You noticed, when you last
saw Betty the evening she
was dying, in the curtained
off area of the ward, that she
was wearing around her neck,
the wooden rosary you had

given her some months before.
Her husband had telephoned
you and said she was dying and
she wanted to see you. But when
you arrived she was already on
her way out, her eyes closed,

the death rattle taking hold,
her husband and her children
about her bed. The rosary, a
brown wooden cross with a
metallic Christ, was still there,
the Christ lying where her night

gown covered ******* slowly
rose and fell. When you’d seen
her some months back, in the
high street, she said she would
learn the prayers of the rosary,
and how grateful she was to you

for the gift, and she fingered it
there and then, her thumb and
finger rubbing over the Christ.  
You’d first met her a year or so
before as she sketched the large
gardens you visited as a group.

Her hand guiding the pencil as
the image was translated onto
the sketch pad, her eyes scanning
what it was she wanted to capture
in all its beauty. I like capturing

churches, she had said, watercolours
and pencil or charcoal as my aids.
You remembered words that evening
as she lay there dying from cancer,
the curtained area dim and silent
except for the rattling breath, just Betty

and the rosary in the end, and your
deep love and the unwanted death.

i can hear the crickets again:
chirping chirps,
deafening me, a silent sound
bears them unbidden to me,
supplicant, bathing darkness
across my skin.

you are thinking about me, again.

i am certain of it,
why else would you be so silent?

Give me your tongue for Christmas:
it is of no use to you.
i will give you the fingers
of my left hand,
so useless to me.
It is a fair trade, no doubt.
Then we will both have
nothing of value.

The young boy wrote his Christmas Cards
Wrote his name as neatly as he knew
He put the ones aside to take to school
And in his bedroom he hid two

These cards were special for the boy
One was for his Uncle, one was for his dad
The cards just had to reach them
And here's the plan he had..

He knew that mail to Santa Claus
Made it up to the North Pole
But, he wasn't sure just how his card
Would reach his fathers soul

You see, the boys dad and his Uncle
were taken by an IED
They'd both been gone two years now
Since the  boy was only three

He visited the cenotaph
In the park, most every day
He'd stop and he'd salute it
And then he'd go and play

It was a gentle hi to both of them
For he knew that at this place
He could feel them staring down on him
Though he'd forgotten his dad's face

He took the cards down to the park
And he left them by a wreath
Left over from November
He laid his two cards underneath

A man was walking past the boy
And he saw the boy salute
But, he also saw the Christmas cards
And he thought the whole thing cute

He waited for the boy to leave
And he opened one to read
It said  "Merry Christmas" , "Thank You"
"I miss you, yes indeed"

The man went to the nearest school
to ask about the lad
To find out if this one young boy
Was a student that they had

A teacher overheard his tale
And called the man in for a talk
At the end she sat there crying
She had to go out for a walk

She went to find his teacher
Told the tale of this young man
Then between them they sat down and
They both devised a plan

The next day when the class began
Christmas Cards they would write
Each one was for a soldier
And to them this just seemed right

They would set up a class field trip
To see the vets up on the hill
In the special Veterans Hospital
to the kids, this was a thrill

The hospital was telephoned
And the vets were set to meet
Miss Johnson and Miss Watson's class
To get their Christmas treat

The kids were dressed in sunday best
Like they were a month ago
But, this time it was different
This time there would be snow

Each card said "Merry Christmas"
All said thank you, some were sad
To think this project started with
A card left for a dad

After all was done and dusted
The kids continued on
They went down to the cenotaph
To give more cards to those now gone

The story made it through the school
And each day another class
Wrote Christmas cards to soldiers
And they delivered them en-masse

By the action of a little boy
who wasn't locked to a computer
He started a tradition
this young boy, the saluter.

“The F_g with the Bow Tie” 1

            “Only in Russia is poetry respected – it gets people killed.
              Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a  
              motive  for ******?”

