newark

and now, of the longest post in some time

The final draft of War Cries is on its way to printer !!!!!!!! and will be available the first week of March 2005 on Amazon.com and in book stores in NYC. My second book is called "Beauty and the Beast" and is do out in Dec 2005

here are some draft's, it is not dark like "War Cries", rather love poems for some of the woman in my life over the past year or so

Stradivarius

"For Vivian"

Strength and Beauty
Quite Confidence
Adventurous, yet conservative
Gently curved for dramatic effect

To touch you is to touch the Almighty himself
Firm and strong - Smart and generous
You are like not other I have ever held
All others pale in comparison

Your youth shines through
You have been preserved
Bearing a natural kiss of the Sun
As only a few have

The finest of several woods
Help make you all that you are
Nothing was spared to create you
You are what craftsman & scholars, labored to produce

Where eloquences meets style and grace
Is where you are found
It only makes sense we met in a grand concert hall
Nothing has been made like you in three hundred years

Some believe you belong in a Museum
A natural beauty such as your should be shared
Yours is a healing power
Producing a melody that tames even the savage beast


Periscope

"For Jamie"

Do not abandon ship
All is well
To be found
You must be lost

I see the life raft you cling to
The Ocean, like life is vast
Still you do not give up hope
You are to strong not to survive

I see your pain
I notice it when you speak
Our pain is different
Yet we are the same

People pass without noticing
Hiding in work, it is the best disguise
Not wanting to be found
Yet you were recognized on seas horizon

I wonder if the world sees what I do
Perhaps it takes a blind eye to truly see
Beauty such as yours
Inside and out

Do not be afraid of the darkness
It is merely the absence of light
Blind as we are
It is always night time

From the depths of the Ocean
I linger beneath the murky water in the frigid blackness
The only warmth is the moonlight and your smile
I admirer you from my Periscope


Light years

Sunlight falls as my heart sinks
Knowing you will return to me
within two more cycles of the Globe;
still it is 52,000 miles away

The sun will rise and set
a pair of times
Even at a 186,000 miles per second,
Still the sun is moving, to slow for me

Does it not know
I am waiting for you
Having waited a lifetime for you
These last two days will feel like another

The World will see sorrow and Joy
Several million times over
None of that matter to me,
As you are my universe

Vividly I remember our first kiss
Over a thousand days in the making
Natural as your beauty
Confident as your stride


Dizzy

A lone star shining
On a three quarter moon
Faintly behind it - soft stars - dizzying me
Almost as they are her orchestra

Full of energy - Radiant
She warms my soul,
When I seem, light years away
Or inches apart

Bursting with power and energy
As the purest beauty accompanies me
A perfect night
Tanglewood in its full glory

A gentle wind hums
The melodies of love
With a swift, but slow comforting pace
Romance fills the mid summers air

Lovers hold hands
And express themselves with a smile
Hearts beat as one
To the rhythm of the Symphony

Time stands still
Then with great sorrow
This magical moments passes
But will never fade from my memoir

Reborn in the summer solstice

Solstitium,

As spring ended in its last hours
I passed into summer
Having done so three dozen times before
It was only fair that this magnificent day

Had the most sunlight of the year
Warm with a gentle wind
Sharp but without edge
My skin tingled as my body shook

The Gods showed favor upon me
Opening the heavens gates
Sending their most perfect creation
Aphrodite was no equal

The Stars aligned and shined brightly on me
Zeus lent me his strength this day
Realizing my equinox was before me
Mount Olympus was missing it fairest Goddess

Pusillanimously - I dare not whisper your name
Thinking I might awake from the dream of a lifetime
Why would they reward a mere mortal man such a gift?
Especially on who had followed Ares to Hades and back?

