What if Eden and Gethsema!ne
were in the selfsame place?
Then, in the spot where Adam fell,
knelt Christ to take his place.
Perhaps the tree of knowledge stood
where Peter fell asleep!
He lacked that night the stamina
his holy watch to keep.
The Via Dolorosa starts
where Peter struck the slave.
Passion cancels passion out
when there are souls to save.

George Johannesen isn’t dead
though the State claims he’s expired.
His driver’s License they cancelled
though he still had four good tires.
George, at first, thought to complain
about this twist of fate.
Then he came to realize that
Death is a tax free state.
Five hundred thousand dollars
Were paid out to his “next of kin”
Paid to one with the same name
Who looked a lot like him.
He accepted philosophically
the wage of sin is death.
If the alternative is taxes,
he assumed its for the best.
George enjoys the “afterlife”
on the Island of Majorca.
Where he chases younger women
And he doesn’t need a walker.
Only George, of all his friends,
has managed to retire.
He enjoys his afterlife
While the state thinks he’s expired.

Golden haired and handsome, Joe seemed to have it all.
He’d won a PAC 8 championship just that previous Fall.
Surely the Heisman would be his; another prize to win.
He started strongly, at least at first, but would falter at the end.

Joe Roth had Melanoma and it ravaged skin and bone,
It was a lonely battle, the hardest fight he’d known.
Joe Roth was a gamer who would strap his helmet on
and go out on the gridiron though his strength was nearly gone.
He knew that he would not grow old, or play the game for pay.
In this final autumn of his life he merely wished to play.

. Despite fatigue and nausea he still made every start,
Until his game clock ran out on an overburdened heart.
There’s a moment when the cheering stops, when a man feels most alone;
blind-sided by a tackle while checking down against the zone.

When game clock seconds tick away and the outcomes not in doubt
Joe stood tall in the pocket even when it was a rout.
He gave the game the best he had, then it was his  time to go.
He was an All- American, and no ordinary Joe

We die each night,
to sleep succumb .
Perhaps to dream,
remembering none.
Yet as we wait for
sleep to come,
we believe
we'll see
the morning sun.
Ten thousand million
days saw dawn
before the day
when I was born.
Ten thousand million
nights might end
ere ever I see home again.
If Being sees
in me no worth
perhaps this is
the last of Earth.
But as the Son
for mercy, dies.
Perhaps this good thief
too may rise.

A single Bloom, unblemished,
it's skin as red as wine,
I lay here at your headstone
to mark a year of time.

Perhaps you cannot hear my voice
in the silence of the plot.
I have stopped here just to show
you have not been forgot.

There will be gifts for Mothers
Jewels and tulips too.
Here I leave a perfect rose
in memory of you.

I look  upon the Fields of France
and see her scars a century old.
The fading craters made by shells;
the trench lines where they fought and died.
No star shells now disturb the night
No need to fumble for gas masks.
No "No -man's Land" between the wires.
No butchery mars these fields of France.

In Nineteen Fourteen, in July
with declarations by old men,
A generation went to war
and most would not see home again.
In muddy trenches rats grew fat.
Whistles sounded the hopeless charge.
Machine guns made a mince of men.
At Verdun, alone, a million dead.

This is now and that was then,
but this is, in truth, a fragile peace.
Hatred simmers, oaths are sworn,
I sense the battle lines are drawn.
The lamp lights flicker now as then.
Will butchery mar these fields again?

The time has passed, too quickly,
since the years they served in war.
Some grow bald, others grey,
They are rounder than before.
Today’s objective is the restaurant
to beat the midday rush
When Retired Old Marines Eat Out
They usually meet for lunch.
At times like this, they reminisce
of D.I.’s they have known.
Speak the unused names of friends
who never made it home.
They give their time to charities;
Like Christmas toys for tots,
and package gifts for young Marines
who serve now they cannot.
They serve as honor guard for those
Who’ve reached the final post.
The few, the proud, who keep us free,
Have given more than most.
Perhaps not lean,
but still quire keen,
Semper Fi,
the Corps.

I loved to watch you as you sleep;
your breathing even deep and slow.
I loved to watch you as you dreamt
of places I can never go.
We read your stories, I heard your prayers
Then, touching the pillow, you drifted off
It seems like only yesterday,
but really it was long ago.

Two hands, one heart
a band of gold.
It was my mother's ring.
Redolent of emotion,
the last of all her things.

Two hands, one love
a heart of Gold.
A Mother's tender care.
Though parted in the present tense
in Memory, ever there.

It started with Adam, the father of all
He and Eve had no last names that I can recall.
While the man tribe stayed small there was really no need
One name was sufficient to distinguish indeed.
Yet, as we expanded, this soon came undone
As every man Jack was some father’s son.
Cicero, Caesar and Pompey, those Romans
Were known as just that; nick-names, patrynomens
Rembrandt and Picasso those giants of art
probably had two names when they got their start.
Elvis and Dion were stars in the fifties.
Liberace was too with his style none too thrifty.
From Cher to Madonna Fame’s admission fee
was becoming Mononymous to the bourgeoisie.
So Adele and Miley revel in this;
Fame’s a fabulous ride and it’s not to be missed.
There’s money involved and a lot of acclaim
And best of all people remember your name.

Scottish single malts are loved by fans here and abroad.
Some folks will pay a fortune for rare bottles they can hoard.
Whenever a commodity becomes as rare as gold,
there always will be criminals with profit as their goal.
They'll find an empty bottle and forge tax stamps for it too
and fill it up with Canadian Club, a far far lesser brew!
Then, when the fraud's discovered, Scotland Yard is called
to find the perpetrators and to hang them by the *****.
A detective of a certain sort can discern what bottles hold.
by looking at, in certain light, the subtle shades of gold.
He'll need to know which revenue stamps are fraudulent or true.
If the contents are suspicious he must taste them , wouldn't you?
" I'm thinking this is Jameson's, Not Macallan's malt so pure.
but I'll take another glass or two to be absolutely sure."

There is a day, and not far off,
when we will say goodbye.
I do not have the choice of when
Or where or how or why,
There is a day not too far off
when we must say goodbye.
I can’t pretend that it won’t hurt
And I suspect you’ll cry.
Please let me with my parents sleep
upon that nearby hill.
Remember that I loved you well
And I’ll be with you still.

I knew it without knowing; I cannot tell you why.
I sensed that this would be the day that we would say goodbye.
The doctor in in lab coat had played this scene before.
He used the term “metastasis “as he told me the score.
I asked if I could be with you as you faced the end
He said “of course, it’s better if the pet is with their friend.
He promised me there’d be no pain; just a pinch and then
My Labrador would drift to sleep and to his final end.
I kept a brave face for Boots sake; He shouldn’t see me cry.
The hardest part of having a pet is the day we say goodbye.

This place is a museum now; this great hall where my father stood.
Here he waited on line with all the rest. He waited for admission.
He was dressed in his best with a few dollars in his pocket,
and the address of his sister and her husband in New York.

There’s a lady in the harbor here who holds her torch aloft for all.

My mother, Helen, was native, first generation born upon these shores.
My father was a laborer; the quarries and mines had made him strong.
His years in Scotland plus his native Irish brogue
was baffling at first  to those Ellis Island clerks.

There’s a lady in the harbor here who holds her torch aloft for all.

My Dad found work building a bridge high above the waters reach.
He started out a near illiterate but slowly learned to read
From discarded copies of the New York Daily News.
He met my mom at an Irish dance.

There’s a lady in the harbor here who holds her torch aloft for all.

My mother’s voice was all New York; a dialect of English speech.
She loved her numbers, and clerked for Met Life, but she may have longed to teach.
Instead she sat with me in our small kitchen
Teaching me my numbers as our dinner was prepared.

There’s a lady in the harbor here who holds her torch aloft for all.

For those of you who have heard me speak
And found my own accent hard to place.
I am a little of old New York and a little of a fair green place.
My American voice is but the echoed music of my race.

There’s a lady in the harbor here who holds her torch aloft for all.

A orange tufted dotard and a tubby rocket man
got into a ******* match and said: “The world be dammed!”
One spoke of fire and fury while the other threatened Guam.
The World looked on in disbelief-“Who gave these morons bombs?”