                                                -Osip Mandelstam 2

Spain. Poetry got people killed in Spain -
And still wherever tyrants of delicate nerves
And artistic sensitivities hear
Whispered rumors of whispered disapproval

And so an innocent, fearful and trembling
Must be motored away to a moonless death
Upon orders spoken, written, tweeted
Telephoned, telegraphed, or teletyped

One prays he has a moment to adjust his tie
Perfectly - as an honor to Poetry




1 The slur is attributed to Federico Garcia Lorca’s murderers:
https://lithub.com/dictators-****-poets-on-federico-garcia-lorcas-last-days/

2 Quoted by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in 20th Century Russian Poetry

Yesterday my daughter e-mailed me again, asking why I didn't do something useful with my time.

"Like sitting around the pool and drinking wine is not a good thing?" I asked.

Talking about my  "doing-something-useful"  seems to be her favorite topic of conversation.

She was  "only thinking of me", she said and suggested that I go down to theSenior Center and hang out with the guys.

I did this and when I got home last night, I decided to play a prank on her.

I e-mailed her and told her that I had joined a Parachute Club.

She replied,  "Are you nuts?  You are 78 years old and now you're going to start jumping out of airplanes?"

I told her that I even got a Membership Card and e-mailed a copy to her.

She immediately telephoned me and yelled, "Good grief, Mom, where are your glasses?!






This is a Membership to a ******* Club, not a Parachute Club."

"Oh man, I'm in trouble again," I said, "I really don't know what to do. I signed up for five jumps a week!!"

The line went quiet and her friend picked up the phone and said that my daughter had fainted.

Life as a Senior Citizen is not getting any easier, but sometimes it can be fun

In the end when they send you off in
a coffin
and drink your goodbye with slices of egg and dutch ham pie,
you may wonder why they're saying nice things,when they couldn't be bothered to see how you where,when you were there among the living and giving your best.
You were a pest and let's face it, they couldn't stand you but look at them now,long drawn out faces,squeezed out cake cases litter the floor,what's it all for,who are they trying to fool?
Not me
for I've gone,
but suddenly I was the best thing since the advent of the wheel,I don't feel it at all,let them have their ball,play their games,cry hallelujah in all of God's names,it's a sham,a bit like the dutch ham which came from Algiers.
Let them shed tears,they'll *** less as my dad used to say,but it's a sad state of affairs when at the end of my days,some sausage mouthed man gets up and he says,
'we''ll miss him,our friend'
Send me right now to the Devil and how he will pay,it's not bad enough that I'm dead but to listen to this is really *******.

I would say this as I kissed off this world,

'he was a ****,bright not thick,,a waste of time in a time of waste and a pasty faced ,two toned, large *****,I'd rather that he telephoned,i couldn't stand the sight of him,he liked the sound of his own voice,you listened as you had no choice,will we miss him?not so much but in some weird way he touched us with that madness,sad less and even less than that,the beer he left us for the wake is in the barrel flat

that's a whole lot nicer than the type of spice they curry you with when you're on your way,and who am I to say all this?none but the one who will miss me the most.

Last night I had a dream
so to see if it were true,
this morning when I woke
I almost telephoned you.

My fingers knew the number,
but my heart forgot the words..
so when you answered and asked who it was,
silence was all you heard.

Sometimes I wish that you were here
to make my dreams more real
but then I remember all of the pain
that you always made me feel.

I guess it is for the better
that we are still apart
I thought my mind had accepted that
until in my dream, again, you broke my heart.

BT telephoned
six times at home
to sell me
a mobile phone

They wore me down
and then they charged
fourteen pounds
forevermore

Now I've put it
back in the box
I'll send it as a gift
Pre postage paid
and even weighed
BT will pay for it

At my house
I have a skylight and on a rainy night through
fall drops of heavenly dew, cats visit through.
Daily I repair others fallen ceilings.
But, i look up into the sky, and
bless my telephoned pole hole and
see stars glowing. That pole
brought me
a start to meaning
living now. with no limits
to my future, or ceilings
to hold me down.

.           Before he decided to sleep

          he telephoned Little Bo Peep

               She said she felt lousy

                  And feeling drowsy

Because the bell whether’s one noisy sheep.

Before he decided to sleep

         he telephoned Little Bo Peep

              She said she felt lousy

                 And feeling drowsy

Because the bell whether’s one noisy sheep.