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Tis with a heavy heart I write
A transience of severed soul
For in the richness there abound
A vacuous and tethered hole.

Within, without, the treaded way
A long and winding road
A consequence of earthly stay
In shouldered heavy load.

That deep within the threaded mire
Divorced from that which sings,
Abandoned in the throng, entire,
Where right and wrong wear wings.

For thee and I must share the load,
Must wear the bleeding back
For happenstance, so long to goad,
When skin and bone hue black.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
Cast thy nostril to the air
To sense the magnitude of change,
What was then is now no more,
The atoms, rearranged.

Touch thy fingertips to life
To feel, as difference lingers there,
For what was smooth and sensuous
Now calloused, in abrasive air.

Know, that in a passaged time
The trickled sands invert their flow,
For what was once a comfort stop
Becomes an unsafe place to go.

Skill, once held in high repute
No longer wields the mantle now,
Torn the chaliced riches, worn...
Gone, the wealth of sacred cow.

Vast, the might of new elite
Emergent in its chosen time
Fallen, now the vanquished
In the tragic wayside, left behind.

Gone, is the old world
In its jaded coat of faded charm,
Reshuffled, to obscurity
Whilst surging new blood, fast rearm.

Where once, there stood a working forge
Which fashioned mighty wheels of steel,
Now shifts, a field of windblown wheat
Which cares not, one jot, what you feel?

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
There's always a beginning
There'll always be an end
And no matter how you play your cards
You won't see round the bend.
For tomorrow is another day
The morning sun will shine
And the layer of potentialities
Is arrayed for yours and mine.

In looking back a long time
A little boy in jeans,
Check shirt on a pushbike
Amid the in betweens.
Nothing really mattered,
Each day came and went
and before the realization dawned
The infancy was spent.

Mother died of cancer
The agony in eyes
Just 43 years of age
In alcoholic lies.
The Old Man was likewise
Collapsing in my arms
He passed away at 43.
Evaporated charms.

Adolescence came and went
Forced to join the race
Of madness in the unknown
The world's a violent place.
Decision ****** upon in spades
Cut and ****** in life
It's Papua or Vietnam
Instead, I took a wife .

Disaster in the making
A sidestep in the way
I left the complication there
And coldly strode away.
Changed the whole complexion
Altered how it planned
Ended up with knapsack on
Afresh in New Zealand.

Strangely how it re-aligns
The order falls in place
Confusion dissipates to let
What clear defined, creates.
Somewhere I turned the corner
Took it all in hand
Built an actuality
Of promise in this land.

Pride and hard ambition,
defy the odds and graft.
Visualize a rainbow
From inspiration's craft.
Build it with your own two hands
With sweat upon your brow
And know, within your very depth
You're on the right path now.

Lady luck was with me
Somewhere along the way
I found myself a sweetheart
In chance creation's way
Then ragamuffin boychilds
Scrapping on the rug,
Engendered that which matters
In life's eternal shrug.

You touch upon the beauty
You taste the honeyed wine,
You walk on fields of flowers
In the nectar of your time.
Tenderness and kindness
Essential to the mix
Should you wish to be of value
In the blended world you fix.

Some you win, some you lose
Sometimes you just laugh
For as the years meander
There's humor in the task....
And a gentle satisfaction
In the way it all pans through
And in my eighty year reflection
I'll just throw a smile to you.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
Eighty years, gone in a flash.
Wouldn't have wanted it any other way though!
Having soared above the surly bonds of earth, shared the heavens with eagles and billowed halls of cloud, having witnessed the glorious-ness of the golden light of a setting sun on craggy mountain peaks and the eternity of great oceans.... and on descending through the patterned, green fields to set my craft down in the velvet tones of pristine evening.... I have lived the life of the Gods....
And want for no more.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
An explanatory note to they, who have not yet tasted the utopian experience of piloting an aircraft through the high altitudes.
Having not witnessed the true, unbelievable and pristine magic of this, our mother earth, the place we call home.
Suave the fair Germanic aire
In the sweptback, blonde Germanic hair,
Blue, the clear, Germanic eye,
A place, where to this day, we cry
Blackest, now, the **** heart
Within the name, Auschwitz, imparts.

