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Qualyxian Quest Oct 2021
Where will you rest, Tecumseh
And where will be your home?
The pioneer and Army cleared
The land you used to roam

Tecumseh get your rifle
Tecumseh get your gun
For on the field tomorrow morn
You'll meet with Harrison

Now who can sell the air
And who can sell the sea?
Who has the right to sell the land
Put here for you and me?

Tecumseh get your rifle
Tecumseh get your gun
For on the field tomorrow morn
You'll meet with Harrison

Now word is on the Valley
And on the hills around
To go and fight for freedom
Up in old Prophetstown

Tecumseh get your rifle
Tecumseh get your gun
For on the field tomorrow morn
You'll meet with Harrison

Tecumseh he was shot down
Upon the field in Thames
Around him lay the wounded
And dyin' Shawnee braves

Tecumseh get your rifle
Tecumseh get your gun
For on the field tomorrow morn
You'll meet with Harrison

So remember all you people
The man so true and brave
For family and his freedom
He fought so hard to save

Tecumseh get your rifle
Tecumseh get your gun
For on the field tomorrow morn
You'll meet with Harrison

               - The Tillers
          ( From Cincinnati, Ohio )

https://youtu.be/uLW5nzD1N0w
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2013
Road Trip: Thinking it's about time (find yourself within II)

This particular poem was born as a one line response to a message.  But in many other forms, half written, it exists still, un, unfinished, waiting for the next burst energy, the next holiday time, to reach a new finish line.

This is a different but similar to a poem posted on June 2nd, "Poetry Round (find your self within)"

Any error of omission is unintentional, but know that this took many hours, until fatigue won. If you never told or revealed to me your location, know that you will be called out, to and unto me, in another poem, called "your banner is my flag."


Fact about me:  You design me.
-------------------------------------------------------

th­inking it's about time for a road trip.

create an excuse
(reasons, I got a plenty)
to stop by,
to show you another side of me,
for a drink, a meal,
and some kind
of exchange, of
form and fluids,
manner to be determined.

to come to Minneapolis,
watch you create a heated sensuality,
verbally, from melted snowdrifts,
a hot time to be had
by all the poets
of the mini-apple,
I want to meet
and celebrate ann victory.

travel to Thiruvananthapuram,
tour the treasures
of gold and diamonds,
from whence come
the bejeweled poems,
that have earned visits from
thousands upon thousands,
pilgrims, devotees, followers,
to partake at that, his,
special temple.

Gomer, Gomer,  & MJJ,
I am in your Florida,
no, sorry, not in Ocala,
near to your homer,
and I feel you springer
ten times in the
November sun rays,
that have me locked
in a full Nelson,
your productivity,
endless,
a sea of orange sunburnt words,

Tennessee,
The Carolinas,
Georgia,
The South,

I rise with it,
now, again,
that I will need a slow
sunny all lazy summer long to
learn y'alls ways,
see the wolves,
in your forests,
helm the riverboats,
navigate the quaint tides
of Charleston,
the special places
where they heal, le ville,
where the ashes of
burnt children,
retuned to be whole.

learn y'alls ways,
walk in your boots,
of seeing poems
using your special
southern saber words.

missed the original
Thrilla-in-Manila,
but rest easy, assured,
that hotbed of creativity,
where I check the
PH of the mc waters
to comprehend its
wisdom and now, it's sadness,
will be an illustrious destination
on my itinerant itinerary,
stopping by Makati City,
after all,
it is writ in the good book,
this island,
the PhilippineS,
is the birthplace
of the letter S,
Samples: samson, sally,
and So many others?

in Nevada City,
which is of course in
krazy California,
wager philosophy, romance,
be available for
succinctly seeing
works in progress,
from which I
will imbibe,
so **** deeply,
may have to
stay awhile for...

while I am there,
will need to do
a search and
Hug Mission,
to find a special man,
his unkempt prose,
his mortal rhymes
disguise not his holy worth,
even to the grassy
cal-stratosphere,
to the mesosphere,
will I high fly,
to find his sweetest spot,
then and thereafter
going looking
further on to
Humboldt County.

in Leeds, in West Yorkshire,
(Hamphshirians, Northamptontonians,
patience please)
built foundries and factories
over the magical forest of Loidis,
near to the river Aire,
yet still hides a
magical sorceress of words,
casting spells over
men and beast.
no one has seen full
her half-turned away face,
but when she summons,
do I have a choix
other than obey?
even if I get lost,
my sorceress,
you know,
I am on way too.

to get there,
will fly I must,
to Heathrow hell,
will do it,
just for you,
faithful friend,
a man da gotta do, what
a man gotta do...for you,
but first a stop off at the
London School of Economics,
Hampstead as well,
for a tutorial about sonnets,
or sams in wells,
even if I come
in my bare feet.

even in New York Upstate,
a man da gotta do,
what he mulls over in his heart,
be not surprised at a knock upon
your door, to make comparative notes,
about each other's tattoos.

in the South African veld,
hid in the highland grasses,
crouches the poetesses and tigresses,
waiting to ambush you
with words that must be seen
to be heard, to be well understood.
perhaps I'll come at ester time,
under blue indigo skies over,
a golden landscape,
seizing all the gems
that can be seen
only at 3:00am

leeward,
north to Canada,
must I, transgress,
country of my momma's birth,
fly from Montreal to Toronto, Calgary
then over to Vancouver.
Canada,
a dangerous place for me,
cause there are beautiful
souls up there,
and maybe even a
warrant to
repossess mine,
they want their
poets back.

double down by ferry,
me to Seattle,
to see a man about river,
in the Pacific Northwest,
where I have happily
drowned so many times,
that The Lord is complaining,
am hogging all the baptismal waters,
but when reminded that
nothing lasts forever,
here tomorrow,
gone today, walk on,
I add my tears
to that river,
before hitting the road.

on that river,
gonna drive me a kayak,
down Daytonway,
on the Yamill River,
see a gyreene marine,
watching me do a beach landing,
in Willamette Wine Park.
he will teach me to salute,
I will teach him how to
shake hands,
and learn from him,
it's ok,
to stand down.

man o' man
there are a lots of poets,
in these here parts,
this grand
Pacific North West,
looking for one in particular,
who will be quite easy to spot,
as he is my very own
soul brother.

will be easy to find,
though we have never met,
he will be on his kayak,
I on mine,
tho when he paddles,
somehow he manages
to hold
never letting go
of, his lovely bride,
his best half's hands.

this will a problem,
for I must teach him how to
shake two handed souls,
while hugging and paddling,
even bailing,
with an old dented pail
simultaneous.
but you can teach old dogs
new tricks, even the ones,
that can't spell
rhymers.

have mercie on me Ohio,
like a mother has to her daughter,
done a three year sentence in Cleveland,
but no jail can hold an NYC boy,
but if requested, yes I will return
to set fire to the *
Cuyahoga,
again! he he he...
but do not s mock me!
(now you know why the FBI loves
my poetry, my biggest institutional fan).

souls in torment,
where you be,
where you hide,
matters not where
you physical reside,
for we have found
each other
in each other words.

You, who live in
your very own
personal hell,
I think we met there,
because
yours was
mine too,
tho not found
on any map.

maybe I will meet the
Empress Josephine Maria,
rowing on the canals of
the Netherlands,
no longer will she be
alone.

but then again, some
very special things,
like
the purest of love
are on no map,
they are everywhere.

while in India,
will seek the many musings of many lips
of aged rhyme men
and complicated charmers
so I may kiss them
with spiced humors
to pour and pour,
more and more,
upon this western soul,
mysteries of the east,
to Kashmir, Bangalore,
wherever I must,
even take a praDip in the Ganges,
I will go, find you,
un-hide you,
among the
teeming millions,
millions of
jokes and rhymes,
that make the
world spin brighter.

in Germany,
all the university students
speak English,
in Wiesbaden, they know
poetic beauty is not in the format,
some in Bamberg,
with a peculiar
Missouri accent,
which is nicht gut Englisch,
so study hard the real way,
speak the language
the new yorka way,
which will require
study abroad,
which is quite funny,
now that I think about it.

but in Mo.,
the native drums roll,
long and slow,
making words
I know
better, different,
in a way never saw before,
leaves me asking for,
mo', mo', please?

to get there, to Allemagne,
land of my forefathers,
a ship I will take,
from Southampton
across the Kiel Canal,
before I depart,
will have my hair cut,
my words reworked,
by her Ladyship,
whose keen eyes and
maternal instincts,
see the joy of life in every
Livvi little thing.

Watt am I going to do if
I need to find a Tecumseh,
taker of my naked poems,
and enlarger of them,
so truth by her,
all revealed,
we are all naked
at least,
twice a day?

In Nepal I will purr at the words
gleaned from the markets and
train stations where
voyages from Lalitpur to Katmandu,
start and end,
where there is a miracle almost
sixteen years young,
where they call their schools
future stars and little angels,
so why should poetic miracles not be
as common as its subtropical clime?

though I despise the
Dallas Cowboys,
not my  America's team,
nonetheless there is a young woman,
a true rose of Texas,
who waits and writes
so lovingly of her airman,
in Afghanistan, I have placed
their names first,
in my nighttime prayers,
hoping to be there,
schedule my visit,
to witness his safe return
and their
joyous reunification.

there are no Mayans in Maine,
but poets of similar name,
kould be, mae be,
Julia's in Jersey, new,
in Auckland,
there are poets
who don't know it,
and Down Under, too,
where getting high is easy,
getting high at
and on words
well marshaled ,
but **** sure I will be
peering and prring,
all the way.

Oregon,
don't be gone,
those wide eyes shut,
when I come by,
who knows when I
will pass this way again...
on my way to Phoenix,
where sunrayes bend to the
desires of dessert breezes.

Kentucky to Korea,
one long road to travel,
but middle son,
if you can do it,
so can I, and,
I will follow.

in a beautiful city,
unsurprisingly called
Belleville,
the leader of the band,
still leads us in belle 'noise'
and when he finishes
fall leafing us in song, he still,
rises up in the mid of dark,
prayerful haikus to write.

off to Rogers, Arkansas
to meet an Italian from Mexico
who specializes in skinny poems,
something one day I will be too.

maybe I will go to
places it snows,
there are so many,
but your photo,
and tattoo trail,
clues, will follow,
no matter how hard
you make it a mystery.

you, who live in just
the world,
don't even think,
that crazy dotted lines,
unstraight,
or huge plains,
are sufficient,
to hide your
moody dust trail
from me!

somewhere in the USA,
roses grow in ground
that needs the
watering of tears,
though this place
is hard to find,
ha, turn around,
that is me,
tapping you,
on the shoulder!

will find you,
as I am searching for
a lovely pair
of stockinged ankles,
each with a heart tattoo,
but I sure could use
a clue,
before this hobbit searches
all the shire,
derby hatted,
to find your
heart real, and the real you...

my mode of time travel?
why I am just
a dude on a rocket ship.

Wisconsin,
look for my ruby message
in the snow,
in the dust,
in the sand, the skies, the sea,
but will you answer me?

Pittsburgh,
patient, you've been,
you thought I forgot
all about you,
chimera  at the intersection
of three rivers,
all you need wonder,
upon which one
will my ship arrive
and why you still disbelieve
you are not a poetess!

ME oh my,
you too, a hidey hole got,
but, we are strange, we humans,
we would gladly bleed to please,
If we could but find
a combination of
new words that
would your heart gladden,
your eyes tear,
your lips wear,
a smile of pleasure
at our offerings poetic!
but still I know not,
the where!

Lagos,
where
I shall climb the tallest skyscraper,
calling out in Yoruba,
where is my Temitope?
where is mine,
worthy of thanksgiving
so I may carry my Popoola,
my pole of her of
written wealth?


Mombasa, Singapore,
Maryland, Rhode Island, Kentucky,
Huddersfield, Connecticut Joe, Ireland,
South Dakota,

where the merry elders
well ken somethings
about a moon and tattered clouds,
something about children and dogs,
and something about letting
tomorrow's wait.

Milwaukee, Atlanta,
chuck, in *PA.,
friend to all,
to all those scattered across these
United States of America.

can we dare not mention
"The Shaq" of Malaysia,
South Sudan, Pakistan,

of course not!

Suburbia,
beautiful, black San Diego, Detroit;

The BBB's -

British Columbia, Brazil, Breendonk, and
B'kara!
the goodness of *
Boston,
flipping out in Flipadelphia,

did you think I would forget ya?

those of you hiding among 64 stars,
the groves of L.A',
on the lanes,
the special land of I-sia-Bella,
fellow citizens of Neverland,
those of you 'at home,'
in the land of nightmares,
concrete boxes,
those who post without a doubt,
and in the box,
this who think your birth year
is an identifying mark, not,
you never fooled me,
will visit each and everyone.


even and especially,
the grays of crosstown
NYC,
the red writers of my hood,
the tylers too.

