Mein Gott! Can't you see,
in the Teutonic light,
What we proudly Sieg Heil
with the torches all gleaming?
The ******* beckons,
through the perilous fight,
Great Deutschland awakens,
not sleeping or dreaming!

On the huge TV screens,
the footballers are seen,
Foul proof through the night
Brave Germany's dream.

O please make that Hakenkreuz banner come first!
We're the land of Sauerkraut, brave home of the Wurst.

I read with passing interest
The death of the
Field Marshal’s son--
Manfred Rommel--
Gone at 84.
His father—The Field Marshal,
Had been given a choice:
Commit suicide or
Face a rigged trial
Charged with conspiring to ****
******.
If he chose the trial, they said,
They could not promise
That his family would be
SAFE.
The father,
Der Feldmarschall,
Bit into a cyanide pill
And died quickly.
It was Oct. 14, 1944.

Thanks to the sacrifice,
Manfred got to grow up to be
A three-term mayor of Stuttgart,
Where Daimler-Benz makes cars.
Manfred Rommel:
A postwar liberal Deutschland voice,
Supporting immigrants and Jews.
At 84,
Deader than
A dreadnaught.

Makes you wonder?
A fate worst--wurst--
Something worse than
Death?
Really the moment of truth
For any honorable man,
Self-defined by nature,
Molded by nurture.
Family:
The fountain & source
The tribe you belong to.
Family:  everything you are
When you get right down to
Where one’s loyalties
Supposedly lie.

Of course, you opt for suicide.
Wouldn’t anyone?
We are born into a net.
We must bravely defend the network.
Facing insurmountable odds,
Our duty is to hold on
Without hope, without rescue,
Like that Roman centurion
Whose bones,
Later excavated at that front door in Pompeii,
Steadfast & true,
That Roman soldier--
Vesuvius exploding,
A hard rain falling down upon him--
Died at his post because
They forgot to relieve him.
That is duty.
That is greatness.
That is thoroughbred pedigree.
An honorable end:
The one thing that
Cannot be taken from a man.
Unless, of course,
The times they are Orwellian,
And once again,
This time with feeling:
*“Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia!”

i could stare at your very photogenic (albeit invisible) countenance all day, all week, the entire month, this remaining year, at least one additional decade, boot no more than a century21!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Looking for a best friend, or...a wurst (liver) re: enemy.

brief bio Matthew Scott Harris doth briefly sketch
almost two win a half score years since me being:
Born January 13th, 1959

I shake my shaggy hirsute hair
in utter disbelief, when the cocked arrow
begat thine conception,
when meal ate mum and octogenarian papa

begat their second offspring and only son,
what now seems to be a stepped-up pace,
where father time doth affix another candle to blow
where the passage of life measured

in swiftly tailored decades
denoting another birthday,
when with the blink of an eye,
I vividly recall crow

wing like a Lil whippersnapper of a boy
leisurely playing monopoly
for make-believe dough...
--------------------------------------------
nothing ranks as the greatest gift
since being a father twenty-one years ago
then bearing witness to grow
increasing autonomy

of my two precious daughters
whereby each will become master
of their domain, and meet a loving beau
(actually thy eldest dates
a delightful young man
from Puerto Re Coe),

whom intuition discerns would be
a near perfect match –
and this papa intuits dough
nuts to dollars – that such an
em man hint gentle, humble,

intelligent lad – doth ***
pa fully become the future groom
of said firstborn, (which outcome I know
wing couched in a couple of poems

sent his way, and no doubt his smarts lo'
and behold revealed the slightly obscure wish),
where love doth most obviously abound mo'
then prevailed between myself and bride o'

mine these last deuce score
plus (21+) years, but now this Poe
whit aspires to recognize the worthiness of she,
whose chose thyself as a lifetime
groom cuz peaceful status quo

avoiding animosity –
as thyself and spouse gently row
merrily...merrily...merrily
our quiet quite rickety craft
which oft times in the past needed a tow
off the craggy shoals of constant woe.