The Veteran

Pity the poor slob

Who waddles like a dragged dog

Head bowed to the pavement

A gray, jagged, worn-out jacked

Unkempt, weather-beaten, a comical caricature

Performing like an uphill skier

Tail waggles no more, in ignorance, nor euphoric happiness

Having shed his human values

Decimated, beaten, succumbed, downtrodden

His haven and home long ago not accommodating

The free spirit broken with disease, lethargy, drugs

Rejected most help, love lost long ago

Now just a replica in the mirror of a puddle

Degradation, stagnation, self-affliction

All encompassed in this hull of a creature

Mumbling, incoherent, yet precariously

Slugging it out like a drunkard finding his uneven course

We know why! We know when!

He was an honored veteran who lost his way

and much more

Return from Undertow

I’m mesmerized; the rush of foamy ocean wave

Stare at the horizon; tip toe so deep, so brave

Dare tread deeper on the rocks and shells

Suddenly to my neck a salty brew now wells

So hard each step now to retrieve

With jaundice eye much disbelief

As buckets wail into my very spine

Must accept a watery decline

Leave me in peace without demand

The burden nature makes me understand

For all my struggles, aches and pains

Most forgetful and fewer gains

I panic, turn to face the undertow

Return to beach thrashing, as best I know

Scramble to shore full of terror and fear

The ocean could have swallowed me and I’d disappear

Surrounded by my friends, a glass of wine

Inevitable lifetime scare just in the nick of time

Complacent, haughty now, knocked off my stool

I should know better, this experimental fool



One of Us

Frigid, almost frozen, the stiff lay there

Ashen skin

Dead

In the alley behind the trash

Disheveled, dirty, the smell of urine

Grayish disheveled hair

Someone had stolen his shoes

An absent, cold, egotistical world

Police – ambulance

All far too late

Suicide? Homicide? Inclement weather?

Too short the investigation…

He was a veteran

So many of our homeless are

Heroes sometime, somewhere

A father, a husband, a scholar

Who knows?

An addict dug into a black hole

Of drugs

A nobody

Or maybe, just maybe

One of us

I Cry No More

I cry no more, those wet salty tears

Instead my humble old body seriously celebrates

Each day, so welcome, like each pendant on a gold chain

Sparkles, rings, amuses, entices,

Kindles kind, warm flames in my heart

While the world outside decimates, denigrates, accusingly divides

So I enjoy the solace, the secret silence,

Like a prophet from afar I cross over the landscape of time

I see the cracks and fissures of a lively terrain full of traps

Always the horizon beyond the sun-down mountain

Good, bad, evil, beauty, mistakes,

All meander from time to time in the distant past

Blown up irrationally as a guilty curtain, only to evaporate again

I cry no more

Down With All Protest

Where is the criterion – right-wrong?

A noisy, loud, boisterous song

Or perhaps “Where on earth do we belong?”

Will the weak whither, ruled by the strong?

It is a hollow, holistic, heavenly howl

Disgusting, dangerous, some throw in the towel

Or if so bland, bone-headed, brazen; go forestall

Until the military/cop anti-group comes to call

For all proclaim the flag of liberty that we are free!

Yet scared, suspicious, secretive in what we see

Revolutionary now called “traitor” in no uniform

Must arrest, eradicate those from the norm

Instead, the peaceful prosperity of family

Struggling to maintain in a conflicting sea

And if dysfunction is on the plate

Arrest, protest under the umbrella of laws of hate

But squelch, choke, shut up contrarian slogan be

It’s to no avail, excuse and plea

A new society so upside down

Most dare not leave their hateful town

For wild revolt and retribution

Axe to your enemy is a new solution

Ethnicity, race, religion, mine

Incredulous, unethical, all by design

Escapee to far-off fertile land

But where to start and where to stand?

Demise of principles long instilled

The old democracy will soon be killed

New manners, morals, mannerism

Too late to find your own schism

A new world in new solid phase

Time to forget the good old ways

Alas, if you only knew

It’s just my fertile imagination and not all true…

Blithe Spirit

Blithe spirit travels on the sunbeam

On ten thousand dust particles

Transports to a mysterious destination

Open mouth – inhales

Enraptured, captured by the spirit

“Why now – why me?”

He happily acknowledges

Today Fate is my bride -

I shall tarry, romp and ride

The joyous overtones of merriment.

Accolades heaved, success acknowledged

Feverish, he decides, almost concurs

Was it all perception, or reality?

Its stamp is tough and lasting

Computer space awarded, the victor

With open arms he/she is received

Believed until the battery dies down

Then the silent shadow vanished

with the sinking sun.

Aged I must celebrate

Aged I must celebrate

Before absent-minded makes it too late

While body and stomach wish for more

The juices search for love to score

Must celebrate in gratitude

For every sunshine is an interlude

Where friends still look me in the eye

Feel the criticism and know just why

Where I peruse with insight

Rejoice and share the light

And tender touch such blessed gift

Reciprocate, give life a lift

Guiltless, I can afford mistakes

Appreciate little things for heaven’s sakes

With infantile freedom roar and laugh

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