I still wonder
About the past.
I'm sure most of us do.
Quite cliche of my like to say,
I still wonder
About the past.  

Conflicted, knowing friends won't change.
Jaded by relationships,
As I watch them all fade.
Calmed by smoke, more than fire.
Hard to find inspiration,
Out of things that won't transpire.  

Although the glass is half empty
(sometimes half full),
Why has no one questioned,
Who made a glass so dull?
Because glass cups never were,
Before man made it so.

Where did all that water come from?
Where will it all go?
Like memories that make up life
Paint lemons shades of bold.

No towering, flowering, landlocked tree
Will weep for the waning life of thee
Forgive them, friend, they never saw you smile
Forgive them, friend, they never saw you grin

To mistress maritime you were married
For her you lived, so with her be buried
Below the surface of sorrowful sin
Where above breathe hateful and hollow men

Solar shadows spin and empty seas flow
Though they are bereft your supernal glow
Forgive me, father, I can't seem to smile
Since you died, father, I can't seem to grin



(And from the waves we are ******)

(And unto the waves we are ******)

Oh Jefferson Beauregard Sessions,
being bullied by President Trump
You were loyal and true
as a lapdog, but you
have been thrown 'neath the bus like a chump.

So when Donald Trump asked you to fire
Mr. Mueller, you must have thought, "How"?
From that task you're excused,
being rightly recused
from the Russian mess playing out now.

So Trump's trying to shame and demean you,
saying that you're beleaguered and weak.
What a cowardly disgrace.
He won't say to your face
that "You're fired": Those words he won't speak?

Robert Mueller's team is closing in now,
with Trump's nuts in a vice - he can tell.
Trump won't show you the door
'cause we all know for sure,
it would make him look guilty as hell!

Understand, I don't like you Jeff Sessions,
with your racist past troubling and sad,
but I hope that you'll stay,
for I so love the way
that it's driving Trump stark raving mad!

Inspired by Shel Silverstien’s “Hungry Mungry”

They’re coming. They’ll get me.
They’ll get me, and hit me, and make me bleed my young blood that looks just like theirs,
With skin that looks just like theirs, but something in me’s different.
As different as my mothers before me.

It doesn’t matter.
They’re coming.
Their dark boots clomp down the hall, begging to bash my ribs, or my face, or my shins, or--

--They’re here. They take their fists and their feet and their words, taking turns finding the soft flesh
Covered by my backpack and my shoes and my clothes and my bones.

They found me, and they’ll beat me, and they’ll **** me--
That’s what I think until--
--I change.

I grow. My shins and my fingers and my skull and my toes.
My body elongates, it stretches and lengthens.
I’m still bleeding and bleeding and still bruising and bleeding.
But the blows stop.

They back away, at least I think so, but my body pushes them farther and farther,
I’m pressed against the ceiling, pressed against the lockers, until I feel them give, and I’m free.
I break through the ceiling, I break past the rain, I--

--Stand up. My head skims the clouds, misting my face. I feel myself drift away from this place,
As my head reaches farther, my neck, my chest, my stomach, my legs.

Trees break beneath my feet.
They crack and splinter, just like the houses, just like the schools.

The ground gets farther and farther away, my feet so big they spread across the land and the seas.
I’m blowing up like a balloon, like Violet-*******-Beauregard, from that book I read in in the second grade.
I push back against mass under my feet,
Let them feel the fire, let them feel the heat.
Earth is flying too close to the sun, as I grow, and I grow, and I grow.

The stars drift around me, popping blistering holes in my skin as I grow and push against them too.
I stick my hand in Jupiter, in Neptune, in Saturn.
I crush Mars like a dirt clod inside my fist, and slap nebulas together with a flick of the wrist.

I am the sun, and I am the storm, and the wind and the waves,
From the place I was birthed--

--The place I was birthed? Where was I? Where’s that?

I look to my feet and see naught but a speck,
I do a summersault to examine it closer--

--Not an inch from the Sun, my home withers and dies.

