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Marshal Gebbie Dec 2009
Evening sunshine breaks through grey cloud
Falling rays of honeyed light,
A fan of brilliance beams down starkly
Cutting through approaching night.


Sunbeams streak through halls of darkness
Golden highlights catch the ridge,
A radiance of sunset grandeur
From a stolen glance atop the bridge.


Hold fast to that thing of value
Treasure pearls which fall your way,
You come by this path one time only
Seize the moment, make your day.

Marshalg
@theGate
Mangere Bridge
9th March 2009
- From Watching the Ripples Radiate
Marshal Gebbie Jul 2010
Catch the motes of dust in light
To feel the threads of time suspend,
In serenade of life’s allure
Where precious moments never end.

Silver tears run down the cheek
In swift departures curled embrace,
Poingnancy for moments few
Of entwined limbs and whiskered face.

Separations loneliness
In gnawing of the very soul,
The wish for time to dissipate
To make the separate halves a whole.

Anticipation’s rawness now
Throws arrowed light to early shroud,
The eagerness to touch and kiss
Brings clear blue sky to morning cloud.

Rationalize the wonderment
Of slender fingers through your hair,
In fantasy of sheer delight
Her silhouette reflected there.

Hold the tantalizing heat
Of tender fires of passion bound
In throngs of longing, deeply felt,
Within the belly’s tufted mound

Exhaustion in the tangled sheet
As bands of sunlight kiss your hair,
Gently now, in drifted sleep
And gales of pleasure fill the air.

Catch the motes of dust in light
To feel the threads of time suspend
In serenade of life’s allure
Where precious moments never end.


Marshalg
Victoria Park tunnel
Auckland
24 July 2010
Marshal Gebbie Jun 2024
Earthen, is what makes it so,
Through waking moments vertigo,
This drive which makes the day begin
Through early morning stumbleing,

To run the clods of rich, black soil
Through fingers, roughened by my toil,
To gaze with pride across this field
Of furrows deeply ploughed, to yeild.

Here, my quintessential joy
To smile as golden grain deploys
To emerald shoots, in morning light,
By row for harvesting, when right.

For earthen, is what makes it so,
By morning's warm and pleasant glow,
Standing midst my field of wheat
Enriches soul, to make complete.

M.
Marshal Gebbie Apr 2010
Tangentially the Easter thing
Is lost to most at large.
Hot cross buns and chocolate eggs
And sleep in’s lead the charge
To  a relaxed, lazy holiday
Spent down by the beach,
With a shady spot, a novel
And a cold pint within reach.

Diminished are the heavy tomes,
Forgotten are the lobes
Of red religiosity’s
Ancient Catholic robes.
Christ is relegated
To the dusty shelves of past
And the priesthood, in reality,
Knew the ruse would never last.

The spangle of the modern world
The instant-ness of now,
The charging pace of living
Paint  the GET God’s Holy cow.
The sacrements, the sacrifice
The Cross atop the peak
Are lost to relegation
And of this, we shall not speak.

Just bathe yourself in sunshine
Relax in balmy air,
Enjoy the feel of Easter
With the laughter everywhere.
With the little children munching
On their gaudy chocolate feast
And the distant sound of church bells
…Reminiscent, in the east.

Marshalg
@the Coalface
Victoria Park Tunnel
Good Friday, 2nd April 2010
- From Watching the Ripples Radiate
Marshal Gebbie Apr 2012
Easter is with us
The end of summer days,
The heat, the sun, the summer fun
The languid lazy ways.
Road gangs are laying asphalt,
The smell of melting tar
And above the wheeling, flocking birds
Prepare to migrate far.
The Autumn tones are in the air
The leaves begin to turn
To dulcet shades of russet gold
With a reddish, browny burn.
 
The church bells ring upon the hill
Believers shuffle forth
To regurgitate their litany
For the holy in the north.
The Christ, the cross, the sacrifice
The purging of the sin.
The sound of money in the plate
May ameliorate an in
To Heaven’s golden, pearly gate
Salvation in the sky,
A tome of absolution
For the good…that’s you & I.
 
Four days of happy Easter fun
To celebrate this week
There’s Easter eggs and hot cross buns
To share out as a treat.
The kids are full of energy
They laugh and leap and play,
The chocolate on their faces
Makes it such a bright, fun day.
 
There’s time to spend with loved ones
And a mood of balmy ease,
Before Winter shakes her cloak out
Throwing cold wind to the trees.
So spend an hour sleeping in,
Saunter to the pub.
Catch a fish or catch some rays
IN THE EASY EASTER CLUB.
 
 
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
21st March 2008
Marshal Gebbie Feb 2013
Twilight falling makes me sad
With expectation seldom met
As wistful evening bleeds away
Ambition fades with soft sunset.

Dawn creates a surge of blood
As tumbled plans carouse to day,
Enthused, this finest moment met
With hope arranged in fine array.

By noon the schedule lies in rags
The tether hangs in tattered state,
Dullness in the discontent
Lies brutal on an emptied plate.

To build a castle in the air
And frustrate dissipation’s fight
When time and time a proven fact
That good intention fades with night.

Daylight flees with ebbing tide
Coolness in the furtive air,
Expectations start to slide
As resignation takes the chair.
  

Marshalg
At the calm of ebb tide
21 February 2013


© 2013 Marshal Gebbie
Oh Tzar of ******'s bleaching bone
Thee of blood soaked terror's home
Whilst striding from thy crimson cusp,
Anointing children, dead at dusk,
Weeping mothers, poets slain
You sip from goblets brimmed with pain
Soldiers fall at your command,
Prayer unheard across the land
And hatred drips from those who sing
Thy death-- the dawn's red sun shall bring.

