#gebbie
“On the trembling of time {comes}words of wonder”
Marshal Gebbie
*heart races,
not a nice tick tocking
but a rumbling tumbling thrombombing,
making heartfelt thanks seem tepid,
as trite, from repetition, even if genuine*
*the conceptual, that words of gratitude mine,
can make time to tremble,
makes me to
wonder why am I
shaking shivering
for no obvious reason…*
wait, another gratitude poem,
please god no,
just know,
*that the waters I draw upon,
are contained in your wells,
so let me congratulate you,
your are the concept creator,
the strategist, scientist,
the architect of grandeur schema,
serving up delicacies in single words.
weaving ideas in abbreviated phrase,
authoring formulas for explication,
propping theorems and notional potentials*
me,
at best a working stiff technician,
or lower still,
the draughtsman,
with chewed on pencil,
eraser reduced to a nubble stubble,
*charged with implementing,
your charges and discharges
into an informed format,
so once more,
for the road,
my thanks
is freely given
to those who set up challenges
daring me to tremble with time,
when I awake to read your messages,
looking for your gold
in those treasure chests
to mallet and scalpel into
a poetic work*
<nml>
9:oops Tue Dec 16 2025
~third night of Chanukah
Dec 18, 2025
Dec 18, 2025 at 2:14 PM UTC
*“For the tomorrows are where the promises resides
…that determines tomorrow's flavours”*
Marshal Gebbie
**a long day in the city, tired in way that only
a New York City can happily tax a body,
awaken just momentary before midnight,
greeted by two disparate realities and peeks of what just
past the bend might bring,
one man laments with utter love
the disappearance of his beloved behind the wall of dementia,^
and another,
by email, newly arrived from New Zealand,^^
inflaming a sensing the common nearing, future of our demarcations,
and yet, he, we,
double down to push yet another blocking boulder off the road,
always one more,
on the collective property that our humans minds share,
with an optimism,
that makes me pen, instantly,
for I am choice-less; now as before,
inhabited
by demon devils and good people,
crying out to all the winged muses hovering, come aid me, unmuddy these rivers of darkest chocolate interlacing the loveliest
of buttermilk vanilla
coursing mightily through a re!freshened brain,
all the clashing contradictory flavours demanded from me
by the powerful quietude of silence
that opens a new day, even though dawn may yet be
many hours away
here I am scribbling, words dripping, page staining,
after a long period
of my soul’s inability to pierce the Jerusalem city walls
of no inspiration,
and the contra~indicators of sanity and its opposite number,
of glowlights of positivity so deep rooted,
that even a lighting strike cannot knock
Oak
down, though deep may be the scars residual,
in a dark home,
where the evidence of life is in a handful of lit windows
across the avenue, of the adjacent sleep noises,
all signals that though spent,
we are not yet rent,
that life’s pleasuring are well and holy embraced with smiles demure,
recalling tales of past that are sugaring our souls, and the saddening
reminders fresh,
that all this, too, shall pass,
our own markers, unique,
all becoming, will be coming
with us
of course,
there is no resolution formidable to these warring states
of mind, and nowadays days,
repetitive searches for the perfect word we once knew too well,
oft come back as
N.C.A.
an acronym of tired sparks saying, that word, beloved to you is,
“not currently available”
as if it has been perma!checked out of the library,
unable to be returned…
the clock has moved us unwillingly to what was the morrow,
to well into the here and now,
and the swirling swishing eddies smashing into each other
yet palpitating vigorously our soul’s surfing,
muscular chested musings,
and our pangs of hunger for perfect certainty of
what will become of me are quietly stored back on the shelves,
of the closeted acceptable uncertainty,
my eyes revert to back to Marshal’s words,
and I make this
promise
to anyone within eyeshot, across this
global sphere,
that whatever are the colours of my continuous searches for that perfect mot,
will end only
at a time and place of,
with words of,***
mine own choosing
12:57am
Sun Nov 23 2025
<nml>
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025 at 1:41 AM UTC
<>
"for the vanity of man is as porous as dust...and, in their supreme wisdom, because of this failing, the Gods have decreed, that mankind deserveth no more, no less than his designated allotment of being.
