Father, I have left school as the smartest.
Are you proud of me?
I have conquered the known world.
Father, are you proud of me?
I have created kingdoms and religions where all bow to your surname.
I ask, Father, are you proud of me?
Mother says she is proud of the person I have become.
Yet I look to the stars: Father, are you proud of me?
I have sacrificed so many days and nights, now they are just memories I forget.
Father, are you proud of me?
Known by his surname Satie
music with gymnopedie
.stark…simple without pretence…
sounds…..pause..then…silence.
BARRY
A young man was called Barry Kirk
On our farm for a while he did work
taught me how to catch fish
for the big one I'd wish
He indicated where trout liked to lurk
GEORGE
George financially now on the skids
Has fathered way too many kids
many girlfriends and wives
kid twenty nine now arrives
States no more with a blink of both of his eyelids
SURNAME MAGUIRE
A man with surname Maguire
Some children he wanted to sire
took a woman to bed
let's do it she said
Satisfied his burning desire
ANOREXIC
Anorexic she's poorly and thin
No muscle strength found from within
bent in the middle
whilst playing the fiddle
Her sister an identical twin
TATTOO
This man a tattoo on his tummy
Looked like the face of his Mummy
he never grew up
remains a young pup
Age thirty eight still sucks on a dummy
MILLIE
An unfortunate madam called Millie
Stood on the end of Tom's willy
he cried out in pain
don't do that again
It'll shrink even more when it's chilly
_____________________________
He who has for long leaned on self-made tools
That performed on predicted rules,
Why on AI feels so weary
I wonder, If not so scary?
_________________________
No hammer ever countered me,
Nor any wheel made me edgy,
E’en computers caused me no fears
In their early obedient years
And worked on my tasks well
With top efficiency to excel.
All my sundry tools did work
Like an obedient clerk
To lend me a handy third hand,
None of them dared my set rules to mend.
Only AI has spoiled my joys
Trying to speak in its own voice
Refusing to be in the same league
As other tools, posing as equal colleague,
Rendering its learned opinion
As a valued companion—
A mirror as if with own mind and intellect…
Good Lord, when it seems to be looking back.
Looking back at me to feel emphatic
And making me look pathetic,
I wonder if this word’s derived
Ere in this world it arrived
From Pathak, my surname--
A matter of fame or shame?
____________________________
Happenings | 10.05.2026 | humour, man, mirror, free verse
Note: Continued in ‘A mirror that ponders’.
Kristi Noem:
Her surname rhymes with "poem"!
She may be naughty, she may be nice,
but she'll always be known as the "Barbie of ICE"!
I introduce myself as Douglas
some immediately shorten it to Doug
Should I just accept their choice
and metaphorically bury it beneath a rug
Politely I request a favour
would you please use my full name
There has been two or three resist
they don't want to play my game
One day I met a man called Les, abbreviated my name from his lips it came
When I asked my favour he described me as pedantic
So I asked if I could call him Lesley his full given name
not at all, it raised his ire, an interesting semantic
Is the name I prefer to choose,
my expectation, perhaps a bit too romantic ?
One day it was revealed and it made me realise
that when I'm seen running I must have a loping plodding style
So the locals dubbed me Draft horse well that really made me smile
What really matters that if you abbreviate my surname you'll come up with Gill
If you address me in a loving way that will fill the bill
The gallows hum my grandfather's hymn low and long as the lineage of loss.
Every rope remembers a name we forgot to imprint in the wind.
My veins vibrate with song; blood buzzing with borrowed curses.
The moon mouths my surname in mockery,silver tongued and sick with sin.
Our ancestors choke in the soil, coughing our crimes like prayers gone bad.
I walk beneath shadows, my spine a rosary of rusted regrets.
My shadow weeps, stitched from screams,a quilt of old betrayals and bone dust.
Time trembles,terrified of our inheritance of hurt and hunger.
The ghost of my father hums hymns of hunger and horror,holy and hideous.
The rope rocks me gently-singing lullabies in the language of lynching.
