones work well.

How easily some evade the trap and the cobweb,
sticky as it may seem to, draw the best ****** ones
into the nectar laden larder of niceties.

They have their  own connecting sentences
which, safely guarded, like intellectual property
gets them zooming into a net of naughtiness.

Author Notes
Browsing.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Just after the ebb and flow
of staying locked for a lifetime
in an earthly connection

comes an unknown
spectre
we can only guess

all those theories
from holy books and men
untested

we go because
we have to
your time is done

and the pulsating final
flourish
leaves behind a memory

shackled to those we love
until they too
must let go

of who we were
when we lived here.
once upon a time.
Author Notes

Fairy Tales come to an end too. "And they lived happily ever afterlife!" who knows?
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Grey blue asterisks against a wet valley of hills
clutching boulders for *******
crags and crannies filled
with luscious flower bursting in bloom
summertime
solace of scenic breaks
the bus trundles around corners
through to Milford Sound
majestically beautiful in its isolation
and magnificence
the lupins soar like coloured points of ecstasy
into shades of pink purple blue
taking in the breathless landscape
as if it all owned the place
forever.

Riding back through the ice packs and awe
of blue waters and spray mists of inspiration
we sit silent and absorbed
cameras unable to take in beauty of depth
but a small window of memories
that capture our time and place
in this wilderness.

Leave it alone for the lupins.

Author Notes
A journey through Milford Sounds-World Heritage site, New Zealand.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Swamp Tigers

No matter the monsoon rains that swished the tall grass
In the rivers journey downstream through
tea bushes on a symmetrical hill where
baskets dangled on nun  dressed heads
collecting  two buds and a burst of beauty
for tea bags.

Hidden in the dense foliage
Semtec strapped to her belly
She walked from bush to bush unafraid.
She had died many times before.

When gathered around counting tables
Her mind tripped as a childs cry found her heart
and she pulled the umbilical cord  to a bomb trigger.
and the muffled sound escaped
as the fifty mothers melted in the searing heat
and the factory flattened against the hillside
burning roasting tea and flesh together.

Deep in the jungle the Tiger growled
a low menace (of rejoicing?)

Other tamil tigers stalked the night in camouflage
jackets, strapping  other  mothers
to the savage sword of an enemy side.
Lost forever in the mayhem.

Author Notes
Its all over now. It happened once before the revolution faded against brutality.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Often I struggle to keep the ideas from bursting
out of the page and consuming me
like a jellybean, sweet and delicious with a nice tangy taste
and vanilla smell and sweetness
like a girlfriends kiss!

Ive read here that poets
0f the old tradition have rhyme and rhythm
and severe straitjackets that confine them
to prison walls of Victorian purpose.

I don’t belong to that staid
upper -lip class, casting a sly eye
on those of us who walk barefoot in the sand
swim naked in the rivers of emotion
or jump into pools of filth.

Free verse is better for me, because it is free.
Straitjackets with pins and needles and pin cushions
are only for those who wish to live in the past.
I m a sucker for sensible writing and for fun.

I am obsessed of a desire to write strange
synergetic words in a formation that sings
its own song in the auditoriums of my soul.

Author Notes
A brief reflection of why I write in addiction. Rehab awaits!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

As subtle as it may seem I frighten at the pause inflicted
when standing before a knowing crowd
to speak up and be heard.

My brain rummages in a waste paper basket of words
for meaning but finds nothing that will escape my throat
out into the open where eager eyes wait and watch
for the imminent collapse of discomfort
around me like a skirt dropping without an elastic band.

Yet my head bubbles with exotic words all inside the cranium
but no words escape from even leaking outlets.
I slink in fright at what I may say, some unkempt sentence
something funny or fumbling, never intended.

Yet I write such massive volumes of words unspoken
but tempered in some inner furnace and beaten into poetic shape
asking no one for any help, but writing unaided and unfettered.

I write because all the things I want to say have gone past spoken
experience and now desire to be recognised as written words.
When spoken before a mirror  they come alive with different meanings
and wander into understanding without jabs and jarrs or prodding.

