"marshalls" poems
There seems to always be a tear in my eye, when you're not here.
For when you're away ther is always the possibility of no return.
You put your life at risk, for who?
For those who could careless and waste their freedom on drugs?
The country you fight for, is not worth it anymore.
I wish for you to be here, and help take care of our family.
WE need you!!! The little ones ask:
"When is daddy coming home?"
They think you're at work, so I tell them to be patient.
Just a little while longer.
They're to the age to realize you may never be back.
Laying in my Bed at night, I ask why.
Why does god prolong your return?
Why I must lie to my children,
Not knowing if you're dead or alive.
Our letters seem to be the only thing Keeping my hope a live.
For the day, They Stop coming, will be the day my world crashes.
I heard there was an accident.
State Marshalls pulled up,with a envelope in there hands.
My knees buckled.
They said they found your lifeless body, in a pile of sand.
Now, you're never coming home.
Our children rage. Wanting to know why.
All because you felt the need to fight for a country.
A country based on Lies.
I tell them our stories.
And how much you loved them,
How much you Never meant to leave them.
For weeks we shared the same tears.
Constantly carrying them in our eyes.
Every plane, every loud noise,
I start to cry. If it were not for our children,
I would surely Die.
Jun 7, 2012
Jun 7, 2012 at 10:50 AM UTC
** I wrote this long ago for a friend with cancer - a small malignancy the size of a pearl in her lung. The hateful thing metastasised to her pancreas after two years in the shadows - she lost her battle last week. She was 73. She was firm friends with my mother my entire life, and her own children Isobel and Craig are like my own flesh and blood. I was unable to attend the funeral due to ill health, but she requested this poem be read out at her funeral - I'm sharing it here as a tribute to her, and I've changed names to preserve her privacy and dignity. **
This kingdom's hewn of time and words
And glances flashing over
Shadows, shapes and silhouettes
And pearls of smoke and ochre.
Rude invaders! Generals!
Who dares encroach our borders?
"Naught but pearls my princess, so
We strike! At dawn! No quarter!".
Set shoulders low and feet aplant
And curl your fingers slowly.
Your enemy is swift and lean,
Ten thousand times below you.
No mercy from a princess who
Instilled in fresh disciples
Wisdom, courage, whimsy, love and
When it's called for... rifles.
Gather muskets! Catapults!
Oh marshalls! Summon nurses!
The game's afoot and outcomes?
Well, who dwells on whom we versus?
For masses swell behind you and your
Gleaming armour guides us.
Swords aflame! We saw! We came!
Wakes of pearls behind us!
Ten years hence, one hundred, more
Louises, Davids, Andrews,
Will sing with you your victory,
Sandy Alexandrou.
Oct 18, 2016
Oct 18, 2016 at 6:38 AM UTC
Where were you when I was growing up?
You were in college getting A's while I was getting D's in science class in the 5th grade.
I remember asking if you wanted to draw with me and you never had the "time"
10 minutes out of your ******* busy day to spend with your CHILD.
yeah, I understand bringing food to the table is important and your brain wasn't fully developed until 25 but, where were you?
I loved that computer. Oh, AOL 5.0, talking to strangers, going into lesbian chats, looking at naked pictures of women.
I appreciated when you paid attention to me when I would wear the same underwear and pants weeks straight.
It was amazing that you noticed I never used to take my Ritalin and that I would hide it under my tongue and then stick it in a mug under my ****** twin bed.
I've had 8 cats during my lifetime?
Do you remember April that cat, that siamese cat, our 5 cats? What was up with having so many **** CATS?
I loved watching nickolodeon and nick at nite. Cat dog all day with 5 kittens in our lovely apartment.
LOVED having your now "husbands" nephew trying to have *** with me when I was like 11 and he was 18.
The moths were fun.....fancied smelling like moth ***** during school!
I loved taking baths only because we had no shower head. Filling up a plastic cup with water to be able to wash my hair was my favorite.
I loved when you threw a hair dryer at me.
Digging your stupid fake nails into my skin, not sure what I did "wrong" then but that was always the best treatment, CHILD.
My favorite was when you helped with my homework.
Loved when you threatened that you would "tie a rope around my neck" and that you hated me.
Loved eating raviolis and getting 2 chicken sandwiches from Mcdonalds. Oh, 4 mini burgers and fries from Whitecastle after going to Marshalls was my favorite.
That guy, that assyrian, iranian guy that owned Carvel and was 20 years older than you...I loved when he used to let me go outside alone the condos when I was 3.
Loved when he'd force me to where overalls and ugly clothes in elementary school.
Being forced to go to an Assyrian church every sunday was the best!
Jan 9, 2013
Jan 9, 2013 at 5:07 PM UTC
In Neverland - never to grow old
never to marry that sweetheart
never to have children and grandchildren
nor watch hair thin and grey.
Full of derring-do - more dash than discipline
lanky and loose-limbed they swank and saunter
not like soldiers at all
no doff the cap humility
to the old rules and distant monarchies.
From a newly stolen world
hardly secured or steady with itself
lodged on the edge of a vast continent
clinging to a rim of turquoise blue.
Now cramped
in the pock-holed sores of ancient lands
richly bone-dusted from time to time.
Waiting for the fight to end
to go ‘back home’ ‘over there’
to farms and factories; schools and stations.
Still there - left behind
in the archipelago of cemeteries
as far as Fromelles, Pozieres,
to Bullencourt and Paschendaele
in fields of beetroot and corn,
fields bleeding red with poppies
beside the Menin Road at Ypres
in bluebelled woods of Verdun
in the silt of the Somme
on the plains of Flanders
in the victory graves at Amiens
Monash’s boys - the lost boys
cried for their mothers
begged for water
screamed to die
hung like khaki bundles on the wire.