Enter Dennis Rodman, a baller of renown,
His hair dyed blonde, his body inked, dressed in a wedding gown.
“Hold on there! Mister President. Don’t press the button yet!”
“Don’t give your naïve voters yet more reason for regret.”

So Dennis traveled to the East to see the Hermit King.
They drank in Karaoke bars; he heard the dread Lord Sing.
They Joked about “The Interview” They compared tattoos.
They ate Korean barbecue and listened to “The View”

Kim had so much fun with him all bombing was delayed
They went out for a quick massage and afterwards got laid.
The seventh fleet remained offshore with no invasion plans.
“A bullet was avoided. Dennis Rodman is the Man!”

I don’t drink any more,
This I freely confess.
Drinking too much
makes ones whole life a mess.

For when I drink too much
I’m a maudlin bore,
and as often as not
I wind up on the floor.

It’s hard to make waves
Or make a big score
When one for the road
means two or three more.

I don’t drink any more
But I think you can guess
My not drinking more
Means I’m not drinking less.

She was not born to be a bride,
She had no child of her own.
When she faced evil face to face,
some will say she died alone.
But to the children whom she helped hide
when terror roamed those halls.
She didn't die for nothing
She died to save them all.

Some learn their purpose early,
Others at the final turn.
Many blunder blind through life.
There are those who never learn.

Someday past suffering and grief
may her family feel some pride.
She was Victoria Soto,
a Heroine, she died.

I lay down on my living room floor
Convinced that the world would end.
A crisis off Cuba with missiles  enroute.
Yes, I am a Child of Then.

A lady in pink with blood on her dress.
A President shot in the head.
I remember where I was exactly that day
for I am a Child of Then.

Police battle Blacks, Watts is in flames
Protests rage on without end.
King is dead at the hand of a bigoted man
Yes, I am a Child of Then.

Camelots heir sought to bind up the wounds
Then Sirhan Sirhan shot him dead.
Bobby bled out on the kitchen tiled floor
for I am a Child of Then.

Asian girl running, naked, on a dirt country road.
A Viet Cong man shot in the head.
Fifty Eight Thousand names on a wall
Yes, I am a Child of Then.

These two had parted once before
when he’d worked in Scotland’s mines.
Now he trekked to the antipodes
to live in southern climes.
He’d see the Emerald isle no more.
Would New Zealand be as fair?
He’d build a new life far from home,
Adventure waited there.
Yet, to never see his home again,
Or hear his mother’s voice.
To venture from the Troubled North
was his necessary choice.
Yet home will never look so fair
As when its left behind,
He’d live and die in a far off land
as part of God’s design.
“I never will forget you, Mum.”
as sorrow choked his throat.
One final hug and then he turned
to get upon the boat.
His ship made way down Belfast Lough
And he watched her from the rail
Til distance made her disappear
as if one  beyond the vale.

I was happy in our home and she answered all my needs
So the day that my first person died, I was sorely grieved.
I plucked out all my feathers as a sign of my distress.
My silences spoke volumes about how I was depressed.
My first persons’ other family didn’t want a cockatoo,
So they took me to the shelter on the day that I found you.
Now I sing and speak and play. I’m happy once again,
But I will never once forget her; my first person and my friend.

I held a rose without a thorn,
I say with certainty.
Every other rose has thorns;
every one save she.
There are other kinds of rose:
Long stemmed, hybrid, tea.
Still it was the thornless rose
that I kept close to me.
Perhaps I held a bit too tight
and her love began to wane
Sadly, I relaxed my grasp,
vainly hoping she'd remain.
We parted as the best of friends
as she got up from my bed.
I looked down, dumbly,
at my hands
and wondered why they bled.

It is bounded by the gyre, this sea without a shore.
It once was but a sea of weeds but now there is much more.
Here are plastic bags and cups discarded thoughtlessly.
Refuse from our teeming shores comes here eventually.

In another time and place these waters were deep blue
crystal clean and beautiful as when first Columbus viewed.
Dappled sunshine lit these waves in this sea without a shore
but now it is a garbage dump ( as if we needed more.)