I am exhausted,
forgive me well,
if thy locale,
I did not explicate,
for the hour is very late.

yet thru subtle fissures
in the clouds,
look for a tired old man
on the wings of a
chariot drawn by angels,
bringing you a dictionary
full of new words,
a present for you,
but truly,
a present to himself
for from it,
your future poems
will come.

*but the sun has come up,
so now I sleep.
1.  What makes this poem special, if anything, is the trust and confidences we share with each other, that allowed me to perhaps catch just little bit something special of each of you, where I could.

2. Can anyone explain to me why the site labels this poem explicit?
“One of the effects of living with electronic information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload.”                                                      
                                                                                      Marshall McLuhan
So, let’s review:
Man is a thinking animal.
Stanley Kubrick took us to space to get us to think.
Marshall McLuhan:  “There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.”
Hemetucky: what was I thinking?
The Rapture for the 1%:   The Language of the World and The Language of Enthusiasm explains why Sir Richard  Branson’s ****** Galactic will only be taking the richest among us to space.
Ian (Limey Futurologist) Pearson:  “Binary is already the dominant language on Planet Earth with today’s machines having more conversations in 24 hours than the whole of humankind since the birth of Eve.”
Larry Flynt:  “**** is the answer to everything.”
Goofy:  “Yeah, I ****** Minnie. I shagged her rotten, baby!”  
Winston Smith:  “Do it to Julia!”
McNugget Buddies:   “Parts is parts.”                                          
Stunod: “Donuts-a -spella backwards issa stunod.” Think about it.
Tony Soprano.  “You ****** stunod, it's a joke.” (Stunod:  in southern dialect Italian means stupid, or a stupid person) http://(www.urbandictionary.com) define.php?term = stunod  / buy stunod mugs & shirts
Marshall McLuhan:    “Jokes are grievances.”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino:  “Antonio Gramsci thought that Stalin and Bolshevism could save him and Italy from Fascism:  stunod.”
The Cloud:  My acceptance of the Cloud into my life and my changeling cyborg self is by no means a capitulation to the surfing life.
Paulo Coehlo:  “The God you seek; that someone who awaits you is you.”
Howard Beale:  “That’s the God *******.”
God:   “Because you’re on television, stunod!”
The Elders of Zion:  Nu?
Meir Kahane:  “Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are. No trait is more justified than revenge in the right time and place. I know that American and Israeli elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz - not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. Vote for Newt!”

**** Jagger:    “Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out” (40th Anniversary Edition, Rolling Stones)
Keith Richards +Fijian palm tree = Stunod.  
Marshall McLuhan:   “The more the data banks record about each of us, the less we exist.”    
Howard Beale: “If there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is not only full of *******, that man is  stunod.”
The Nam, Part I:   a demented slaughterhouse within a microcosm and grains of beach sand inside micro-Cosmo Kramer’s shorts. When I was in the Kingdom of The Nam I was always under the influence of some drug, mostly my own pure adrenaline when scared shitless--a frequent condition for me—not only my own piquant adrenal juice but other stuff like ****, hash, Thai stick, *****, amphetamines, H-Horse ******, quaaludes, horse tranquilizers and Russian *****. The drugs were always a welcome and needed friend, a respite from the horrors of war in Southeast Asia. To meditate & levitate, to transmigrate & navigate, to negotiate & regurgitate myself, I needed a head start if I was going to SLIDE through what would be called a wormhole today, making a three-dimensional movement between different parallel universes, a conquest of time and space. Cue our favorite narrator:
Rod Serling:  “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension--a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.”
WWII, Part I:  A slider now, I SLIDE to my father’s war—the War in Europe in the years before V.E. Day, May 8, 1945. Suddenly I’m flipped right out of the jungle to Germania, to Deutschland in the winter of 1945. I am a P.O.W. of the Germans, sent out into the economy as slave labor. It’s February in Dresden, Germany, the Baroque capital of the German state of Saxony, the city called lovingly by her (****!) many lovers: “The Florence of the Elbe.” It was a long time ago, during the war and I Survived to Tell the Tale. I am a wet floppy Kilgore Trout; I’ve flopped right out of the Twilight Zone into what appears to be an underground meat locker in Dresden. There are animal carcasses hanging from the ceiling and the building is known as Slaughterhouse Number 5. I am a lucky ******* because even though I don’t know it yet, I’m in the safest place in the entire city. Cue the Bombing of Dresden, a strategic military bombing by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF).  In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on Dresden. The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) of the city centre and killed many thousands, according to **** figures-- largely discredited by the victors who not only get the spoils but get to spin the history any which way but loose. Casualty figures were 200,000 and death toll estimates went as high as 500,000. Or maybe just 25,000 total, if you believe the ******* Anglo-American valkyries who unleashed the wrath of Khan’s Smoking Joe’s Barbecue Ribs and Hotlinks. Win a war, get a medal and a seat in Congress, maybe the White House; lose a war, get indicted. You’re going to Nuremberg, pilgrim, or the ******* Hague.
Kurt Vonnegut: “World War II was over and I was standing in the middle of Times Square with a Purple Heart on and a purple hard-on.”
Colonel Kurtz:  “We fight for the land that's under our feet, the gold that's in our hands, women that worship the power in our *****.  I summon fire from the sky. Do you know what it is to be a white man who can summon fire from the sky? ...What it means? You can live and die for these things, not silly ideals that are always betrayed  . . . I swallowed a bug. Who are you, captain?”
Willard:   “Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long long year, stolen many man's soul and faith. Stuck around St. Petersburg when I saw it was a time for a change. Killed the Tsar and his ministers, Anastasia screamed in vain. I rode a tank, held a gen'rals rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.”  
WWII, Part II:  The bombing of Dresden had to have been some kind of a violation of some International Code or Geneva Convention. But, of course, the bombers, the Victors, ran the Nuremberg show trials. The bombees didn’t get a chance to say much, didn’t want to make a fuss, seeing how generous the Army of Occupation was with their coal, gasoline, clothing and food handouts. But I was there when it was safe to climb out of the meat locker, and immediately got put to work on the après les bombes clean-up. I was there doing the ***** work, a corpse miner, tasked with collecting the fried grasshopper remains of so many unlucky Krauts who were simply burned alive, like heretics at the Inquisition. So it goes.
William Tecumseh Sherman: “War is Hell, Babaloo!”
Colonel Kilgore: “You can either surf, or you can fight!”
Sam Bottoms: “I dropped a tab of acid at the Do-Long Bridge, so I think I’ll surf for awhile: ‘I see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.’ Reading Blake: for years it was the only way I could block out the war, that and losing myself in a bunch of undercover assignments. Yeah, it was William Blake, I-Spy and lots more acid; that how I dealt with PTSD.”
The Nam, Part II, LT DAN:  “Good job, trooper; those ******* drugs got you coming and going, sliding so fast you’ve missed latrine duty 3 times this month. Now go get 5 gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline, mix it together and torch that ******* feces, soldier.”
** Chi Minh:  “This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.”
***** Friedman:   “The Democrats and Republicans are the same guy admiring himself in the mirror.”

Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak:   “Vote for Pedro.”
Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard:    “Fight Fiercely!”
Marshall McLuhan:    “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”
The Author:   I am a disaffected angry old man, formerly a disaffected angry young man; a Hopi-Italian Jew with Chinese offspring, namely my left-brained son, a mathematical genius but having a tough time dealing with idiots, the many truly stunod people in the world.  Then there’s my Rose, my sweet King Lear-jet daughter, like her half-brother, not yet finished paying for my sins. My offspring are haunted, visited upon daily by their father’s  ghosts, ghosts created, ghosts hovering over me, from wars hot and cold and peace lukewarm and cloudy, like the uranium ground contamination on the mesa, visited upon mothers and infants  and children who seek only a glass of cool water from the spring not to be glow worms in the dark, leukocytes made insane by something in the water. My sins, a father’s sins; things I did to curry favor, to ingratiate and advance myself with the 1%, things I did to get ahead in life, to get what I thought my father and others in the ancestral slipstream had failed to get, twice to the Rabbi for a get (Hebrew: גט‎, plural gittin גיטין), to get the edge my kids need now, the edge I never had, and life reduced to an exercise in ultimate combat, little more than a cage fight, man against man and God against all. The things I did for money and position shame me now. And shame is a large  source of my anger.  I will remain angry. I will hang on to my anger at God and myself and all who have been disappointed in me, by me, especially the cavalcade of short-term caretakers, women used, abused, left behind and forgotten. Why am I me? Sometimes I think that’s the way I’m programmed. But it’s okay, like Gaga: “I'm beautiful in my way 'Cause God makes no mistakes I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way' Cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track, baby, I was born this way and will I continue to surf the Cloud: even though God is dead and I don’t believe you, or me, or them.
Basic: remember Basic?

10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30   GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30  GOTO 10
10   A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 20
20   START STEP TWO ANGER KUBLER-ROSS INFINITE LOOP
30 A IS FOR ANGER NEXT 30
30  GOTO 10 Ad infinitum
Don Bouchard Jan 2012
I remember reading
Martin Luther King, Jr's
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Mark Twain's Huck Finn
DuBois' Souls of Black Folk
For the first time

The words of Chief Joseph
Sitting Bull
Tecumseh
James Welch
and Alexie Sherman
And others of indigenous kind
Linger like arrows in my mind.

Of course, there's
Gilgamesh's forlorn quest for Enkidu;
Osiris, Amun, Ra, and Seth,
Homer's Illiad and Odyssey,
And Virgil's Roman treatment -
(For whom the gods destroy
We all must learn bereavement).

I remember reading
Milton's Paradises (lost and found)
And Dante's Infernal quest for Heaven
Through the bowels of Hell with Virgil's spritely guide
And up the Devil's staircase with Beatrice by his side.
John's Revelation of Times' End;
And LaHaye's money-making Left Behind
Apocalypses here to chill my mind.

I have surveyed Dead Presidents
Washington,
Jefferson,
Lincoln
Both Roosevelts, Ted and Frank,
And Reagan
And smatterings of others...
Then hopped the bookish pond to read
Sir Winston and some others,
Not the least of whom is Gandhi G,
Taught by the Queen to free his brothers.

I have studied
Moses
Job
David
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The Disciples
Paul
and James
(Ironically,
Though Jesus is the "Word"
He never penned one).

British poets's thoughts,
Tale tellers long-dead
Have found their way
Into my head:
Beowulf and Chaucer
Old moral plays
Shelley and Keats
Cavalier Poets
Scott and Brownings
Burns and (not) Allen
Spenser and Shakespeare
Dylan and Tolkien
Lewis and Auden
And so many more
That I leave on the floor

Western Americana I have loved
Hemingway and Steinbeck, all worth the time,
Mari Sandoz' Old Jules, and
Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth,
Keroac went on the road, while
Joseph Kinsey Howard showed us the West
Lewis & Clark in journals scribed
Their journey west and back again

I can't forget psychology
And so I will digress
Or Sigmund's accusation stays
That I have but suppressed:
Ellis, Freud, and Eric Berne,
Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson,
Wundt, and Wm James, Piaget and Chomsky
Then Vygotsky and Bandura put a social spin
on cognitive psychology, and Everybody's in.
Diverging and Converging, psychic students, all
Could never make transaction
'Til Rogers tried to make some peace
But Ellis wouldn't have 'im.

And then, of course,
The lighter stuff,
The popcorn of the mind:
Clancy, Rankin, Carole Keene
L'Amour and Will James
Stephen King and Poe,
Cruz Smith and Leon Uris,
Grisham, Deaver, Cornwall,
Asimov, Bradbury and Herbert,
Carroll and Baum...
Written Words change us.... I use the term "poem" as Louise Rosenblatt did, namely, a poem is the creation each reader makes to describe the connection between the Text and his or her own life experience, opinion, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, etc. Those "poems" affect and change us in our wanderings on this earth. I am, indeed, changed by the texts I have read and continue to read....
In haphazard fashion, I am starting a collection of writers who give me an understanding of the world's color and shape. This is just the beginning.... If readers have suggestions or reminders, I will add the ones I have read....
Don Bouchard Jan 2016
I remember reading
Martin Luther King, Jr's
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom
Mark Twain's Huck Finn
DuBois' Souls of Black Folk,
Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck,
Sherman Alexie's Part-time Indian tale....
For the first time

The words of Chief Joseph
Sitting Bull
Tecumseh
James Welch
and Alexie Sherman
And others of indigenous kind
Linger like arrows in my mind.

Of course, there's
Gilgamesh's forlorn quest for Enkidu;
Osiris, Amun, Ra, and Seth,
Homer's  Illiad and  Odyssey,
And Virgil's Roman treatment -
(For whom the gods destroy
We all must learn bereavement).

I remember reading
Milton's Paradises (lost and found)
And Dante's Infernal quest for Heaven
Through the bowels of Hell with Virgil's spritely guide
And up the Devil's staircase with Beatrice by his side.
John's Revelation of Times' End;
And LaHaye's money-making Left Behind,
Collin's Hunger Games and Dashner's Maze Running
Apocalypses enough to chill my mind.