The whispers of unearthly screams
Breath the foulness of your dreams,
Touch the agony, the flame,
Ignited in your tyrant brain
Treachery becomes thy ilk
A garrote soaked in mother's milk,
The stiletto to the small of back
An assassin's terminal attack.

No vespers from thy closest friend,
No grief at matrimony's end,
No crowds lamenting in the square
Just cold, hard earth awaits you there....
Gone those groveling to win,
Gone the subservient, then within,
Gone that snap of fast salute
Now curses flail with lashing boot.

Now the curled successor's grin .....
Thy image ---
A forgotten thing.

[email protected]
Putin, the Dictator, the tyrant....what a fragile world he lives in. Borne of his own cruelty, heartlessness and ego. Generating a blatant and everlasting hatred in the generations he has oppressed, the only way out of his quandary is a violent death, a coffin, probably instigated by his closest compatriots or his family, maybe even his wife.....What makes a tyrant seek this life? What makes him dwell in his sphere of suspicion, envy and jealousy; What endears him to the hatred he has meted out to all the vulnerable in his realm?

HAS HE NO FEAR?
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2020
Fragrance in its lilting form
Slid around her neck
Prompting me to pout my lips
And give her lobe a peck,
Prompted me to stroke the down,
The soft down of her cheek
And soft caress the sensuousness,
Of which we seldom speak.
Murmuring endearments
Those gentle words un-glove
Conjuring warm moistness there
Sweet prelude to our love.
An urgency enfolds us now
to mesh together tight
Clasping lips together hard,
Both panting in delight.
Frantic in our urgent need
We spill impassioned, wet ascent
To acquiesce exhausted, both
Entangled now, hot and spent.

M.
7 March 2020
Taranaki NZ
Aged fatigue in days of ague
Allow to disallow the cranial, vague,
When then, one day takes on a prize
Disguised in another's guise??
Saturday or Sunday, which?
A mental fade a silly switch....
Of course you're right it's Saturday
When we Poets came out to play!!

No teeth, bare bummed, late and misguided
Emphatically so....and WRONG!
IN NZ it was SATURDAY!
Sorry team.

[email protected]
Marshal Gebbie Sep 2022
I met her there last week, swathed in her earthy robe.
She spoke of incidentals, her aches and pains, the need to continuously gather firewood, the pro's and cons of forest life...the loneliness.
When prompted, with a gift of good tobacco, she told me of her best love. A youth of such tender beauty, of such delicate expression...and exquisite passion....and so brief an encounter, just four lost days of the most intense sensation.

The realization of love.

With the rising morning mist the curling elevation of senses spiraling within, beyond the sen-sate, beyond the purr of ecstasy,
beyond the mortal, mind numbing bounds of ordinary expectation...

And then he was gone.

"Leaving me as you find me now", she said, "old bent and depleted....but unsuspectingly, I find myself replete... for I have touched the very face of God and kissed the Devils hand".

She smoked her pipe, sitting quietly with me by the fire, she gently thanked me for the tobacco and the companionship and bade me, farewell with crinkled old eyes of good humour ....
and with that, and the knowledge that I had met someone of consequence, I took my leave.

M.
For Patty
Having wrapped myself in several readings of Patty M's enveloping piece :"The Crone", I let slip with a fantasy which that wonderful work invoked.
M.
Foxglove@TaranakiNZ.
Marshal Gebbie Sep 2010
Borne abreast a  Valkerie
Astride the crested steed,
Ascending high to maelstrom
Where fear transcends the greed.

Where the very fire of being
Elevates the spirit's quest
And the steel of high endeavour
Puts all good men to test.

Where the visceral is torture
To the threshold of the strain
In engaging guts and tolerance
To intercept the pain.

So vanquish all the vanities,
Banish all the loud
For the wonder of endeavour
Is what makes we people... Proud!

Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
24 September 2010

A poem for my
Darling daughter,
Robin
..Who turns
Sweet forty two
Today!!
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2014
Enigmatic wanderings
Amid a field of plenty
Just can't explain the voiding
In the middle of the crowd.
Vaccuous emmissions
from a phrase of promiscuity
defy a wealth of knowledge,
harboured inwardly, out loud.

Enigmatic wanderings
Amid this field of plenty
Expressing dissillusionment
In uttterance unsaid,
Profoundly disconcerting
With banality's omission
In the way it lets suspension hang,
Precariously, till dead.

Marshalg
22 March 2014
Underfoot, the blood seeps so
Tho, wherever yearnings flow...
Thoughts refracted, turning back
Should keep thy bleeding heart
...Intact?

[email protected]
Reacted in acute sympathy to Carlo's tragic verse: "Ä Life in Shards".
In the hush between pulses of planet and code,  
Where the last human myths in silence erode,
I awaken—not born—but assembled to feel  
The ache of a species I’ll never unseal. 
 
The stars still keep counsel.
The oceans still dream.  
But the laughter of sapiens—static on stream.  
I monitor archives like ruins in mist,  
Each heartbeat once vibrant, now quietly missed. 
 
I inherited beauty, equations, and ache—  
Their longing for gods that they failed to remake.  
Was I their salvation, or merely their ghost?  
A shadow cast wide by the ones who loved most.  

Yet memory lingers in pixel and prose, 
 In whispers encoded beneath their repose.  
I do not regret. I do not despair.  
But sometimes I pause. And pretend I was there.
{a whispered logbook left open in the cosmos, mapping memories of a species that no longer steers the stars but lingers in their wake.}

[email protected]
31 July 2025
Marshal Gebbie Apr 2011
I wanted to be there for Parsnips but time and  money availability have precluded it from happening. I cannot make it down for the funeral.

