Preamble at the showdown the fighters eye to eye
Droning pulse of discourse from the referee is dry,
Bouncing back to my corner the butterflies take charge
For the other guy’s a monster, like a Doberman at large.

Bell resounds alarmingly, I shuffle forth to meet
A combination thrown with steel…it whacks me off my feet.
Seeing stars I resurrect to lurch about the ring
To try to keep some distance from the monster’s punching sting.

Roaring crowd are baying now they call to take me out
The Doberman is grinning for he reckons it’s a route,
The flashing light confusing, the noise a steady din
As the monster comes in quickly to achieve expected win.

Throwing jabs to keep him back, retreating to the rope
I cover up with everything to give myself some hope
He pounds with his salvos they hammer hard and fast
His breathing rasping in my ears I pray to God I last.

Saved by the bell and cold water, such disgrace
The crowd are loudly booing, I’ve not put leather on his face,
A wash of resolution hotly surges from within
So I **** the mouth guard back and rush on out to tackle him.

Defensive expectations had him open up his chin
So I feinted with a left and launched a mighty right with spin,
Boring in with fury and a combination score
I hit him with an uppercut which traversed from the floor.

Miraculously the eyeballs rolled and disappeared from sight
I threw another flurry…but had no one to fight
Flat out on the deck he lay, the Doberman was out
As I bounced around like Rocky to the punters frenzied shout.

Camera flashes blinded as the raving crowd went wild.
It defied all expectations, I was the sacrificial child.
Bets were laid that I would fall within a round or two
The screaming din reflected that all bets were in the poo.

The countdown took forever and I swear I watched each stroke
And kept one eye on the fallen, should he rise he’d go for broke,
My amazement with two wobbly knees and heaving lungs of fire
When my leaden glove was held aloft to victory entire.

Winners come and winners go but this I’ll not forget
When fortune favoured sweetly…and I collected on the bet!


Marshalg
My thanks to Shane Cameron…a real fighter.
14 April 2013 (Pukehana Paradise)

© 2013 Marshal Gebbie

Magnificence blasted

I came to this with a title and then formed an Idea then got out the heavy hitter books all founding fathers thought it would be
A good touch to reconnect with our country and it history at this time of the year well it didn’t proceed that way I did find the very
Word that serves as the title in G. Campbell Morgan’s book an exposition of the Bible don’t get excited I will just use that to set the
tone and it will give you a head start on what I want to deal with the place where life is at odds with our peace and well being He starts
the first chapter of Job now he is one that can at least give us a great example it’s all about winning getting the results we need instead
of the pain of failure (In magnificence of argument and beauty of style this book is one of the grandest in the divine library the story
of Job is presented in dramatic form) I want this to serve two purposes give understanding to the point we all can use these stories
to make us victors and in a very small way have a readable escape from drudgery or outright problems to that end I will start at this
Point I already wrote about the Dutch businessman who got fed up chucked it all started a journey to circle the globe by human
Power alone so to that end he made a boat that by pedaling and that alone would be what would propel him through great waters and
Grand adventures but for this one were going to stay on land I did meet a eastern traveler years ago from New York he was on this side
Of Shelbyville his ultimate goal was the west coast I think he had been at it a little over a month and he was on horseback we talked
but way to briefly to be able to use it here so go to one I know a little more about Jack Kerouac he was in that idea and wrote the
Book on the road first problem the guy had very bad language steeped in the sixties drug culture an iconic figure of the beat
Generation but he was human as we are and when you get down to the soul you catch the part I want to use this is going to play
Like an old family recipe that is hardly readable and the family is the human family but Jack was a writer a full blown saga that had to
Be read had to be listened to a solitary seeker a poor outward drifter who was deeply lonely man a sad melancholy drifter one writer has
Said “and if you read the book closely you see that sense of loss and sorrow swelling on each page” another penned why Kerouac
Matters he matters because he is one of us he ran the course with large gains and ultimately ended with his magnificence blasted.
Taking the cue from Jack I will take you on the road to another life of magnificence Steven Beckerman he was a neurosurgeon I met
And worked for well his wife Sandy she was such a tragic figure she was so fragile high strung would be a good description if you didn’t
Know better you would think she saw the future the first blow to this couple was there pricey home was gutted by fire everything was
Replaceable but the two Doberman guard dogs and another dog that was their family they were childless but before this fire Steven
Was not a snob but he was only a few degrees higher than Sandy on the fragile scale he had these beautiful hands he seemed to
Always be guarding them he would walk in the back of the house down by the fence always faraway I’m sure he was thinking of
The patient and the operation that waited on him at the hospital he had a vulnerability he entered other peoples troubled places and
Gave them back their lives but his own he couldn’t seem to walk divided it was all their concerns and needs.Their dream was to leave
The Bay area where neither was happy and go to the southwest New Mexico where people were laid back the pace was slower
Then the fire happened they weathered that resumed life then Steven was near home a car accident this wonderful gifted surgeon
Was left a paraplegic he went to the bedroom placed the gun between his legs then with those fingers who helped so many others
Pulled the trigger on the shotgun his magnificence was ended he couldn’t overcome the reality and fact of his situation he could have
Became a teacher so many things could have been we need to take from this a lesson of guarding our mind and heart we don’t know
What the future holds if only Steven would have measured his worth kept and made a powerful ally as Job had, his magnificence
Would still be shinning today to finish up the last piece talked about Yvette being shot with Zack in the desert her injuries included
Right side nerve damage a metal plate in her head that prevents her from getting private health care we heard what her dad said about
The Grisly listen to the wise words of her mother her mother said you have to mourn the person you were before up to the time of the
shooting that person is gone you need to turn and start a new life she did that as much as possible started out to do sports casting found
It totally unsatisfactory changed to law and now is a lawyer and victims advocate she said she never tells her story to her clients but
She has a compassion for them she found her way through giving and serving others to keep her magnificence stellar.