Tasting the sweet summer air on your lips
And watch the breeze in your hair,
Aeolus must be praised
For bring you into my life

Thoughts of you

for sarah

As slow jazz plays on the radio
Sitting reading on the couch
In the candles soft flame
Listening to the gentle rain on the windows edge

When I head to bed
Kissing my pillow good night
And hold it ever so tight
In our half empty bed

Staring at the Stars
Under the moon full brightness
While the wind whispers your name
On a soft summers eve

Each and every time I toss and turn
Awaking in the middle of the night
Imaging your there with me
By the dawns early light

While I brush my teeth
As I head to work
When I pass a child and see your eyes
Knowing I fought for you

Abandoned

for sarah

On a warm summer eve
With perfect weather
My reckless youth was abandoned
Not far from my childhood home

We ate pizza and searched in vain for corndogs
Playing thirty dollars worth of arcade games
Walking miles on the boardwalk
Awkwardly advancing with true romance

Over a decade before I lost my innocence
Twelve thousand miles away
In a unforgiving desert
In a land that God had forgotten

That evening I forgot the horrors and pains
I focused on you
Savoring the day, as if, the creator had made its splendor
Just for you and I

We laughed and joke
People watching and job guessing
You even got me to go out on the sand
Of the beaches I surfed twenty years before

I held your hand on the drive home
Laughing and talking all the while
Till the dawns early light
A three hour first kiss ended that special night

Awaking together, I thought
This is first day of the rest of my life
Realizing somewhere between the Skeeball and sunlight
I had begun to fall in love for the last time in my life


Awaking / first hour

As the sun wakes me gently
In the dawns first hour
A soft breeze causes the air to stir
The sweet smell of your hair
Still fresh on my pillows

For an instant I turn
Looking for you in my half empty bed
Thinking - are you there
Knowing in my heart your not
I have to look anyway

I smile hoping you will return
I remember that morning
The memoir of a life time
The softness of your skin
The face of an angel

I lay silent watching you sleep
Holding tightly against my chest
Not wanting you to awake just yet
So that the moment would not end


That of an angel

There is no beauty
Like that of an angel
No softness
That compares to her wings

Floating effortlessly
Evil dares not to dwell
Anyplace she goes
Even better, she barley knows

How her touch, heals my weary soul
Her eyes brighten a room
She solves the worlds problems
One smile at a time

A face that defines beauty
Her fine hair gently flows
With Big brown doe eyes
Innocence is evident

The Sweetness in her voice - confirms
Southing and without contempt
A little girl quality
In the body of a woman

She is all that is good
On the green earth
How could I, not be the victor
With God's most divine creation on my side


Fermata

"for Sarah"

She lays softly silent
Seemingly without a care
Quietly content, with bed hair
Her beauty leaves me gasping for air

I watch her chest
As it rises and falls
Just as my heart does
Knowing I must leave

In a few precious moments
Returning instead to my half empty bed
Countless hours of work and time in the gym
Remember each crest of her breast
On that Saturday morning

Why would God give me an angel?
Then send her away so soon
She will return to me in weeks
But how could the days not loom

I kissed her good night
On the top of her head
I held her tightly
All night in her tiny bed

The morning brought a smile
To my sweet princess
So smart and so bright
She has courage and honor

She is not afraid to fight the good fight
Rarely, you find such a fiery soul
Willing to toil,
But, never to sell her soul


My Angel of Mercy
for
"Jean Anderson"

She changed my dressings
She shaved me each day
She held me while I trembled in my sleep
She checked on my after her shift

She told me I reminded her of her dead brother
She held my hand and caressed my face
She kissed my cheek, to say good night, when she knew I was asleep
She wiped by brow a thousand time, and asked me about the War even more

She did not seem to mind, when I did not answer
She spoon fed me Jell-O and scrambled eggs
She brought me junk food, and paid for it with her own purse
She brushed my hair back, with the greatest of attention

She told me to wake up, because she wanted me to know she cared
She told me it was okay for a grown man to cry
She read to out loud in the softest of tones
She let me touch her face each day
She prayed for me each night
She nursed me to health
She wanted to marry
She knew I loved her before I ever saw her

