Drinking to Remember
The bar was closed,
the dawn approached
like a grey and threatening sea.
He placed two glasses on the bar
one for him, one for me.
Black Bush shimmered in each glass
golden in half light
We proposed a toast to you
thirty years ago tonight.
That day We'd brought you to the church
and the graveyard just beyond.
Larger than life you always loomed
hard to believe you're gone.
They say that when a father dies
a boy becomes a man.
If it didn't happen right away
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poem by John F. McCullagh
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Father's Day
My father left our family-
Many years since have gone by.
So suddenly did he depart
that we never said good bye.
I’m sure he said I love you
as he struggled up the stairs.
Just as surely did he mention us
within his final prayers.
But when the fatal stroke arrived
And flooded through his brain
He cried out for his mother-
because men are all the same
Her shadow at his deathbed stood
As she watched her last son go.
She would lead him to a better place,
leaving us to mourn below.
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poem by John F. McCullagh
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A Rose Amidst the thorns
Roses in profusion
bloomed along our garden wall.
They were both red and yellow-
tea hybrids, I recall.
There were thorns too,
as I well knew,
standing guard among the blooms.
A careless creature soon would learn
to give the rose wide berth
An agony of thorns awaits
the careless of the earth.
Yet thorns permit the bees to come
and pollen to transpose.
and, if careful, they'll admit
my own scent seeking nose
I think thorns serve their purpose well
else roses would be trampled
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poem by John F. McCullagh
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Immaculate Mary
She reigns above the grimy thoroughfare
where Gun Hill Meets Jerome.
A school house made of yellow brick
serves as her earthly home
It was built by Italian immigrants
with plaster Brick and stone.
It comforted the Irish Micks
when they felt all alone.
A sculptor found the beauty
contained in a block of stone
and carved an inspiration
for her people far from home.
The faces at her table change
They hail from different climes
The words and accents differ
in the liturgy of time.
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poem by John F. McCullagh
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The Oak Ridge Gang
An old nun and two aged hippies
Down in Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
protesting 'gainst the A bomb
Breeched homeland security.
Armed only with fence cutters,
And ignoring warning signs,
they made it past the wire
in Olympic record time.
The Penguin and her minions
Splashed human blood against the wall
Of the 'well secured' establishment.
Where plutonium is stored.
Only then were they arrested
By Cheech and Chong, our well paid guards.
The nun beamed at the cameras
When escorted from the yard.
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poem by John F. McCullagh
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A Study in Scarlett
A Study in Scarlett
A wistful sadness in your eyes
Says all you need to say..
Your heart desires privacy
Now that love has gone away.
A legendary beauty-
A star of screen and stage
You’ve always been before us
since a young and tender age.
Mother Nature was most generous-
Most think you live in clover-
Blonde hair, blue eyes, the perfect skin
And cups that runneth over.
Life can serve up curves besides
The curves you proudly own.
To make you think, like Garbo,
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poem by John F. McCullagh
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Skin In The Game
The old man's skin was parchment thin,
his eyes a watery blue.
On his left arm he bore the mark;
his Birkenau tattoo.
The letter 'B' and six numbers
would be with him to the grave.
A permanent reminder
of his time as Hitler's slave.
Two winters spent in Auschwitz-
What God would so design?
It left him gaunt and starving
with no faith in the Divine.
Yet he survived the worst and lived
when all his bunkmates died.
His first wife was dust on the wind
as was their little child.
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poem by John F. McCullagh
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The Recusant
When you're hanging by the neck
until your life is nearly done.,
It might almost seem a blessing
when the hangman lets you down.
They then spread you on a table
Then the real torture began.
They cut away the man parts
from their sacrificial lamb.
Then your core is cruelly opened
and your bloody entrails rise
in the hands of he, your butcher
displayed before your dying eyes.
Your brain supplies an image
of back when you were a child
and you greeted good Queen Mary
in fine ornate Latin style.
Mercifully shock set in
as death transfixed your eyes.
Sweet Jesus’ name was on his lips
as the recusant dies.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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The Stewards of Destruction
The bird was routed from its nest
by the growl of a tractor’s roar.
Slash and burn, closer it came,
a tank in Mankind’s war.
The macaw soon was homeless
as its tree was knocked to earth.
Slash and burn, some peasants came
And hacked for all their worth
Elsewhere too, the Forest bears
brute evidence of man.
Slash and burn, the trees are gone
Crops planted there by hand.
Some miracle medicinals
Are forever lost down there
Slash and burn, fates’ wheel turns
Homo “sapiens” doesn’t care.
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poem by John F. McCullagh
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Mouse Droppings
When she saw brown dots upon the rug,
and more upon a chair.
The poor housewife was certain
several mice resided there.
“I’ll need a cat. Or perhaps two,
quite possibly I’ll need four.”
“This quantity of scat demands
a feline killing corps.”
Just then her rotund husband
opportunely wandered in.
with a bag of Nestle morsels
and brown stains upon his chin.
She watched him munch a handful,
several dropping to the floor
Hard to believe someone that fat
had ever missed his maw.
No killer cats were needed
if spouse droppings was the source.
What the housewife really needed
was a lucrative divorce.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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