I have surveyed Dead Presidents
Washington,
Jefferson,
Lincoln
Both Roosevelts, Ted and Frank,
And Reagan
And smatterings of others...
Then hopped the bookish pond to read
Sir Winston and some others,
Not the least of whom is Gandhi G,
Taught by the Queen to free his brothers.

I have studied
Moses
Job
David
Ruth
Esther
Isaiah
Jeremiah
The Disciples
Paul
and James
(Ironically,
Since Jesus is the "Word,"
Through men He penned).

British poets's thoughts,
Tale tellers long-dead
Have found their way
Into my head:
Beowulf and Chaucer
Old moral plays
Shelley and Keats
Cavalier Poets
Scott and Brownings
Burns and (not) Allen
Spenser and Shakespeare
Dylan and Tolkien
Lewis and Auden
And so many more
That I leave on the floor

Western Americana I have loved
Hemingway and Steinbeck, all worth the time,
Mari Sandoz' Old Jules, and
Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth,
Keroac went on the road, while
Joseph Kinsey Howard showed us the West
Lewis & Clark in journals scribed
Their journey west and back again

I can't forget psychology
And so I will digress
Or Sigmund's accusation stays
That I have but suppressed:
Ellis, Freud, and Eric Berne,
Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson,
Wundt, and Wm James, Piaget and Chomsky
Then Vygotsky and Bandura put a social spin
on cognitive psychology, and Everybody's in.
Diverging and Converging, psychic students, all
Could never make transaction
'Til Rogers tried to make some peace
But Ellis wouldn't have 'im.

And then, of course,
The lighter stuff,
The popcorn of the mind:
Clancy, Rankin, Carole Keene
L'Amour  and Will James
Stephen King and Poe,
Cruz Smith and Leon Uris,
Grisham, Deaver, Cornwall,
Asimov, Bradbury and Herbert,
Carroll and Baum...

The list goes on and on, and will, I'm sure, expand beyond capacity.
Work in progress.... Thanks to Soul Survivor for catching my glitch about Jesus.... Since all Scripture is God-breathed, technically, Jesus is the author of Holy Scripture, and He inspired the text we know as the Bible.... Good catch!
JDK Jan 2014
"If you're the least bit sensitive, this world will eat you alive."
Is it any wonder then that so many of us want to die?
But I gave up a long time ago on suicide
Such an ignoble way to say goodbye

So if I must go, I want to be beaten by some ******* while defending a woman's honor
Shot by an oppressive father for attempting to liberate his daughter
Gunned down by the government for standing up for the rights of another
I guess you could say,
I have dreams of becoming a martyr

"Only the good die young"
Only through self-sacrifice can you become
Deeply ingrained in humanities' collective brain
I want to make a difference
Before I grow old and insane

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lincoln
JFK
Jesus Christ
Gandhi
Joan of Arc
Tecumseh
And then there's Socrates

Somebody help me, help me please
I want so badly to die for the sake of a belief
But it's all so ****** up now
Twisted and torn
Sometimes I wish that I was never born

And there have been others who felt the same way
Vincent Van Gogh
Rothko
And Hemingway

I know it's not fair of me to say
They all lead lives wrought with such pain

Like Bradley Nowell
And Kurt Cobain
Some saw it coming
Like Mark Twain

Freedom really is a double-edged sword
After Jack Parsons blew up he left us his words
His mom OD'd shortly after having heard
Greatness can only last so long in this world

And what of Albert Camus?
Was it really unplanned?
And that poor old Nietzsche
Came so unglued at the end

And fate is really something
How can we comprehend
Some lives are surely doomed
From the moment they begin
Dropping names. Freddie Mercury ought to be in there somewhere.
Sofia Aug 2010
I can’t remember exactly where or how it started off but i found myself on a beach that was coast to a massive ocean, perhaps the Atlantic . I was with clare and some other people I didn’t know, but it felt like I did know them. We were all running away from someone who was particularly dangerous to us for some reason. I think there was a bar or club we ran out of to get away that was also on the beach shoreline. It was a cloudy day and we all ran into the water. I had no idea how we’d escape when suddenly there was a silver Volkswagen bug car just floating there stationed in the shallow water waiting for us. It had no wheels, just floated there like a boat, and there was no top on the car so it was like a convertible . We all jumped into the car in great haste and I asked, “how are we gonna drive this thing?!” (as it was, after all, a car in an ocean). Clare said “we just start it.” She turned the key to the ignition and it rumbled to life just as a normal car would, and to drive it we just used the gas pedal and steering wheel to drive it full speed across the waters surface. It drove very smoothly without faltering. We needed to make it very far away, like sail from wherever we were to a country in Europe, like France. So I then fell asleep for days on end in the car so I wouldn’t have to be waiting for us to reach land. Once I woke up it was sunny and we were in a country that resembled Florida. We got off the car and left it floating in the water and went into an old abandoned house to pack up things for our next voyage. It was old inside the house with wooden plank walls where the sun shone through it’s cracks into the room. There we met up with several others who were making getaways just like us all across the continent, we were all trying to escape something but just didn’t know what. We were all very tanned and very *****, we were covered with ruddy sand and dirt and our skin was bronze like we’d spent days out in a desert. I really missed my parents as they were unaware of me leaving so I wrote them an imaginary letter in my head hoping they’d somehow read it that way, and would understand where I was and why I was leaving. I was worried sick about them for some reason. then everyone left our cottage to board the car boat and I was left back because I was having trouble deciding what coloured flip flops I wanted to pack in my bag . Simona was yelling at me to hurry up and I was looking at red, blue black and brown flipflops all mismatched under a table. I grabbed the brown ones and took off. We somehow made it across more bodies of water and under seaside cliffs, hills and mountains as we sought a place of refuge from this thing we were running from in our starting land. Then we made it on land and found a house in a city, and inside the house resembled my uncles’ house in Tecumseh. We all went into the basement where FUD was having band practise but they had no instruments and were just talking to people. Terry was bidding goodbye to a slutty gf who couldn’t keep her jeans on without showing her crack to the whole house. I fell asleep on a couch in the basement on a really comfy pillow. I awoke and everyone was leaving and Tyler was running around the basement making bad jokes. This time my mom was in the basement and she was either wanting to come along on our escape or begging me to stop going anywhere. I felt really awful about it but I can’t remember if she came with us or not. Suddenly we were all gone from the house and I was climbing an immense system of buildings and steel planks they use to build things in big cities. If i fell i would surely plummet to my death, but i was climbing so agile and nimbly and fast it was not a concern to me at all. It was dusk and the sunset was painting dark blue and reds and pinks and yellows across the sky. I was climbing 500 feet up in the air and behind me was jasmine from Aladdin. We were chasing this Asian man from the Disney movie mulan, he was the secretary character, with a long moustache and kimono outfit. He was really evil to us I guess. He eventually reached a big peak in the building system and was laughing at us below when a huge metal cross was being lifted up and down and delivering a crushing bang to the exact position he was sitting on. He couldn’t go anywhere as the end of the structured thing hit his legs, then missed, then hit his toe, and finally crushed him and he fell all the way down to his death. I was awestruck and still hanging 500ft in the air on this skeleton of a building and the sun was setting, and then I woke up with this so vivid in my head I had to write it down cause it was so real to me.
Shelby Bates Feb 2012
A warm dark rectangle.
That was what it was after all. A long toasty box, filled with rows of seats; all with a certain air of weariness about them. Covered in a thick crinkled heather grey material, they seemed to be begging silently for a kind of companionship.
Despite the silent, tired interior, the exterior was jumping, vivid, and fake. Bands of glowing neon twisted their way across the structure, globes of red light sliced through the dawns inky chill. This gaudy shell sped across barren city roads, quiet as a snake. As it slid into view, it's waiting passengers hoisted their heavy packs, and waited for their dazzled, stricken vision to return.
With a hiss, the double doors of the bus opened and the travelers mounted the dull metal steps, and deposited themselves into designated seats. Frigid and sleepy, neighbors attempted stilted conversation. Once the necessary social obligations where filled, they relapsed into a sort of semi conscious coma.
Maybe it was 10 minutes, Maybe it was 10 hours later. There is no sense of time on the bus. Just a cloying fog of heat and drowsiness. Whatever the moments had been, the passengers knew that their time to face the day had arrived. Gliding in front of the brick and glass monument to conformity, the doors opened, and the brave souls onboard filed out.
As they entered the building, the seats sighed. They missed the travelers. Carbon copies, possibly, but people all the same. And when your lonely, nothing is more desired then a human touch. 


"Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place."
~Tecumseh
Tecumseh's
obsolete
                who once
                pillaged and bent iron
                                                    railroad tracks
and scorched onetwothreefourfive citiesforfreedomsake
                                                                                              Jesus
must have been in that army
                                                and all i need to know is
why you didn't run to the sea
Mister Sherman
This poem is an imitation in the style of "Buffalo Bill's" by E.E. Cummings
“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.   Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.”                              Marshall McLuhan

You understand where I'm coming from,
Reader Rabbit, you twisted ****? Maybe not;
While you and your boy/girlfriend, later your wife/husband,
Were ******* backpacks around Europe,
I was of a less fortunate, less frivolous cohort,
Like the poor, who always miss the fun stuff.
So I stayed home and waited, dreading time,
Treading water in Queens,
Doing the graveyard shift at the Wonder Bread Bakery in Jamaica,
(No, not that Jamaica, mun.)
Building bodies 12 ways, and sweating out the inevitable,
Praying to my lesser god not to hear from my local draft board.
And who was I to disturb the universe?
“It ain’t me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son;
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, lawd naw.”
(Send  "Fortunate Son" Ringtone to your Cell)  
I was just another cynical working-class hero,
Unlike you, numb nuts, and the rest of your silver surfer friends.
I knew I’d wind up without my teddy bear,
Convinced I’d end up sans security blanket,
With no ****-vacant musical chair,
To plop my sorry non-exempt, 1A **** cheeks
Down into when the music stopped,
When the music’s over, turn out the light--Jim Morrison,
Lizard King--turn out the light.
My horse, my horse . . . no wait . . . **** the horse . . .
My kingdom, my kingdom for a 2-S college deferment!
What kingdom?  
What was it Jesus said?
Not of this earth, anyway.
Colonial Indochina: rich man's war, poor man's fight;
It was such an efficient way to rid trash from poor neighborhoods.

Needless to say, I’ve been having a little trouble adjusting ever since,
Since I got back from that Kafkaesque Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
My personal Cold War thriller,
My Tecumseh Sherman “War is All Hell” war,
My war: 45 years ago next week.
These things take time:
So says the recorded message on the VA’s PTSD Hotline.
45 years ago I packed up my duffle,
Packed for what I thought was going to be my last time in uniform,
Grabbed my Army discharge papers, and
Limp-dicked out the side door of,
The Veterans Hospital in St. Albans, County of Queens.
I’d like to say I never looked back. But I’d be lying.

(cue PSA: VA Reaches Out to Veterans:
The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin,
Contacting nearly 570,000 recent combat veterans May 1,
To ensure they know about VA's medical services and other benefits.)

Today and every day is 11-11, Veterans Day—
What gets me now is that all my time since The Nam,
Is on average two lifetimes,
For all those sent home, bagged and tagged.
Is it survivor’s guilt? I doubt it.

You may not understand this, but I miss that freaky jungle.
I felt safe there.
How quickly I learned to expect the unexpected,
And that meant to expect the worse,
Finding my comfort zone the more uncomfortable, the worse it got.
I miss the wet weight of the air,
The cloying heat and humidity.
Humidity: a plain and simple meteorological miracle,
When you have plenty of time to really think about it,
Which I did: 365 days and a wake-up.
You know that whole gorgeous hydrologic cycle thing?
I miss the rain, the sound of falling rain.
I miss the other sounds, every buzz and click,
All the arcane and dismal things that go screech in the night.
And that relentless insect hum,
The jungle vibrating and intense,
The colors vibrating too, especially that electric green,
A green so vivid, every leaf and vine,
"The world's richest repository of terrestrial biodiversity,” I read in some nature magazine,
Lying naked in bed while my therapist ****** me off the other day.
All those freaky creatures great and small,
Every miraculous living thing that’s really alive and thriving.
And this is why--I think,
Getting obnoxiously philosophical for the moment,
This explains why it got to be so easy to waste what was alive and thriving over there, including and especially our selves.

Death never seemed that permanent, that final over there.
And besides, you couldn’t **** anything for that long,
The critters all looking their wet and slimy same.  
Two minutes in The **** and you were
Killing every ******* gnat and bug,
Every leech and snake, anything &
Anyone that just looked at you sideways.

