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We all gather here
Young old fat thin wealthy poor
Voluble or quiet
Shy or maybe bold
Even princess but no prince
No matter

We all write silent songs

Some saunter in
Bulging pockets stuffed with
Words
They pull out at random
Glue to the old chalk board in
Confusing stinking chaos
Then they name it poetry
They insist you must read

Perhaps they serve a garden salad
Leafy words already in decay
Which they sniff like aged cheese
And pair with white wine

Others fold origami poems
Engineered with wings
Toss them at you
Boeing planes of paper
That always bank awry
Crash into other words
Made mountains made seas

A few possess talent
Make memories into magic
Slip sly notes from desk
To desk
Where sly mouths silent
Smile back their pleasure
In the read

Here are writers who can write

All that kicking in the third
Trimester, about which
Mother proudly whined
Was nothing more than writer’s block
Ill temper in the little one
Writing and writing
Writing in the womb

Here are masters of the craft
Carpenters of line of rhyme
Plumb-bobbed poems
Straight and true

Like hypnotists on stage
Journeymen and women poets
May put you in a trance
While they sit at a distance
Safe before a desk
Not even wearing pants

They can make you laugh
At nothing
Make you weep with
Made up sorrow
Ask you count your chickens
Today and tomorrow
Make notes in the ledger
Only you can see to borrow

Yet

It ain’t no game
They can write serious
For serious people
They write of life’s big moments
Pick and choose the details
To whittle on
Bring emotions down to size

Sick with love afraid you’ll lose
That woman of mercury moods
Instead you marry algebra
An equation of partnership
New stresses multiply her storms
New threats to leave
Forever - forever free of
Love’s demands

Screams from the birthing bed
There’s the
head of a daughter
You hold her with new love
So strange, unknown, skinning knife sharp
This love……
You hasten to a toilet
To retch

A circle formed of childhood friends
Circled round a bottle Boys
Of aged Kentucky bourbon
For me it holds grave gravity
Drink a dram down my friends
Then another then another
Let us toast my dear dead Mother

A new job, new staff, new friends
Your marriage took a sideways slide
A big down and almost out
Employee Becky
Hands you her business card
Hand written- If you need anything-
Anything at all - call on me
Danger there……
And who doesn’t enjoy a little
Danger?

Do we write our own eulogies?
**** straight we do
Who better, huh?

So go fling some ash
Search my will for cash
Long ago
Such lies I wrote
Such praise I heaped upon
Myself
You may well wonder
Did they burn the wrong body?
I wrote this out of joy for the resurrection of writerscafe, may she live forever.
Indrew C Mar 2013
We are journeymen
Always on to the next foot
We set to travel as if we know our destination
Not knowing it's the journey
That casts the die for our dreams and ambition

Roads paved with memories yet to come
Make themselves apparent to all of us
Faced by ambiguity and fear for the next,
We clasp to a certain past which made tonight
Surreal than it will ever be

We find ourselves gazing back to the days
Whose hours were made by little wonders
That last like stars in the sky
Moments that determine who we are
Linger in our hearts, touched by one another

Like brothers in arm
We hurdled through countless days
Learning together in good times and in bad
And by filling up each other's imperfections by our diversity
We discovered a new guise of love

Emotions fuel the memories
It is the reason why
We will only just remember how it feels
We always have choice to look back
But we can never walk back

Why?

Because we are journeymen
Always on to the next foot
We may take these steps far from one another
But we will take these steps together
Like we always have, and we always will

*"Good-bye's are only for those who think
       they don't have you inside their hearts"
Undertakers, hearse drivers, grave diggers,
I speak to you as one not afraid of your business.

You handle dust going to a long country,
You know the secret behind your job is the same whether
     you lower the coffin with modern, automatic machinery,
     well-oiled and noiseless, or whether the
     body is laid in by naked hands and then covered
     by the shovels.

Your day's work is done with laughter many days of the year,
And you earn a living by those who say good-by today
     in thin whispers.
Seán Mac Falls Nov 2014
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
Seán Mac Falls Jan 2014
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
betterdays May 2014
falderal and balderdash
two little imps,
of some small renown.

falderal is a skinny,scrawny slip of a thing.
all intelligent darkness, rootlike in nature.
all grasping and clinging hands and feet.

balderdash, well he is
as his name implies,
round and shiny.
far less than exceedingly bright.
stolid, and cat curious,
smile quite endearing,
but a sense of humor
to be fearing.

imps they are,
as already stated,
of the cadre of earthbound. they are to each,
the yingle to the yangle,
the left to the right,
the peanut butter to the jelly, the day to the night.