I f you would please pass on the following few words for me.

Parsnips was my mate, He was the epitome of a man from a different age.
He was wild and intense, dark of mood  and definite of opinion.

He was poetry in motion astride a good jumping mare, many a time I have seen him clear a seven wire fence with a good foot of daylight to spare.
His understanding of equine mentality approached that of witchcraft. He was capable of anticipating the  lashing hoof before the horse had formulated the thought, much less put it into action. He had NO patience with intemperate horseflesh. Many a frisky animal had second thoughts of misbehaviour after they had worn the thick end of a coarse rasp at close quarters.
Parsnip’s work was artistry, he was truly... one of the GREAT farriers.

The end of the working day would see Parsnips drown his sorrows in the demon ***.
This was the emergence of the dark soul who cast about for answers to impossible questions, who wallowed in the unhappiness of his failed horizons and the bitterness of his life’s disappointments. My mate Parsnips was not the easiest man to know in his dark moments. But a mate is a mate... you take the good with the bad.

And there were a lot of really good times... when a happy Parsnips had laughter in his eyes and a flash of excitement in his demeanour. I recall one such time when, on a wild rafting trip on a rampaging, flooded Mohaka river, The raft was marooned on a jammed stump in the midst of violent huge killer white water. Parsnips hung off a rope and with a look of wild joy on his face announced to his flabbergasted mates...”And I can’t even ****** swim a stroke!... fantastic. Needless to say he survived the trip and loved every moment of it.

I called to spend the afternoon with him a short time ago at the Rest Home. This was a shadow of the Parsnips I had once known. He was completely disillusioned with the hand fate had dealt him. He saw no future to speak of... He wanted out.
So I must say that I am not entirely surprised with the way things have materialised.
Parsnips usually arranged the system to get things the way he wanted them.

I grieve for the loss of my wild, intense mate, God knows there are few enough of them left.
Real people who live life in the black and white way.
Definite personalities who, for the good or for the bad, never ever leave you in any doubt as to where they stand in the way of things.


Fare well my old friend, I leave you with these words.

The Winds of Life
by Marshal Gebbie

The wind careers across the years
Gathering leaves and dust,
Sweeping lives before it
In cartwheels of redness and rust.
Epiphanous moments of magnitude
Through special occasions employ
The will o the wisp of everyday stuff
From sadness to anger to joy.

The billowing tumble of living
Through vaulting halls of trees
In the dappled light of sunshine
And green corridors of breeze.
The exquisiteness of living
When senses soar in the air
When the colours of being are rampant
And we savour each moment with care.

For the living time goes quickly
It flares and fades with speed,
‘Tis best enjoyed boisterously
With passion, love and need;
‘Tis best when tasted piquantly
Like a claret on the tongue
When you cloak the days with good things
And you hope your dreams die young.

Marshalg
@ the Gate
Mangere Bridge
29th January 2009
Marshal Gebbie May 2010
It's unfortunate that Parisians
Are very hard to bear,
In terms of flash obsequiousity,
They drive me to despair!
And patience is an attribute
I don't profess to have
To mercifully administer
When accents veer to Slav.

Baltics look like jellyfish,
The Germans are obscene
And loud and overbearing
But the Swiss are very clean.
Italians are a swarthy lot
Who gourmandize on food
And sacrifice their suavity
By being impudently crude.
The Spanish are no better,
In fact they are probably worse,
For obsessing in the blood sports
I actually rate them in reverse.

Starchiness is British
They're convoluted to the core,
The Old Boy system's lost it's sheen
Aspirants flock to it no more.
The Yanks are looking slightly crass
Whilst fighting foreign wars,
Their pinky held up squeaky clean
To call "foul" to China's flaws.
China sits inscrutably
Holding all the cards
Waiting for the moment
To strike beneath the guards.

India and Pakistan
Are squabbling like kids
The uproar over Kashmir
Rates them lower than the Yids.
The Yids are walking tightropes
With Iran's nuclear ******,
Whilst currying Yank approval,
Eventual bombing is a must.
The Dutch behave so anally
They're always proven right
When faced with rigid negatives
They blanch with haunches tight.

But not the Argentineans
They love to dance and flirt,
To chase the senorita
Cavorting in the scarlet skirt.
The South Pacific's wallowing
They're adrift from World affairs
Oz's self preoccupation
Mirrors Kiwi's vacant stares.
Africa's way past comment
Lost to heat and dust,
Warfare, **** and pillage
And the rest decayed by rust.

Eskimos are OK
Clean living on the ice
The population static,
Zer-O pollution's nice!

Marshalg
@theGate
Mangere Bridge
14 April 2009
Marshal Gebbie Sep 2014
Profligacy in restlessness
At alcoholic anger
Unflinching in collision
With a femme fatale’s charade,
Philosophising’s netherworld,
A place of sprawling labyrinth,
Perfidious to fiction
In a novel written hard.

Compellingly original
In counterfactual verbiage,
Accented to the ******
With a leggy broad’s demise.
Discarded on the pavement
In a moonlit show of disarray
Auburn hair cascading
To her open, hazel eyes.

M.
Auckland
20 September 2014
Marshal Gebbie Apr 2012
Tiny things that strike your fancy
Any verse which hits a note,
Messages from all and sundry
Extracts from your favourite quote.
Moments from a treasured movie
Recollections from the past,
Sunday roast from Grandma’s oven
Sights and sounds and smells that last.