The plastic and the Styrofoam are scarcely changed by time.
they'll still be drifting in the sea when breath is no longer mine.
The salt sting of my bootless tears I've add to the sea,
for all the creatures great and small who drown in Man's debris.

When the bees are all silenced
By Glyphosate laced grains.
When our waste and our garbage
Are choking sea lanes.
When the stocks are fished out
and the oceans then die.
When the struggle for life
Is once more eye for eye.
Is it too late to ask
Why we’re consumed with hate?
Why, for sake of a buck,
A planet was *****?
It’s three minutes to midnight
on the doomsday clock.
We’ve not much time left folks

TICK TOCK< TICK TOCK

The smoking wreckage is where once stood
our humble family home.
I am the sole survivor.
Everyone else is gone.

As I wander through the ruins,
I spy a little shoe.
It is the only thing remaining
of my brother who was Two.

My family has been murdered,
by your mutual hate.
When slaughter is indiscriminate
Peace will come too late.

The holy land? What holy land?
From the river to the sea
This has become the ****** land
And I? A refugee.

Though genetically indistinguishable;
Semites one and all.
Ismael will ****** Isaac
Or Ismael himself must fall.

The bearded man in the forager’s cap rode in on little sorrel that night.
Lee had called a council of war to game plan for the coming fight.
The Northern aggressors were on the move but they might be vulnerable on their right.
It was a bold audacious plan to divide in the face of the foe.
The Calvary screen was key to the scheme to find where best to strike the blow.
The battle would be called Lee’s masterpiece; ******’s men broke and they fled.
but the battle would also be Jackson’s last; in just a few days he’d be dead..
In the dark of May second, men rode the plank road, Jackson rode at their head
Did they ignore the Sentry’s challenge? Or did the sentry mishear what they said?
They took Jackson arm, the saw-blade did sing, but alas it was to no avail
He crossed over the river to rest neath the shade of the trees in the hero’s vale

Orion, mighty hunter,
is casting down his light.
He is my lone companion
On this frosty winter‘s night.

Not long ago, not far away
He shone upon us two.
Back when we were still in love,
Before you said we’re through.

I wonder what you’re doing tonight.-
Tucking in the children, turning out the light?
Do you toss and turn the same way
I do every night?
I wonder what you’re doing tonight.

It’s possible we’re laughing,
both, at the same comedy.
It will have a happy ending-
unlike the tale of you and me.


It could be that we’re wishing,
both, on the self-same star.
Those wishes cannot be the same
For wishes seldom are.

I wish you were remembering me
but you wish to forget.
Both wishes go unheeded
in a lifetime of regret.

I wonder what you’re doing tonight?
Tucking in the children, turning out the light?
Do you toss and turn the same way
I do every night?
I wonder what you’re doing tonight.

Love, imperfect, stillborn
to have been but not to be.
We ended it in a coffee shop,
how cruel that was of me.
An old love had resurfaced,
but who had the better claim?
Should I go back to she who left,
or, with the other, remain?
There are no perfect answers
in life, in love, in time.
My children followed from my choice;
sweet hostages to time.
If I were of two bodies
as I was then of two minds
only then could I refuse
and not leave one behind.
My past has been imperfect,
I'd hesitate to live it twice.
Yet all I'd ever hoped I'd be
flows from my choice that night

They can’t be seen.
They won’t be felt,
when you and they collide.
They’re like universal glue
That keeps the Heavens bound.
In the dark of seeming empty space
Is where the W.I.M.P’s abound.
Invisible, undetectable
the source of beings’ ground.
Science hasn’t seen one yet-
They’re difficult to find.
Yet Scientists believe in W.I.M.P’s
Though they’re tricky to divine.

Just six inches long and not hard to conceal,
I examine the pistol that began the Great War.
It’s been put on display in the British Museum
And it must be regarding with awe.

“The Archduke must die!” Mister Princip declared,
as he emptied this gun at close range.
“Sophie, live for our children.” The dying Duke begged,
But sadly his pleas were in vain.

Great armies mobilized, by August, guns roared
For Four years the slaughter went on
Till all the King’s horses and all the King’s men
and even the Kings, too ,were gone.

Now news comes from Turkey of a murderous deed;
a Russian Ambassador slain.
Once more a pistol was used for the deed.
How much can this poor Globe sustain?