apprentice and journeymen they be,
falderal quick to rush through the ranks. balderdash on record,
for longest ever time,
at the start of the race.
they are attatched to the place,
the "rooms" if you will.
of the quacksalver,
come life's strife coach, buttinskimentor.
(he thought to modernise and appeal to a larger demographic spread of people).
the shingle over his eaves, pronounces his name to be, hi. p.r. condriac esq.
if you please.

one day it might be,
when you are feeling,
confused and perhaps,
a tad frail
you skim your junk mail, then, you may find his brightly hued pamphlet,
just skitters to the pile top
and with the dust of conviction spread over thick, and a little innoccuos doubt, another mind trick.
you stupidly think i might try this chap out!
his work sounds appealing, if somewhat radical,
i hope i get lucky
and he gets to revealing,
the source of the foot odour, the smell in my shoes.
that makes me think of hell, and regurgitated *****.

unbeknown to your goodself you have begun, a set of trials, a hopless spell,
a winding serpentine course of sysiphian tasks,
(at a kind and generous 10percent off)
to rid yourself of,
this unholy smell,
which really is,
if i am a secret to tell,
the *** of falderal
and of course the sweat of balderdash's shiny brow,
and places less mentionable,
applied with delighted relish and made to stick with medical grade super glue.

and so after months of debraiding your life,
a light switches on
and an epiphany occurs,
you become wise to these minions of strife
and garner up the courage to yell "
it is a sham and he, but a shylock"

you then wend your way back to the good doctors rooms.
i can garantee you he will not be there,
to listen to your plight,
with due care he has long since,
packed up his snake show, revved up his vespa
and into the night's cacophony,
he has driven,
with journey man falderal and apprentice balderdash, in tow,
clinging on tight,
to the rear mudguard.

he now has other fools in his sight.

as to the problem of the pongy shoes,
to be rid of the smell.
the answer so simple,
you will hear in your mind the loud ringing of bells. garbage the lot shoes,
socks as well.
walk the world barefoot.
you will not be mocked,
but you may find that people mention the words,
slightly eccentric,
when you come to mind
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2012
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
Seán Mac Falls Jul 2013
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
Nat Lipstadt Oct 2014
when the poems don't come,
where do they go?

silly notion,
what's the commotion...
don't they just wait,
gestate,
till the time is right,
till one fires the starter's pistol,
they come when they come,
right?

no.

poems are journeymen,
cover bands,
looking for work steady,
airborne, breeze borne, atmospheric,
looking for a ready, willing & able
host and hostess

a recognizer of their properties,
willing to offer themselves up,
by adding the final touch
to a project that has
its deadline passed,
needy for a Caesar,
cut it out,
to come and get it

are you willing to add
your name to it,
cutting its chord,
let it pass from the airs of heaven
down the stairs
to an earthly audience?

are you willing to own it?
Oct 9 2014
a taxi poem
Seán Mac Falls Mar 2013
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
NuurSeraph Sep 2014
Come forth thither~therein lies the dust of Worthy wo/men

Paint not the Saint to be a sinner
pitch accordingly to Prophet's Call
Into Mourning crawls the Child
Twilight's mist brings forth a Wo/Man
Walks the path, long and narrow
led forward by the voiceless Word
Echoes bounce within his skull~
into Verse the messages heard
brought to Song the Sparrow sings
made to beat by Ravens Caw
Swinging Melody sways a Tree
beckons down the Tales of Fall
Onward walks the age'd Seer~
bend of back from Earthen pull
Through the curving Mountain trail,
frail with cane of gnarled wood
Upwards to the Peak he wanders
voiceless whispers the Miracle
Destination as was promised~
arrives the Cave of Oracle.

So now may he rest his weary bones for he has finally travelled Home~
Songs of Nature mark the way much like the poetry of wo/man.
brandon nagley May 2015
Crawling intellectuals,
Brawling interceptionals,
Stairway's that leadeth thou to thine end!!

Entrancic scening summer fairies,
Prophetics turned to visionary,
Thy mission's uncompleted in thine own home....

Sorceretic witchdoctors,
And jesus Christ mockers,
Snubbers and grubber's all as one!!

Journeymen hath thou learned a trade?
Junction friend hath thou burned thy craze?
The tallismen steady hand is gone!!!

Violate me as thou will,
Smile as thine shaky stick can ****,
Volition's grand view is seen!!!!

Vocal vitality is a blessing to those who brand their name,
The wanderer's flame knows no fancied escape...

Absorment Temper's flare adhesively,
Treatingly accidental!!!

