The Lion of the Senate Somewhere Up North a Liberal is Dying   I cry sanctuary and flee from the TV into the relative peace of my garden, pausing to putter and sort these shock induced thoughts.   Somewhere up north a liberal is dying. We’ve not been popular in these greedy, slanted years. One senses this is changing, and just when…   Oh my God! Look at the clematis! It’s abundant and climbing the ground. I’ll pick it up and string it around to climb the birdhouse poll.   He is the youngest and living the longest somehow sets things right ‘specially since John John went flying into the sea.   These hosta couldn’t have been a better choice. Just look at the perfect height and contrast. I must look and see which special one of the genus this is.   I’ve been grieving that fertile family all my life. I can mark my own by the ups and downs of it. I wonder how long, Teddy. Oh, anyway it’s about quality now, not time.   This weed with the pretty, purple flower spreads like kudzu! Maybe I will let it run wild in chosen areas to act as a spread. This wants to be an English garden- so say you, Capability Brown!   ‘He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, And it's greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman!’   The next time we’re down to Williamsburg, I’ll look for a matching birdbath for the other side this bed and catch out the winged things.    He’s still a wet-whistle and Irish to boot. He’ll go sailing for sure. His sailboat is as this garden to me- island, Ireland, England, islands. Nature centers a confused man- ‘less there’s a bottle hidden in the hold.   I’m surprised that I’m weary already. Sixty was a mistake. The informality of cottage beds is the ease in which I can cover my tracks or lack of them. I’ll lie and say I planned it. It’s politics. Hypocrites want perfection in everything especially people. They can not forgive or forget the libertine nature of the liberal man- blinded by the occasional weed, they do not discern the beauty of the garden.   I wonder what mementos he has tucked away, those most private things that you share with no one today. Will he leave pressed flowers to be found? Do you burn the diary or not?   I’ll mix these promised, fat tomatoes, in here, and here, and perhaps there. Those last year, were too small, ripening too late. I can’t believe store prices today. Too dear with the garden so near!   I’m tired. I’ll go in now, break my diet yet again, and nap, then later try and remember what the news had the muse whisper in my ear. “Somewhere up north a liberal is dying”. Somewhere up North an angel awaits his wings. © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell...revised at Sir Edward's death...2009   Citizen, Had You Realized or Cared,   that they finally had taken that long anticipated, and ages ago promised shot at him? Ah, but sorry, so sorry- too late! Teddy, had moved on, out of harm’s way, into the arms of whomever awaits o’er there, on that far metaphor, under the cool shade and gentle breeze of the golden, fluttering, eagles wings.   Anointed as he was, cleansed clean as when in fine, Irish linen, swaddling clothes, he came upon this uncertain life, full of good and primary things. Tempered with trials and troubles, he was immersed early on in the  lures and inducements that in the hot blood of youth he bridged so like his wastrel and wealthy kinfolk, America’s own sacrificial Kennedy clan.   No matter! In these last decades he found his calling, and Teddy rose so high into the legislative annals of this great Republic, it’s enough to make an Irishman blush, immigrating into all, that empathy that is catholic to any great democracy.   The sod is not set yet, but the fickle dance to a piper’s tune. Fidelity fades fast for some; even the neighboring Jew, who did feign to be a friend, did stoop to become just a bigot’s stereotype, a blemish on his tribe that have nourished so, the simmering stew of our melting pot. Like mesmerized children, some fell into line with such haste and so little regard for any consequences except the soothing of some   imagined, planted challenge to their civic pride. They would not be moved upon the chessboard- when, in fact, the men behind the curtains did slide them with the ease of an lustful eye o’er some cosmopolitan pretty boy centerfold.    But, he is our stalwart history now. He has left leaving that dream parading on in its long, long, march to equality.   Teddy, trust that we will not let that dream die, never!     “For all those whose cares   have been our concern, the work goes on,   the cause endures, the hope still lives,   and the dream shall never die. ...”   