I remember my old Grampa
And the way he used to look
He had so many stories
He was much better than a book

I remember on our visits
While the folks would head outside
Gramps would get us grandkids
And take us for a story ride

He'd hitch up the hay wagon
We'd get up and off we'd go
Then gramps would start to talking
And so began the show

He'd tell us all the stories
Of our folks when they were young
Some he had to censor,
And sometimes bite his tongue

Now, Grandpa told the stories
Whether we were in or out
And we'd all sit and listen
To what they were all about

When we'd gather by the fire
He'd pull up his rocking chair
He'd have his pipe and all us grandkids
And his dog, Whiskey, always there

We'd all sit in front of Grandpa
We'd want to take in every word
And he would speak up louder
To make sure that we heard

He'd tell us tales of Cowboys
Of bank robbers and the trail
Of how the west became the west
And how his horse once lost his tail

The folks would gather round too
When it was almost time to go
But, Grandpa, being Grandpa
Wasn't set to end the show

See, he'd told the tales forever
To our folks and all their friends
You could tell that some were truthful
And in some the truth....well....bends

The older ones among us
Knew deep down that most were fake
But, to see old Grandpa work the room
Man, that man just took the cake

We'd get together monthly
All us kids stayed close to home
We weren't like lots of others
Who had that built in urge to roam

The stories, we'd learn later
Were mostly from TV
He'd be talking of those cowboys
And of how things used to be

A few years back we lost him
His dog had up and died
Gramps old heart was broken
He couldn't take it, though he tried

My brother tells the stories,
Not as good as Gramps at rhyme
But, the kids all hunker round him
I'm sure that he'll be good in time

We still go on the hayrides
Tell ghost stories now instead
To all us grown up grandkids
We still hear grandpa in our head

Each month we get together
There's near a hundred now in all
The kids go with my brother
And he tells tales ten feet tall

The stories are consistent
Of old cowboys and the west
I can close my eyes and listen
And still like Grandpa's versions best

How can I get my woman's clothes off
When I can't even manage
To get off my own
I feel as if I need a store dresser to undress me"
But who cares
Clothes or not
Gramps still does
What gramps has to do,
Even with his clothes
Still on.
Now that
Is accomplishing,
A task!

Hiya gramps,

It's been a long time since I said hello
Not that I forgot about you though
It's just that things have been going kind of slow
I miss you, you just don't know
Honestly wish you never had to go
Life would have been so much easier wouldn't you say so
These tears wouldn't be flying like rain drops in the sky
Wouldn't be clinching this string so tight
Struggling not to say forget it all and just die
Belive me it's rather tempting but I could never bring myself to do it 
Always thought about that deathly frown you'd give me
And that judgemental shake of the head
Followed by the famous "I love you, but you got to try again"
Well anyways I just wanted to say hi I'm doing fine
You'd be so proud of me if you were still alive
For you and I I'll survive
Rest in peace grandpa I love you so much

He lay awake in his narrow bed
And opened his bedside drawer,
Then fumbled around until he’d found
The thing he was looking for,
A faded folder, covered in dust
It must have been there for years,
‘I want you to take this folder, son,
And give it to Mildred Pierce!’

His grandson blinked away a tear
And uttered a silent sigh,
Then dropped his gaze, he found it hard
To look in the old man’s eye,
He knew he wouldn’t be there for long
Though his steely brow was fierce,
He said, ‘Sure Gramps, I’ll pass it along
When I find your Mildred Pierce.’

‘You’ll find her back where I left her, when
The way of the world was wide,
Up on the banks of the Darling, she’ll
Be there on the Wentworth side,
She used to teach when the town was young
In a little timber school,
I should have stayed, but the girl had clung
And I guess I was just a fool.’

‘She looked so prim in her teacher dress
And her hair was up in a bun,
We used to walk by the river banks
When her teaching day was done,
Down in the shade of the eucalypts
I kissed her there one day,
With her hair let down on her shoulders
She said, ‘Please don’t go away.’’

‘I only stayed for the shearing, then
I followed the shearing tracks,
I had to keep on the move as long
As the wool grew on their backs,
We said goodbye at the junction where
The mighty rivers join,
I should have stayed for the love she gave
But my only love was coin.’

The old man, he was exhausted then,
Lay back, and then he sighed,
His grandson waited a moment, but
He saw that his gramps had died,
He took a look in the folder when
He settled in back at home,
And found a number of pages there
And each one was a poem.

One called ‘Sorry!’ and one called ‘Why?’
And one that he’d drowned in tears,
One that was just a stark lament
‘For the Love of Mildred Pierce’.
The boy had blushed at the poem meant
To eulogise her thighs,
While others sought for her tender lips
And the lovelight in her eyes.

He waited until the summer break
When the funeral was done,
Loaded the car and headed out
To where the rivers run,
He thought that she would be dead by this
It was just an exercise,
But when he had asked for Mildred Pierce
They had caught him by surprise.

‘She’s out on the banks of the Darling
You can’t miss her little shack,
She keeps herself to herself, prefers
To wander the outback.’
He stopped the car at her garden gate
And he called out by her door,
‘I’m looking for Mildred Pierce!’ Then heard
Her footsteps on the floor.

He half expected an ancient dame
With half a foot in the hearse,
But what he saw was a lovely girl
And still in her tender years,
‘They named me after my mother
Who was named for her mother too,
But Gran’s been gone for ever so long
So what did you want to do?’

They sat on her small verandah, and
He showed her the folder then,
‘My gramps wrote these for your grandmother,
Some time in the way back when.’
She slowly read through the pile of verse
And her eyes had filled with tears,
‘I’d heard all about this shearer from
My grandma, Mildred Pierce.’

‘He couldn’t have known they had a child,
My mother arrived in the spring,
And she was told who her father was
But they never heard a thing.
My Grannie died as a spinster, still
A teacher at the school.
How sad that he couldn’t reach her then
To say that his heart was full.’

They went to walk by the river where
Some fifty years before,
A teacher walked with a shearer for
A magic moment more,
They stopped, stood under the eucalypts
With them both reduced to tears,
And that was the moment he kissed her,
For the love of Mildred Pierce.

David Lewis Paget

With grandpa's avocado farts
As in the days of moses
The red sea parts.
When grandpa gets a chuckle
I'm contagious
Pretty outrageous
Your naughty sincere uncle.
When gramps takes off his pants
Let's dance.

"This is called the fisherman's hook"
That was my best friend alongside me fishing
Author of life turned the page of the book

Heart bigger than a heart itself
Hunting on Christmas was the only presence I wanted
He was my Santa and I his elf

Trapped in my mind with no release
Sitting under the lights crying "I need you please"

A figure appears
"You are becoming a great fisher of men"**
Here I am talking to gramps all over again

Thinking of Eve Seeing First the Shiny Thing
The subtile beast, she saw eating of the tree she was
told
would **** her
if she ate it and she believed,
if she even touched it, she would die,
though die was something of a mystery.
What, she thought, is happening here?

The shining serpent thing
is living and eating the fruit of knowing
some thing known to this thing,
unknown to me, this shining serpent can't speak, needn't, but 'tis a beguiling
creature,
a scoff-god swallowing forbidden fruit
as nothing happens. Not dead,
what ever that may be,
why should I? Curioser
and curiosum it says, with its eyes,
"you shall know, as God knows, you shall not
surely die".
(those Kachinas, I imagine dancing off in time,
singing as the chorus of snakes,
"we hold such things as men can't hold in hands")

Oh, no, wait and see. We, you and me, we play no
past roles, no deed is redone, thoughts are rethought.

Everything has been thought, the object of thinking
is to think them again. Mr. Goethe made note of that fact,
when he thought, everything, excepting what I know,
is temporary at the moment, I recall the idea of

God knows what, but it ain't accidental,
and it ain't the misperception of decept-icons dancing
on the head of a pen.

You got that right - question - quest ions symbolize what
you do not know, so, who knows? Question marks
Symbolize the act of questioning. It's a primal need,
Wisdom, the principal thing of which
more is always desire-enabling.
Somebody beyond your knowing imagined that  right.
Would you believe the algorithm needed to program
perception of a who'll-go-rhyme,
or an I'll-go-rhythm positive knee-**** response
to the ***** of a pen or the whisper of a word,
which it is supposed, was written
by 100 monkeys with typewriters,
whacking away endlessly, balancing precariously
on the edge of the first 100 turtles
in the stack? What are the odds, eh?

Life has a plan with no plot, ought we think?
We shall not surely die, we know now, that's a lie.

Beyond believing lies, we know now, how and why
we are naked, by our own cognition.
We told us we are naked.
We, now, know that,

but here, in the pages of the book of life,
we are no longer subject to the ******* of fearing death.
Here, there is no more condemnation.
Believed lies re-cognized here,
affect no fear, we know,
the final foe fell. "It is finished" was no lie.
Take comfort here. Be still, and know,
rest prevents any
re-triggering viruses left by
the lying messenger's old fables, told as prophecy
or fair-tales oft sung as epics
pre-determining the possibility of evil winning in the end.
The words that built the lies remain,
not the lies. Evil never had a chance, life isn't fair.

