Called to the word, duty.
- three poemlings -
- for American Memorial Day

Memorialized worth weighed.
-- what would I memorialize?

Duty weighed
in the commons
this due debt each reader obeys,
leaving any original touch alive in logos
used to fit reasons why and how for now,
using memorialized excuses for active wars
calling ceaselessly hero wannabes
to hold true earnest faith in wars reasons
being  a duty, an aliegiance,
only that which must be done,
while young in wordless wonder of mutual nonsense
if sense and sensitivity persist past understanding.

Look up. Imagine ever, imagine now, ever
after all we think or ask is made apparent,

an artifice, a made thing, not made by hand,

the heavens and all that in them is, like us,
too complex to guess self formed, as if
no reason, no rational balance law
enforces re-ality always,
in our own time.

------------------

After all, now, is what we be
as sensing sanity beings
in cosmic chaos bound
to spiral ever more ceaseless.

Learning life's way.
Spinning enforcing will…
per hap and chance ifery.

According to a whim,
whether mine or another's,

I venture not to say I know,
for in this time I'm bound in,

I am bound to ever learn and
so, to confess the process,
ready made, pre-installed,

whimsical reification of wha-tifery
we may imagine without words.

Symbolic jestures, gestating
waiting. Making up secret signs,

lo' I see, you know, that I am
naked, first idea tasted
raw ality init run on
gaseous, formless
we, us ones, awe
forms framed in lucid

lackadaisical tension loosing.

------------------


Phased perrenial philo response,
sponsored by the guy who lied to you.

Truth beknownst, as knowledge
and understood wisdom,
wissen wishin' kennen
kennethed upto me,

may, is my word today.
I may say I think, and think
I may.

Enter, if you will, you may, here;
for to hear a wink reminds us, we;
persistent sophistries relax ourselves,
into the one thing we all think we are.

Yes. There and then, we think we are.
I am of a mind to accept the similarity.

I am out acting out-ist-ence, seeming
something informationally nebulous,

a thought, unfit for children's
undeveloped world stage character,

- in the software under our skin
- we are gaseous by simile being
- breaths used time and again, sigh
signs of all the stages, phazes of us, this

we who seek and find delight,
in learning who lied and why,

when truth telling gets you kilt. Dead,
memorialized with a national holiday
a day set apart to acknowledge duty
done gone
totally off kilter,
tipped too far,
to fill the vessles, not a few,
as duty to the professor.

- as one ever learns one is
- nothing but a bit of it,
- reality as we imagine.

Under the umbrella of religational
authority, we tie our mind's axe
in a bundle of barrel staves,

and offer liberty means to set minds
loose enough to imagine freedom

from authorities existing in the paradigm
fitted to the model citizen, for when
a memorial day comes to our we mind,
we finish realizing this is Spaceship Earth,
our only home,
star orbiting, gravitational bloom of life,

in which, remember, we
join mind in mind,
using recyclable whims, thinking
peace given once, can never be untaken,
like breath, grace for grace, Chabad -
made mock of only
by those who hold lies true, fools,
seeing themselves
chosen warriors
for justice,
military minded solo scripturants
led - re educated
to believe
in the bayonet spirit
during duty programming for killers,
for killers are what duty calls heros,
pledged, soul deep
to hate others, all lying daemons
of the destructive mindset calling Christmas
either
a whole cloth fabrication
or
a message which must be authorized,
to proclaim accomplished, once
for all. Under 501-3C tax freedom
only certified
saints disciples can claim
to listen, and spew anointed mass,
listen, repeat in vain the rosary chant,
hmm. hear the apparitions told the children,
to say we see, only leave being true this story,
for the rest of your lives, or
burn in faithless shame
for not relaying the message
to be carried into battle, believed

as taught, accepted as heel-stomp proof, troof.
-on Earth…
When one becomes a true citizen… one imagined
as having peaceful access
to all the freedoms promised,
when dead to all intents and purposes,
upon successful passage through mid-life.

Breathe,
remembering indeed.

It is one's duty, in the form of gaseous we,
to breathe and remember being one,
among the current crop on Earth,
breathing  members involved
in letting peace be realized as us,
whose task is mocking gods of war.

Somewhere in town,
a dog licks at the hand of a child.
a man with no shirt plays hacky-sack alone
The stalwart city has come crashing to her knees,
and so against his own he kicks the bag
again and again
as if he could raise the razed ground
with the power of a child's game.

I CRIED
YES I CRIED
and
LOVE TRIUMPHS OVER HATE
and
UNITE.

By a fountain on the curb
men with long hair and guitars sing together,
only strangers before today.
a woman who saw someone
gasping in vain for smokeless breath
inhales deeply from a cigarette.
A saxophone sings out sweet and low,
his melancholy tune sung
for everyone who can only hear
the screams, long gone silent save for in memory,
where they pierce as loud as sirens.

a boy walks to the movies with his mom
and asks her what the sign says.
she reads to him:

“TODAY IS
"A DAY AT THE MOVIES"
ALL MOVIES WILL BE FREE
TODAY.
STOP BY THE
CONCESSION STAND FOR A
COURTESY CUP OF SODA &
POPCORN”

and, baffled, he cannot understand why
a free movie
and a sugary drink
and a tub of popcorn
brings his seamless mother to tears.

One hundred years ago
My Mammy was just three,
The exact same age as me,
When she sailed us across the sea,
All those years ago.

Just lately,  just now,
I said Mammy's Mammy's name out loud.
What was that, I asked.
For sure her name's not been said
For many, many years.
Margaret Duffy
A dog barked.
So I said my mother's:
Mammy
A breeze furled the window sheers.

The dog continued to yelp,
So I said her other names louder:
Brigid...........Nellie

I will keep the wind inside me,
And allow the dogs their day;
Your names will still be called upon,
In stress or tranquility.

I'm on my way to luncheon.
It's only down the hall.
But at journeys end the shortest way
Seems the longest road of all.

It's most peculiar.  These old walls
Were decorated plain.
But the fog dissolves to a distant shore,
As an Emerald Calls my name.

I've journeyed through the decades
Where I've heard the Church bells peel,
From the beachhead of June '44
To The factory gates in Theale.

I grew a garden proud and fair,
With a weeping willow tree.
Where my family played in its summer shade,
It still remembers me.

My trips to Ross have long since stopped,
But the earth salutes them still;
With the ghost of a car, on the shortcut
Down the side of Birdlip Hill.

My travelling days are now long gone,
But my family still recall,
That a ship came back from Guernsey
With contraband alcohol

I don't know how they'll judge me,
When my final furlong's run
But an echoing stranger’s voice talks
Of a gentle Gentleman.

I was a handsome charmer, now
I've supped time's cruel pill.
But that glint in my eye, as you pass me by
Is shining from me still.

I learned it from my father,
Snooker was my game
Now friends have all gone home
I’m tired; I've played my final frame.

I'm on my way to luncheon.
A familiar smell wafts by,
The scent of overcooked
Roast beef, the tang of apple pie.

I'm on my way to luncheon,
I drop my frame and fall.
I hear the siren whisper
Of a distant dancer's call.

I'll leave you all in peace now,
But I don't want any tears,
And I don't want any fuss now,
When you toast my passing years.