What is a Slave? A slave is a human being who works but is not allowed to keep the fruits and profits of his labors. He is forced by his master to deliver up the fruits of his efforts under threat of punishment and receives back a bare minimum sustenance. Tax Freedom day is now approximately June 30th each year. When we were younger it occurred in April, then May. So I figure that we now are "Half Slave, and Half Free" No nation can endure, half slave and half free- or so somebody once said.

She felt far removed
from life’s maddening pace,
whenever she would come
to this quiet place.

Here, the air was hushed
with barely a sound.
A blanket of snow
lay on the ground.

A blanket of snow
undisturbed by feet-
save the tracks
of a squirrel
in search of a treat.

In that field of stones,
in that place of peace,
she sought one name,
one dear deceased.

One lost to war
in freedom’s name:
One life lost,
hers’ forever changed.

Never to be
in tune with time
ere she joined
her forever Valentine.

His old guitar is where he left it,
Still strung and tuned as on that day.
I remember he would play for hours.
Rock and roll he loved to play.

He never got to hold his grandson
or sit with him in his rocking chair
He's not a name that most remember
but fans of Joanie Jett still care.

For all you who love rock and roll
He wrote your anthem, he penned your prayer
I'll play a cover on my Fender
as the old man rocks up heaven's stair.

You know your alphabet, yes you do, all twenty six letters you say by rote.
Few know there once was Twenty- seven, one more of which you should take note.
It is the humble Ampersand; the character you see today
Used mostly as a linkage between two corporate proper names.
It does mean “and” it always did; its shape from Latin is derived.
Its name is a type of Mondegreen, by pronouncement it is described.
Back in Elizabethan time when schoolboys said their alphabet
They did not end with “X.Y.Z” but with “and per se &”
The Roman “Et” was anglicized and its usage codified.

He seemed the perfect gentleman, his friends and neighbors said
He seemed to dote upon his wife, attending her every need.
They never were seen to quarrel, their cul-de sac agreed.
Like two white swans they seemed to float upon Life’s stormy seas.
But Perhaps all wasn’t perfect; just a show for others’ eyes-
beneath the surface; a furious struggle;. Concealed with a web of lies.

So in their quiet neighborhood; so rich and well-to do.
They acted out contentment so that no one had a clue.
Until the town patrolman came and found her on the floor;
Victim of a crime of passion, stabbed twenty times or more.
Her husband wore pajamas that were stained a crimson red.
“Don’t bother with an ambulance- I made damm sure she’s dead.”
He sat with his morning paper puffing on a cigarette.
and on his face there was no trace of remorse or regret.

The walls of this place
have protected me
since the moment I
was first aware..
Here in the darkness
I float upside down
like a fruit bat
asleep in his lair.
Now I feel pressure
and pushing
Something’s draining
the fluid of life.
A dim glow growing
constantly brighter
at the end of a tunnel
there’s light
My heart beat
is marathon racing
as I’m dragged from
my sinecure dark.

This new place is large
and its freezing
Put me back in,
I beg you
I scream.
My protests are ignored
as I’m prodded some more
Then I’m slapped
on the ****
by some cur
I’m lain down
on a warm curvy belly
and this woman, called mom,
weakly smiles.
At least this part
doesn’t seem
frightening
Perhaps I will stay
for awhile

Shall I awake you with a gentle kiss?
Or with warm lips caress
a milk white breast?
Perhaps I'll  just  lay back
in our  four poster bed,
and watch your every sleeping breath.
That might be best.
Then, in the warmth of our remembered love
drift off to sleep myself
and dream my dream of you.

When young men take up football, they often come to grief.
Steroids often fuel the strength that they need to compete.
there is violence in the game and roid rage in the Elite.
Young men thirst for glory, getting paid to deal defeat.
So when they turn on women, am I surprised?- not in the least.
They are bred for strength and violence, it's the nature of the Beast.

The fierce urgency of now
Was never more apparent
than when I took the moviprep
And someone hogged the toilet.