And such it shall be."
writ by
The Marshal Gebbie
June 2023
<>
rise up, rise up,
son up, sun up!
see for yourself a newly birthing day,
the early rays licking the unlocking of a grinning earth's face,
humbling humans and their perpetuity e~mo/notions of eternity.
how are the daily~we, to measure ourselves, versus our ancestry,
by whom shall we~be set forth as examples to our posterity
what tools we fools think, we possess, an etch~a~sketch,
to imprint of who we are,
what we were, and
who we might become, and
be beauty becoming,
marking our time with ensigns of
words of integers in some giant network
authored, offered, up unashamedly
and even though the sun
does not always greet & meet
the discombobulated human riffraff
every diurnal,
daily identical,
when it shines,
it shines for us all
in an equality of glorious,
it shines upon us all in equality,
it, great equalizer, who restores and
replenishes our colored planets blue green,
a methodology of air, soil and water interactively,
for we are all chemicals, forever effervescent rebirthing
and so it goes.
our cells, are a
rare earth depository,
we plant ourselves
eternally, fed by
foodstuffs of
our ancestors cells,
their brewed ***** dust,
and thus each of us singly
is thus remembered, reconstructed
as are we, both, individually and collectively,
from dust we are, to dust we return, this matériel future prepped
postscript
We Hebrews have a knowingly foolish,
a most beauteous custom, gifted to us by
our forefather Jacob, who when espying a
solitary grave by the road, a nameless marker of
piled-on stones, marking an unknown person last remains,
added one more, add-on to ensure this nameless one yet remembered,
so we too do not pass by without adding a stone, a tiny pebble,
we encumbered, to solidify, perpetuate, renew, ever sustaining,
cannot pass by without adding another rock,
another pebble, that time will surely shift,
but as long we follow this custom,
spiting time's erosive nature and until today,
yet the same, for at a cemetery, every grave,
all marker, ego big, humbled small, topped,
festooned, with small stones, we top them
signaling that this, very spot here, here!
for now, until for ever
shall never
be forgot
<.
and so this peculiar, deteriorating canister places
one more smoothed handy beach pebble, upon
this, his unmarked resting spot
nml
<>
Monday morning
7:10am
an august, August dream day
specified as the 11th day of this
eighth month in one particular
calendric methodology
and as the
17th of Av 5785
in his ancestral calendar
Aug 12, 2025
Aug 12, 2025 at 5:03 AM UTC
~
December 2023
HP Poet: Marshal Gebbie
Age: 78
Country: New Zealand
Question 1: We welcome you to the HP Spotlight, Marshal. Please tell us about your background?
Marshal: *"My name is Marshal Gebbie and I write under "M" or "M@Foxglove.Taranaki. NZ". I am 78 years old and a native son of Australia. I came to New Zealand for a looksee with a pack on my back and a guitar under my arm, intended spending six weeks but absolutely fell in love with the Kiwi people and this magnificent little jewel of a country nested deep in the waves of the great Southern ocean of the South Pacific. I've now been here 54 years and counting. I married darling Janet back about 35 years ago and we produced two fine sons, Boaz and Solomon both of whom have great careers, wonderful partners...and in Solomon's case, produced a delightful granddaughter for us to love and spoil to bits.
From ****** agricultural college I went to the darkest, deepest wilds of Papua New Guinea as an Agricultural Officer, returned to Australia two years later to become a secondary college teacher in Ag Science. Easily the most satisfying profession of my life in that I succeeded in drawing the pearls of enlightenment from within the concrete mass of the, then, recalcitrant, brickheaded studenthood to realise the wonder of discovery, involvement and engender, within them, a genuine spirit of endeavour. Stepping off the boat in NZ I took a bouncers job in a rough public bar, three months later I started my own brand new tavern @ the Chateau Tongariro in the skifields of Mt Ruapehu.