Despondency shows up for the destination thou has thought to receive,
Hath thou given up yet?

Where at last shalt thou find thy predetermined destiny???
SV Paulson Jul 2018
There are no roads
no destinations, no needs beyond my eyes
There are no more barriers.
It's open and anxious.
Lost in an ocean of thought and suspense.
I am the lone drop in an ocean of colors,
brought to life by lack of meaning,
Eyes open wide and burrowing into thought.
Fear is present, O yes, but it is a companion, not a foe.
And longing
for more, for loss, for change. For naught.

We are the journeymen,
the wizards of our travels.
We belong to the victorious onward.
We are alone and we are crowded.
There may be nothing more for us but sound and water, bread and sky,
but we are present within.

I've lost sight of the costly promises,
the hopes and dreams of a lovers first touch.
If it still exists, it is only in mirage and fantasy,
a myth of a simpler time.
But it lingers like an afterthought
or a scent memory

Journey on my good man,
and may you approach the truth on hallowed ground
Seán Mac Falls May 2016
( in honour of Memorial Day )*

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
.
Seán Mac Falls Sep 2014
By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
Poem written in honor of all fallen soldiers and commemorating the 'Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall' in Washington, D.C.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for (Missing In Action) during the War.
Seth Milliman Mar 2016
Power plays,
On different days.
Bringing irony to the tip top of this plateau,
I struggle with words beyond reach sometimes.
But never forget what's below,
Hellish work for sound minded journeymen.
When all wish to be as quite so,
Yet when one is corrupt.
The mind no longer sound or sane,
This is the beginning to what's down below.
And to what's never seen again.
Julian Jul 2022
How Does History Really Work?