Half obscured by powder smoke, the long Grey line comes on.
“Double canister and hard shot, pour it on them boys!”
They dress the line and still they come, inexorably, like fate.
We are in need of some support, but will it come too late?
A high wood fence disrupts their charge, like clotting blood they mass.
As many a dying Virginian boy wishes for his cup to pass.
“For Fredericksburg!” “For Fredericksburg!” Alonzo Cushing cried.
We worked our guns and gave them hell for all our friends who’d died.
Our blood is up and still they come, over the parapet.
We are all determined this is as far as they will get.
A breath of air, a cooling drink, a lover’s soft embrace;
Strange things crowd into your mind when in a hellish place.
A company of New Yorkers, coming on the double quick,
Have piled into the Rebel mass where the fighting was most thick.
Back you go, proud Virginians, back over the low stone wall.
Not so many as started out, no longer proud and tall.
A rebel of some prominence sits, dying, near my gun.
He asks for General Hancock, strange to hear that name upon his tongue.
My friend, Alonzo Cushing, lies beside the caisson where
He bleeds profusely from his wounds. He is too far gone to care.
He will not live to see the Sun rise in the East again,
Or live to hear a nation’s thanks for what he did for them.

My mother was a little girl when the Western Union man
Put the dreaded telegram in my grandmother’s hand.
It said that my grandfather would not be coming home.
It told her that she’d have to raise my mother all alone.
Grandfather was honored, in death, for his service overseas;
the Medal of Honor, we still have, awarded  posthumously.

We thought that his remains were lost, committed to the sea.
Just one of many thousands who have died to keep us free.
Then recently, I traveled to the island where he died;
A mass grave had been discovered with some brave marines inside.
They found a tattered uniform that dressed grandfather’s bones.
Emotion overwhelmed me as I thought: “He’s coming home.”
In Sante Fe, New Mexico he’ll rest with all his kin.
Guns will fire in salute; they’ll fold a flag for him.
They’ll place it in my mother’s hands; his little girl grown old,
For her hero who died long ago on the Betio atoll.

As the Rose is the flower of flowers,
Exalted above all the rest,
Their color denoting desire
Which words alone cannot express.
Some shades are symbols of friendship.
Some others connote happiness.
Some buds are a byword for passion,
and the reddest of blooms says it best.
A first love is never forgotten-
unless you forget yourself first.
It lingers in mind like the taste of your lips.
It is either a blessing or curse.
We were little more than adolescents
That day we embraced by the shore.
Though the tides haven’t changed
It has been many years
And now I will see you no more.
My tears are my heart’s lamentations
For a Love that was too long repressed.
I place my red rose on your casket.
The reddest of blooms says it best.

When I was young there were great songs played on the radio.
We had fine librettists then that made the lyrics flow.
Now their pens seem out of ink and when they stage a show
They only play the songs you know from forty years ago.
I guess being young and hungry is essential now as then;
But, being fat and happy, they cannot begin again.
Here and there I catch a tune I haven’t heard before.
But the business is disrupted and they’ve closed the Record Store
True, Adele lends her voice to grief, loss and depression.
Otherwise its Taylor Swift and her musical confessions.
The boomer bards grow silent and what does this portend?
I begin to wonder if I’ll ever hear their like again.

They sit straight in a row, like jackdaws on a line;
three women, garbed  in black, on uncomfortable metal  chairs.
They speak in low murmuring voices.
Their eyes are fixed upon the burnished Bronze casket
at the front of the chapel.
The casket that contains
All that remains
of the cancer riddled ruin of a man.
Their eyes are downcast, their ankles tightly crossed.
They have come to console their sister for her loss.
She is one of them now; she has joined in their number.
Indifferent wives make excellent widows.

We were down in the province of Basra, Iraq
For reasons not precisely clear.
Our objective that day was a Shia run town;
A town named Sari Mi Dyr.
The road to the town was a minefield of sorts
It was *****-trapped with I.E.D.’s.
Still it was the constant sniping that caused
the bulk of our casualties.
The day was as hot as a woman’s scorn
when the last of her tears have dried.
I’ll remember this road to Sari Mi Dyr
On which so many good friends have died.
The day was near spent when command showed some sense;
We heard our choppers draw near.
They aborted the mission and extracted my men
From that hellhole called Sari Mi Dyr.
I’m writing my after action report,
and trying to hold back a tear;
When I think of the good men and women who died
On the road to Sari Mi Dyr.