In the hatred Wannsee birthed....
Jewry's Holocaust, unearthed.

For to travel the path in the white, driven snow
In the stately magnificence then, on show,
Chaired by Heydrich, Chief of the *****,
And Adolf Eichmann, who wielded the light,
Mueller, Stuckart, Freisler and Lange
And 9 other Nazis who bellowed, the song.

They ate, laughed and all drank in tune
The Fuhrer's toast from a French balloon.

**** the Jews the mantra's seal
Gas them all from Europe's field!
Sobibor, Treblinka then
In Dacau's lonely railway pen,
In Auschwitz where the ovens glow
A Jewry Holocaust on show.

In January 1942
The Wannsee met to slay the Jew.
From '42 to '45
They kept the genocide alive
Six million dead at the final count
Until the Allie's German rout.
Á legacy of doom and shame
Still now, adorns the German name.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
17 February 2025
The Wannsee Conference was actually held on January 20, 1942. It was a high-level meeting of 15 senior **** officials in Berlin, where they coordinated the implementation of the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"—the systematic genocide of European Jews.

Key Attendees and Their Roles in the Holocaust:
Reinhard Heydrich – Chief of the ***** Main Security Office (RSHA)

Chaired the conference.
Oversaw the transition from mass shootings and ghettoization to extermination camps.
One of the main architects of the Holocaust.
Adolf Eichmann – RSHA, Head of Department IV B4 (Jewish Affairs)

Took minutes of the meeting.
Organized the logistics of deporting Jews to extermination camps.
Managed transportation networks for mass deportations.
Heinrich Müller – Head of the Gestapo (Secret State Police)

Ensured Gestapo operations aligned with extermination plans.
Supervised security and intelligence efforts to prevent resistance.
Wilhelm Stuckart – State Secretary, ***** Ministry of the Interior

Legal architect of **** racial laws, including the Nuremberg Laws.
Advocated for forced sterilization as an alternative to mass extermination.
Roland Freisler – Representative from the ***** Ministry of Justice

Helped create laws that criminalized Jews and facilitated their ****** through judicial means.
Josef Bühler – State Secretary, General Government (Occupied Poland)

Pushed for the rapid implementation of the Final Solution in Poland.
Favored early extermination of Jews in ghettos.
Martin Luther – Foreign Office Representative

Coordinated with foreign governments to deport Jews from occupied and allied countries.
Helped ensure diplomatic cooperation in sending Jews to death camps.
Erich Neumann – State Secretary, Four Year Plan Office

Managed economic exploitation of Jewish labor before their extermination.
Ensured deportations did not disrupt wartime industries.
Otto Hofmann – Head of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office

Helped define racial categories and legal policies for identifying Jews.
Proposed sterilization measures for "mixed-race" individuals.
Gerhard Klopfer – **** Party Chancellery Representative

Ensured Party leadership was aligned with the extermination policies.
Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger – State Secretary, ***** Chancellery
Represented the office of ******’s Chancellery.
Gave legal approval for extermination policies.
Georg Leibbrandt – Eastern Occupied Territories Ministry
Pushed for extermination of Jews in Soviet territories.
Alfred Meyer – Deputy Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Worked on killing operations in Eastern Europe.
Wilhelm Kritzinger – Deputy Head of the ***** Chancellery
Supported legal frameworks for mass ******.
Rudolf Lange – Commander of Einsatzkommando 2 (Mobile Killing Unit)
Reported on mass shootings of Jews in the Baltics.
Advocated for using gas chambers instead of mass shootings.
Outcome of the Conference
The meeting formalized the genocide of Europe's Jews. Heydrich declared that 11 million Jews in Europe were targeted, with extermination centers like Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor ramping up operations. Bureaucrats ensured the plan’s smooth execution, coordinating mass deportations and legal policies.

While Wannsee did not "start" the Holocaust, it made the genocide a coordinated, state-run program with full bureaucratic support.
She sat astride the stool in silence
Watching how the mayflies flew,
Symmetry in chaos painting
Colour’s gentle strokes anew.
Felt the touch of evening breezes
catch the tendrils of her hair
Watching mayflies rise and fall
through symmetry, without a care.
Promise fills the moment’s magic
Hope is pounding through her breast,
Mayflies rise and fall in sunlight
Love’s anticipation best.
Scattered light intrudes through leafage
Casting sunspots in the shade,
Mayflies rise and fall in sunshine
Tranquil peace of mind is made.
Softly a guitar is strumming
Melding with the lakeside air,
Rendezvous with him a-coming
Mayflies rise to empty chair.