And the flora? Did I mention the flora?
Soupy Sales: (Smack! Bam!)  “I told you not to mention that.”
The flora:  the plants grew back and they grew back quick.
You chop a path on recon and the next day it’s not there anymore,
So you chop the whole way back to the L-Z.  
Chop, chop, Hop Sing!
You were one smart ****, Hop Sing,
Safe and sound in Lake Tahoe, Nevada-side,
Cooking up Ponderosa pork bellies for,
The Cartwright Clan: Ben, Adam, Hoss & Little Joe.
Meanwhile, I’m not earning any frequent flyer miles,
Aboard a chartered TWA, coffee-tea-or-me,
Royal **** airplane to Saigon,
A place called ** Chi Minh City today.
I remember looking around at the faces on that airplane,
As we landed at Tan Son Nhut,
Those forlorn godforsaken faces,
Black and Chicano and poor white trash boys.
Scared shitless, of course,
But we really were jolly green giants over there,
American conquistadors, Cortez and the Boys,
Seeking gold and glory and, of course,
*******, (www.urbandictionary.com):
That sweet wet hole we all crave,
Can't go for too long without,
Center of our life's desire,
What gives women the upper hand in almost every situation,
Except when you pay in South Vietnamese piastres,
Your basic exchange rate $3.00 *******.

Yes, we were American conquistadors,
But traveling light this trip,
Our black-robed Jesuit fathers having missed the flight.
That’s right, for us no Ad majorem Dei gloriam this time,
Our mission so simple and so clear:
SEARCH & DESTROY.
But mostly, Destroy.

And pretty soon you worked your way up the evolutionary ladder,
From bugs, to fish, to frogs and snakes,
Small varmints and reptiles, birds and rodents;
And by the time you taxonomy out to the runway,
You’re pretty much whacking anything that moves,
Anything you feel like, pretty much any time,
All the time, sometimes just to pass the time,
Just to break up the ******* monotony of it all.
So making the anti-personnel leap got sort of easy:
They all looked the same, didn’t they?
They all wore the same pajamas,
And it was never conducive to grunt longevity,
To nitpick the civilians from the soldiers,
Never a good idea to waste time distinguishing friend from foe.

Good Morning, Vietnam:
We really were nerve-gassed-Adrian Cronauers over there,
G-2 Army oxymoronic intelligence stiffs,
Having a little difficulty finding the enemy,
Having one hell of a time finding a Vietnamese man named "Charlie."
They're all named Nguyen, or Tran, or Thanh or Trong or Bao or Phuc . . .
Oh, ****, I get it now.
I grok the how and why,
Of all the names we’ve used for centuries to dehumanize the enemy:
***** and Nips, Chinks and Slopes,
Huns and Krauts, Redskins and Ivans,
Redcoats and Rebs, Zulus and Mau Maus, *****, Ragheads and Sand ******* . . .
To dehumanize is to be dehumanized.
Nominal dehumanization; linguistic trickery.
It made it easy . . .
Well, easier . . .
To **** you.

What was it Pope Innocent III’s legate advised?
“**** Them All.  Let God sort ‘em out.”

Is it smell of burning flesh that makes me so digress?

Yes, I miss that freaky jungle, my friend.
I miss knowing what to expect and what was to be expected.
And most of all I miss that absolute confidence,
My self-liberating soporific certainty,
That I did not give a **** whether I lived or died,
And no one else did either.
I miss the peaceful place to go,
Coping with fear by letting go,
By writing off my life,
My future "in-country,"
My 12-month tour of duty,
My 365 T.S. Eliot Ash Wednesdays,
Learning to care and not to care,
Cultivating indifference as to,
Whether or not I ever made it Wee, Wee, Wee,
All the way home again.
The answers were right there,
Always there, all the time,
In nursery rhymes, and counting songs,
In psalms and arias, and every blues and rock lyric,
Right there, so right ******* there,
In Kris Kristofferson/Janice Joplin parlance of the times:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

And life for me since then--
ONE BIG, FAT-TITTED INCOMPREHENSIBILITY!

What was that Walter Sobjak in The Big Lebowski said?

“This is not 'Nam.
This is bowling.
There are rules.”
Nat Lipstadt Apr 2015
For Harriet - Wherever You May Be

read this quote and instant mournful,
for this is you,
and me lessened,
less courageous,
by your absence.


"Courage -
a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger,
and a mental willingness
to endure it."

William Tecumseh Sherman
one of the best poets ever here, who writes but infrequently now,
as she travels our united states
in her ambulance.
I miss you and your courage.
I endure.

http://hellopoetry.com/harriet-tecumsah-watt/
James Floss Dec 2018
And then,
Whites were gone
Not even then when

No Niña Pinta or
Santa María
No TB for NA

No Auto-de-fés
No pogroms
Nor hollow cost

All brown around town
North South and Central
Native America

Look: on the $20 bill–
Alexander Hamilton
There: a Fredrick Douglas fifty

Jesús? Brown.
Buddha? Yellow.
Tecumseh? Red.

George Washington
Carver? Black.
No white slight, that

We can build walls
Separate families
Deny others entry

Or reclaim beige and
Not run the race
And finally, just behave
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2020
With a mask do I fare forward
With both my talents and my sins

I am one who gets up and fights
Starts over and begins

Yes, I am afraid of death
Annihilation's terror

My life has known much madness
But my life is not an error

I still have plans and schemes
Resistance to the end

I had the poetic dream
O Tecumseh! Be my friend!
Thy birth on January 13th –
   cervical contractions
   would not abate
the pesky master (papa), strove

   to synchronize seminal bait
thence, forty-two weeks
   after ma parents did pro create
imminent lviii plus years ago to date,

this present baby boomer doth
   indubitably and inherently equate
nineteen hundred and fifty nine
   bequeathed birthed mine kempf ill fate

neurological manifestation,
   sans obsessive compulsive did grate
behavioral motif and analogous
   to frontispiece per story I hate
of my life and hard times,
   when all of a sudden out blue irate,

the onset of emotional nadir,
   where ballistic ordnance bombed away
fancy free, innocent, naïve boyhood
   decrying, detonating,
   and describing me own Pigs Bay

Allied, linkedin, and synced Luftwaffe
   and Panzer division invasion that clay
like materiel within southern cerebral hemi
   sphere inroads usurped no delay

riding roughshod via synapse straits sporting
   scoring sorties using every
axe n newer on dread did
   Swiss hide dill naught

   to decimate with spirited ghost
   of William Tecumseh Sherman
   determination tuff flay
leaving not one iota (oft times)
   referenced as gray
matter unaffected quite aware
   of rebellious confederated voices
   yelling “HOORAY”