Many like me have said the same thing when discussed
and I wonder why that happens so uncomfortably.
Best to leave us alone and not bother to seek our words of wisdom
but our written words as reflections of an inner mirror!

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The national pride is nullified by the constant buzz of shores
being broken down and beaten with patrol boats
scouring the waves for lame boats carrying
malnourished passengers to a land of plenty.

With searchlights and stern rugged faces
blue uniformed and well fed, border patrol
scout out the weary travellers braving the high seas
and sharks to find a safe heaven in some hidden cove.

Pest control is serious business. Unlucky to be caught
and housed in centres with rationed food and worn clothes
herded into bare camps, often deported back
to home turf, the pest control cycle continues.

Take heed. A nation is built on pests., working hard, saving
every cent, running against the clock, against government agencies, starved and poor, defeated in justice, welfare,
community, papers, education and livelihood, slinking through
alleyways of paper networks, low paid, often beaten and bruised
packed in housing crates, stacked storeys high, nation building
begins at the journeys first step away from regimes too busy amassing wealth and wonder for themselves.

Nation builders are the pests you want. The pests you spend your money  to keep away from your own backyard
for a vote for safety.
Pin up a country that did not grow without these
masses of refuge pests?

Not one.

Author Notes
Migrants are nation builders. Check it out.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Housed in a walking stick
the King stuck a feather duster at the top
fancied his fourth wife and tickled his fifth.

Ten mutton chops later
a gourd of red blood wine
two scoops of brain cutlets
he was feeling better.

With a bowl of imported shrimp in hand
battered and buttered
with chilly powder ,a chilli *****
he was getting excited at the prospect
of knocking his seventh wife
but a flagging spirit ruined his *******
and he commanded the courtyard maidens
to dance like Queen of Sheba
on the High Priests entrails
as the music beat a violent end
to heads rolling in the dusty desert sands.

Done.
He counted the bowed heads
and picked the odd number out
to even his court ****.

The cradle of all creation was found ten yards
away in fossilised rock after five years of
guessing it must be around here.

Author Notes
Parody of procreation.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Backed by a belief that  butchery
is part of a survival strategy to cling
to the edifices of power blackened by the bomb
and bunker smoke of fighting in the trenches of hate

Hidden in hell holes beneath the barren  browning landscape
scattered across the fragile face of the desert
soldier rats rush into pock-marked craters
as the planes overhead search them out with infrared
points to demolish and bury them
in the graves the enemy nation
carved for cemeteries
unmarked
in the battlefields of bourgeoisie.

War brings  the drones of mercy
raining  from the skies of hate
piercing through the armament of commands
from Generals decorated in medals of honour
from the Boys Club and  green mossed jackets.
Sit, daddy,  in rifle ready barricades
awaiting the crackle  command
from higher up the food chain.

Those who make those decisions are unaware
a child sits at home playing with a little toy soldier
"Made in China" from printed plastic moulds
of mass production and extermination.

"Daddy is my hero.
He will come home for Christmas."

He wont. This time round, son.

Author Notes
The Toy soldier.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Bullion stacked against a window sill
piled high enough to watch the street parade
from behind bullet  proof glass panels
wives and children safely ensconced
in upper rooms closer
to the helipad on standby.

He watched the streets burn
Moloch madness known
ego blown and ballooned
on taming the nightskys own fireworks
with the stars in attendance.
with God as his butler.

The man on the street did not think so.
The bills mounted high
and his power was cut for the presidents party.

with a loaf of bread to feed six children
he lost his soul to the furnace in his brain
molotov cocktail in hand
he marched down the alleyway
to the highway of the presidential palace
to set fire to his anger
on the parapets of broken promises
to lay waste to the promised kingdom
to break bread with his brethren
until his message was written
on the politicians plate of plenty.

The helicopter rose
straight into the molotov smash
and the fireball consumed the palace.
The rising ashes replaced the starlights
in the sky and the gold bullion melted back into the earth.

Author Notes
The Revolution has just finished in one place. It will start again in some other.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Its easy to toggle between keys and numbers
shifting relationships
saying the same thing over and over again
balancing between copy/paste
until the formula comes right. Sometimes.