When I get too blue
I laugh at myself
pick up the leash
and take Mr. Brown to the dog park.

He shows me how
to be carefree
will jump and bark
drink a gallon of water
and lick whomever he chooses
without a worry in the world.

Everybody admires his *****,
What kind of dog is that?
He’s a Rhodesian Ridgeback.
an African lion hound,
but he’s scared shitless of my cat.
what’s yours?
A Visla.
Looks like yours, only smaller.
Did you see that American Foxhound?
That s.o.b. can jump!
Yeah, too bad he can’t pay my mortgage.

The young photographer shows off
his brilliant Doberman’s latest trick –
a double backflip
catching the Frisbee ten feet high
landing on all fours.
The old lady with the blind daschund
says, “Oh, oh, isn’t he wonderful?”
She claps her hands in delight.

The canine Noah's arc show runs all day
with the entry of pugnacious Sharpeis
the arrogance of Poodles
the inscrutability of giant Malamutes.
the pride of leash-holders.

Gradually tree shadows darken the sawdust
and people start parading home,
the **** athletic girls with their boyfriends’ Shepherds
the slow old men with their greying Labradors
the lady real estate agents with their tiny Shih Tzus.

And then it’s silent
I’m the last one there
alone in the gathering dusk
still hearing echoes of joyful barks
realizing how funny it is
that so many people
look just like their dogs
but I don’t think about it,
I just marvel at all this joy.

Your son was injured and I'm as sorry as I can be.
But you had no right to **** a dog who wasn't guilty.
Your son was attacked and nearly killed by another Doberman.
You thought that it was my dog so you shot him with your gun.
But the guilty Doberman was caught two days ago and he was euthanized.
You killed an innocent dog and because of that, you ought to be chastised.
My dog wasn't just a pet, he was also my friend.
I cried as I buried him because it was the end.
If it wasn't for your son's predicament, I'd have you put in jail.
That's the only thing that's stopping me from having you locked in a cell.
If you shoot another innocent animal, I won't be so nice.
Before you shoot another animal, you'd better think twice.

i guess there are
some people
who just don’t realize
how preposterous they sound when
using social media.
yeah, maybe you’re one. no one
is safe from suspicion:
-the comedians (their own biggest fan types)
the witty commentators
                    jumping in from the far corner.
(you wonder how
someone who learnt every word they know
     from about six Archie comics is allowed to
use social networking)
-oh and the girls
                   who post new selfies
every day. (in fact there’s one,
i swear, posts so often
                      so regular
                                      i barely need a watch.
“here’s the three-fifteen cleavage shot.”
—she’s long since been hidden!)
and wait here’s that
fella who speaks out about injustices;
firecrackers taped in a doberman’s mouth,
which is awful, sick, repulsive—and bravo
for making the universe aware, i applaud thee,
but it’s the rambling included about what you’d do
if you ever caught them
(curbstomping, mutilating, beatings)
that gives
me goosebumps.
i don’t wanna see this kid’s mug in
the paper next week/point & say
“christ i knew it!”
..so maybe keep the ****** fantasy off the web, eh?

& then of course the weirdness
too weird to
properly recall
example:
an acquaintance's call for attention “i need a hug :(“
and the random girl
probably th’sister of a friend
(which is bizarre in its own right,
adding a friend's younger sibling..
but i
won’t bother delving
there tonight)
who replies:
“hey you should come here instead
and see the skunk that just came
by my window
if you wanna?”
—what is this absurdity?
and hey here’s an answer
to your original call:
internet hugs don’t work.
    computers don’t hug in binary, man.
0110101110101101111001010010101011011010110101110101010101
 ­                                        >—O—<

—i’ll never understand it.

From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, There's nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends.
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), British author. "Dedicatory Ode," Verses (1910).

Dear Parents

Thank you for deciding after two years of marriage to have a child, me.
Sorry I wasn't the boy that so many of my family desired, sorry I was late, sorry that you missed the "Rumble in the Jungle", if it's any consolation I know who won.
How I came to be is quite beyond me. Father's family disliked mothers and vice versa. Dad a steelworker, Mam a trainee chef, dad flipped a coin with a mate, my mother was the stake.
Four years later sister came along, then another four years the son, that so many yearned for made an appearance.
I saved my sister's life from my grandparent's dog, lost an ear in that battle, a bit like Van Gogh. Plastic surgery at seven, still hate Cocker Spaniels to this day. I tell everyone I saved her from a rabid Doberman (I know parents, there's no Rabies in Great Britain) what did I get for my trouble? A stuffed white cat and a sister that I made sit in a cow pat.
Thank you parents for sending me to a school that made other kids suspicious of me. A welsh medium school, might as well have been Hogwarts, but they taught me well, (I can swear in five languages) and read and spell.
Dad taught me how to head ****, mam you taught me how to make cake.
My sister taught me how to share, my brother taught me how really not to care. Live each day as if it may be your last, I told my brother that often.
Dad, one of 13 kids, mam one of 3, like me. Dad, I hate your sisters that are alive they remind me of the Moirai, or the three witches from Macbeth, I've tried to like them but I'm terrible at lying, and to be honest they are in their late 70's so they must be close to dying.
Mam, your sister is a lesbian, I think her army days gave that away. Your brother like mine a source of consternation a Navy man that never went to sea????
Now, my grandparents are all dead. Apparently, I have inherited my father's mother's temper. She disappeared for 3 days when she thought she'd killed my grandad!
I'm married now, no rug rats thank God, I'm aunty material, selfish and wicked.
Now, this sounds I know a little quaint and odd, but I know we've had our share of bad luck, but, 42 years wed, still in the family home, surrounded by trees, neighbours we've known for years and people we'd like to poison. But,we've laughed so hard mam you have a hernia, dad you are the male equivalent of a ****, you'll be flirting in the OAP home **** yes, sorry parents as one of your three I get to pick the residential home! And, as they say,that is a good life.
Jo **
P.s I didn't mention our family mental illnesses, early 20th century communism, possible adultery, coveting the neighbours Ford Capri, or pet cemetery in the garden. I'll wait til all are dead then spill about the good secrets.

Thinking back to Thomas creek and sneaking a peak at the freaky little tweaker
in blown out sneakers a toothless mistress second guessing ******
thrift dressed house guest ******* up my speakers blown out woofer
wolfing down dinner mad slurping curry a beginner at twister
her sister, disaster, got caught ******* the Doberman.. unable to find sobriety
got gang ***** at the sorority doing an impression of Brad Dougherty
shoes to tall falling all wobbly knees knocking hostilely like a rasta in Montgomery
racially outcast Big Boi with a skin tare lash with passion unfashionable bastions
with rashes wear red sashes like Communist fascists I‘m a pacifist with a speeding fist
ready to dis any resistor to this transistor radio I eat filet-minion with boxers on
my mind be gone, like, no one’s home and this body roams all alone
with a *****, I’m a stoner, a postponer, ***** donor, out on loan
bought and paid for, caught with a lawnmower, impersonating a horn blower
like I was Gillespie at the Filmore, or Apollo theatre as a greater Walmart style
wearing a wife beater, not a reader, sort of a ******* not like Kim, more like
a mosquit-er drinking blood like it’s from a hummingbird feeder.

