Bird’s eye view, first balcony

Beautiful, but

Dad was disillusioned

Of course there is!

One hundred school children 

Dancing their hearts out

Don’t break formation

Don’t get too close

Enter stage left

Exit stage right

 

I see taped stages everywhere

Six feet

Don’t break formation

Don’t get too close

Step two, three, four

Humans approaching stage left

Quick

Pivot 

Exit stage right

by Stephanie Schreiner

 

Clickity-clack clickity-clack

ridin' the rails, taking me back

engineerin' my memories to ease my soul

ridin' the rails taking me back

clickity clack clickity-clack

 

Slipity-whoosh slipity-whoosh

sledin' on the snow avoidin' a spruce

wishin' on a star that my pa wasn't dead

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

 

Tapity-tap, tapity-tap

dancin' on the boards in my ma's big hat

crying at her casket now  she's dead

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

 

Hoppity-hop, hoppity-hop

jumpin' to numbers on a concrete spot

wonderin' where my brother is to turn the rope

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

 

Sippity-sip sippity-sip

drinkin' down gin with a sandy slip

givin' up my soul to the demons of sin

ridin' the rails taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

 

Splishity-splash, splishity-splash

swimmin' in the ocean quick as a flash

watching my babies swim in the sea

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

 

Rockity rock rockity rock

sittin' on the porch mending a sock

breathin' in peace and breathin' out pain

ridin' the rails, taking me back

clickity-clack clickity-clack

 

clickity-clack clickity-clack

ridin' the rails taking me back

                                    taking me back

                                                      taking me back

                                                                          clickity-clack clickity-clack

 

 

 

[END]

 

 

 

  

Empty roads lead to 

                     parking lots stuffed with people seeking salvation in toilet paper on empty shelves

     A silence so profound you can hear birds sing just outside the mall

     The drone of electronic information at home meant to inform drives 

                     you to watch cartoons to regain your sanity 

                        only to find anxiety

      and yet

      People reach out to people offering a hand or a can of soup

      Restaurants offering drive up service or delivery to survive

      Social media exploding with connections, 

         advice

           anger

               prayer

                  love 

                                     and a whole lot of stupidity

     but 

     connections aren't there anymore to talk 

             to touch 

                  to laugh 

                      to drink 

                           to walk       

                                    with 

                                        everyone has become an introvert

     still

      it is some how peaceful not to have to be

             anywhere  

      or keep up the chit chat 

               make a decision 

                             you can see the attraction of  disconnecting

                                                          and yet

         others are losing jobs, staying home with children who have no schools 

                                     forcing families to talk to each other, call each other connect  with purpose

                                                  what are we losing really besides distractions? 

 

                                                           Mother nature feels none of this

fat squirrels stuff acorns into their cheeks and run along fence tops 

   birds sing, 

            wind blows

                     sun shines

                          and goes down and up and              

                               the earth still resolves around the sun and 

                                     the stars come out at night and the tulips push up through the earth

                                                     to continue their dance of spring

                                                    

                                                     what have we lost except distractions

George Cassidy Payne is an essayist and poet from Rochester, New York. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, MORIA Poetry Journal, Chronogram Magazine, Ampersand Literary Review, Allegro, Red Porch Review, Tea House, The Angle at St. John Fisher College and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, The Buffalo News, Syracuse Post Standard, and Rochester City Newspaper.

Front Porch Volume 12, April 2020 Copyright © 2020 by Glen Phillips

 

CBS News “On the Road” correspondent Steve Hartman joined retired Air Force bugler Jari Villanueva to promote Taps Across America and keep the spirit of the Memorial Day holiday alive since it looks different this year due to COVID-19.