Print is easy too
Ctrl+ P- sometimes an imprint can occur
not often does it work if the partner is smarter
she might just get a new keyboard
or a whole new faster bandwidth
and move on
at times it can be messy
if you catch a bug
or get bugged too.

If we design love based on a set of keys
the result may become
an out of tune romance
that needs to be rebooted often.

Otherwise you may just have to put up with
an old fashioned typewriter.

Author Notes
IT is happening.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Beneath the dark foreboding heavy print there sits
a sullen moment when the worlds problems are inked
in black lined language that skittles across the page
in a hurried beat informing
all who would care to read
how the world is shaping itself to explode
in the fireplace of disagreement on such things
as land and water and elements and boundaries
and rituals of culture and creed
that caused the great divide between
location and dislocation.

The day that barter was invented the troubles
started and multiplied for all. Enough was never
but invasion of another's territory was ingrained
in the psyche of all man, irrespective.

To travel and take by force was inbuilt into the minds
fences and protection was guaranteed to all
through evolutionary dynamos of the inner
workings of a space and time that kept all people
in a society of linked cobwebs through social structures
that tightly bound them into networks.

Once the unwritten laws of social structures were tested,
it let loose the insidious desire to take
without asking what was rightfully not yours.
The birthplace of all who ascended the throne
of comfort through the discomfort of others
can be traced to this malady.

Stay within your own blessed boundary.
Stay within the headlines of decency.

Author Notes
The Territorial Imperative drives all mankind.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

I just stood there glued to a magnetic compass
that emanated from your eyes
to my crotch slowly rising
because you stared me down with that slant
and silly look that opened and shut
like a silky lipsticked kiss
that was stolen while your husband was busy watching
the Super Bowl of popcorn
cracking up the score.

No I was not guilty at all
Instead I felt for him like a brother
who just lost a squeezed lemon
**** with spoons of sugar
and a touch of vanilla lip-smacking
tongue touching sensuousness.
His games chalked up my own scores!

On the way home I knew
what you were thinking
because I could not resist a reverse
back to your place
but the lights were out
and the dog was snoring loose
the ***** tossing about
and I could not sing like Romeo
at anyone's balcony.

I went home and drew the boundaries
on my own property.

Author Notes
Oh! did I just own up?
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month

You must know this
no matter how you get to know it
that love supersedes all other emotions
and from that well there springs a deeper yearning
that pervades everything else. Unquestionably pure.

There will be wobbles and wisdom
and deeper questions on why
this is so
but it is those exact changes that make
Love stand out and shine
as if, it just belonged to us alone.

So take this poem
as a bond of love between us
and never let it go
no matter what happens
for in this complete abandon
there is only one thing that will bind us together
forever.

Love.

Author Notes
After journeying through a thousand poems and ten thousand different ways of saying things, there is only one emotion that stands out against all others. Love.

No matter how we say it, the simplest way seems the best. Just say it with everything poetic  in you.

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

A 3 point turn heading opposite ruins
the direction first taken. Manipulative maniac!

Remove the spark and power from your connections
and you slip into thick darkness
without props, from where you first came to the light
collecting heads dangling on a political belt
blood gushing to your temples with the excitement
of ladders built with opponents ribs
and maidens in your harem dancing to a dirge
of stolen energy from ball-less *******
who catered to your swords sharp language.
palpitating fear of adding their own heads,
to your prized totem collection
on rancid streets. Amen Amin.

The power cut plunged the dark continent
into an abyss of bottomless economy
where the price of bread surpassed
the goldmines and oil dynasties
into deltas of doom.

Even now the sword and sceptre
intertwine to carve society into slabs
of lean meat in the markets of the madness.
Rise people rise! You do not carry
shepherds hooks blessed with a question mark? do you?
Quietly sharpen those question marks into spears
of liberty. Start now.

Author Notes
The Revolution continues. Where are we?
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Those aged between 10-16, trade in your toy soldiers
for real guns at Barrack No 33 along
mocambo rd. Come alone. Parents not invited.

Be well fed, watered, trained and tempered
in steel resolve to waste the enemy.

