My apartment once was beautiful; hard woods and fine antiques.
Then civil war came to Aleppo and the fight was in our streets.
A improvised explosive shattered every pane of glass.
Hot metal and the fog of war obliterate my past.
I stand in the ruins of what was once our home.
My family has been scattered; I am frightened and alone.
I search about for some semblance of shattered civility.
A Deutsche gramophone recording has survived along with me.
My television has been shattered; I have no working phone.
Just a working turntable and I listen, all alone,
To the sweet strains of a chamber piece
That was written by Chopin.
I enjoy this scrap of harmony
in a  City of the dammed.

White crisp field, unbroken snow,
waits for gentle imprint
of boots, or bodies making angels.
Let’s go!

We the People have an enemy
But it isn’t who you think:
It is not the Liberal Printers
with their paper and their ink.

It is not protestors in the street
Who wear pink p*ssy hats-
No, the enemy of the People
is not as obvious as that.

The enemy of the people
is no social media link.
He’s not some homeless vagabond
adorned with tattoo ink.

He is the oaf who took an oath
To Preserve ,Protect, Defend
The very basic liberties
He would subvert and suspend.

So if you seek the enemy
You vain and pompous ***
You will very likely find him
In a West Wing looking glass

What should you do with a second-hand muse--
inspiration spent, and by his mistress abus’d?:
Feed him some grapes under cliffsides and clouds,
sit him under a tree;  read him verses aloud.
Make him a spectre of love unrequited,
tell him of enemies that you’d like smited.
Recount  transgressions, and triumphs and losses;
ponder Cruel Fate and the luck of coin tosses.
Tell him of all of your sins now excused--
how the Judge and the Jury have been recused.
And that any dream, urge, or whim can be used--
but you simply cannot go on as a-mused.

They came for us with tanks and guns.
We stood our ground—the old and young.
All our troops had mustered round
our Capital--Sacramento town.
A New Republic, we’d declared,
and its defense,
among all would be shared.
With the Bear Flag flying high
we all came to fight and die.
Young men in their combat boots
repelled the dictator’s first wave of troops.
Civilians came from South and North
to resist the fascist ruler’s force.
From Frisco and from San Jose,
from San Diego and L.A.,
from Calistoga and Marin,
thousands had come pouring in.
Then US bombers burned the city,
for the orange Fuhrer had no pity.
They won the battle, but we all know
from history, how these things go.
An occupation cannot last
against a people whose strength holds fast.
The tyrant’s troops will tire, while we
will fight on, until we’re free.

I ask you not to keep me, Lord,
I've no fear for the coming storm.
My life has led away from harm
My resting place is safe and warm.

Instead, my God, I beg of you
To keep all those that seem but lost
The broken, sick and destitute,
The battle-scarred, the tempest-tossed.

If some great blessing you had planned
To cast on me, I don't deserve.
Instead bestow that act of love
On those the world sees under-served.

“We don’t want em!”
That’s what he said,
He’d rather grab what’s between her legs,
He has no idea what she is worth,
To him,
She’s just another skirt,
But she is beacon that shines in the night,
You can’t fold her arms or dim her light,
She welcomes all without a sound,
Silent lips and heavy crown,
Colossus over land and sea
She bids them all,
“Come to me”
It’s sad,
He has no idea……
Has he?
I think he’d even call her “Nasty”
©B L Costello 2017

“With silent lips, “Give me your tired, you’re poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
(Emma Lazarus "THE NEW COLOSSUS")