And Teddy, this voice, this petulant, and mocking organ of mine, irreverent in its distain of advancing rhythm and time, will not fail to serve in the cause of that dream; just another humble courier in the tempest-tost’ fog; of howling heralds carrying messages of ghosts like yours whispering; “Remember me, remember me, remember me.”                                                  © 2010 by E.D. Ridgell	A People's Prince Back Off, Paparazzi! Poor Prince Harry; robbed of his Mum so young- He was always equal in her eyes. The young are about fun. Their words are as feathers to air- to judge these heavily most unfair. Let the lad mature and learn to feign for the sake of mendacity. Too soon is youth mum’ed of light alacrity. Swastikas are but ancient history unlearned, but Halloween is contemporary to a jovial night, and identity meant to be jokily masked from right. Time will stiffen the boy to your censored words. Would you have mocked his whims, if he’d died in the sands of your saintly, self-righteous sins? © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell __________________________________________________________ Sorry, My Dear Nights in the gardens of Spain; I was falling in love with you. In Madrid you drove me wild with fluent Spanish in the throws of the sheets. I threw that glass of wine at you in Paris and broke the mirror to the armoire. We both laughed. We had that habit of throwing things. We were passionate. In London we saw Hermione Gingold in “A Little Night Music”. Back in the States you drifted away. ‘What a surprise. What a cliché’. I saw you from a bus window months later entering the library. Unlike Zhivago I made no move. Did you know how close you’d come to winning me? ‘Don’t you love farce?’ Whenever I hear “Send in the Clowns” I think of you with sadness but never with regret. ‘Sorry, my dear, But where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns… Quick, send in the clowns. Don’t bother. There here’… © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell ___________________________________________________________ A Message to Artnet.Com I would have you know How I would have you go White upon the screen; Void as an untouched canvass, Left leaning against the wall. When a union of want and desire Are tripped by a middleman, A theft not a service ensues. I would have you know How I would have you go Quickly on your way Off the mother ship’s screen. Here me now, You have no right to my name, Or any a pseudo name- Any of my art, so little wanting fame, That you would indirectly Circumvent to claim. Here me now, I lay copyright to it all- No matter the path you invent To benefit from this sweated brow! I would have you know How I would have you go Off one and all my peripheral screens. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell ___________________________________________________________   Social Issues!   It seems I have undergone a me,me,metaphor,fa,fa,sis. I have become a Social Issue, a hanging chad, examined. Out of the closet to be welcomed by some and condemned By others to be frack'd down into Dante's imagination, A santorum stain on the shower-room floor!   Oh yes, I'm still a peda-fille, waiting in the van for Middle school to let out! "Little Boy, we have candy for you!"   I track Pete. He was out in something short of seven years. Even his pic is on the Internet-last address-last job; A real pedophile, I helped to check so long ago. I don't understand this particular flavor, And God help me, I can forgive him, see the Fascist system That will never forgive, and at least wish him a gun shot to The head. Better that, than no cure, topped by no solution. I don't know. I have old perverts in the family tree, Eighty year old watermen who married the next twelve year old Lass in line. Some sired more. The wash got done. It was Necessary. Where is Michael Jackson performing, now?   Here, then, where the grass is greener, I find little to graze on. Mythology is fading. Intimacy is warping. Friends are misunderstandings waiting to happen on a ever clearer screen. Sex is so dirty to these people. They taunt with jacket-likes From Brokeback Mountain. They miss the message of what they Can not feel themselves, not to mention A damn good score! Finally, We can welcome real sex addicts Into the fold! No matter, but they take it so seriously. Conceal their porn sites! It's a rum world, and at times, I reminisce  for the closet!   Oh, Frack it! This is a poor poem, And they delete them now, pretending To have read them. I can feel the irritation At the interruption to what? What do they do? Oh well, another sing song for the poetry site, Another entry into my private diary, a comment On the Social Issues of my time. © 2012 by E.D. Ridgell
