JOHN FENZEL

Remembrance Day

Dispossessed voices on vast crossed and starry fields,

Of Luxembourg, Brookwood, Gallipoli, Fort Vaux.

Solaced whispers mingled with tears and convulsed despair.

Final letters sealed before a slow and anxious dawn,

In Shiloh, Le Cateau, El Alamein and Iwo Jima.

Sons and daughters far from home in hushed prayer.

Shrill screams of rockets flying low to high,

Through, Guadalcanal, Inchon, Khe Sanh, Fallujah.

Terrible noise and dust, blood and tears, searing air.

Echoes of Taps voice remembrance of courage and sacrifice

At Antietam, Bastogne, Kandahar, Saratoga

Old men’s souls sit alone—silently, painfully aware.

 

-John Fenzel (2009)

 

Photograph of a WWI cemetery produced by Rocco of the Military Cemeteries on the Asiago...

In Flanders Fields

 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae (1915)

I've Learned

by Omer B. Washington

---

I've learned that you cannot make someone love you.
All you can do is be someone who can be loved.
The rest is up to them.
I've learned that no matter how much I care,
some people just don't care back.
I've learned that it takes years to build up trust
and only seconds to destroy it.
I've learned that it's not what you have in your life
but who you have in your life that counts.
I've learned that you can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes.
After that, you'd better know something. 

I've learned that you shouldn't compare yourself
to the best others can do,
but to the best you can do.
I've learned that it's not what happens to people,
It's what they do about it.
I've learned that no matter how thin you slide it, 
there are always two sides.
I've learned that you should always have loved ones with loving words.
It may be the last time you'll see them.
I've learned that you can keep going 
long after you think you can't. 

I've learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done
When it needs to be done,
regardless of the consequences.
I've learned that there are people who love you dearly,
but just don't know how to show it.
I've learned that sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry,
but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.
I've learned that true friendship continues to grow even over the longest distance.
Same goes for true love.
I've learned that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to
doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have. 

I've learned that no matter how good a friend is,
they're going to hurt you every once in a while
and you must forgive them for that.
I've learned that it isn't always enough to be forgiven by others.
Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.
I've learned that no matter how bad your heart is broken,
the world doesn't stop for your grief.
I've learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are,
but we are responsible for who we become.
I've learned that just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other.
And just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do. 

I've learned that sometimes you have to put the individual
ahead of their actions.
I've learned that two people can look at the exact same thing
and see something totally different.
I've learned that no matter the consequences,
those who are honest with themselves go farther in life.
I've learned that your life can be changed in a matter of hours
by people who don't even know you.
I've learned that even when you think you have no more to give,
when a friend cries out to you,
you will find the strength to help. 

I've learned that writing,
as well as talking,
can ease emotional pains.
I've learned that the people you care most about in life
are taken from you too soon.
I've learned that it's hard to determine where to draw the line between being nice
and not hurting people's feelings and standing up for what you believe.
I've learned to love
and be loved.
I've learned...

Eden’s Wasteland

 

What are the arrows the eagles clutch,

the wasted lands overflown?

Where is the olive branch,

the elusive gardens sought and sown?

--John Fenzel

New Years' Crossings

One leaf falling,
From a soaring oak.
Once Separated, now drifting.
Horizontal,
on a wintry gust.

Fall's foliage rustling,
Across the frozen soil.
Once lost, still searching.
Vertical, certain.
The Old Norse Traust.

A year's promise passing,
In the emerald night.
Once fulfilled, yet fleeting.
Leaning anew,
toward Spring's oblique.

--John Fenzel

Before the World Was Made...

old woman young girl... by *anubis on deviantART

 

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

~W.B. Yeats

From: A Woman Young and Old, by Yeats (For the Full text, CLICK HERE)

'Spell Checker Blues'

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

-Anonymous

'All the world's a stage'

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms,
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare
From As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7

We Don't Stand

We don't stand at your grave and weep.
You are not there. You do not sleep.
You are a thousand winds that blow.
You are the diamond glints on snow.
You are the sunlight on ripened grain.
You are the gentle autumn rain.
When we awaken in the morning's hush,
You are the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
You are the soft star that shines at night.
We don't stand at your grave and cry.
You are not there. You did not die.

Mary Elizabeth Frye nee Clark [adapted]

Photo by Ilona Wellman, The Stranger

Traditional Irish Blessing...

May the blessing of light be on you, light without
and light within. May the blessed sunshine shine on
you and warm your heart till it glows like a great
peat fire, so that the stranger may come and warm himself
at it, and also a friend....

Photograph: Philip Pankov, Japanese Branches, view onto Sugar Loaf, Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, Ireland 2004