Sabotaging orbitofrontal communication
incorporating connection between anterior
cingulate gyrus cortex heightening activity
bridging (via atom sized pontoon bridges)

greater activity upon basal ganglia, which
synoptic description does nothing to alter
the predisposition to ingress of un control
able imbecilic, inexplicable, and illogical
fixation particularly during onset of puberty,

when an emotional kamikaze nose dive
at nadir of near lifelessness, the shadow
of me former self nowhere tubby found
on account of deadly symbiotic relationship

asper the invisible nemesis – i.e. electrical
impulses faux nattering nabobs of mien nativity
whereat unseen thriving sensational riffraff
quenched powerhouse ousting nestled milk
maids, or rather pressing said resources,

sans vitality into dangerous, frivolous,
and horrendous self destructive antics,
where ballistic charges drugged eminent
domain former nerve cell size occupants,
thoroughly re-engineering sense and sensibility

with pride fullness and prejudice on par
with dousing one with ****** completely
upends functioning healthily, judging lovingly,
and managing productively versus expending
precious time and energy self absorbed

into manic, neurotic, and/or psychotic actions,
manners, thoughts, et cetera, which irrationality
got embedded within the neurological interstices,  
even as of this moment hound me
akin to wild beasts circling ever closer
to launch mortal kombat against their very housing.
Jonathan Moya Oct 2020
The cairns are mothered
by murders of crows—

four stones as black as raven eggs,
others sky blue with specks of black,

pointing this way to heaven,
pointing this way to hell,

or is it to Tecumseh’s grave,
the bones of all buffaloes?

But then crows are great tricksters,
erecting spoof vortexes, medicine wheels.

They see everything at ground level,
the new landscape under their feet,
the old air lifting their wings.

They revel in the unbalancing
of everyday things

the sun, the moon,
the earth, the sky.

They will flip flop when all are asleep
and flop right back in the waking dream.  

Crows know the cairn formed
where Cain and David’s stone’s fell,
where Jesus dare not cast the first one.

They know what happened to those
who stole the middle stone
causing the soldier to come,

the ones who rose when
their gravestones were removed,

the ones that mark where
the things of life are buried,

even the feather cairns that line
to the final game jump.
In Ohio
Valley if
Tecumseh once
treated dear
certainty with
their disgust
and two
by lust
but when
leaders they
ready kissed
her said
why Britton
went there
for one
in Battle
Ground too
Re" Tippecanoe and Presidents
Qualyxian Quest Dec 2022
Fey
So I was just a bit manic
And I think I scared her away
Let me wait awhile
Live to text another day

Tecumseh in Ohio
And the Rock Hall of Fame
Carolina Inn
She hollers out my name

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy as language game
Vienna waits for you
Judi, not Jesse James

Georgia on my mind
Basketball to play
Cocoa Tigers delight her
I still hit the Tre

                Fey
Qualyxian Quest Feb 2023
So I see a NASA bumper sticker
With a Native dreamcatcher
Gets my attention

Arapahoe, Linganore
Cherokee convention

Exoplanets spin
Astronomers find water
I have 3 sons
She has 2 daughters

I'd like to take her to Budapest
Prayers for Taipei 101
Tecumseh get your rifle
Tecumseh get your gun

On the field tomorrow morn
You'll meet with Harrison
Qualyxian Quest Dec 2021
George W. killed hundreds of thousands
Paints in peace in Texas
I eat veggie dogs
Haunted by my exes

John Brown, what a fighter!
America's good terrorist
I now live near Harper's Ferry
It glitters in the sun

Richard Nixon bombed Cambodia
Killed his own at Kent State
I went to Angkor Wat
And San Francisco's Dragon Gate

Tecumseh and the Prophet
Book I'm reading now
Lives of Defiance
Tecumseh get your gun.
Florence hydra logical might -
tee pseudo tentacles, monstrous sight
didst bring watery plight,
deluge rivaling Noah - bliss oblige
     epic flood of biblical
     proportions, downright
terrible, re:, a drowning egregious fright
ten ning (in contest

     able uber catastrophe) - Don know why
     das trumpeting spare none, tossing,
     pitching, and lap
     ping blithely alight
ting across geography of thee
     Old North State leaving affright
full trail of destruction, (envied by
     the ghost of General

     William Tecumseh Sherman),
     he no match, where battling
     mortal men didst bite
the bullet outflanked,
     sans doodling Yankees topflight
capstone march to the sea,
     then touted as outright
masterful stroke, asper,

     turning tide of historical Civil war,
     which swath of indiscriminate overnight
destruction in tandem
     followed his Georgia quick step,
     successful Atlanta battle, fight
     ten, which campaign
     rendered victory in sight
Union accorded devastated country

     as winning *****, viz prizefight
ting champions clearly, grimly,
     and lamentably plunged
     once promisingly emergent
     then vanquished Confederacy
     with defeat written
     in figurative bombsight,
qua Rebels surrendering

     at lanced armstrong
     rapier pointed to Appomattox Court House
     original United States territory
     initially indigenous copyright,
stolen, whence ark enemy
     routed, killed, and decimated
     blood brethren human kind -
versus present natural disaster

     no matter meteorologists foresight,
nonetheless horrendously cruel debacle
     crushing The Tar Heel state
     trouncing analogously
     as aqueous blight
**** hellacious sight
tropical storm forcibly reclaiming
     visa vis re

     discovered primacy birthright
(i.e. revanchist deeded sic - seeded),
what "she," viz Mother Nature
     felt tubby "her" right,
bar no holds Gaia
     pulled out all stops
     punishingly ravaged North Carolina
     mercilessly didst wring

havoc bore out flooding
     and proved accurate "NON
     FAKE" fervent devout
     alarmist theologians
     appropriating weather forecasters dire
     prediction as doomsday message
     fore taste testing, telling, and texting
     presaging Armageddon authored

     by cosmic playwright,
whence global pulverizing,
     savaging, and torturing spite
     fully sucker punching
     swing, perhaps indicative dire strait
(a hunch from this topflight
atheist) posits ultraright
religionists possibly ascribe
     divine creator a bit uptight.
Qualyxian Quest May 2021
We speak of guerilla warfare
And badass old Tecumseh

He's reading 300 books
I like his Spider hat

The Tillers sing the song
Harrison confronted

Tecumseh get your rifle
I want one good at bat

    But where is that?
Qualyxian Quest May 2021
The fog in San Francisco
The mist in Budapest

Wanna do the best I can
Before I take my rest

I plot and plan and play
Yes, I do protest

Tecumseh get your rifle
Tecumseh is the best
Qualyxian Quest Jun 2020
Panther Across the Sky
Going down fighting
Prophetstown sighting

— The End —