But still I grow, and I grow, and I grow.

Earth is now too small to hold

Still I grow, and I grow, and I grow.

I see so many things from here, but I shan’t get closer, for fear they’ll disappear.
But that’s not enough, still I grow, and I grow, and I grow.

Pushing them away like so many I know.

I hope and I dream for this ride to stop, still I grow, and I grow and I grow.

I grow, and I grow, and I grow.

A man was elected with no view on the most controversial issue.
Ignoramus within the southern states believed
This man to be a danger to their lifestyle and their
Wanted rights.
One by one, they became their own.

One fort, Sumter, became a commonplace for
Controversy. Belonging to the north, within the
Newly founded Confederate States, the fort was tossed back and forth in a game of table tennis.
A threat of war hovered above their heads, but supplies were sent.
No weapons.
No orders to attack.
Complete neutrality.

The attack came from an impatient general Beauregard,
Who ordered his men to open fire,
In a hope to force evacuation and surrender.

It worked. And all hell broke loose.

Methinks I need an outside day
To ponder the days of June
And how they so stealthily became
The days of July and
Nights of July so hot that
Everyone complains in
Sweat anchored softy-clothes

Here in a cape of Florida
A mosquito named Beauregard Bountiful Belly
Becomes the happiest creature in the swamp
Then became the deadest
Black stain on my arm gallery
No blood to spare, poquito
Blood is thick with boredom

Trump's recent nominee--
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions--
Has been confirmed by the Senate,
Despite the man's horrid impressions.

Rejected in 1986
To serve as a federal judge for being
Racist, Sessions is now AG!°
It's hard to believe what we are seeing.

Having been a loyal promoter
Of Trump's agenda all along,
Sessions is now in a perfect position
To add more verses to Trump's song.

Good-by to police accountability;
Good-by to voting rights as well.
Compassionate immigration reform
Will probably be shot to hell.

LGBT rights and protections
Will also continue to dwindle away,
For Sessions' reputation leans
Toward being anti-gay.

His strong stance against civil
And equal rights is revealing.
It will be sad to watch America
Deepen wounds that should be healing.

by Bob B (2-9-17)

°Attorney General

May the American poets, at Hello Poetry enjoy reading the following lyrical poem.  

The Ragged Old Flag
Written by Johnny Cash

I walked through a county courthouse square
On a park bench, an old man was sittin' there.
I said, "Your old court house is kinda run down,
He said, "Naw, it'll do for our little town".
I said, "Your old flag pole is leaned a little bit,
And that's a ragged old flag you got hangin' on it".
He said, "Have a seat", and I sat down,
"Is this the first time you've been to our little town"
I said, "I think it is"
He said "I don't like to brag, but we're kinda proud of that ragged old flag"

You see, we got a little hole in that flag there
When Washington took it across the Delaware.
And It got powder burned the night Francis Scott Key sat watching it
Writing "Say Can You See"
It got a bad rip in New Orleans, with Packingham & Jackson
Tugging at it's seams.
And it almost fell at the Alamo
Beside the Texas flag,
But she waved on though.
She got cut with a sword at Chancellorsville,
And she got cut again at Shiloh Hill.
There was Robert E. Lee and Beauregard and Bragg,
And the south wind blew ******* that ragged old flag

On Flanders Field in World War I
She got a big hole from a Bertha Gun
She turned blood red in World War II
She hung limp, and low, a time or two
She was in Korea, Vietnam, she went where she was sent
By her Uncle Sam
She waved from our ships upon the briny foam
And now they've about quit wavin' back here at home
In her own good land here She's been abused
She's been burned, dishonored, denied an' refused
And the government for which she stands
Has scandalized throughout out the land
And she's getting thread bare, and she's wearin' thin
But she's in good shape, for the shape she's in
Cause she's been through the fire before
And I believe she can take a whole lot more

So we raise her up every morning
And we take her down every night,
We don't let her touch the ground,
And we fold her up right.
On a second thought
I do like to brag
'Cause I'm mighty proud of that ragged old flag