Uniforms supplied, washed once a year.
Make your playmates olive green with envy.
Sleep in air conditioned dormitories
roofless, and watch the stars glide in and out
of a universe you do not know.

Learn to ****, ******, loot and march
in pincer formations up and down mountains
and rest near bubbling brooks and silver coloured leaves
in the jungles of dissent. Eat from tin can plates
and smoke delicious kat leaves to rev up your libido.

What are you doing playing with plastic toys?
we can give you real ones, real bombs, guns
serrated daggers,poison pellets, misty eyed maidens,
order your disorder.
(and bald heads for target practice)

Come my children,
learn the art of war
for the good of your country.

Sign up today
the commander will even shake your hand.
Become a real soldier.
Come in today. Come.

Author Notes
The rag tag mercenaries are resourcing real soldiers from the ranks. Sign u today. Learn the art of war. All recruits must be between 10-16 years only.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Around the pool of chandelier light the movers and shakers gathered
in tight knots, unwilling to untangle from the policy books
intent on pushing fences further out into the Caspian Sea
across the Black Sea and encircling the whole Artic Circle
from latitude whatever to wherever.

The chief fence maker arrived with a pair of pliers
and rolls of barbed wire twenty thousand posts
and a battalion of unnamed soldiers all hiding
behind masks of make-up

" Now listen, people, roll out that spikey wire starting from here
to eternity and keep going around the globe until you return
five hundred years to meet the beginning with the end!"

A few bald heads bowed but wary of  cross-hairs
hiding along the ceiling behind sharpshooting
shapeshifters.
They knew instinctively, that unbowed head may be bowled
over and transported to Siberia in a meat wagon
for permanent freezing with the mastodons.

"Go Now, do not turn back, ever, or you will become
a pillar of salt."
The band played The Last Post
as the last post rolled out.

Peace began as soon as the war ended
and the fences were built around the entire
Northern Hemisphere.  

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Banked up against a terraced mountainside
photogenic pristine rows
of blasting green
rows of manicured waterways
with two buffaloes treading ballet-like
between squelching mud and green shoots
the paddy fields stayed buoyant
all season through.

Come harvesting time
and thrashing the sunburied ripe
tendrils of husk and seed
along threshing traffic wheels
the husk sought divorce from
the long tongued long grained
wives -and parted ways.

Soon the pudding spent its silky smooth sexiness
on a plate of punchy aromatic costumes
that invaded the senses and palate
in sensual smoothness. Oh my!

Ricebowl pudding
of the worlds staple.

Author Notes
Gluttony beckons just now!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Big bang dust that created fifteen billion years ago
still courses
through our ash wednesdays.
nothing escapes the recycling of resources
or theories of our origin.
From a spark in the universe travelling through time
to today where you stand as  a conglomerates of atoms
molecules and mind, fused
into one pulsing, vibrating being.
A recycling bin of beauty

Look around you and dust walks in cooperate entities
managing themselves, often unknowing
of a beginning or an ending
back into the same billions of years of making.

Did Christ come before the first spark
or after the initial fireball that burst and blossomed
into infinity? question and ponder
the implications of being everywhere
nowhere.

Today
is a reminder
of how we began with the universe.

Author Notes
Ash Wednesdays began with the Big Bang. Is there any other way to explain creation? Try me?
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

My time in the shadows has darkened me to pale yellow
words that sing in the jazz moment of knowing
how the rhythm undresses the silky smooth curves
of the rhymes that bloom and blitz in the moment
of writing.

Bright light stuns my eyes as I try to squint
at the  luminescent blue visuals that step into place
as gingerly as the last woman I seduced
with an open hand upon my heart.

I am a lover of beauty and brains. It is
but natural to be magnetised by the mind
of the other person who sees 3 D drawings
in the fragment of a captured moment.
Why do women sensualise feeling that much more?

There are many on AP that tick the right boxes
with their artistry of the spoken and written words.
Naming them all would expose their flawless skins
of pristine poetry to public gaze.

I am also selfish wanting
to roll and tumble in their mastery of liquid  language,
just to caress their velvety words with my fascination!

Write on my beauties. Write on.
My heart flutters for you a thousand times
more as I bathe in the silky soap suds
of your sensuality.

Author Notes
Ode to Inspiration.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Even if the season of lust blankets loneliness in a tight wrap
smothering those fragile emotions in the winter months
of a lifetime of cyclical wants and needs
waiting for the summer to send its life giving mantras
deep into the ****** soil of waiting,
the hibiscus waits ready to grasp the first finger of sun drenching
warmth to burst out into beauty
above ground and spread its dense green leaves
with crimson flower and trumpet shape
into the minds eye of acceptance.

Soon the valley changes hue as altogether
the trees spring to life shedding their softness
into every nook and corner, crabbing into crannies
and leaping wings of delight into welcome air.

The hibiscus will soon take ownership
of the entire valley bringing to the forefront
our own wanderlust.

Author Notes
Changeover between summer and sunshine.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Life sparks between two ends
the moment of birth is also death
accept it now
we journey from one spark to the other.

Make the best between the connectors
and do not, whatever maybe,
short circuit that which rolls down
end to end. Shed light
as the circuit completes.Go bright.

Author Notes
Life and death as an electrical circuit.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 26 days ago

The silence was sinister, as if, sound had lost its vocal chords,
the days arrived and sunsets painted the sky in crimson
and gold leaf ensembles of artists dreams.

While they sat around a table, document drivers ran around
pushing agendas, translating armageddon scenarios
if the other side raised a finger or pulled a trigger.
So the sulky diplomats sat like doormats where
the national feet were wiped upon and trust was invested
in their stupidity. Harvard education, pin-striped suits
with loud aggressive neckties announced their status
to TV crews and intrepid journalists, hanging on every word
like guillotines, to ravage the leading newspaper stories.
Headlines were deadlines. Diplomats drummed
up side angles for photographic faces  to appear firm
and responsible to the taxman's money.

Here they gathered
with their policy whisperers awaiting for a signal
to open their loaded dialogues of positions and
policy shifts. Yet no one said a word.

The silence, for once, kept all the mouths shut
( one wished permanently!)
no one said a word for 3 long hours,
but they sipped chilled water, took notes of nothing
glared at each others sides and took notes
again of what was not said.

At the stoke of two, when the clock belted
a twang and the echo bounced through
many empty heads, the diplomats rose
to call it another day of negotiations.

The cold war had just had its 9th meeting.

Author Notes
The Revolution says little, but the war take sides. Diplomats are busy 'discussing' how to end the war, and find a solution. Their policy positions are so entrenched, that little happens. The silence is as loud as could be. Meanwhile, the guns boomed and little childrens playgrounds were pock-marked with cluster bombs. Lines of refugees, walked up the mountains seeking shelter in neighbouring towns. The cold war complemented the heat war that was raging on the battlefields of doom. Please stay indoors.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The first  time we met we recollected
many other recollections
of how things would work out
touch and taste, tremble at the thought of knowing
that physical conquests were now possible
and emotional rollercoaster rides real.

But we stayed within the boundaries
waiting breathlessly to clamber
over social boundaries and bask in the sunshine
of our togetherness. It was that calm.

When you left you took a chunk
out of my memory bank
and left back some chewed up bones of discontent
and sheaves of paperless poems
that suddenly looked as hollow
and soulless. Empty caskets.

Now I wonder why you walked away
from three other lovers
in the same way, leaving behind burnt fragments
at each destination.

Author Notes
Everybody moves forward. Some leave a lot of baggage back.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The deepest understanding  between lovers
stands majestically above the deepest abyss
as if, unbreakable and pure in its unreachable,
unbreakable bond.

Whatever melts this emotion together
was forged in a hotter furnace than ever found
that only two people can understand.

Rising above the highest tide
soaring above tornadoes and typhoons
and cruising along points of paradise
available only to the two of them.

How serene it feels to know
that your own reflection mirrors
in the other person and their every nuance
is written into your own poems
adding the rhyme and rhythm
for your own journey together.

Author Notes
Feel like this at times?
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.