Seeing a unique opportunity and with no money of my own I bought a derelict motorcamp in the small country township of National Park, named the place "Buttercup Camp" and set about making the enterprize one of the very first destination holiday venues in New Zealand. I pioneered paddle boat white water rafting on the wild rivers of the North Island, commercial adventure horse trekking in the wilderness trails, guided adventure hikes across the active volcanos of Ruapehu, Nguarahoe and Tongariro. Cheffed three course roast dinners and piping hot breakfasts for up to 150 house guests daily and initiated an alpine flightseeing business and air taxi service to and from Auckland and Wellington International to the National Park airstrip, a long grassy, uphill paddock liberally populated by flocks of sheep and/or herds of beef cattle.
Somewhere along the way I earned myself a Commercial Pilots Licence and owned, through the duration, 7 different aircraft. With the sudden fiscal collapse of tourism in the late 80s along with several inconvenient local volcanic eruptions, I divested myself from "Buttercup", moved my young family to Auckland and took up a 20 year lease of a derelict motel in Greenlane. Within three months I had converted the business into Auckland's premier truckstop providing comfortable welcoming accommodation, piping hot dinners and early breakfasts with the added bonus of a pretty young thing serving drinks in the bar....Super service with a smile for the nations busy truck drivers.
It worked like a rocket for ten years then the local matrons objected to the big rigs starting up at 4am and the Ministry of Transport and the Local Authority shut me down.
I worked the last 12 years of my serious working life as a Storeman and Plant Coordinator for a major construction company building motorways and major traffic tunnels in and under Auckland city and in rural Hamilton. I loved every minute of it all and objected furiously when they retired me at age 75.
Now I'm happily a Postman Pat in a little rural country town on the coast called Okato, have been for three years and shall continue be, gleefully, until they put me in the box. It has been a helluva run....and I wouldn't have missed a minute of it all."*
Question 2: How long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?
Marshal: "Poetry started for me when I wrote a beautiful ditty as an exercise at high school.....and the caustic old crow of a teacher said, publicly,...."You didn't write this!" That got the juices flowing and set me off on the tangent of proving my worth as a writer....and I have never stopped."
Question 3: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).
Marshal: "Falling in love for the very first time kick started the romanticisms....it took me years to mollify that. Since then and throughout life Poetry has hallmarked discovery, achievement, white hot anger, combat and delight!"
Question 4: What does poetry mean to you?
Marshal: "It is the medium of expression which allows the spirit to enhance and colour my world."
Question 5: Who are your favorite poets?
Marshal: "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Emily Dickinson, WL Winter, WK Kortas, L Anselm, Victoria (God Bless her), and a character, sadly long gone from these pages, JP. All favourite poets of mine."
Question 6: What other interests do you have?
Marshal: "With the slowing of my battered body these days I commit myself to my darling wife, Janet, our kids, now grown and living out there in the big wide world, and in growing and nurturing the truly magnificent gardens of "Foxglove" ......following the All Black rugby team and enjoying the serenity of a cut glass noggin of Bushmills Irish whiskey (neat), sitting in my favourite chair, watching the sun set in golden array over the grey waters of the distant Tasman Sea, far, far below."
Carlo C. Gomez: “Thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to get to know you, Marshal! It is an honor to include you in this series!”
Marshal: "Greetings Carlo and thanks for the opportunity to unload on my fellow poets."
Thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed getting to know Marshal better. I learned so much about his fascinating life. It is our wish that these spotlights are helping everyone to further discover and appreciate their fellow poets. – Carlo C. Gomez & Mrs. Timetable
We will post Spotlight #11 in January!
~
Dec 1, 2023
Dec 1, 2023 at 4:20 PM UTC
<>
”What worth, dear man, are thee to me?
Of Brotherhoods eternity,
Esteemed, thy worth, from whence thee came?
In consequence, by any other name.
Whence laughter creased and cracked thy face
Wouldst sadness flee to lesser place?
And wouldst thou rather, not have been?