The basic plot is a man-made thought, the purpose is not.
Life goes on, death never could have won
and now its power serves
to make eternal waves that keep thinkers thinking things differently.
Loneliness, after all is said and done,
is not
as common
as one might think. There's always
Details, details, details
God only knows.
Saying such a thing idly is vain.
Unless, you know, God knows.
****, that, too.
None of that here, you know.
no condemnation
Socrates was a joke, nothing new under the sun,
beyond that is no mortal's concern. Believe me.
Knowing nothing is far more difficult than men imagine.

Tongue in cheek was an old clue in fair play,
your gramps
could poke out his cheek like he had a snake in his mouth
struggling to break through sealed lips.  
Then he' tells a
fish-story and claims the magi know it true.
Tongue in cheek, so to speek, I see some missed conceptions
fructify from spores spat idly as ****** hells and damns
from tinkers tinning pots with crazy making lead solder.
Which meandered my other me to lead
Lead soldiers. I led the boys to war, that's what they were for.
It's all in the plot to make men of boys so we can help God
defend Heaven, in case…

What?
Good versus evil and all that whole lie.
Or is it faith we must defend?
How reasonable is that? What can **** an idea like
one of the big three?

Eve knew knowing good and evil cost her.
She paid attention to
the truth of all she so suddenly knew.
Otherwise,
she could not attempt the task of bringing
Able into the world, after the pain of Cain.

Oh, please, let Cain fulfill the promise, I cannot bear the pain,
said Adam in his shame.
Eve, on the other hand,
knew hope for joy she found in every
birth, and there were many twixt Able and Seth, all girls.
Cain had been gone for decades ere Seth came along.
Eve was o'er-joyed at the boy whose son would somehow
bring to bear the final sacrifice of travail and pain to
manifest the sons of God to play the role pre-ordained
for sons of God and their sons to play, wombed and un,
each, in his own way, the one creation groaned for,
the missing, wanted, desired, one, an
only begotten with just exactly your DNA,
one in 8 billion, a rare element, indeed.
You know.

Sitting on the limp writin' stool

Rambling and thinkin'

To stay amused
Gramps has got the cramps
No chance for today's work piling up.

it’s so simple
I just have to cry. for a while.


I know heaven is the only perfect place for you to rest now
and met up again with your beloved one
my Granny
hope God do take care of you two in his place.

I do missing the smell of your black coffee
mix with your high nic ciggar
I do missing your deep voice calling out my name
the way you talk
the way you see the world and just try to fix it a little.

you have an awesome kids
my father just as tough as you
and hope that also running in my blood
Sorry gramps I always being a little late in everything
if only I could have a chance to spend another day with you
even just for an hour I’ll be sitted next to you just to watch
and listen carefully to the story of your life.

and I do hate the part of being grow up
I dont have any spare time to spend with my old man
with you gramps
Now I have come to understand
the way it is, the way of life.

you’ve got this look I can’t describe
without a doubt you’re on my side
and it always gonna be my biggest mistake
not being there to give my last honor to you Gramps..

in your honor

Last Christmas grandmother told anyone who would listen that she quit the wine. She said it once as my father cracked open a bottle of ***. She said it again serving the ham; mentioned it in passing while gramps polished off a bottle of Malbec;

she said that last summer in the hot-tub at Laurie’s she had a bit too much Sangria and got out and fell on the pavement, cutting up her knees real bad ---

she said that she couldn’t even believe it was happening, she couldn’t believe that she drank so much. I could believe it.

Gram had always been a bit of a drinker; her sober stinging words caught you good enough even when she was on her best behavior. Imagine when she was unhinged! Talking while her teeth were all red was like getting sucker punched by a kangaroo; Gramps got all loose and loud, Gram got all hot and bothered and mean.

Don’t get me wrong. If I could, I’d drown in a pool of whiskey, choke on the amber stream from the tap.
But I don’t lie about it! I don’t talk about it; I don’t lie about it.
I’ve been sneaking sips since I was 14,
and I’ve been drinking pools of the stuff since I was 17 and if you asked anyone they might not believe you.

I wonder if punching people in the face and choke holding them into doing what you want them to do is a past-time. Most people drink to get nice.


People like her drink to get mean.