A Red Maple Leaf Who struck you skidding ill humor with a last laugh in the rear view mirror offering not even one rain-soaked tear? Do their elfin black eyes peer from the safe-harbored, nervous grass? It pains me, this wriggled pass. The traffic tarries and goes askew wobbling worrisome at you. . Why do we brake to care so, while others typify speed sports to go invisibly wet-patching from this crosswalk on wheels fast searching slower stalk? Each day falls, a red maple leaf, spinning down in the mythical belief that the privilege of innocence must be attended, allowed due course before in its turn it withers dead. Indifferent witness to the pain of this common goose, the symbol of bliss now plentiful and profuse, hear a mother honking in pain on a wet road near Ottawa, O Canada! O Canada! O Cana…… © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell ****************************************************************************************** copyright of the grave belongs to Ancestry.com   Walk down With Davis Tutt   Hickok shot Tutt through the heart In a first, slap leather shoot-out, From some fifty, some say seventy five, Yards away. Bill was a dead shot!   That thar future Pistol Prince Was not ignorant of notoriety, And he knew the gravity Pull’in down on that spinn’in, Bit ‘o lead, and leav’in Dave right dead In Springfield’s, town square- The first recorded walk down- All ‘cause of a golden pocket watch, And, as was fast rumored, One rascally, Missouri woman, Susanna Moore! © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell	Who Let The Dogs Out? Oh for pity sake, When will we see some leadership? It’s such a familiar ruse played out So often on the rungs of history. Contrived infractions of a weaker state, Met on land, sea, and air by a pompous perpetrator. Is the Fuhrer laughing? Does Stalin think it novel? The media Tsar has made a move on the oily chessboard. Our Beloved Leader slips and slides, Forever a pawn- Never a knight! Is an ally not a friend? Where is fidelity? Is there no mettle? Where is might? © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell
A Red Maple Leaf [Version 11] Who struck you skidding ill humor with a last laugh in the rear view mirror offering not even one rain-soaked tear? Do their elfin black eyes peer from the safe-harbored, nervous grass? It pains me, this wriggled pass. The traffic tarries and goes askew wobbling worrisome at you. . Why do we brake to care so, while others typify speed sports to go invisibly wet-patching from this crosswalk on wheels fast searching slower stalk? Each day falls, a red maple leaf, spinning down in the mythical belief that the privilege of innocence must be attended, allowed due course before in its turn it withers dead. Indifferent witness to the pain of this common goose, the symbol of bliss now plentiful and profuse, hear a mother honking in pain on a wet road near Ottawa, O Canada! O Canada! O Cana…… © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell	A Baby Boomer’s Plight What is it you want from me? Can’t you see this is virgin territory? I never thought to reach for centenarian struggling not to go out a damnable burden. Stop pushing your pills at me! It’s disorienting enough, thank you. Give me one more form to fill out, and I’ll resurrect the ghost of my father complete with his social security number! Stop hurrying to replace my body parts- I’ve no inclination to be a titanium robot; hurriedly pushed to boost the earnings report of a company’s stock, I’ve never heard of. Cut me some slack, while I sit down. I’m tired of shuttling from jamboree to jamboree. I don’t mind babysitting once in awhile but I’d hate to be remembered as just another nanny. Grant me timeouts in overtime for cuddly huddles. And why doesn’t anybody listen to me? Why don’t you weigh my opinion? I’m tired of retakes of my mistakes, encores by you of me to witness yet again. What is it you want from me? Can’t you see this is virgin territory? I never thought to reach for centenarian struggling not to go out a damnable burden. © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell
Lickerish   He held two Georgia peaches in his hands Chosen carefully from his roadside stand, Cupping them both proudly for me to see, Hoping for a purchase bagged with a rebel’s smile. I was cruising through the South In search of just such fruits of hospitality.   I felt ticklish and lickerish, And something stirred below,   Wanting the downy round and fallen orbs; I desired him for his ripened peaches, The cream on the cusp though.   Driving deeper into Georgia My mind musing on sapid treats to come, Everything grew hotter wanting for a cool beer. I stripped to the waist, Pulled off for a tall one; Stopping at the little roadside bar and inn That looked a little low-down and inviting, My kind of dive, one more pause in my long drive.     