Cryptic clues lead to the jewel
Free to exchange
Man will be paid
Arms stretch afar in this digital age

Informed design as heart crosses mind
Few and far between are inside of a dream
Where have we been

What can I say I'm cheap,
I couldn't afford a 69 so I went
for the cheaper 59, 10% off.
      
                      Ye off the end result.


She was like tongue me deeper,
                    and she blew me.

Not like a vacuum hose,
more like blowing a birthday
                        candle out.

I'm moaning, she's coming.
Then a gust of wind in my face.

What can I say, she called me cheap!
And you get what you paid for,
I don't know why but my ***** are singed.....

To realistic for my liking that *******.

a man privately asks, can you help?
you say, sure-no-hesitation

let me think on it for a day or two, he says
yet you act even before he comes back,
too late, you say, when he returns,
too late, he repeats in puzzlement,
yup, my check is in the mail,
cause one senses the need is dire plus,
plus you well recall the immutable obligation when  
a vague commitment of “just ask” was inked in a long ago message,
a poem born from/in the days when you slept in the car on the street

this vague promissory,
a more enforceable judgement in your own court of law
than any state construct or the judgmental eyes of a silenced god

word, honor, do.

thus it begins, an unwritten contract inked,
an egregious interest rate of 0% proffered and agreed,
commences a plain white envelope trickle,
a check inside, by postal mail, slowly it came,
month by month, inch by inch, Niagara Falls ^

years go by, and then comes a day,
when the accompanying check and its gift wrapped note says,
Paid In Full!

and so much for the tedious minutiae...

like kindness, I do,
Thank You and Your Welcome
are high on my list of proofs of
daily human extensions existential,
Paid in Full,
now rests at the top of the list

let me be blunt, the thrill of being a party
to a deal with no handshake, just coated in the
honorable words waterproof sealant,
with a person I likely may never meet,
made me so better assured of whom many claim I am,  
a mathematical proof revered and kept mind inscribed,
it was an aspirational ****, an unforeseen monthly blunt,
the best feeling good smile,
a kick in the pants about what really matters

being paid twice over and me,
getting by far,
the humanity confirmation,
the better half of the deal

write too often of honor,
and yet, will instinctual do again,
again overpowering my rays of will,
for there is no deflection, only reflection

for the glorious riches gifted and received,
without compare
the return on my honorable investment the best ever

oh brotherhood, oh brotherhood,
I am paid in the currency coined from brotherhood...

yes, it did.
Just now

right now,
the now that was a moment ago and left a mark.

Beastly meme-ish mark, a consonant glyph or a ligature,

an umph!

Right between the eyes.

right between the --- fit any jective noise ---ooof!
Umphh
ouch

eyes.

no cursem
no sworn revenge, mere wind knocked
from my sail

a seen monster blocking my sail with the shadow of his storm

Float, still as a pond on the Albatross killer's sea of green.

there never was a yellow submarine,
The one Krasner sunk in central park was fake. That was in '68.

March, maybe, ides of March keep signaling meanings
I never knew were clues.

This just happened.
I was telling a friend about the effect of seeing my first man die,
as I set the scene, March, '68…

tellin' him, it was the next day,  the next day after
we met in a chow-line at Camp Freznell Jones,

You axed, whatchewdoin here? I rolled my eyes.

You were a medic, you said if I needed
hope, you had dope…
(we had first met on the first day of first grade.)

I had shot him in the belly with a bb gun, when we were twelve.
He slugged me in the mouth for Alice Jones, when we were fifteen.
(there's a story, but it angles away from what just happened.)

We remembered a time.

March 1968, about a week after My Lai,
we were
nineteen year olds, schooled together  in good citizenship,
since we were six,
in the year 1954. when
President Eisenhauer,

personally, we heard,

had added two words,
under and God,
to the good citizen allegiance pledge
all first grade good-citizens-to-be
were learning again,

because the new pledge meant more than the old pledge had.
That had needed to be done.

Or the commies were going to get a cobalt bomb
and blow the whole world to heck.
Per Boy's Life, the scouting mag.

This was explained by the fact that there were no escapes
from prisoner of war camps in Korea,
the commies were at
war against God,

that was explained when a captured secret brainwashing plan revealed:

the lack of knowing why America was worth dying for in Korea, among
the U.N. G.I.  little brothers and younger cousins

of the greatest generation's victorious G.I.
warrior heroes, every one,
so steeped in esprit dee corp,
the ones who could would march in Parades for fifty years.

But
Those
tweener losers twixt the survivors of first
wave greatest generation warriors and  us
(Talkin' bout my generation, we didn't die before we got old),

those guys nee-cess-it-ated,

Purely from lack of knowing, never having been taught

the Uniform Code of Military Justice and that our
allegiance is and was pledged to a nation under God.

Both which were new information
maybe our moms and dads didn't know yet,
we could teach them for homework
the new pledge and ask for dimes
for the march of dimes
at the same time.

Echo
The boom of babes
just beginning citizenship training for the war
they would fight, but right,
they would know,
because the commies,
could not infiltrate our schools and teach lies…

The boom of babes
just beginning citizenship training for the war
they would fight, but right,

like all the men in town who served and survived the real war,
the world war,
not a Po-lease action,
and who,
if they were shot down (no fault of their own, ****** Red Baron)
they escaped
in movie quality dramatic ways
from prisoner of war camps in Germany,

(Not many escapes from Japanese
prisoner of war camps,
but Islands account for much of that. Sharks.)

Echo
the boom of babes
just beginning citizenship training for the war
they would fight, but right,
that boom of fresh new cannon fodder for the future,

we needed to know
we were pledging, promising to pay with our life, no lie,

I pledged, we all pledged knowing, no mistake,
God is on our side,
we are, as a nation, as a citizen of this nation,
under god.
From now on.

We all stand.

--- that was all flash back---
What just happened was Doc Musgrove stopped my tale,
my telling of the first death
I watched

He remembered
He was a medic
He cleaned the mess I watched that left this stain.
He carried the bodies.

I walked away.
Then fifty years later, I figured it wouldn't hurt to tell.
But it does.
You, generations after ours, remember war
does not make better people of good citizens who know

allegiance means allied with, not ruled by.

Liege lords are things of the past. That's why the statues always fall.

We are free because truth, when known, makes us free.
Wars make no man free.

If you can't love your enemy, that's no excuse.
Set a standard, high as you can imagine,
based on the good you know is good,

{no this is not preaching it is sharing, so you don't suffer from lack of knowing and say nobody shared what he learned after becoming the definition of a heretic.}

exercise your self, discipline your self
become a disciple of good
for goodness sake
do what you know is good
as if it were being done to you

and enemies become others who maybe
you could see things like, if

you looked from a higher plane.

Yes, I dare, I was dared. An Indian kid dared me to prove
I inherited the wind.

My new addiction
is to write good poetry;
ignoring day job

"Get back to work!"  the voice shouted out

"There is work, you ****, to be written about!"

"Ok!" I said, as I stared at his head

This story is over, this poem is dead.