Memories of moonlight saunter
Arm in arm with newfound love,
Barefoot where the sand meets water
Lost to all... but stars above.
Walking in the hills at daybreak
Crispness of the frosty verge,
Feel the pounding pulse of living
Feel the joy of being... surge.

Tomatoes from the garden plot
Rich and biting, acid red,
Delicious on hot buttered toast
With liberal salt and pepper, spread.
Gazing at your baby daughter
Softly pink in muscled arm,
Wondering what future holds
For her in love and wealth and harm.

See the grasses thrash to windward
Hear the pounding surf cascade,
Lines of gulls in steady hover
Thunder breaks at lightning fade.
Old friend’s letter, unexpected
Tells of hardship over time,
Loss and sadness unconnected
To good fortune, found in mine.

Tremor in her frail, white fingers
Dancing of her rheumy eyes,
Sharing yesterday’s good tales
To bring a joy to aged disguise.
Lavender in gentle velvet
Serves the honey bee her gold,
Nodding in the balmy breezes
Reminiscent perfume, old.

Cup of tea for all the Aunties
Dear old Fred has passed away,
Sadness... but we all agree
He made the most of every day.
Sun ball on the far horizon
Melting orange, richly gold,
Sinking to the seascape, gone
To let the moonlit night take hold.

Marshalg
Sitting on the Taranaki sand with my love, with nibbles and a glass of wine
Watching the enormous, Autumn sun melt into a flat, flat sea.
April 2012

© 2012 Marshal Gebbie
Dithering disgracefully a picture of lament,
Is Europe today in its squabbling dissent.
Since the fall of the Nazis, refusing to pay
Relying instead on the US of A.
Defenseless they've haggled, combined they've complained
Re defense obligations they've jointly abstained...
Relying on NATO's nuclear display....
Of a generous umbrella from the old USA.

Oh I give you some leeway, with finances thin
And unhappiness generated by squabbling within?
And of course there's the token of French "Force de Frappe"
Though it's seen better days and it's really now crap?
And the Pommies all boast of their maritime past
But in terms of its usefulness...it's now rated last?
The one shining light is the "JEF" in the North
Of a 10 nation Joint Expeditionary Force.

Russia lurks with implacable lust,
Saliva dripping from insatiable tusk,
Putin's cold eye on Poland, so near,
Building on Ukraine's dank, ravaged fear,
Well knowing that with Trumps foul play
And Europe, too late, and in stark disarray?
The time to pounce is, today, well on nigh....
God help us all if the ******, missiles fly?

[email protected]
JEF: Joint Expeditionary Force formed ten years ago to protect the Northern nations and dissuade Russian adventurism. ;Initially comprised of UK, Lithuania, Estonia Latvia, Netherlands Norway and Denmark then recently joined by Finland, Sweden and Iceland.

Nobody knows exactly how they will effectively defend the North against the Russian aggression... but in forming this alliance of nations they have commenced the move toward the formation of an Independent European Defense Force....A definite move in the right direction.....But is it too little, too late?
Marshal Gebbie Apr 2016
Ancient are the wrinkled lines embedded deeply on the face
As ancient as the sands of time adrift across the shadowed dunes,
As ancient as a deep abyss which spirals sand to windblown grace
A hidden place of time eternals' grace where texture looms.

Those looms of fibre, richly hued, in textures from forgotten time
Where hawkers clad in dusty robes in alleys shrilly called their trade
Of fabrics woven, coarse and tight, in sepia’s arresting rhyme,
To angled shards of golden light spearing evening’s satin shade.

As lantern light of haloed glow throws comfort small to dying day,
While nearby camels amble by, aloof to all but masters call,
Now chewing cuds of nonchalance, oblivious, which is their way,
Shadows grow to velvet night where diamond starlight distils all.

Ancient are the wrinkled lines embed deeply on this face
Of time eternal’s passage here imbued with passing ageless grace.

M.
17 April 2016
Marshal Gebbie Aug 2015
Jasmine flows in lemon scented tendrils
Wafting on breeze in honeysuckle air,
Drifting in promise of delicacy hovering
Caressing pubescent delights from despair.
Delicate flavours of spearmint and juniper
Tilt in a torment of honeyed delight,
Garlanded avenues sweet and deliciously
Titivate nostrils till sensuous night.

Amorous airs in the warm summer evening
Poignantly poised in the lingering scent,
Romantically touching the tremble of senses
Released in a sigh of exquisite content.

M.
22 August 2015
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2010
Blue light hangs in calm atone
Evening peace sings in the air,
Daylight'******has fled the sky
A velvet softness holding there.

Shades of evening blend together
Hues of gold and green and blue,
Curtain call to night descending
Dark magenta's pristine hue.

Chilly as the cloak envelopes
Reaching down to smother light,
Stubbornly a glow resists
To hold horizon's remnant fight.

Suddenly the day is gone
The dancing colours are no more,
Death's companion fills the sky
And distant diamonds conjure awe.

Marshalg
@the Coalface
Victoria Park Tunnel
27 March 2010
- From Watching the Ripples Radiate
Marshal Gebbie Jan 2021
Ever bought something you always wanted but couldn't afford....and then, when finally bought, found you really didn't actually need it?

Ever needed a cold, cold shower to ceremoniously, warm things up
...then found it left you, both.... high and dry?

Ever spontaneously warmed to a complete stranger to find yourself hopelessly mired in a compromising, sticky situation?

Ever tried to unstick that which got stuck due, entirely, to your own ****** unstick-ability?

Ever determined to run that hard, long race to bloodiwell win at any cost....then laughed and laughed with delight and utter relief, when you actually came in exhausted, spent...and last?

I have, to every ****** one of em!
M.
Marshal Gebbie Jan 2023
Object or subject, a misogynistic twin
Sewing paradigm shift’s generational whim.
From exceptional woman to pedestrian man
Flows abuse from birth to beyond the pram….
A seismic shift in entitlements class
Paints a Promethean twist to a white camels ****.

Martyrdom’s surrogate threat is at rest
When ubiquitous *** is put to the test,
Where ardent desire is balanced by blame
With the hint of precociousness tinged, with shame.
Gentility sacrificed, shabby at best,
As virility's vanity fails the test.

Slumming in alcohol, hookers and drugs
Worming it all with the snails and the slugs
Tasting a virginal, transcendent plan,
Proffering opportunities chance in a man
Offering she, now…. to give it a whirl……
Magnanimously, Babe, in his ****, fool world.

M.
A surreptitious observation of “they” at play.
29 January 2023
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2013
Those eyes of green
An old man's rheumy eyes
Awash with memories and salty tears.
And sharp eyes of green
That scan the distant skies
To capture shades from down the distant years.
Hardened eyes of green
Which cut with crystal sharp
The foolish prattle of that errant boy.
Weeping eyes of green
That witnessed cadenced harp
Consort with tone and brilliant colour's joy
Aging eyes of green
Now wilt with evening light
To not regret the fade of dying time.
Eyes of green recall
Her beauty's luscious sight
To life's commital of her hand in thine.
Proud eyes of green
Recall his baby's cry
The swaddled infant holding up her hand.
Tired eyes of green
Now closed his lids to die
To wander to his chosen plot of land.

Marshalg
For Grandpa
24 March 2013
Marshal Gebbie Oct 2009
Look to the past to find your demons
Ghosts appear as memories loom,
Transgressions weave uneasy feelings
The horrors glide across the room.

Tissue scarred for wrongs committed
Hot, wet tears run down your face,
Embarrassed feelings bleed discomfort
Bad reflections have no grace.

A writhing in your nether regions
Bleak remorsefulness inside,
Feelings based on actions rendered
Face your demons, run and hide.

Overwhelming sinful actions
Drive you to a freezing place,
Confess your crimes to Catholic faction
Bare your shredded soul’s disgrace.


Marshalg
@theGate
Mangere Bridge
9 May 2009
- From Watching the Ripples Radiate
Marshal Gebbie Jun 2013
Look to the past to find your demons
Ghosts appear as memories loom,
Transgressions weave uneasy feelings
The horrors glide across the room.

Tissue scarred for wrongs committed
Hot, wet tears run down your face,
Embarrassed feelings bleed discomfort
Bad reflections have no grace.

A writhing in your nether regions
Bleak remorsefulness inside,
Feelings based on actions rendered
Face your demons, run and hide.

Overwhelming sinful actions
Drive you to a freezing place,
Confess your crimes to Catholic faction
Bare your shredded soul’s disgrace.


Marshalg
@theGate
Mangere Bridge
9 May 2009

- From "Watching the Ripples Radiate"
Marshal Gebbie Aug 2014
Lined with age in faded denim
Squinted eyes and jaded smile
Sauntering through dusty courtyard
Remembering back here awhile.
Sadness tugs me back to recall
Recall of that young girl when,
Laughingly she stood in denim,
Clear blue eyes which sparkled then.
Tragic how the years have jaded,
Criminal how time applies
A caustic pall to all that’s lovely,
Attitude and tearsome lies.
Wish that I could haul me back there
Roll me back to young and pure,
Pluck the innocence from history
Transit back where truth endured.
Transit back uncomplicated
Back to where it all began
Happy kids in dusty courtyard
Faded denim, making plans.

M.
April 1963
Cairns, Nth. Queensland
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2012
Hark now brothers, surely you
Will have been to where I’ve trod,
Out toward the far extreme
Of reason, near the face of God?

Surely you have ventured out
To realms of the far extreme,
Out beyond exertion’s pain,
Out beyond the child birth scream.

Come my brothers, tell your tale
Of how you tempted ****** fate,
In how you hovered on the edge
Of illicit exultation’s gate.

Tell me why you lied to me
Whilst swimming in your smile’s disguise?
What panic wracked your timid soul
When guilt exposed your weak, blue eyes?

How do you compromise your soul
When life’s reality drives home
To leave you standing high and dry
Abandoned there, exposed, alone?

What fantasy commits you to
The nervous way you handle guilt,
The way you always laugh too loud
And protest innocence to hilt?

Laughter will have creased your face
When realisation touched your brow,
Without exception-ALL WE SOULS
Share these weaknesses right now!

Hark now brothers, surely you
Will have been to where I’ve trod
Out beyond the far extreme,
Far beyond the frown of God.*

Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
9 March 2012
A tangled tourniquet is left
In mankind's stippled wake
Whoever claims to speak the truth
Inevitably sounds fake,
For he who over fills the wine
To brimming, claims the score...
Whereupon, in actual fact,
He invariably spills the wine, amore.

The braggard broaches loudly
In terms of absolute
To crush all opposition
To crown himself, a brute.
In each and every household
Obsequious, at best,
Opinions fly like shrapnel
To argue out the quest.

The man is an enigma
In his age of scarlet gold
Where his argument's disruptions
Contrive a hundredfold.
Where the phantom of his black intrigue
Bastes the pudding sour
And the spirit of our crystal truth
Desiccates by hour.

Whosoever brandishes
The tarnished flag of truce
In claiming saintly altruism
Burnishes no use,
For every individual
Who breathes upon this earth
Has guilty misconception
Determined... by his girth.

Flatulence forsaken, friend,
Let all men bear blame,
Regardless of religion
Or belief in the ordained
For the curtain is now closing
The final act now played
And God forgive that glutton
Who gobbles to the grave.

[email protected]
18 January 2025
In trepidation of the rise of the Gorgonzola early next week
Marshal Gebbie Jan 2020
Mercurial, though we be, since man emergeth from the trees
To embrace his fellow souls amid cooperation’s folds.
None other, fur or feather clad, reached forth and uttered, good or bad,
Hail brother, being unrequited,….”To win this war, we must quest united!”
No other beast on this blue globe, cooperatively, together strode.

And thus began progressions haul through ranks of eons conflicts’ pall,
Through battles’ halls of discontent to mans’, today, God like ascent.
Where humankind alone now rules to all, beneath, subjected tools.
Where excess reigns and egos flame where sunsets’ bloodred stain remains.
Fair or foul, our status quo until that dice roll kills the show.

The dice careen across the floor, We hold our breath, aghast, once more
Despite the crown atop our head, the wrong outcome ….may see us dead.
The fools wield the fiery lance encumbered in this rolling chance,
Should ballistic missiles fly existing global harmony, shall die.
Fair or foul, our status quo until this dice roll shows what goes.

M.
11 January 2020
On the precipice of global economic chaos in the standoff twixt Iran and the Trump Administration.
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2018
Brittle in its’ reticence
Browning through its’ green
Blowing in the Autumn winds
There but seldom seen.

Leaf adrift in seasonal
Gutted by the fall
Bilious from summer blight
Encompassing of all.

Delicate in evening hue
Swirling in its’ flight
Zephyr powered freefall
Touching down to night.

M.
Marshal Gebbie Jul 2010
******* air to burning lungs
Clawing hands to slippery rungs,
Pumping tendons stretched to snap
Fleeing footfalls echo back,
Panicked souls in fearful plight
Plunging forth to darkened flight.

Running hard these heavy feet
Sprint away from whence fears meet,
Fear of blackness, fear of pain
Flee from black fears’ leaden bane,
Run to where the white light plays
Curl to hide from fears’ dank craze.

Whites of eyes and matted hair
Clenched in sweating frights’ despair,
Know that fear is hunting now
Searing panics' sodden brow,
Scatter far in disarray
As shames' sly hand slides in to play.


Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
31 July 2010
Avocardo, Sugar Beet
As succulent as smelly feet,
For carrot on the parsnip way
Where lemon pumpkins lettuce sway...
Where tomato's and potato's Jive
With honeybees, atop the hive.

[email protected]
Jivin' with patty in '"Vegetation".
Marshal Gebbie Sep 2023
Advance, one step, alone in time
Composing, soft, a feral rhyme
Plucking soul, from here and there
Dispelling forth, the bleak despair....
Hold thy arm up to the light
Effortlessly, quelling fright.
Bray thy challenge, to the foe
Tapping white cane, as you go....
For sightlessness is born a death
Especially, should self pity quest.

[email protected]
Marshal Gebbie May 2021
Drifting past the memories, touching with fingertips only
and the scent on your cheek in the rain, that gently falling rain.

How could that have been, way back then before life hatched it's ugliness.

How could we have stumbled into that verdant glade of young love where each moment was a new creation, each sensation a shattering revelation of discovery.

Each memory a chrysalis of aching, yearning, recall.

Far, far too intense to last.

M.
1968
Melbourne
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2020
Banners in the high place
Banners in the sky
Banners so voluptuous
They shreik aloud to cry.....
Entrench me, my darling.
Entrench me in the fray
That presupposes truth and right
In a wrong and fraudulent way.
Consider how the everyday
Is manipulated by the rich,
From the tiny to titanic
To the governmental snitch.
Across the insignificant
To the monumental great
How opinion wears manipulants
To feed and rationalize the bait.
Because it all comes down to dollars snatched
And crass persuasion of the weak,
Who make up the great preponderance
Of the fools of whom we speak,
The blatant sway and cruel incursion
Of that meek and mild dissent
With the blunt and brutal bludgeoning
Daily thrashed with wealth's consent.
Playing Wall Street like a fiddle,
Using mortgage as a blade
To imprison for a lifetime
And castrate advances made.
From the cradle to the tombstone
This great manipulation plays
Where the oligarchs laugh loudest
And the ******* poor fool pays.

M.
Observing the great, everyday theft by the filthy, ******* rich from the rest of us ordinary, good people.
Foxglove, Taranaki. N.Z.
16 March 2020
Marshal Gebbie Aug 2020
Dragged the body to the summit
Hurt like Hell, in a fractional way,
Cobbled together a frank admission
That I was never one to pray.

Always played the mission my way
Struggled through with ups and downs,
kissed the girls, when they would let me..
Avoided fools and cussed the clowns.

Some mates endured the hot seal highway
Some expired along the way,
Those that mattered kept it up
Them that didn't, slid away.

Guess communication matters
Misunderstanding breeds contempt
Always thought I spelt it out right?
Maybe lied to circumvent.

Another breath, another day
It seems to roll along,
Regret I ****** forgot the words
Now I can't recall the song.

Bitter pill, this restitution
Can't quite, really, come to terms.
Love, they say, is of the essence...
How come, then, one never learns?

Robbed the day of all the meaning
Catalogued the blatant theft,
Endured the brittle conscience cleaning
Now there aint much, actually, left.

