I. Simon / Simon
Simon
Old man leaves his ruinous flat,
To visit a Broadway show.
Politely greets the drunkard,
who vacated long ago.
He drives the same old station car.
Meticulously kept over the years.
A retired registered accountant.
He no longer keeps track of his tears.
He woke this summer morning.
Eager to see the face of his wive.
She died a decade earlier.
After a long cancerous strife.
He’s convinced it’s almost Sunday,
but’s its noon, Friday at best.
He keeps forgetting his medicine.
Snores as he tries to rest.
Decides to visit his eldest son.
Who left the country long ago.
Has trouble reading the signs,
because of the falling snow.
“Hurry up Jimmy“, mother yells.
Trisha and Joy already in the back.
Little Jimmy wrestles with his shoe,
wails about laces and slack.
“Oh, for crying out loud…”
Mother walks back to the house.
“What’s the matter?” she demands.
Inspecting her little spouse.
“I don’t want to wear Spongebob,”
“it makes me look so silly.”
She shakes her head with a sad smile.
He’s such a nilly willy.
Batman leaves the house.
Swings his cape onto the front seat.
“You look scary.” Joy whispers.
Trisha tinkers with her feet.
Jimmy quickly weighs his options.
Decides he’s rather cool.
Better to be a mean bat,
than a sponge who plays the fool.
“Mummy, ” Joy shrieks, “I need to pee.”
“Ok, come with mummy to the little T“
“Where are we going?” Batman asks.
Trisha tells him, it’s one of her tasks.
“Does anyone else need to pee?“
They shake their head as one.
She shifts the angle of the mirror,
somewhat blinded by the sun.
“Can I please ride a brown pony?“
“Will they have strawberry ice?“
‘It’s going to be a long fare…’
“Simon’s a good man,” was mother’s advice.
She turns her car onto the highway.
As measured and careful as she can.
On days of leisure and pleasure.
She’s annoyed to have Simon as her man.
Always on duty with the Navy.
He loves to sail the distant seas.
“Mummy, my cape is stuck…”
She looks at his urgent pleas.
“Mummy, please help me, I’m stuck.”
She hears this strange humming.
A witness later declared,
“Neither saw it coming.”
“Mummy LOOK!” Batman screams.
The collision disintegrates both cars.
The sight of his severed head.
Left some with lifelong scars.
The ambulance driver arrives home.
His wife looks at him and cries.
“It kills me to see children…”
He sobs, while part of him dies.
Simon looks at the Ocean.
Several years passed by.
Sometimes there are moments,
when he feels the need to cry.
Jimmy’s body was in a closed casket.
The girls burried with their Mother.
The old man’s cremated remains,
were scattered among some other.
Simon… is a man.
Who suffered more than most.
Sometimes late at night,
I sit beside him by the coast.
Mako The Poet
–
The timeless Wisdom of John Adams, the Second President of the United States.
“It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.”
“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”
“The Constitution is …the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.”
“Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.”
“Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.”
“This is a revolution, damn it! We’re going to have to offend somebody!”
“Ideology is the science of idiots.”
“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”
“To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.”
“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, “whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection, and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security and justice whatsoever.”
“An honest, sensible, humane man, . . . laboring to do good rather than be rich, to be useful rather than make a show, living in modest simplicity . . . is really the most respectable man in society, and makes himself and all about him most happy.”
“Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.”
“Property monopolized or in the possession of a few is a curse to mankind.”
“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
“Our whole system of banks is a violation of every honest principle of banks. There is no honest bank but a bank of deposit. A bank that issues paper at interest is a pickpocket or a robber. But the delusion will have its course. … An aristocracy is growing out of them that will be as fatal as the feudal barons if unchecked in time.”
“Power always thinks… that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.”
“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.”
“When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form.”
“We have no Constitution which functions in the absence of a moral people.”
“We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls.”
“There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.”
“It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.”
“Always stand on principle even if you stand alone.”
“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.”
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