The Point by B. Elders

How did it happen
the day the Towers fell

that Evil
was named and indicted

       perplexing untold millions
       for whom Terror is daily fare

Justice winged out windows
that day

and a Rule of Law nation
inflamed heat of passion

Land of the free
        (and righteous)

       Terminates Taliban
       Attacks Iraq

       Quarantines Cuba
       Frees Bar Abbas, Inc.

a beast unleashed
        to secure its interests . .

       who shall name Evil next?

A few years ago, way too often, my children’s two dogs would somehow manage to drag wild animal carcasses into the middle of my lakefront lawn: deer, raccoons, feral cats. The deer were mostly intact, with only the backstrap missing. I reported it to the local poaching authorities. One officer came out after several reports. After seeing the backstrap cutout (no photos please; no DNA tests), he asked if I would like for him to dispose of the carcass. Sure. ... whereupon he picked it up and tossed it into the lake, which happens to be the city’s drinking water reservoir.

Finally, the dogs got smart and drug the next carcass into my neighbor’s yard. I called the neighbor at work and asked if I could please incinerate it on their brush pile while they were at work that day. Sure, they said; and thanks. The next week, that neighbor (on the east) erected an unsightly chain link fence and we haven’t spoken since.

A couple of years later, my neighbor on the west erected a wrought iron fence. She said it was to keep my dogs from pooping in her yard. Because our yards slope down to the water’s edge, there’s plenty of crawl space underneath and all the dogs from the neighborhood continue to poop where they please.

I figure these two neighbors have spent about $4000 on fencing. Meanwhile, their cats and my dogs come and go as they please, someone continues to feast on backstrap, we now have to walk about a quarter of a mile should we ever get desparate for a cup of sugar, and -- the view is shot.

A parabola is, among other things, a plane curve generated by a point moving . . .

kicking and biting why couldn’t she just behave herself like all the other blokes’

mothers did and if that wasn’t enough she went off and joined that screaming bunch

embarkation anyway someone had to get the job done couldn’t have the slanty -eyed

little bastards landing on Bondi or Cottesloe and what really hurt was that his dad was

on her side not his you’d think a bloke’s father… and anyway he came home safe and

sound so all her raving on was for nothing not much call for body bags this time only

about five hundred and the other mob no body bags for them the Yanks had the right

idea took ‘em up in helicopters and threw ‘em overboard a bit expensive but just like

he worries though about his kids troublesome ones especially the boy older now than he

was when his marble came up his wife blames the war has to give her a backhander now

and again to shut her up and his mother his damn fool too excitable mother? she went off

and died in a big heart attack just when everything was settling down although he’s

worried now about his own health and he gets a bit sour on people so many out there who

don’t even know what V.C. and V.V. stand for and if you gave ‘em a world atlas wouldn’t

even know where to start looking for Vietnam

" I am a late-blooming BabyBoomer boy. I have been writing creatively and conscientiously since the early 1970s, with no writers-blocks intervening.
In 1988, I published Poems of a Happy Bloke, and since then have been published increasingly frequently and widespreadily.

My training is as a musician, but an accident and health-crisis put an end to that, but I will always be a minor musician and major music-lover (of 'classical' music of the West and China).

I once learnt 'be your best self', and thought it so wise that I took it to heart. To do this, I continued in the creative arts as a writer and poet, became an editor (of both text and production), got a BA, kept away from horror & hurt, and became a Christian, a Toastmaster, and a very happily married man.

Presently I have 6 manuscripts being accessed, and have another 4 to go out. One manuscript is A Funtastically Fantabulous Fairy Book, known also as A Fantabulously Funtastic Fairy Book. This will be a big-time winner, make Anne rich, and me famous, and Clare Aden, my illustrator, both. Another is Oh, Parnassus!, and is poetry about poets and poetic activities. It is funny in all sorts of ways, and is written using some two dozen persona. Is my personality so shattered? No; this is about people and poetry, and is me scriptwriting poetically.

I am now a 'very happy bloke', who writes poetry, prose, articles, scripts, and stories."

He comes to sit and listen, and sometimes read,
Apologising for his troubled words.
He’s not the poet he would like to be,
For so much and so many have destroyed
The dreams of one unlucky to survive.

He wanted to be an entertaining
Poet sublime, enchanter divine,
With sparkling wit, and winning ways, and
An audience applauding all the time.

No vengeance for he who so easily forgives.
He wants to forget, but that can never be.
In war there are winners and losers. He won, and lost
His happiness and laughing audience,
Nor shall they come again in his sad life.

And will, when he is called away
By God-the-loving, God-the-forgiving,
Who needs to laugh with our
‘Speckled Potata’,
To spite the misery gloried in His name.