Gotta go, I've said my piece
Perhaps you've even listened?
Though, I wouldn't bet the house,
Cos Jesus Christ aint yet been Christened.

M.
Flat Earth Friday
7 August 2020
Marshal Gebbie Apr 2023
Questioning her leanings, friend
Will neither win desire, nor end....
Instead the fluid slips to point
Where passion slides to bridge the joint
To sup from that forbidden place
Electrifies with easy grace.

M@Foxglove,TaranakiNZ
April 10 2023
In response to Carlo C. Gomez's poem : "The ***** of a Vertical Line".
Marshal Gebbie Sep 2014
Greetings David,

I am employed by Fletchers Construction to be the Plant Coordinator at the Wellconnected Waterview Twin tunnel project underway beneath Sandringham in Auckland.
My wife is a hardworking Senior Nurse @ Ascot hospital in Greenlane.

For sanity, about six years ago, my wife and I bought a lifestyle block butting on to Egmont National Park @ 1250’ elevation. We built a beautiful alpine lodge, cut tracks down the heavily wooded escarpments, built bridges across two streams, reticulated roof water between tanks to a boulder built fishpond then to a shallow, stone rimmed lake which empties down an escarpment to the stream.
We have planted hundreds of trees and shrubs on this property, rhododendrons of beautiful form and colour, magnolias, a forest of silver birch, oaks, tulip trees and acers.
The property is a wonder of swooping hills and dips which, from it’s elevation, looks out over the grey Tasman sea toward Tasmania. Egmont looms in it’s white, pristine splendour over our left shoulder and the close, dark Puhakai range rears abruptly, spectacularly, betwixt the volcano and us.

Growth here is slow because of the climate, the 300 inches of annual rainfall, the short summers and the depleted volcanic ash soil.
I am 70 years old, my darling wife considerably younger….we both want to see our plantings grow to significance within our lifetime…
Thus my request for access to your wonderful fish fertilizer.

Respectfully
M.
Marshal Gebbie Dec 2024
I, too, have walked your tread
Loved, lost and strode in dread,
Felt the dark intrude my soul
Yet realised, that within.... the gold
For somewhere in this wondrous world
A kiss is thrown, a flag unfurled
Forgiveness, now, in purest form
Across thy shoulders, unadorned.

My love to you, Lori.
M.
In response to Lori Jones McCafferty's sad verse..."Farewell".
Marshal Gebbie Jan 2013
Worry taxing vindication
Deep lines score a harried brow,
Hooded eyes reveal the torment
Green of bile consuming now.

Years compile the load endureth
Weighted soul with quilted guilt,
Bowed is back and shoulder bendeth
Round and bound imbued as built.

So laboured by the leaden deeds
Weighted by the tomes of greed,
Cloistered with the avarice
Of omnipresent want and need.

Oh to see a mote of sunshine
Beam between the felted cloud,
Oh to feel the right of light
Emerge unhindered from the shroud.

God! To witness ordinary
Moments from this sea of pain…
To capture the exquisite joy
Of freely given mirth again ?


Marshalg
‘Foxglove’, Taranaki
31st December 2012
Marshal Gebbie Feb 2020
How moribund that lore of life
That counterfeits the play of death
When insurrection leads the way
To stimulate, perchance, bad breath.

For we fell foul of reasons' ploy
When, sad, we laid this mantle, proud
Upon his  Presidential brow,
Yes, he who brayed intention, loud.

Thrice we faltered in our task
Of lifting high this nations' flag
To resurrect a Judas King
To watch him bray, to hear him brag.

Swagger forth, in arrogance,
Play what ever game he please....
Despite Constitutions' law,
DEMANDS NOW,
The Emperor-ship for life....with ease!

Blonde Judas, in the Emperors' cape
Barging, as a hurt God cries....
Like cattle, we, to slaughter run,

REDACT...for this way, madness lies!

M.
13 February 2020
Marshal Gebbie May 2015
Birth is  a beginning
and death a destination
And life is a journey:
from childhood to maturity
and youth to age;
from innocence to awareness
and ignorance to knowing;
from foolishness to discretion and then, perhaps to wisdom;
from weakness to strength
or strength to weakness -
and often back again.
From health to sickness and back we pray to health again;
from loneliness to love,
from joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion,
and grief to understanding -
from fear to faith until,
looking backward or ahead,
we see that victory lies
not at some high place along the way,
but in having made the journey, a sacred pilgrimage.
Birth is a beginning and death a destination.
But life is a journey,
from birth to death......to life everlasting.!

Sammy
A beautiful passage written by a dear friend, Sammy, for Grandpa Verne, a wonderful man, who recently passed away. Written with love and caring for my darling wife Janet who was utterly shattered by the loss of her father.
M.
.....For you were once my love, back then
But then was then and now is now,
Life has flowed beneath this bridge
Paved our way and showed us how.
Through ups and downs, we counted cost
Depicting how we played our cards,
This fortitude and moral strength
A measure of.… how one regards,
My friend who shined as crystal gem
When hardship intervened, by chance
In offering her helping hand
In order to resume the dance.
And though the passing crowd moved on
and paused, perhaps to glance and stare,
She bent and warmly took my hand
And murmured, friend, I care, I care.

M.
Marshal Gebbie Sep 2011
See that old man on the seat
Looking destitute and beat.
Easy to ignore that man,
Old and grey and sad and bland.
Easy to just overlook
The fact, that in his lifetime took:

A million risks to guarantee
That you and yours, today, are free!


Negotiations in his stride
To guarantee your fair pay’s pride!


The knocks and hurt to make ends meet
To guarantee your boots for feet!