The enantiodromia of parallax founded as a predicated fulmination of retrograde incident precluding accidental consequent is a natural referent of a bypassed bridge that through tip-lipped coercion resorts to the nature countenance and visage of the holiest creator of our majestic universe bolted to the linearity of patterns of trigonometric spelunkers seeking a sub-Pythagorean orbit of granular generativity that becomes its own amplivagant vessel and simultaneously ampitheater that is a fission of magnetized smog mobilized in ulterior provenances of heightened parlance for impavid labtebricole secrets marauding with visagists that cloak the heavens in the elective cardiac synergy of a saturnine swindle wandering listlessly with jive-talking smooth-walking creatures of cerebral habit jaunty with legacy but bounded by the strict cloffins of the lambent source of journeymen into the sojourn neither of regaled destiny nor whispered prophecy but more on the lines of a conflated flux dispersal of entropies competing in space time to wander endlessly through the diaspora of the living hallowed graves of the Potemkin Village of the silentium of the protectorate behind McCauley Culkin’s agoraphobia. History rotates upon a transdimensional supercalendrical access point beyond which there is  nothing but terminus even in the absence of pointed aberration because the milk of even the lactose inferior mettle of scurrilous witwanton bludgergrumbles of the wednongues is a hallowed wassail only to the degree the counterfeit becomes moribund by the rickety cringes of logical deceit becoming tinsellated surfeit that the stars appetize for but because they are installed with a degree of reticent amnesia it grafts a gridlock of paralysis from which the hostage situation humanity has prevailed through despite velivolant winds to the contrary is capable of plumbing abyssopelagic transportation only in the moments when the material world and the numinous intersection of the seminal ingeminations of orderly demarches in the folksy remedies which bandy their temptations on the borrowed bibliopolists who in gingerly Canada Dry secrecy burrow the furrows of the sulcate grooves of waxen miracles in the glabrous limelight of the gallywow diversion that earns leverage over the meager rather than spars with the promethean pataphysics of a time that is becoming so prolific with fulgurant streaks disguised by smog that even  the most well-paid firefighters can never stop the rampant conflagrations from infiltrating cantabank muses upon alighted destinies. We are at a centripetal point in time among many others but because we witness the transdimensional bypass with such geopolitical clarity it becomes an obvious zugzwang for those who try chryselephantine gambits and gimcracks in the ginnels of backwater boondoggles to enforce the hibernaculum of blackguard engraved in the literate apostasy of man from the true origins of the dynamos that all decided together to ensure the vitality of the syndicated enterprise of the very transgressions and felonious against the “Space Cops” to the extent their overflush of ostentation in their gingerly mannerisms becomes itself the guarantor of an ascertained future clouded by murky residual charnels in the nemorivagant chase for the shining beacons of the brains that siphon unprecedented influence in order to cleanse lavaderos of the ***** grime of egestuous obolary poverty of the pastorauling and the aspen groves that lurk with pernicious impertinence above sandapiles of sadly deceased souls journeying towards neither an eternal conflagration nor a vacancy of substance but rather that substantial determination of magnanimity. The myths that perplex humanity were clothed as a parvenu IQ test for the people who sizzled with the saute of keen acumen foisted upon a thought loop of lunatic subversion of ultraviolet genius beyond the detection of the lens of prismatic fortunes gained by reversing photons in time to regionalize the spectral reality into the elaborate alveolate ploy by the elite to assume not by arrogation but rather by thaumaturgy that all witnesses become contributors in the modern age and therefore this funnels the continuum and spectrum of a radiological race girded by the futtocks of jetsetting analysis to bifurcate planes of trajectory that at first diverge widely because of raconteurs grafted with numinous fictions of the facade of man in a Potemkin Village like Manhattan which saw its population decline by nearly four-hundred thousand people in three months (All of the Boroughs) to invest in enclaves where their furtive fruition would be recognized. The very invention of time travel is an epigenetic alien configuration of races that outlived us and sought sidereal mysteries in boosterism that granted us parceled notaries that spell doom for democracy but bonanzas for the autarky found in inalienable rights such as the pursuit of happiness most importantly configured into the realms of persuasion to become a meddlesome hypestorm that few tempestuous mercurial sailors would dare to journey beyond because the early grave is reserved froward in the momentary amnesia of videos of accidental leaps that frogmarch us into a more clever ascertained future micromanaged by a collective syndicate of outfoxed limiculous creations drowning in cesspool swamps of money to bury the bridewells alive because essentially we are now entering the pivotal crux of  history when one man’s barnstorm becomes a collectivized enterprise to radically reform the conditional antiquity inherent to time and to gouge funding for armadas fought by warriors that lapse between milliseconds in order to deliver calculated payloads with extremely precise mathematical precision. When someone patented the Theory of Relativity he postulated that the condensation of matter is fungible and flexible plasticity rather than a benumbed sopiter race of grumbling groaks that become costermongers for comatose sleeping pills and mandatory heart monitoring. There are a few moments in history capable of jump starting the generator not of myth but the progeny of priggish mathematical facts lurid in their prurience of permanence to ensure that neither mythomane nor sophist can clamber into an artificial alcove of the celestial paint of enhanced perception predominating over a century obsessed with perceptual enhancements of prosthetic invention emigrating from distal orbits among the lunisolar accord as well as around the regional taxes of Saturn and its cove of troves of bohemian impertinence. Analyzing history in the alpenglow of the donnism of hedonistic impetuous importance is a yield and cloveryield to an optimism of guarded shibboleths easily duplicated by laboratory investigations into the microbiological elements of the functioning human society upon which percolations of reality drawing ever near the icebergs of certainty that the ship will eventually sink in Africa and that sad welter should appall us all but because one person who owns the master of destiny cognomen capable of surpassing the largesse of the frissons of glamour becomes the swift parvenu of an anointed bludgergrumble extorted by powerful puns in this society of fashionable violence to enforce codes of silence by tampering with individualism and individual flavorks that demassify to preselect by artificial implements that the predestination they heard was a warbled echo of a now extinct future aborted as the time line converged upon the antipodes of fission and friction to exert filagersion in geotaxis to ensure that the sworn blatteroons of bloviation endowed with such great fiduciary importance that when exact events are hallowed in history movie dialogue memorializes those moments at the very second they are observed without being an underminnow of lip syncing. Some primary examples of pataphysical conundrums exorcised from time is how the whiskey bar aloft in the heights of the stratosphere could find direct knowledge of the future live on camera in movies like Twister to memorialize the thaumaturgy of sartorial shoes mixed up in time and how in Lost’s final episode of the first season the entire cast was elated by their renewal of knowledge or the introduction of the inseminated creed of the mysterious bottle that was kicked and then dematerialized. Physics is a funny science but the belabored tropes of game theory existentially altered the trajectory of humanity from a docile ploy of slot machine slaves into a society that engraves its superstitions upon pervious minds to the salubrious decorum of a whittled henpeck of privilege that whatever is broadcast automatically becomes preeminent because it is so widely spread even among piebald audience of sebastomania and lunacy can be cordial with poorly kept secrets secreting the jaundice of self-reference and milking dead organs of surgical pride for the stomached emasculation of the humane virility undergirding civilization. Right now and starting in early September 2020 and much before that if you study the Earthquakes created near Hawthorne, Nevada the meterologist suddenly becomes the kingpin because his Big Lebowski antics are a sardonic rift on the rafts of publicity to reprove the agentic force of a discarnate inanimate evil of a being that lacks sensory capacity so thereby seeks to disincarcerate its own obligatory tether to the vacuum of warbled tilts of information to domineer with a degree of captaincy catapulted by the future dominion of historicity compounded by the dearth of energized rebuke flabbergasted venom of deceitful charlatans of yobbery complicant   on contraplex bromidrosis of ergasia flapdoons emigrate from the citadel of veridical truth.
Seán Mac Falls Nov 2017
( in honour of Veteran’s Day )*