Somewhere in his teens and oh so tightly squeezed into his hole-poked, blue jeans He met my gaze with predatory eyes to match my own. There was an agreement that would come in awhile, no words needing wasting on the understood. He chatted excitedly about a watermelon In a cool and clean running stream out back of the bar, Waiting for him at the tail of his day. At closing we fished his melon out and he relaxed, lying back, laughing and spitting his seeds out all over me, a sweet, well packaged, Georgia boy, laughing, young and free. No harm meant. No offense taken. Understood.   I felt ticklish and lickerish And something stirred below. I desired him for his melon cheeks, Watermelon buttocks teetered somewhere on a cusp though.   Right through Atlanta I drove Hard and bold on a long haul. Running low on gas, halfway there, I took an exit, stalled into a station, And a tall drink of water; He was drunk as hell And had more than gas to sell.   I felt ticklish and lickerish And something stirred below. I desired him for his pump handle, At the end of that long hose of his. An un-carded fill-up, and nicely near that cusp too.   Into Savannah; a sauna For water snakes, I came searching for Mementos and wampum. I shopped the antique shops Until in one I stumbled on him, young and collected, Passed around town; now a menial Of a prominent and stately Southern homo. He posed, twirling terrestrial globes provocatively, He bartered more than history for a fair fee from me.   I felt ticklish and lickerish And something stirred below,   I desired him for the quickie, Brashness banishing boredom, Toyed and rubbed with dangerous geography, Spinning confidently, leaning and leering On that precarious cusp Between my desires and his toiling round.   In Greenwich cemetery, Chatham County, There’s cold, incised marble Decorated with little toys-- The mark the memory of Billy Killed meanly by Jimmy, Ill used and tagged ‘as is’ Just on the behind of his cusp; Victim to a midlife crisis just when he was ripening; A hot picked, red-necked pepper, now   Left dead on the carpet floor-- Another Savannah cocktail party’s Passed around wittle whore.   I felt ticklish and lickerish, And something stirred below; A cusp in the pit pot of my bowels Turned by recollections of my victim past; Childhood ill begotten memories Of someone’s driving through and over me, Robbing me of my sweet innocence and bending me to time and Sending me on the long journey in search of the unanswerable.   The journey at an end, I turned around and  headed up the Road again, no wiser, and no more satisfied. I never am. I leave you with this now, arising from the read words of that poet. Merrill wrote in “The Broken Home”; 'I see those two hearts, I’m afraid, Still. Cool here in the graveyard of good and evil'.                                                         © 2011 by E.D. Ridgell	Spring? Spring? Is it spring again, So soon? The seasons fly. I can not feign Some fainthearted interest. These breaking buds Belie your mourning. Make no move to Stir the mulch That mothers me with a warmer warmth than the ever absent sun. Let the rain rein Above it all. Let me linger in this middling realm ‘neath This newly chiseled monument Of marble so white and cold. What need have I for rising From another winter’s rest? None! This grave is hard won. Enjoy your springtime musings. Think I thank you for these planted bulbs of fall, that for but a bit of time will run their course, fore rotting down and down, digging into the ground around me? I have no further need for offerings. Leave your wreath if you must, But be gone, won’t you?- Fade away into the unmoving Springtime’s mist. My allotted springs are done. © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell Expectations [dedicated to the stroke of a pen] If just this one promise met, with its expectations, blossoms. If these tests you sanction, today, bear fruit to half their hope, your name will be honored for all time to come. You will be dubbed, ‘Doctor’. Swiftly your beacon-hand moves confidently across the recto, too long unattended. Praise day, that your script stems age old crippling and disease. Succeed or not you shine that torch on risk again, an aging beacon’s symbol. Pull aside the curtains. Beware of walls. Open wide the cell doors and let us breathe free again. Flip open the registrars, shut for fear and let them in. Fill the pot to the brim. We expect to be tested again, as surly as we know we’ll win, braced for the storms to come; a folk risen from discordant winds; yes, even if from one mistaken, mushroom cloud of our own devising- we’ll rise firm and stand again in those expectations of freedom’s never ending promises. Though we be tempest-tost, tired with many pushed poorer still, you throw open that golden door again, and say; “Yes we can!” © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell
	http://youtu.be/Pvfexvihri8 You Irreverent Little Queer [ Dedicated to Harvey Milk and Sean Penn ] You irreverent little queer; So near to the line, Always testing boundaries, Stepping on toes. Who knows what motivates Your mouthed views, Bent and unsacred Psalms echoing from atop A Castro soapbox, Preludes to another march To and up the marble steps Of the Temple in Hilly San Frisco. You rarely lie, And are seldom believed; Too near the mark, A black sheep, Never dipped, Yearly sheered. Just you wait, You irreverent little queer! Winking doll, So lickerish and ticklish, You shock and stir Disapprovals, Leavened with slurs, So loud it’s got ‘a hurt. Good! Sundry laws spew From the divers camps Of kings and bishops Concerning you. States legislate Words white on dark slate To silence you. Cement your diseased orifices And here’s another in lead- You irreverent little queer, With your reminders of Things better forgot; Gardens of good and evil. Jesus hangs From recycled crosses, Among the markdowns In the sanctified aisles Of a mighty nation’s Many splendid Walmarts- Misgotten and easily forgotten Are the pink stars Ploughed under in graves Unhonored and unmarked. Die Faggot, die! Anita loves you! And there’s the straight shooter Out in five and Self-done in two. That’s your doing, too. Serve but don’t you tell- You irreverent little queer! Just disappear, just disappear! © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell "Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.” - Alexander the Great "I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers." – Walt Whitman
Like a Pendulum it Swings Back The death of this enemy brings no solace. Like a pendulum it swings back, homing into the eye plucking it with the consequence of words and deeds of those clockwork oranges marking time to self fulfilled prophecies. The clock face has hands enough to pace polarities. The politics of Zionists free and unadorned of patches, yet bejeweled within the grip of a crescent moon, that harries a starry pentagon, ally themselves to an amnesic. Downing down a street; their echoing words penetrate chambers’ walls to proselytize and portend further strife. Internecine tongues, loose keys of muezzins high in minarets, break the spring wound of a facile but possible opportunity; the knell to pause the heavy weights of war ringing in a ticking start that stops the watch at peace. © 2008 E.D. Ridgell	They Got Family Values! They can not agree to disagree amiably. Resentments weigh their words down. They digest the voices personally, Readjust and circle round. Like vultures spying a last gasp. Rationalizations abound, Spewing up hurt-meant incivilities; Spite waiting in the wings. You can not appease them. You’d prefer to leave them. But you must face arrows And die the die of Saint Sebastian, The patron saint of old. They whittle home made arrows. They got family values! Silence is feigned, a shirked sound- Innocence in the Senate But insult in the Forum. Too ingenuous to venture far, They foist so many words about Behind the curtains, Only to go white on the page When opposites surface To peer at them from eventide- From divers and sundry, Different sorts of kinships. They are always there Waiting to shoot the dove, Taking aim with rusty tenants, Plugged with muggy gunpowder. They down everything around And they muffle the mourners. These Baptists from Westboro-types. They got family values! They would protect the children With Propositions from on high; Pull the love-plugs carefully placed so, from the dikes bravely holding back an age old flood of urchins reluctantly redeemed to foster and foster and foster in strange and cold abodes these call homes. All of this, too often, in the name of His maligned and supposed words, Never uttered but presumed to be in their graphite, scored bibles. Jesus! They got family values! All across the land new hearts burn, In that melting pot that has never been A prescribed and simple recipe Of any set kind of family. The cauldron is constantly simmering and the taste of the stew changing. These families though are usually Held at arms length for generations, Until by magical means, the stink gone, Well they, too- They got family values! But what of the price? What of the bashed and slashed martyrs lying dead in their cold and haunting alleys? History has recorded every word, every missive, Every outrage, every shame based suicide. In the end, that final end, they plead their case, Waiving and waiving their tattered, And hastily revised, guidelines in hard copies, They again and again insist that- They got family values! © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell