How to know if the choice was right, a review when cuddling after 40 years.

The Disclaimer : I am not boasting the years I have accumulated, that is not my intent, I was fortunate and I recognize everyone has their own road to walk. I do not want to admonish anyone nor thump dictates into another, that would be pointless for no road is smooth and all paths have bumps which give the journey dimension.

The Location and Time : In bed at 4 A.M. thinking of what to write when I rolled to one side and found familiar…

Standing in No Man´s land, a charred post views our heroes.

The post stood alone, brittle, bereft of kindness, a peering eye.

Between the trenches it watched as man´s hubris sputtered by.

Raging courage, to quell the fears, it saw men blindly race to the fore,

Soon to be slaughtered with guts hanging in mud, terror turned inward with gore.

The post was merciless, strewn with wire, channelling a poisonous pain-filled parting,

At young men, with innocent loves tendered, who saw the light of life soon departing.

Posts, nought but wood, made a line, a christening, decorated with razor wire,

…

The last moments of two driven ideologies breathe their final thoughts.

The glistening shine of blood trickled between his fingers. The smudge and gunpowder ingrained creases of his desperately squeezing fingers were an angry reminder of what had casued him to hold his guts in. The intestines were a yellow, sickly-pale grey. They bubbled around the bottom of his palm, unwelcome sausages searing pain and dimming hope. His panting was light, held in a grimace, as he stared across the three yards to the other side of the ditch. …

Is our literary diet being usurped by algorithms and agenda driven editors in the big publishing houses?

I am not wounded, laying in a ditch of self-loathing, nor fiendishly plotting the demise of those possessing loathsome opinions who do not see the world as I do… but I have a sharp instrument in my hand.

Thankfully it is merely a pen.

I recently read an article by a fellow Medium writer Britni Pepper entitled, ‘Did you write this crap?’ The article was a pleasant escape, but it troubled me.

Finding test readers is like panning for gold. I went through…

A poem of thought in the pond at my entrance.

She floated alone, complete in her being

I ventured near, held in wonder

Her petals reached up, her spirit all-seeing

My hopes destroyed, my heart torn asunder.

The pale hue that graced her depth of soul

Made me quiver, a helpless child

She wrestled from me my love’s control

Leaving my worthy ardor defiled.

Of course it was not she who cast me out

It was a villain far more hateful and cruel.

It was the shadow that lurks within — doubt

That revealed my heart to be a hapless…

A mountain of struggles compounds daily in the lives of many and the struggles are not new. They may be different but the idea of enduring difficulty, in whatever form it manifests itself, has been around since Neanderthals first scavenged for food.

I wonder if, during a deluge on our primitive world, hundreds of thousands of years ago in some darkened hovel or cave, two early beings shared a desire for protection from the elements and a morsel of food, perhaps a hind of wild boar. Boars in those times were immense, and a hind was enough for eight, let…