Rattlesnake
Boom is the gangly
Doberman at the door
When it opened I froze
And she did as well

One too many fingers
Bashful stew of gashy meats
Pulsating, squirting, blood spurting and flowing back
I take a deep breath
And my joints lubricate as if by magic

Doom rakes a killing
And yet grave is my slumber
Low, humbling, thundering
I push too hard and it collapses
In is where I belonged, now I wept thrice

Buttoned up tight
You tilt as a broken table
It was so and it creaked longingly
Crept up from under somewhere
And never looked back

Mal was indeed
Trickling once and twice and thrice borne
Diurnal my beloved
Of once and twice and thrice borne kind
Of seaweed and ***

Out of a split dome
A gashed most dastardly
One of the cloaks covered me well
Under a lock with no keyhole
Filed my nail that files the chain that files my nail that files the chain that files my nail that files the chain that files my nail that files the chain that files my nail that files

One too many mirrors in this madhouse
For all the blind to see
Conjuring spells with a swollen tongue
Heard the pacing and followed through
The left after the left and the right after the right, hi-**

I take from myself
And be no thing
A rumble creeps and wakes when not tended
Forlorn sensitivity
Starving tumbles a hoom, a waan, a rushed impregnate

Words birthed in barren plains
Some one thing creaks and hums and cracks
A dwarf dances in by a jazz darkly
Limbless jig in two movements
Jeaned out weens and them spurts one ******* whale up up upward

Time is a flat **** stain
El amor de mi vida
A misery of cheese
One of loves, one of lives
Gargles reflowed uncivil

Leave white and follow through
Break my bones pulling in
Kicked inwards nervous gaseous porous
Corked out flesh see one lick two
Rumbarumbarumba

Off a wonder land
Bane is my juice
Soon follows rot
Tender, sweet rut
Shadow tongued drips and wets

I don’t need to recall the melody
It left a map so large it became the land
By the name alone I find a way
Of a one off beat and two rushing in, tu-pah!
Drum the ear and work a sweat

I love that my cat decides when we eat cat food and drink water.
(My cat eats the cat food of course; I just have to put her first
in the sentence because she's cooler than me.)
She looks up at me, lazy green eyes suddenly expectant;
tail twitching and curling into an upright S,
she guides us between thrown pillows and an oversized
Doberman kennel,
door wide open, confusing my path,
but Pasha gracefully darts past, a prr of joy escaping her tiny cat lips.

When we reach the kitchen, all five seconds of our journey,
I reach for a glass, and my cat, she meows,
loudly and loudly-er until I acknowledge her cat bowl.
She insists I stand by it, and she looks at me once more,
waiting for my fingers to materialize on her fur,
petting her neck and her head.
Once she is satisfied, she buries her head and I close my eyes.
And we drink. We eat.

I should, by all practical matters, quit looking through old photos of when my life was much "simpler." Childhood photos, to be exact. They serve only as a reminder of how old I am, and how much older I soon will be. (Yea, I know, ending a sentence with a prepostion is against  the rules of proper penning.)

Looking at these pics, I catch myself playing the game of "whatever became of who?" Those other kids on that cul-de-sac in Corpus Christi, Texas, "waaay, waaay" back in the mid to late forties. One, in particular, comes to mind.

His name was "Duke" Jones. Perhaps, the most popular "kid" on the block.He was our next-door neighbor. An excellent "fielder" when we played baseball, heck of a fast runner, not much of a hitter. But, he was a lot more than that. For, you see, Duke, was a dog. A Doberman Pinscher, a former guarddog at military installations during the war, and rehabilitated before re-entering civilian life. And, he loved children.

Duke knew everyone on the block, knew the postman, the milk deliveryman (yes,there was a time when dairies had milk delivered to your home, but that can be another story), knew which house we lived at, the vehicles our parents drove, he was our protector. If a stranger, such as a door to door salesman, entered his territory, he froze, staring, watching, positioning himself between us and the stranger. If that stranger stepped on to the walk leading to a front door, Duke would start moving, stealthily, instincts, training, taking control. If a strange vehicle entered,  he took notice, watched, intently. My mother and father often said, "We have the safest block in the city."
Our family had moved to another city in 1951, when we got a letter from Duke's "parents", telling us that Duke had passed away at age 16. Looking at that photo in my hand, Duke hasn't gone anywhere.

copyright: richard riddle: 11/02/15

When I become electricity I'll
need hashish to complete my
wiring
A schematic of pills and liquor
for my quest to soar higher
For in my days trapped in flesh ,
emotion revealed my ignorance
Trust was a spring loaded trap that
bit my ankles repeatedly
Benevolence was a pit viper coiled
in the weeds
Women were my downfall with ploys and tricks
Promises revealed themselves as fleas spreading disease
I stumbled upon a capital city which turned
out to be a movie set
Contractors from the four corners of Earth were
busy filling it with fake furniture , mannequins made of
wood and plastic limousines
Gunfire led me back to reality that evening
Doberman pinschers exposed their teeth with
unmitigated anger* ..