“To the Glory of God, and in grateful commemoration of His servants, Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, Prelates of the Church of England, who near this spot yielded their bodies to be burned, bearing witness to the sacred truths which they had affirmed and maintained against the errors of the Church of Rome, and rejoicing that to them it was given not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for His sake; this monument was erected by public subscription in the year of our Lord God, MDCCCXLI.”


“ ‘Be of good cheer, Ridley; and play the man. We shall this day, by God’s grace, light up such a candle in England, as, I trust, will never be put out.’”- Hugh Latimer.




Just outside Balliol, upon Magdalene street,
There’s a cross made of stone you can see at your feet.
It’s where Ridley and Latimer were burnt at the stake
For that which they held dear; beliefs they would not forsake.
They were Bishops of London and Worcester in life;
now bound by cruel chains to keep them upright.
The guards piled on *******, the fuel for the flames
while Ridley and Latimer called on the Lord’s name.
Martyrs or heretics? I’ll let others decide.
But the crowd was impressed by how bravely they died.
Latimer reached out embracing the flames
and was soon called to glory with an end to his pain.
For Ridley a death that was slow and obscene;.
On his side the wood that they used was still green.
His feet and legs roasted while he suffered in pain
held fast to the stake by the cruel iron chain.
His temporal agony raged on and on
Til the flames reached his face and poor Ridley was gone.


Queen Mary reigned briefly, yet ere she was done,
Many souls suffered death in fire and blood.
England, once Catholic, embraced a new faith.
The Romish persuasion at last was replaced.
Their candle burned brightly, a glorious flame,
and continued to shine as Elizabeth reigned.

F
A
L
L
I
N
G

Falling in or out of love
We are falling all the time-
out of favor or out of line.
out of  synch or out of rhyme-


That’s why all poems start at the top,
and line by line decline.
Mimicking their maker’s fate
As we fall through time.

The trick, of course, is to appear
As if we’re standing still.
To create the illusion of permanence
We never had nor never will.

The dusty plains
of Mars, our neighbor planet,
may be our future.

You look like her.

No, not in the full light,
nor to the searching
and discerning eye.
But glimpsed briefly-
En passant-
By a mind preoccupied
Like a ghostly image
You look like her..


You, of course, are you.
The resemblance is
Superficial
It is like touching
A woman on her shoulder
Thinking, wrongly,
That she was one
I had loved.

These are not the flowers I thought I would be buying,
These are not roses for the girl I wed.
These flowers bear a message of condolence
Who knew I would be buying these instead?

The time was short from your first diagnosis
until the morning when you met your end.
Now comes the tears of selfishness and mourning;
the pain that comes with losing a true friend.

Februaries in New York are bleak
when winter lingers on without an end.
“It’s a great life if you never weaken.”
I recall that’s what you always said.

We stand on frozen ground at Calvary
after three days spent on folding chairs.
Each of us drop a flower of remembrance
as the Padre mutters solemn prayers.

You never had a child of your own body
or devoted spouse to mourn your final breath.
Your nieces and your nephews now surround you.
Of your generation now none are left.

A Pall of Civic Sorrow shrouded Charleston like a mist;
Nine bronze coffins in the church nave waiting to be blessed.
Anger would be natural, doesn’t violence beget more?
Is forgiveness even possible? Many were unsure.
The congregation gathered to pray and understand
in the place the murders happened; a church built by freedmen’s hands.

As they prayed about forgiveness, one shrill voice disagreed.
It cursed the “white man’s Jesus” and all those who bend the knee.
Stop praying to your “*****’s god” and burn the city down;
all those fine homes of brick and wood that stand in Charleston town.

With Faith comes understanding, wisdom denied to the proud.
There will be no wave of violence here, the congregation vowed.
Lord Jesus was not Black or White; his was a brown tanned hide.
He was in chains and felt the lash on the very day he died.

Love is neither slave nor free, as it appears to me.
It is with Love we live and breathe and have true dignity.
So let the White and Black join hands across the Charleston span;
Then we will not be White or Black but each Americans.