MARINE VETERAN LARRY WINTERS responds with his poignant essay: "Taps"

Read it here:

 

Unless you spring from a history that is smug and reckless, unless

you’ve vowed yourself blind to a ceaseless light, you see us. We

are a shea-shined toddler writhing through Sunday sermon, we are

the grizzled elder gingerly unfolding his last body. And we are intent

and insistent upon the human in ourselves. We are the doctor on

another day at the edge of reason, coaxing a wrong hope, ripping

open a gasping body to find air. We are five men dripping from the

burly branches of young trees, which is to say that we dare a world

that is both predictable and impossible. What else can we learn from

suicides of the cuffed, the soft targets black backs be? Stuck in its

rhythmic unreel, time keeps including us, even as our aged root

is doggedly plucked and trampled, cursed by ham-fisted spitters in

the throes of a particular fever. See how we push on as enigma, the

free out loud, the audaciously unleashed, how slyly we scan the sky—

all that wet voltage and scatters of furious star—to realize that we

are the recipients of an ancient grace. No, we didn’t begin to live

when, on the 19th June day of that awkward, ordinary spring—with

no joy, in a monotone still flecked with deceit—Seems you and these

others are free. That moment did not begin our breath. Our truths—

the ones we’d been birthed with—had already met reckoning in the

fields as we muttered tangled nouns of home. We reveled in black

from there to now, our rampant hue and nap, the unbridled breath

that resides in the rafters, from then to here, everything we are is

the stuff of astounding. We are a mother who hums snippets of gospel

into the silk curls of her newborn, we are the harried sister on the

elevator to the weekly paycheck mama dreamed for her. We are black

in every way there is—perm and kink, upstart and elder, wide voice,

fervent whisper. We heft our clumsy homemade placards, we will

curl small in the gloom weeping to old blues ballads. We swear not

to be anybody else’s idea of free, lining up precisely, waiting to be

freed again and again. We are breach and bellow, resisting a silent

consent as we claim our much of America, its burden and snarl, the

stink and hallelujah of it, its sicknesses and safe words, all its black

and otherwise. Only those feigning blindness fail to see the body

of work we are, and the work of body we have done. Everything is

what it is because of us. It is misunderstanding to believe that free

fell upon us like a blessing, that it was granted by a signature and

an abruptly opened door. Listen to the thousand ways to say black

out loud. Hear a whole people celebrate their free and fragile lives,

then find your own place inside that song. Make the singing matter.

 

 

It is now apparent many politicians have broken the oaths they have taken. A blatant example is that high officials of our government have known that Russia set a bounty on American soldiers lives and have kept it hidden. Killing our soldiers was successfully accomplished by the Russians and the Taliban and our political leadership has done nothing even after the public knows about it. The moral injury this event is causing is undermining our military and all true American patriots.

 

An example of the dedicated oath takers are the two hundred doctors and nurses who have died of the Corona virus, to date. We should be making plans for building a memorial right now for these health care workers who saved millions of lives.

 

Soldiers take oaths but they must be placed in a different category, because breaking their oath can be followed by execution, or prison and public shaming from receiving a dishonorable discharge and court martial.  So, compare our soldiers with the politicians who have broken their oaths and have not even lost their jobs for making the decisions to allow our soldiers to die without their family’s knowing the truth.

 

Why do we have oaths? Some say they provide a moral guidepost for how to behave in times of life and death. When politics enters the arena of our current wars and the pandemic, our leading party is distorting our nation’s understanding of the sacrifice individual oath takers make. Politics has prioritized capital over human life. With rhetorical lies, the American public is being told our constitutional compass is set to true North, where in reality our setting is magnetic North, which leads directly to the banks of our wealth. carried upon the back of our oath takers. 

 

An oath is sacred because it often involves life and death. Politicians have taken the oaths they’ve sworn away from the sacred relationship it is and engaged in an intellectual jousting match to hide the fact they are using human lives as a commodity, “So help me God.”

 

From, Watergate, to Whitewater, to the Ukraine, our country's highest-ranking officials have been breaking their sacred oaths. The consequences for these acts have been minimal because they get swallowed into the bowels of our judicial system. All those oath takers in that judicial system were appointees working to protect those politicians who appointed them. These politicians’ infractions once may have been seen as crimes against God and our nation but not now. 

Today we watch our oath breakers harvest their notebooks for their next career of writing books to collect financial remunerations. While those who held true to their oath continue to die while protecting those who are manipulating their destinies. “So, help me God.” 

 

As a combat Marine in Vietnam, I felt that the oath takers would not leave me behind on the battlefields. What oaths are you living by today?