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?
The Fire Burns Sep 2016
Friday Afternoon, it’s time to blow
load it all up and away we go
kids in the back with a bag of snacks
gone for the weekend, but we'll be right back

Dog in her lap and the wife riding shotgun
driving down the highway out running everyone
bare feet on the dash and the radio playing
country music, hip hop, and rock, and were singing

We know every lyric of every song
when we sing the ride, don't take as long
but whining and asking makes the truck slow down
we will gas, eat and *** in the next town

All of a sudden, I'm the only one awake
driving down the highway not taking a break
we'll get there sometime, 6-10 hours
the miles on and on the truck devours

Whether it’s to Raton, the Deer lease or Home
awhile it takes, bugs dying on chrome
of the bumper or the windshield,
seeing deer and turkey in the field

Next to the road, as we go by
or looking at stars in the night sky
sometimes its clouds that pass the time
depending on season or current clime

I've seen a rat, and once Alfred Hitchcock's profile,
never know what the clouds will make in the next mile
sitting and Riding and Riding and Sitting
getting kind of tired but I’m not giving

Up the wheel, even though I'm tired
mile upon mile tired but wired
if I'm in a car, I'd just as soon be steering
needing some tea, Gas station is brewing

It’s getting late, we're almost there
tomorrow morning, waking up without a care
got all Saturday to do why we came
hunting, fishing, or visiting, get it done just the same

Had a lot of fun, but like journeymen
Sunday morning do it all again

Back to work Monday
Seth Milliman Dec 2015
Power plays,
On different days.
Bringing irony to the tip top of this plateau,
I struggle with words beyond reach sometimes.
But never forgetting what's below,
Hellish work for sound minded journeymen.
When all wish to be as quite so,
Yet when one is corrupt.
The mind no longer sound or sane,
This is the beginning to what's below.
And never be seen again.
Yenson Jul 2022
In the fickle floccules whimsical of inherent stunted minds
where delusions drive Ferraris' and the gilded are servants
if their hate stop painting pictures of doom rack and ruins
tis known they are just mere inferior mediocre observant

Like moths to flames reeking talentless blow hollow winds
losers no-marks spewing nonsenses under stones like ants
mundane journeymen and maiden oiks alongside philistines
the letdowns in low downs craving distractions with slants

No worthy or good comes from insignificants on the grinds
lacking wit or grace they faff and prattle as modern peasants
their job is hate and in searing jealousy they dribble unrefined
the pitiful community of lesser beings in malice conversance:
Graff1980 Sep 2021
Peasant eyes
tell pleasant lies,
but journeymen
are mastering men,
commanding them
to do their darkest
bidding,
leaving dreamers sitting
sad and dismayed
as the con artists run away
with the heart of what makes
love and language great.
Antony Glaser Sep 2021
What kind words can we use?
Kindly years  Kindly Sir, Kindly dream?
Where there is no kindness
there is only referment

The ordinary never forgetting days
slips through my palms
like salted brine

After the rain
a pale anemone shies
over the convenient ashes of remorse
yet dreams are for losers
and waylaid journeymen
poetryaccident Mar 2018
The sun is set against the sky
on a horizon set to receive
it matter not for this agency
if the direction is come or go

one will bring light from dark
the other puts the same to sleep
there is moment when both are same
except for a reference on the sphere

some would say the difference spans
the view points that divide
one from another seeking life
each too far to reconcile

it’s a ruse by the souls
seeking light in the whole
blinded by the blue sky
fighting wars without insight

consider dark is part of life
when the borders mark its time
these bookends of day or the night
portaled gates where magic waits

framed in pink and the gold
jewels of nature high above
journeymen to the star
dawn or dusk become the same.

© 2018. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20180322.
“Dawn or Dusk” was inspired by a meme that proposed that the rising and setting sun resembled each other.
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
Walter Ong in St. Louis
Where my father went to school

Lou Brock and Bob Gibson
Cardinals are cool

Orality and literacy
God's word, he says, is spoken

I like Leonard Cohen
The Alleluia broken

The Jesuits are journeymen
They've taught me something too

Contemplatives in action
Prayers at the Gesu

— The End —