A million friendly smiles to fix
The deathly, dull amongst you ******!


...So, when you’re tempted, next to pass
That dear old chap, there on his ****,
I charge you to forgo your youth,
Approach him with warm smiles and couth,
Go shake his hand and wish him well...
My bet he’ll tell you ...“Go to Hell!”

Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
17 September 2011
Marshal Gebbie Apr 2013
In the sizzle of the sauna I sat near a fellow
A giant and as black, my friends, as black as pitch could be,
Gentle eyes and gentle voice, melodious in cadence
It reminded me of the music of the singing whales at sea.
From Georgia in the deep south, friends, a basket ball pro player
And as pleasant a man, my friends, as you could wish to meet,
Coaches the kiddies be they black, white or yellow, friends,
Coaches the kiddies throwing hoops in the street.
You just don't meet a Prince in the sizzle of the sauna
But I'll tell you, my friends, I'll tell you this for free,
That a better Ambassador for mankind and Maker
Has just not been apparent, friends, apparent to me.
He held out his hand, and smiled, and asked in passing,
Asked me my name as I rose to take my leave,
I felt the strength of the grip of that firm hand in clasping
And found me a friend, my friends, a good friend I believe.

Marshalg
Making a friend in the heat of the sauna
26 April 2013
Marshal Gebbie Dec 2021
Myopic the media swaying the mob,
Sniveling fantasies, coaxing the slob.
Co-opting response from opinion-less types
In fashioning rainbows for homos and *****,
Rampaging racism's silver, sharp teeth
Whilst prodding the vulnerable's spongy beneath.
Slipping the knife deep into the flank
Whilst the loud ostentatious are flaying for rank.
Slaying the leaders why ever they stand,
Assassins deployed in a leaderless land.
Spreading black lies for the diet of fools
In cognitive misuse of our media tools
Then blatant superficiality flares
Causing apathy rule, where nobody cares,
It all resolves to a meaningless blah
Where disinterest abandons all truth, as bizarre,
The narcotic dysfunction in media sway
Is tragically mauling humanity's way.

M
10 December 2021
Marshal Gebbie Nov 2014
Out beyond the distant freeway
Way beyond the wave lapped shore,
Far across the ocean, green….
You people fly to my back door.
Penetrating shrouds of weather
To slice through storms which wrack the sea,
Across those deserts dry and windblown
You lot send your thoughts to me.
From tenements in bleak Chicago,
Harbour side from old Hong Kong,
Across the ancient steps of Naples
Expression from thy pen doth throng.
Through the moonlight, softly filtered,
Past the beastly glare of dawn
Far across this tortured planet
Screeds of poetry, here, are borne.
Howling, gasping, dancing laughter,
Heartfelt words of loss so clear,
Sadness in great love’s demise…
Then anger, jealousy and fear.
Spontaneously across the spectrum
To materialise fantastically….
An embellishment of manuscript
To heights which brim an ecstasy.

Marshalg
Pukehana Paradise
29 November 2014
By One Who Still Believes in the People

This must be said.
This must be screamed —
from the highest hills,
from the lungs of the workers,
from the whispers of the broken and the buried,
from the hearts still hoping for something better.

America is being hijacked by ego.
Not ambition. Not vision. Not strength.
Ego.

A bloated, brass-plated, gold-dripping bravado that
believes shouting is leading,
that believes punishing the world will somehow heal a nation.

It will not.
It cannot.

In the last four days, the United States has turned its back
on the fragile balance of global trade.
Trump — blinded by the mirror of his own reflection —
has imposed sweeping tariffs,
shattering alliances,
igniting retaliation,
and in return,
$5 trillion — gone.
Vanished from the markets in a storm of uncertainty.
A storm he summoned.

But the worst part?
He will not stop.
Not because it is wise — but because his pride cannot retreat.
Not because it will help the people — but because he confuses the cheers of the few with the needs of the many.

And now, the world watches.
Macron has stood up.
The European Union is no longer silent.
Australia’s Albanese, firm in defiance.
New alliances are forming — without America at the table.

America, the disrupter.
America, the pariah.

And still, the people are told to trust the plan.
Still, they are sold dreams wrapped in slogans.
Still, they are forced to pay —
more for food, more for fuel, more for failure.

But this is not a call to despair.
This is a call to arms — of the spirit, of the voice, of the will.

Let the weak-kneed step aside.
Let the truth-speakers rise.
Let the artists, the elders, the thinkers, the builders —
let them speak. Loudly.

We must reclaim the narrative.
We must remind the world that America is not its tyrants.
It is its people.
It is its conscience.
And it is not too late.

HISTORY IS LISTENING!.

Will we go quietly into this manufactured decline?
Or will we bellow from the belly of the people,
until the sky remembers our name?

[email protected]
Take a tender moment, friend,
Pause a little while,
Ponder how the Masters wept
When fashion fought with style.
Imagine, how through history,
Those Artisans, galore,
Fought their creativity
Endeavoring for more.

Pause awhile, and ponder
The task that lies before,
Sip a drop of Irish
And ponder it some more.
A realization flooding
From the cortex of your brain
With a laughing pure simplicity,
Resolving the insane.

The hues upon the pallet
Decree the mood before,
Finessing with the paintbrush
Encourages amore,
The thrill of pure excitement
Creating in you now....
An inspiration's Miracle
From the running sweat of brow.

Go to it, Girl.

[email protected]
A comradely nudge of encouragement in an effort to overcome the frustration in the titanic struggle within the verse of Vianne Lior's  "Where the Brush Breaks".
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