Before you yell treason, listen...I am only Herald. The poem has a voice. The poet can play both sides of the aisle and sit in the middle. Never mistake the "voice" of the poem for that of the poet. It is not fair to the artist.

Community Service   Hear the swift and sundry Shots cleaving hot air from cold; The rounds of unrepentant rifles Rippling through the issued uniforms Of a diocese’s duty-bound boys, Marching to cadences Bandied with an esprit de corps.   Now stare upon the consequences, The results of patriarchal tutorials Begotten on homeland hunting grounds Unctioned with the blood of game And cultivated on winning fields, The baseball fields, The grid-ironed fields, The basic training fields, And now the killing fields, No longer as civic or civil.   Tag their toes and Reckon the sums Of these dead;  Dancers just a year or so ago On a floor strewn with white carnations Dropped at their senior year prom; Pledges to your sanctioned And sanctimonious recruiting tour.   Here are the body-bagged dreamers, Who, once lusting to Lie and roll in beds less deep and More timely fitted than these, Now have come home in folds to Crease the churchyards.   Paste another bumper sticker, To cover the high school graduate tribute, Gone redundant; something to attest that Your vehicle is now a veteran, dead boy’s billboard To community service. Buy a mass; or two, or three or four: Alms better spent on the parish whore.                                              © 2004 by E.D. Ridgell	LUCY MERCER Copyright belongs to Marine Magazine Amidst and Amongst the Wandering Jews Franklin and Lucy would drive out through Georgia marshlands in a waning wait, rejuvenating earlier times- amidst the wandering Jews. Both new and neither voiced the inevitable. In medias res- it did not matter. A war was won- amongst the wandering Jews. He had always fought inner battles. Only now could he admit the cripple; that insecure hero- amongst the wandering Jews. Only then could he patiently pose, lay down his pen, and die- amidst the wandering Jews. © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell
A Street in Madrid in the summer of Seventy Six, She could not speak English, and she did not speak it, courteously, with kind, knowing eyes. Fat, dressed in black, receding with a gait, a carrying-bag in one hand, shards of Spanish light cut her into sharp shadows. She was colorfully colorless. Franco had banned color. She would not be muted. She had bade time for a lifetime. Grown old and obese on collected memories, she knew the cost of the loss of freedom- red blood stains on black and white photos, hot, hot hue on no color and all color, definitive. Receding down the sunlit street, at siesta- burned into my memory, a scenario; that gait had once been flamenco, and kind, knowing eyes had blazed for the bull fighter. © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell
Much Ado About Nothing II   Minor are these things, Minutia in the funnel of these storms. Major things first, the loved ones. Manage things as best you can- Mirror nothing but patience for the sake of all. Move slowly, tread softly- do not step on toes.   Mean is the moon. Generous is your House- Most purple is your harvest; Mingled wine and blood. Mithraic mysteries of old Marching throughout time,    Moor your honorable mention.                          © 2011 by E.D. Ridgell	Dedicated to her Father and Mother who lost Michelle but for awhile. In A Quantum Leap… algorithms dictate, I am dead, and you are resurrected. You split in an infinite number of possibilities. Differences reconcile. No laws, no morals- opposites! Higher dimensions seek proof in collisions- atomic components wanted! Particles disappear into higher dimensions- proof positives. Open the portals. Become immortals. Be as one with the gods! He saves through wormholes; our lifeboats, transporting monopods of DNA- God’s ant colonies! © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell