Putin See What Pooh And His Common Little Friends Can Do? Well, Beloved Leader comes home from the games, notices that an friend has been maimed, and moves some boats around, and gives another ally some missiles to play with. He speaks in a very loud voice and tells the Big Bad Bear he’d better beware. That bad bear does not care one hair and bears always bite back. Everyone knows that! So the Big Bad Bear says he’s going to sell toys too- missiles, and guns, and maybe tanks-so there! And so, sigh, Beloved Leader speaks in a louder voice that he’s going to see that Big Bad Bear is not invited anymore to the Teddy Bear picnics! Oh my! Big Bad Bear goes right on maiming. BUT Pooh and his common little friends say this won’t do and they proceed to take out of the Bear’s den eight billion in jars of honey in just one week! Now everyone knows that bears like honey and so the Big Bad Bear declares victory! He turns and leaves but he leaves his stink behind. Tomorrow, no doubt, Beloved Leader will throw a parade and wave a piece of paper in his hand on which is writ, Peace In Our Time! © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell	Lying on the Three Seater Swing I liked to lie on the three seater swing on the screened porch of the Spanish styled house listerning to the electirc trap zapping mosquito after mosquito, a popular fad of the fifties. I’d contemplate the exposed beams running parallel to one another in the ceiling above just visible inside the door to the living room. The wet, dog smells and the snoring of damp, dozing Collies lent company to solitude usually preferred by an only, lonely child. The frogs croaked to the background sounds of wetland bogs that exuded a perfumed stink all their own of a Maryland night, and drew me further down into a lulling so perfect I remember it today. In the distance I heard the breaking of the waves belonging either to the Potomac or the Bay or both, each nearly equal in distance away so as not to betray which wave belonged to which bank that bordered the narrow peninsula. Frequently there was a welcome breeze gently intermingled with the whispers of the Confederate ghosts, the prisoners who did not survive to saunter home after brother finished killing brother too exhausted and broken to go on. I often fell asleep only to be awakened by what to this day is my favorite sound, the sound of a wooden screen door slammed. When I die know that my ashes will be strewn with the better half of my soul on that Palace Green before the Governor’s Mansion at Williamsburg, in fair, neighboring Virginia, but my heart, broken so often and patch quilt, mended, will feign to beat to the sound of the waves breaking the banks to that peninsula where the Potomac collides with the Chesapeake night after night after night. © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell
Untitled There are noises that fetter moments plucked out the white background, The sweet sounds settling into the recesses of the mind, Like nuts being lain down for winter; Sounds that bookmark memory, Echoes to sooth the tempest tossed, Sounds that mark your journey, past and present- The slamming of the wooden, screen door on Grammy’s porch, The cicada in the grasslands at Dad’s at sunset. The honking geese flying over the fall festival that year, You took time to be grateful of your life’s course.   Tonight, I listened to footfalls of grandchildren’s little feet, Scampering over floorboards above my head in my house. Tonight I am sixty two years old and I cross myself For the, final, comingling, last chords caught out in the din of old age.   © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell In A Last Breath   In a last breath the unheard is silenced, the unseen vanishes, light shines dark.   Utterances linger but awhile; Images recede into nothing, Marble crumbles- Ashes wash into the sea.   All vanishes into the void; That is the vessel of time- An illusion within The mystery of it all.   In that instant that was not, There was a being that never was For whom we who do not exist- Grieve now needlessly.   But oh how it seems to hurt. Oh how heavy nothing that was Seems to weigh on weightlessness. Oh, Oh, Oh, God!                                   © 2011 by E.D. Ridgell	Emily Dickinson's Home, Homewood- Hartford Connecticutt Emily Dickenson's Homewood Emily, tomorrow we will walk that path you described as “just wide enough for two who love” from the Homestead to the Evergreens; then shake the ghosts still roaming Hancock before dining at Deerfield’s, deserving inn. Could we marshal more congenial company at close, old prospects that in the mind’s eye are, at both one and the same time, faire but false fronts of history? © 2008 by E.D. Ridgell In the summer of 2008 Rudy and I visited Western Mass. and Connecticutt- Deerfield, MA; Samuel Clemon's Home in Hartford Conn.; Emily's adjoining houses, etc.
It Ain't Easy! Some lives are sucked up in post trauma, A syndrome, surely worldwide. Mine has been such; Slap after slap, the first slap at birth! It shapes the individual for good or bad, Or in my case for someone stuck in-between. My point, my poem, this song is to say this can be A blessing, a soul search for creativity born Of the necessity to survive, The sensitive, soulful swap of the artist. So often this post traumatic, symbol, says Something so shape-shifted it sounds The depth of a simp, singed to not be silent, Just for the sake of societies' silly sensibilities! You try singing your "s"s this sticky sweet, and succinctly! It ain't easy! © 2011 by E.D. Ridgell	Recession 1   The muse, if she visits at all, Just sits there silent, a vacant gaze, Shunning me, shaming me, Depressing me further.   I feel past empty, Running on gas fumes. Voiceless in the face Of so much apathy, Weighing down dark times- hard times, Coming as they do, Not singularly but in wave, after wave, after wave..   Where is everyone gone- Syntax, shit!  What am I to do with your Leftovers? Am I meant to do Anything, to nurture hope, to lament, To mirror feelings that, in truth, Leave me as overwhelmed as them?   She sits on a bench In Walmart with her Bent-over, grey haired Head in her hands, Waiting. What for?   He goes out to lunch, Frequents groups, Worries that two houses Up and the one next door, Also have one old person Left within echoing walls- Survivors, burdened by the guilt of Surviving, guilty at the relief It is over, and waiting like me For the answer of what to do With a house no longer a home!                                        © 2011 by E.D. Ridgell   The Milleniums-Generation Y. They're in Cyber Space and they're in the living room under your nose!
	Digg the Myselfish Old poet Hippie, School the chance Millennium! Ya gotta slam the Peter Pans; Or keep it short and IMMY- They're here. They're there. They're everywhere, Very much together! If you wish upon a star, They'll cruise the Alt-worthy authority, But keep it real, They're savvy! They rewrite the rules. The biggest bust yet Was the killing of Osama; Mashed Potatoes in Times Square, And an ex-hole's best White-Rhino! Digg it! Oh yea! Teach just dialed ya! © 2011 by E.D. Ridgell AKA Pop Pop!