Mayflies rise and fall in twilight
Rise and fall...and they don’t care.

M
January 2013
For dear Guy Scutellaro and his utterly perfect
"The Evening's Gentle Embrace".
Hanging in a leaden sky
Gulls, in tight formation, fly.
Heavy snow's cascading flare
Sodium sharpness filling air.

Heaving waves carousing fen
Ocean's scent, aloft.. .and then
The skiff with oarsman pulling tight
Materializing from the night

Braving, now, a heavy sea
Puffing pipe, irreverently.
Oblivious of mounting gale
Abandons oar to set a sail

Skimming sharp to gravel beach
Shrugs aside hazards reach.
Wading into pounding foam
Smiling thought of ***, at home.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
Not trying to one up you, fellow mariner....I felt I should tell you of the other old salt doing his thing, just around the corner  in the next stormy quay.
Inspired by Anais Vionet's beautiful rendition of maritime drama: "Harbor Snow".
"Certain of Sunday, it had to be Sunday"
I said to my Bride in a moment of pique,
Oddly she looked at me wearing a half smile
"Monday, my Darling" she intoned with a squeak.

"Can't be Monday, possibly Saturday"
Back, said I, with eyebrow askance.
Laughingly merry she whirled in a circle
Dispensing me with a dis-missive glance.

Appalled I stood, unable to tabulate,
Befuddled, in that, it wouldn't compute
How could I lose my weekend to history
Besides losing face to my woman, astute?

Laughing it off with a toss of the shoulder
Dismissing it all with a fling of the head,
Pointedly ignoring the look she delivered....
A glare, under brow, with expression of dread!

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
Climbing onside with Nat Lipstadt's "Friday Morning Terrors""
Laden with thought and beetled of brow
Who midst you recognize me now?
Who midst you, venture forth to this place
Where the wealth and the egos broadcast disgrace.

Wherefore the justice, wherefore restraint
Check out the frontage, graffitied with paint.
Who stole the payroll, who cut the power?
Who saw the ******* that shat in the shower?

See the disorder flooding the town
Whilst the Cops and Councilors shrug and frown.
Traffic is chaos, Sirens galore
Screaming downtown, foot flat to the floor,

Trains running late all the planes on the ground
With the trash piling up in heaps all around.
Pipes full of mullock and taps that don't run
And out of the pub runs a fool with a gun?

The Boss sits on high with his thumb up his ***
Complaining the ****** of this town have no class?
Now whosoever claims they're in charge
Of this dog running bedlam amok in discharge....

Obscene-ness here has stolen the cash
Hysterically laughin' whilst smokin' hash.
It's gone to the dogs, my dear old town
No reason in Hell...why I'll stick around.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
1 February 2025
They pass like phantoms in the shade
Their faces lost in mist
Voices dimmed to strings of time
That memory resists,
Features hover through the mind
Though details in-succinct
And threads of past performances
Occur but Indistinct.
I could have passed him in the street
But never caught his name
**** ghost of time's  a misery
Consumes me so... in shame.

Old friends walk in brotherhood
Through ancient tracts of time,
Though pained familiarity
Failing to define,
I almost caught our catch cry
In that old familiar song,
Some haunting shades of yesteryear
But....guess I got it wrong.
And then there were the stories
Which didn't quite add up
Like whiskey soured to water
Slipped in your favorite cup.

But come the next Reunion
I'll saddle up to go
Spend the dollars travelling
Attempt to make a show.
I'll hail the fellas loudly
And pound them on the back
Though all the while quite frantic
Thinking, "is it Joe or Jack?"
It's a product of the vintage,
A cursed sign of times
When you know he's struggling just as hard
Cos he can't remember mine!

M&Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
After 60 years of time and uncommunication...a Reunion of the Old Boys of ****** Agricultural College, Class of 65
Cheers Dadda DDA
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