A thought we all would curse....obscene!
Of what thy vaulting valued prose?
In essence, beyond scented rose.
Perchance, dear friend, that thee should die?
Hot tears would rain from blood red sky”
**MARSHALL GEBBIE
<§> <§> <§> <§> <§>
the reconciliatory process, never ending,
one seeks to estimate his worth on this earth,
harmonizing his consciousness with an undated
human elegy, appraising his qualifications on a
malleable but fixed scale;
fixed are the qualities:
kindness, kindness, then courage to be more kind!
honesty, honesty, the honesty of rigorous estimation,
the excess of giving love always more, eradicate selfishness
malleable is the scale!
an instrument that measures more, always more,
the little lines on our ruler, meter stick, are but a
ladder to a ceiling ever visible but luckily unattainable
the highest grade attainable is glorious failure that
says, back to the drawing board, redrawing thy image,
the singular constant, a grail with no final location,
an equation that is a starry palate of moving loci:
we are each an each
formed by all the points satisfying a particular equation
of the relation between human coordinates, or by a point, line,
or surface moving according to the defined conditions of what is
truly human, hands touching, skin to skin
here is the wondrous rub, the most excellent complication!
the human equation by its very conceptual essence can be solved
by numbers of two or greater value, one, is non-viable, worthless,
a zero equivalent, no solution to all you seek to understand
in this then, we summarize:
you can be a successful human, if and only if, you comprehend that
we exist only, we are defined ourself by the plurality of friendships,
thy own worth, is not yours alone, existing only in the grasp of others, and thus we answer the riddling question:**
*** What worth, dear man, are thee to me?***
5:15 PM Mon Oct 12
2020
Location coordinates are:
Latitude: 41.048513558171045
Longitude: -72.36516056990725
Oct 12, 2020
Oct 12, 2020 at 5:49 PM UTC
*kiss the kids good bye,
send them out on
their own find-a-way paths,
merry or otherwise,
dispatched, once and forever,
stamped, franked, posted,
Gebbie delivered,^
the poems born, borne*
are gone
*never look back,
once writ and gifted,
they are an only child,
not truly orphaned*
but without parentage
*miss'ed every now and then,
see them as a drive-by victims,
hit and run casualties of passing poets,
who notifiy that they saw
"so and so"
and just wanted to
let me know,*
they're ok
*but never look back,
they have been disowned,
each,
a natural birth poem,
must learn
the hard way,
to stand on its own,
tested by the cruelest proctor,*
hoary time
*this is the way,
the only way,
birth mother and no more,
and this why,
some know me as,
the poet of the way...
*this is my way -
my poems are my
dispatched issue,
sent out themselves alone,
to experience
cell division,
mitosis and meiosis
spawning new poetic tissue,
find their own way of sharing*
their ancestral DNA
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 10:57 PM UTC
For Marshall Gebbie
*in June, with sun dispatched to somewhere else,
a steaming mug, adds to the clouds of gloom but,
dissipates the summer chill, that seems colder than its
winter chill counterpart, since it is contraindicated,
here, where, it’s summer and everybody’s inside, hiding,
for all the irrational reasons, the news, reports so earnestly
you send me a poem of incautious beauty, of a moment re-warmed,
desire, recalled, rekindling a past so well remembered that it edges
me off that chill, and I wonder how timing is in always everything,
the rear view mirror concept somehow a predictive tool,
cause we never saw it all, but just right, plenty enough, and
when old men muse, the risk of self- ruse is always lurking about
remembering how it was, how we wanted it to be, how we’re
sure that we too were there, or at least near, almost certainly,
was it a thousand poems ago, or B.P, (before poetry), when
actions were louder, preferable to words, life, charging neurons,
by the billions, so we have those storages, celled memories,
so that the poems of then, come back so easily, framed in our memory,*
in the glorious, stunning heated colorings of pleasure
June 5,
2:35pm
Shelter Island
Jun 5, 2020
Jun 5, 2020 at 4:35 PM UTC