She was there when they uncovered my eyes
She was ten years my senior
She was an officer while I was enlisted
She said she would love me forever, but I had to go away

She is single again after a failed marriage
She new my voice after twelve long years
She took my call and asked if I wanted to mingle
She is the one, to her I owe my life - is there a greater love


Carnation

Before time began
Roaming Mount Olympus
All who knew you called you
Aphrodite

In another life
You were a princess
A thousand years later
Your grace and beauty still shines

Then perhaps - a scholar
A student of life
The renaissance still lingers
In your eyes

After that milk maid
Laboring long and hard
Still; happy just to be
In the meadows air

Two hundred years ago
You lived as a
Midwife helping to birth
Three generations

Seventy years past
You were Amelia Earhart
Courage and passion for life prove it so
Only a few really know what happened

I think that is when we first met
Your soul is familiar
Having seen your smile more than once
In more than just my dreams


Snow Angels

The snow falls and each flake
Reminds me of you
Beautiful and distinct
In its own way

The softness is staggering
A harmony silently fills the evening sky
While the wind whispers
Your name

Small but powerful;
Banding together for good
Covering the darkness and grime
Leaving a pure and innocence for all to see

Refreshing
It, like you - makes me believe
The world is still a good place
Often it is easy to forget

But not when you are near
Or in my thoughts
As you are often
I feel alive

It has been a long time since
I played in the snow
Or anywhere
It did not seem practical - till now

I miss winter
Riding my sled in the cold
Even shoveling on a "snow day"
Until my fingers turned blue through me gloves

The joy of hot coco
Fresh in for making snowman
The roseyness in my cheeks
From being outside to long

Each tiny work of art
Lands without a sound
Its gentleness -reminding me again of you
A "Snow Angel"

I eat at the table of the Blessed

For
Anna and Michael & Chris and Josephine


He accepted the name unknowingly
Happy only to have a home
Their table was bare and coarse
Finer things they knew little

They lived each day,
Not for themselves
Rather to make the next better
For whom, ever should eat at their table

Their pain fructified
As most loved things do
Our table was full and fine
Finer things we knew not

I only hope to do
Half the job of my parents
Should I after all these years
Settle down and procreate

My children would not know hunger
As I never did as a child
And they too may
Eat at the table of the Blessed


Ode to a chubby water buffalo

The Lioness struts and streaks,
As she stalks her seemingly unknowing prey
Pray he does, that she will return
Another and another and another day

An unlike match, the fit and sleek,
Poetically beautiful, blond queen of jungle
And an older oddly shaped water buffalo,
Resolved to focus, long past his days of fun

A portly pontificator
He thinks, for the first time in a long while
Why not me after all
Although, I may not be as tall

He remembers as a great hunter himself,
From way back in his younger water buffalo day.
You never see a lion
Pass the slow moving beast at the end of the heard.

The end it will be.
An old school
Rope a dope
His praise to Ali

So for a moment
He will change positions
And falls to rear back of the pack,
Leading from the six rather the twelve

Short and portly, with a limp
He directs and guides,
Keeping his heard,
Always just a half step ahead of her stride

She remembers his stride and his gimpy pride
Thirsty from her HUNT
She stalks him at his favorite watering hole,
Its seems the huntress was after all the prey

Amen


Whispers

"For Kathleen"

I remember the clothes that you wore
The brightness of each of the 40,000 lights
That covered the trees
On that very special night

Each day I pass our fountain
As the wind softly
Says your name
Gently calling my memories of you

As you quickly take over
My thoughts, for the rest of the day
Of a warm summers eve
When I cherished you

Reminding me over and over
Of the mistakes I have made
Opportunities lost
And now I fear you are gone

There is a man
Meant for you
Your perfect other shoe
I'm sorry it was not me

My sole sorrow and biggest regret
I did not ever
Whisper
I love you

Surely my life would
Have been different
Had I had the courage
To tell the truth