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Board Administrator Username: mjm
Post Number: 4158 Registered: 11-1998
| Posted on Wednesday, July 20, 2005 - 9:48 pm: |
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Honorable Mention Dinner in Stalag 5 Vienna (Carole Barley) My fathers hands told me nothing of cutting wood for coffins, slicing forbidden steaks from cattle that had a cleaner death than his fixed bayonet friends in the desert. Request boots three sizes too big to walk you to the slaughterhouse each bare morning. Slice a steak for each sole, walk back with wind dried blood on your face, food under your feet. In a certain East Coast Town mother waited in a flattened city. Traded toffeee with Yanks and saw her first real Black Man. Folded letters to you, watched sun turn to snow again. And you cut down comrades; sliced the ropes that freed them from too many days of cage. Loosened the knots that silenced them with ridged nails, calloused skin. Your hands touched me softly, lifted me, cradled the head of my dying horse like a god who assisted safe passage to eternity. Your hands invited my mother to dance. And now I look at a photograph taken by someone long dead. You are making, providing, your hands and eyes, confident. Escape would come soon. Dresden burned. You amongst the madness, the fox that got home free. Sailed back to love and home made banners, Hiding bread under your pillow for years. One man wrote a book, others were wept over or stood pround with their medals. You came home, your hands around your love once more. I stand as your sculpture, you are the man who made and moulded me.
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