I heard that David Kavanagh
(So say reliable sources)
Has vacated Hello Poetry
To follow other courses…

He stopped for awhile to graze here
On Hello Poetry
Riding off on Irish horses
Pausing just to speak to trees

No, no, no, I know I was not important as I moved

Through the colourful country, I was but a single

Item in the picture, the name, not the beloved.

O tedious man with whom no gods commingle.

Beauty, who has described beauty?  Once upon a time

I had a myth that was a lie but it served:

Trees walking across the crest of hills and my rhyme

Cavorting on mile-high stilts and the unnerved

Crowds looking up with terror in their rational faces.

O dance with Kitty Stobling I outrageously

Cried out-of-sense to them, while their timorous paces

Stumbled behind Jove's page boy paging me.

I had a very pleasant journey, thank you sincerely

For giving me my madness back, or nearly.

-Patrick Kavanagh

Copyright © Estate of Katherine Kavanagh

Guilt by association for Kavanagh
In the face of Trumps' dismissal
Of a quiet womans' courage
and collosal fortitude.
M.
1/10/18

Tomorrow the baseball Hall of Fame will announce the newest members selected to join her hallowed hall.  Ken Griffey Jr.  will surely be selected.

I wish Hello Poetry had a Hall Of Fame. There are so many poets and good friends worthy of.  

In absence of, I wish to nominate the following poets for the first class when and if it is ever created. My criteria for selection to this Hello Poetry Hall of Fame are:

                    A feeling heart
                    loves  poetry
                    is a friend to others in the community

A Triple Crown.

Time and space are the only reason I have not listed all poets here at Hello Poetry:

Vicki  (My Queen, a love child of Whitman and Dickinson)
Christi Michaels MoonFlower
mark cleavenger
Musfiq us shaleheen
brandon cory nagley
The Masked Pimpernel
rebecca askew
Sjr1000
Pradip Chattopadhyay
elsa angelica
Eddie Starr Poetry
ryn
Weeping willow
KetomaRose
Steven Langhorst
Mike Essig
Willard Wells
Woody
Elizabeth Squires
SoulSurvivor
Pax
Grace
Dave Kavanagh
Sumina Thapaliya
FJ Davis
SE Reimer
Sally A Bayan
solEmn oaSis
Melissa S
Arcassin B
..... and to those I failed to mention I apologize. I am thinking of you, also, but time and space are the only limitations to my list of nominees.

Where were you in eighty two on some hot summer day?
We hear that you had had a few and were in the mood to play.
Where and when was this exactly? Your accuser can’t recall,
But we have to believe her so you have to take the fall.

The presumption of your innocence we will dispense with first.
Teen age boys are predators, they all suffer Adam’s curse.
She’s a female, therefore honest, believed as a matter of course.
Like the woman who accused the boys who played for Duke Lacrosse.

A woman three years older has emerged to add the charge
That you organized her gang **** and you should not remain at large.
Yet she kept attending  parties even after this occurred.
She drank the punch she saw you spike until her speech was slurred.

Brett Kavanagh your past is littered with beer cans, this is true.
The phrase “as sober as a Judge” must not apply to you.
In prep school and in college you were drunk out of your mind.
Is that why you were still a ****** at the age of thirty nine?

Although on page two hundred and twenty
it must come to end,
for two hundred and nineteen and a half pages,
I found on this tree-pâté
(I don't know where ink comes from)
a friend.

Patrick for all his lonely sorrows
has taken me, sat me down in a blanket, and hidden me from the real world.
From touchable, grabbable joy
From the cold touch of a dead memory
From the contorted warmth of a lover about to take a journey.
From the satisfaction of a day job
From the numbing repetition of a day job
From anything tangible I hide,
and while away awhile.

Reading.

Page to page different circumstantial photographs,
beautifully, hauntingly captured, some of them,
all in his warm tongue and keen hand.

I wonder if I know these things he speaks of.
I am so close to them
I can see them
I'm in my blanket
My tongue in my mouth
My hands on his pages
My ears greedily lapping up his nutrition (too quickly to taste)
and my mouth is dry.

Not a callous touches my skin.
Not a memory picks up a pencil.
Not a lover contorts my limbs, my neck, ruffles my hair.
I can ruin my own hair.
I can stand up and see through my eyes as well as his
I might feel tangible
And I'll write a poem about it

My books are piled in the Hallway,
The Girlfriend wants me out,
She can keep all the household cargo
the insecurities and doubt.

I don't care much for chrome Toasters
Just give me my Damon Runyon,
Brendan Behan, James Joyce, Ernest Hemmingway,
Jack Kerouac and Jack London.

Albert Camus, Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh
Mayakovsky and Roger McGough,
the Steamer, bread -maker, Asparagus- spearer
Are all yours, I'm ******* off.

Just give me a dozen or so boxes,
Not those ***** looks,
Your welcome to the giant fridge-freezer,
All I want, are my books

Twenty eighteen has come and gone,
And all I can say is, What a year!
That twenty nineteen will also be
Just as crazy is crystal clear.

Mass shootings once again
Shook the country, taking a toll
On all of us, and yet very little
Has been done about gun control.

Always the center of controversies,
Trump again tried to assuage
The public by pleading ignorance
When Stormy Daniels took center stage.

Then we learned that Trump had paid
Hush money to flings at least TWICE
In hopes to secure his chances of winning
The twenty sixteen election. How nice!

A lot of Trump's team have left
Through the admin's revolving door,
Always mired in controversy.
There are bound to be many more.

Trump has proved he loves his tyrants
More than he loves our allies and friends.
Ignoring advice from experts, he'll do
Whatever Putin recommends.

Hurricanes caused major flooding;
California was ravaged by fires.
Yet dire warnings go unheeded
By stalwart climate change deniers.

The separation of families seeking
Asylum showed a callous side
Of Trump and his team, whose inhumane
Actions cannot be denied.

Year two of investigations…
Manafort, Gates, Cohen, and Flynn
Are talking more, while the walls
Around Donald Trump are closing in.

Meanwhile Trump continues to lie.
There's no end to his subterfuge.
How many lies? Eight thousand?
And Giuliani plays his stooge.

Kavanagh got a Supreme Court seat
After a sham investigation,
Which shows how Trump maintains the belief:
What's good for Trump is good for the nation.

November saw a welcome blue wave
Sweep through the House. Such a delight!
This should end Nunes' obstruction
Of justice. There will be oversight!

We lost three prominent people:
Barbara and George Bush and McCain.
Very few members of
The old Republican guard remain.

Trump cannot stop harping on
His WALL--a waste of money and time.
With our crumbling infrastructure,
Building his "wall" would be a crime.

What will the New Year bring forth?
Perhaps an indictment? Perhaps an arraignment?
Since Trump loves to be the star,
THAT'S what I'd call entertainment!

-by Bob B (1-1-19)