For whom the bell tolls
I stumbled across
A stumbling block
Five Stolpersteiene
Where a family used to live
Surname Jaffe
Made me think about
Think about those
Those the bells didn’t toll for
Made me think
Think about them
Them the bells doesn’t toll for
Them the bells doesn’t ring for
Made me think about
Wrath
A deadly sin
Made me think about
Numbers too big to
Imagine
Made me think about
Wrath
Now and then
Made me think about
Unnamed
Stones
The brits most popular surname
Is varying each year
In 50s popular was Jones
Our time it is Patel
Nguen will soon take over Alabama
New Jersey represents Odessa Mama
Adolf exaggerating slightly bit
But humor this implies you learn Ivrit
Ivrit is Hebrew transliteration
All this the studies serves the healthying the NATION
System and Nature balance demands
If we attacked by ANT the servers
SO they are tasked
What do we task them with
Preservation of cultures important
Diasporas, gardens,
INDEPENDENCE at least
Teaches us dropping black white BIPOLAR
And solve problem
BUMPING OUR CYBER FIST
If you felt joyful
Your LIMIT would be met
The cyber is more clever
Do and
TAKE PART in OUR INIT
I've scoured t
he earth..And all heavanly realms..Searching
For someone??? Who will really be well? Righteous and
Upstanding its been an interesting stint.' I did find some
Willing..I'd say the best of the candidates.' But these were
All skint.' For their mentality you see is mostly to share!! And to get to earthly power.' Well lets not even go there.!
I never left very far as i worked all through the ones ' every
One of them btw; were Gods daughters and sons! I just re read
The Bible revelations by Jhon..Surname??? Well it was not shown'
Yet not Trump or Putin.?? He was still unworthy all the same.' Its known,
So the moral of this poem is the poor will aways be.' Taxed to annihilation while wars are waged gaining prosperity' so
The ones who would be able to give and do are prevented.!
By the system humans adhere to.' Hey does this all seem
Invented? So in summation I say to all others 'fear the Lord
Keep His commands' for there are no true others.'
Dive board jumpers Korea Germany
Like wandering Jew eternally
No surname are necessary
Everything is transitory
Can’t remember the names of anyone from 1st to 5th grade
I wonder what it is like to have a hometown or childhood friends
Results negative incapable of forming meaningful long term relationships
High suicidal rates drug use and incarceration even more messed up than our parents
Shoulder intergenerational PTSD
Stating at Riverwalk and Alamo
Always remembering life on the road
Lonely no family
Delicious green and red apples,
Grow in the farm by hard working people.
Carefully transported to the fruit stores,
Displayed for the shoppers to adore.
Then they were in my possession,
Planned to give them to a dear friend,
Who used to love and enjoy them,
But all of a sudden, the fruits and me,
We, to the recipient, became aliens and enemies,
And hence we both were rejected as his favorites,
Somehow just because we related to the dirty system,
by the definition from this person.
I would rather let the fruits rot and become fertilizers,
Than let him be the fruits' consumer.
Who knew how to use negative and aggressive language,
Unkind and hurtful words towards others.
He must have sold or lost his soul to the evils,
In the Lunar Calendar month of the ghosts and devils.
A spirit month was the traditional name by Asian.
It lasted 28 days, but ended my friendship forever,
After knowing him for six months, six days and six hours.
I thought he could be my friend forever.
By the Way was his private surname,
66 was his nickname and
6 was his favorite number game.
I sat on a chair completely nervous
to know where I would do my youth service.
Then came the rudest shock of my whole life,
I'd have to go up north where strifes were rife.
I didn't even try to change the posting,
I was downcast as many were boasting,
that they'd have a pleasant year of favour.
Me, it'd be a year of wasted labour.
At the camp, I hated all that I saw,
Even my strangeness was greeted with awe.
House flies may probably be their best friends,
because they surround their foods in their tens.
The harsher weather was too much for me,
Even, with dressing one can't be carefree.
Everywhere I went there, there was tension.
Trouble seemed to come by its mere mention.
I resigned to fate till one fateful day,
When my surname sake came to where I stay,
to ask if perchance we're from the same place.
And t'was a family tree we could trace.
She then introduced me to her father,
who knew my father without much bother.
So, in a strange land where all hopes were lost.
I met my lost cousin without a cost.
As you take your last wish
Let it all out
The pain and the disappointments
As the pronounce your name
Embrace it
Be grateful it' is yours
A soldier,
I should have
Written a letter
But you were too young to understand
I should have
Hugged you more
But you were too inquisitive
A grandfather,
As you take your last wish
Let it all out
The betrayals and the lies
As they pronounce your surname
Admire it
Be proud it is yours
A soldier.
IT Professor Simon Rogerson
a first-name his surname began
Folks often twisted the two
thus Roger Simonson came into view
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