Commanded by Field Marshalls
who never went to the fields,
who played the numbers game
in a war of bluff and bluster,
who never touched the dirt and slime,
nor waded through the ****** slush
of broken men and boys,
never waist-deep in mud and sinking,
wounded and drowning in that shambles of a war
Wearing dead men’s boots
and shrapnel-holed helmets
tunics and leggings splattered and rotting
with dead men’s blood and brains
Some haunted boys came home
knapsacks full of secret pictures,
old rusty tins crammed with suffering
breast pockets held their grief
wrapped in shroud-shreds.
They brought their duckboard demons
to the world of peace
Gas-choked fretful lungs still brought
the caustic fumes with every breath exhaled
and from every pore the death-sweat of decay.
But most boys were lost boys
lost forever in that no-man’s land
that Neverland of lives unlived.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 12:32 PM UTC
In Neverland - never to grow old
never to marry that sweetheart
never to have children and grandchildren
nor watch hair thin and grey.
Full of derring-do - more dash than discipline
lanky and loose-limbed they swank and saunter
not like soldiers at all
no doff the cap humility
to the old rules and distant monarchies.
From a newly stolen world
hardly secured or steady with itself
lodged on the edge of a vast continent
clinging to a rim of turquoise blue.
Now cramped
in the pock-holed sores of ancient lands
richly bone-dusted from time to time.
Waiting for the fight to end
to go ‘back home’ ‘over there’
to farms and factories; schools and stations.
Still there - left behind
in the archipelago of cemeteries
as far as Fromelles, Pozieres,
to Bullencourt and Paschendaele
in fields of beetroot and corn,
fields bleeding red with poppies
beside the Menin Road at Ypres
in bluebelled woods of Verdun
in the silt of the Somme
on the plains of Flanders
in the victory graves at Amiens
Monash’s boys - the lost boys
cried for their mothers
begged for water
screamed to die
hung like khaki bundles on the wire.
Commanded by Field Marshalls
who never went to the fields,
who played the numbers game
in a war of bluff and bluster,
who never touched the dirt and slime,
nor waded through the ****** slush
of broken men and boys,
never waist-deep in mud and sinking,
wounded and drowning in that shambles of a war
Wearing dead men’s boots
and shrapnel-holed helmets
tunics and leggings splattered and rotting
with dead men’s blood and brains
Some haunted boys came home
knapsacks full of secret pictures,
old rusty tins crammed with suffering
breast pockets held their grief
wrapped in shroud-shreds.
They brought their duckboard demons
to the world of peace
Gas-choked fretful lungs still brought
the caustic fumes with every breath exhaled
and from every pore the death-sweat of decay.
But most boys were lost boys
lost forever in that no-man’s land
that Neverland of lives unlived.
© M.L.Emmett
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 5:44 AM UTC
Not everyone we were close to
at one point stays forever.
It’s a cold, harsh truth of life,
one I’ve fought and fought
over the years
but to no avail.
Nov 16, 2016
Nov 16, 2016 at 11:33 PM UTC
Generals and Admirals,
making the decisions
On squaddies lives and welfare
Creating the divisions
These combat explanations
The dictionary assigns
The following descriptions
Only the words benign.
A fight between armed forces,
Or, Take action to reduce;
The need for family losses?
Or more souls abuse?
Down among the soldiers
Is there anything more obtuse?
Stood by an adolescent shoulder,
Death in hands to use.
Brigadiers and Field Marshalls creed,
Battles must be won!
With no time for a private’s need
Or their families at home.
One day, with waiting over
Lovers may return,
Some that is, the others
Died in Hades, so listen, learn!
They died, and in their passing
Our freedom they allowed
Take heed, do not stop asking
Be heard and scream out loud,
To those we must make listen
To historical loud spoor
where fields of blood still glisten,
Please! Let peace endure….
Aduain
Nov 14, 2018
Nov 14, 2018 at 5:06 AM UTC
I carry what I own in a rucksack lightly on my back,
the lowdown is the showdown came, the sheriff even knew my name an APB was out on me I had to flee, get out of town, but I know the feds will hunt me down.
I don't have much, no time as such or anything of value that I value more than life,
I took a life and now they want mine and
no time is good time when you're strung out on the front line, when the line is attached to the 'final solution', twenty five thousand volts of electrocution.
So I run and I hide where the night's on my side and the days are the things that I fear and which I own, where the faults are at home with me and home is wherever I am with an eye out for the marshalls man.
I carry it anyway in a rucksack for another day and the CIA are closing in on me,
time to pack my bag and flee
again.
Jul 20, 2015
Jul 20, 2015 at 8:35 PM UTC
A candle burns for all of you today;
marshalls its unflinching flame, braces
for the quick sharp blast of sudden breath
as the dark inhales a strand of smoke.
I know the darkness but I am no prince,
just another faceless futile serf
scratching out a meager sustenance
from the barren, stony soil of conscience.
The field lay fallow far too long a time
and weedy evil sprouted, flourished, nourished
by the rocks which trip me, send me sprawling
on the ground where you once grew as flowers,
wild with color, scent - a spot of peace
planted with no purpose but to please.
Each of you would bloom in your own time,
bringing me to roll and thrash on you;
trampling blossoms, stomping on your stems
and walking off elated by perfume,
unthinking of the crushed and damaged leaves
and unconcerned to cultivate your growth.
An undeserved damnation of indifference
damped your fragrance, dried your colors bright
and left your stalks to rustle in the wind
which whistles, cold and steady through my life.
Day by day I **** and dig up stones,
sow my seeds, pray for grace and rain
and light a candle every Sunday morn
with cursed darkness weighting every stride.
Mar 18, 2016
Mar 18, 2016 at 4:32 PM UTC