Passchendaele.

Off dead mens lips
fell the clarion call.
"Away up lads
Away us all--
Forward
Forward
till we fall !!"


Off dead mens lips--
fell the clarion call.

Her birthday cards

All lined up on the mantle like

Happy paper people, waiting to give praise.

She placed her flowers just below

On the fireplace bricks like

A bouquet garden,

nurtured for ripe admiring.

It’s an impromptu display, in gentle notions reading:

“I am loved!”

Next to Grandpa’s old chair,

Where part of Grandma’s heart sleeps

At night.

What a beautiful home

She has kept

And keeps.

Memorabilia of a better time

When pride came from the simple things.

With a warm heart and keen eye,

Every adornment

In its proper home placed,

And atop the fireplace mantle

Is where you’ll find

The birthday cards.

I can’t remember Spring
can’t remember a cold May morning
with overcast skies
in the land of endless summer
roses bloomed in winter
guavas ripened in February
but I haven‘t heard the wrens
chirping and twittering
since we cut down the lemon tree
or the mocking birds
that used to nest there
seasons still turn
in changing climate’s confusion
but where have the blue jays
and butterflies gone?
the banana tree still grows
the native sweet potatoes spread
but it seems there were always flowers
and I miss the scent of night jasmine
the gardens have withered and browned
without her tender care

got back in bed this morning
to visualize a healthier me
running on the beach
splashing in the froth
like a chariot of fire
the song playing in my mind's ear
but my image maker wasn't working
I lacked control
out of body and out to sea
the ocean's table glistening
I came across a sole blue whale
his back's expanse above water
eyes just below surface
he approached me slowly
without threat or fear
we held eye contact for a moment
a melding of minds
a baring of souls
in silent conversation
intense black irises told me
he was lonely
I thought he wanted
to speak of his plight
his species' endangerment
ecology's pollution
his journey's migration
seeking food and warmer waters
instead, he was looking at me
discerning my life
and mankind in general
wondering if everything
will be all right

sitting in seclusion
on early morning's beach
with a friend
eating potato chips
talkin' 'bout life
he was jobless
I was playin' hooky
a gray sky hovered
cool winter breezes blew
for some reason
he thought his pain
was greater than others'
but he wouldn't talk about it
the chips were salty
seagulls screeched and cawed
the ocean crashed
life went on
but not for him

She'd walked to work at sundown  
When the blue dissolved to evening              
Past the roadside vendors cooking fires,
Not yet bright enough for deepening                
The outline of the factory-house
Where night-time shifts were gathering          
'Round the early evening cooking scents,
Boiled rice, and bread and lentils
Carried on the twilight breezes with  
A light refrain that mentioned
The hunger in her mid-riff
And the mild persistent headache
At the urgent anxious anger that
Her fears and hopes resembled.
And the nagging hopeless worry
That the money wouldn't stretch.

Treading lightly, sandals slapping
In a rhythm never blindly
To be misconstrued as anything
But a walk to work, and quietly.
One hand clutching at her sari,
Coughing mutely through her head-shawl
Barely breathing through the mocking
Of the jeering tuk-tuk drivers
Past the dust cloud covered concrete
With the reek of sun-soaked diesel
And the mouthing finger-thrusting
And humiliating cat-calls
That permeate her modesty
And her sense of self-retrieval
With a fierce determination
That the future must be faced

She'd felt the first forced tremble
In the walls and floors beneath her
And the slowly sliding shifting
Of her sewing, soiled machine
As it cannoned past the T-shirts
Through the carefully folded blouses
And toppled from the table top
To smash against the floorboards
When the building crumpled inwards
And the chaos and the screaming
Chased the panic to the exits
Down the staircase to the ground.
Then the ceiling at the center of the
Wide, high whitened work room
Caved in with crash and cursing
As the lighting dimmed and died

Now, far above she hears the cadence                    
Through the gauze of dimming clarity              
Fire truck sirens moan hysteria
Within the tinnitus of silence                
Tumbled past the dust caked boulders
Of the colorless construction                            
Prostrated down below
In the humid darkened stillness.
Trapped and jammed into the spaces
Where the falling floors had forced her.          
Where the grinding groaning echoes
Of the debris and the torture                        
Close her throat to swells of  panic
For her mother and her daughter              
In the two-roomed cardboard shanty
Miles above and hours away

Barely conscious, breathing lightly
Through the dust and reek of faeces
Thinking of her crowded back-room
Where she'd bathed her infant daughter
In the tin-roofed cardboard shanty
By the stinking standing water
And where her husband’s insobriety
Nightly terminates in snoring
After shouting and the swearing
And occasional forbearance
When her mother’s stifled terror
Terminates in tempers risings
And the all pervading violence
That resolves in resignation
And completes the shaming sequence
By the act of copulation

In the wreckage work continues
Where the rescue teams are scrabbling
In the arms of their dilemma
To keep searching or accepting
That the paradox of seeing and then again
Believing in the hopeless expectations
That some persons can be found
Far below and hours away
The burning thirst has found her
Past the pain of her right shoulder
And the numbness in her legs.
The acrid smoke that holds her  
Transfixed in shallow coughing
While the sari starts to smolder
To the agony of breathing
As she hoarsely tries to scream

In a conference room in London
In the tautly tensioned Aerons
Women smooth their sculpted short skirts
As the slicked-down young supplier
Holds a T-shirt for inspection
To the murmured confirmation
Of the busy buoyant buyers
That the pricing must be right.
Miles above and hours away
Six degree's of separation
Form a loosely joined connection
Out of mind and out of sight.
One by one the vendor cooking fires
Turn to embers and to ashes
While miles below and far away
Comes the dying of the light.