Remembering Our Fallen of Memorial Day and
Death of a Quiet Soldier
This is my reading of chapter 10 from my novel. The novel itself is available through most bookstores in eBook, paperback and hard cover and now also as an audiobook. Please don't confuse my cold reading here as part of the audiobook which is NOT read by me. If you'd like to sample previews from the actual audiobook version of this novel and other works produced as eBooks, paperbacks, hard-cover, and audiobook editions, you can visit Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play or your favorite bookseller.
This is the latest addition to my longest free-verse poem, Unsung Heroes, that deals with the lives of my grandparents and parents. This episode deals with my father-in-law who passed away three weeks ago and who, like my other beloved personal heroes, was very special to me.
This is my reading of one of the 13 short stories from my Echoes of the Mind's Eye collection (C) 2021, 2024.
From my Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (C) 2011, 2024
This is the final part of my longest free-verse poem. It details the life of my mom who overcame blindness in childhood during the Spanish Civil War and left school at the age of 11 to illegally work on a full-time basis in a cousin's fish cannery to help provide for her eight brothers and sisters after her dad's death after being persecuted by the fascist forces for his anti-fascist non-violent resistance during the war. At 16 she emigrated to join an aunt and uncle in Argentina and worked (by lying about her age) tirelessly to make enough money to reclaim her mom and two youngest brothers in Spain. Hers was a life of incredible hardship and tragedy that would never break her or rob her of her can-do attitude, optimism, humor, and faith in God. She faced and overcame adversity at every turn in times of poverty and plenty through self-reliance, honest hard work, and an unwillingness to view herself as a victim, speaking truth to power long before the phrase became a cliche, and always seizing focusing on the silver lining in every storm cloud. She had the singing voice of an angel and the heart of a lion. As I noted elsewhere, she was always proud of her only son on whom she doted, but " . . . one of her cells was worth ten of me."
The poem was written in the days following her death after a four-year battle with Alzheimer's that robbed her of her eloquence, her prodigious memory, and her quality of life. I miss her every day.
This poem is about my dad who passed away in 2018. It was first published in my Echoes of Dawn at Dusk second book of poems in 2020.
Like his parents before him, he had a hard life from the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War that saw his father self-exiled leaving behind a wife and four very young children to fend for themselves. Through hard work and self-reliance he overcame adversity in three continents during his life, without a single complaint or assistance from anyone other than my mom. He lived under fascist dictators all of his life prior to immigrating to the U.S. in his late thirties with my mom and me. Serious illness, runaway inflation that caused his two businesses to fail, persecution in his native Spain for being the son of a non-fascist-sympathizer, and a roller coaster of success and failure never held him down. He persevered the old fashioned way: by pulling himself up by his bootstraps and working hard even as society crumbled around him. His word was his bond, just like his father and mother before him, and his ethical compass never wavered from true North. The world never needed more men like him more than it does now (and women like my mom cut from similar precious cloth). I will never see or be their equal.
This is the fourth part of my longest free-verse poem. This part deals with a portrait of my paternal grandmother and her struggle to raise four children during and after the Spanish Civil War after her husband fled to Argentina when warned he was about to be arrested by the fascist forces and woud not return for nearly two decades, after Franco pardoned those who supported the losing side but had not fought and spilled blood in the conflict. This poem was first published in my Of Pain and Ecstasy collection of poems.
This is Part III of my longest free verse poem that first appeared in my Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems. This episode relates to my maternal grandmother who was taken back to her native Galicia, Spain, by her husband, my grandfather, from her comfortable home at 10 Perry Street in New York City's Greenwich Village when winds of the coming Spanish Civil War began to blow with gale force.
Her story both during the Spanish Civil War when my grandfather was taken prisoner and tortured as a supporter of the doomed Republic leaving her to raise 8 children on her own through hard work, while still helping less fortunate (and less industrious) neighbors with the help of her adolescent children during and after the war.
Her life is the stuff that heroic fiction is made of, without the glitz, glamor, or accolades heaped upon both fictional and lesser heroic figures in real life. She was poor in material wealth, but one of the richest human beings I ever met or will ever meet in life, and one of my personal heroes.
In writing and reading this poem my intent was to tell their untold stories, and also to have my readers and listeners take a closer look in their own lives for those worthy, unacknowledged heroes who may never have gained their fifteen minutes of fame or sought it, but lived lives of quiet heroism, lifting themselves by their bootstraps and facing adversity head-on guided by a belief in themselves, a firm moral compass, the knowledge that no honest work was beneath them, that no one owed them a free ride, and faith in a God who might test them but never place upon their shoulders burdens they could not overcome. The lessons they teach us if we choose to absorb them are worth more than any taught in any classroom. The wisdom they impart can never be bought with gold.
From my Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems (C) 2011, 2024
This is my reading the first part of my longest blank verse poem first published in my first book of poems, Of Pain and Ecstasy (C) 2011. It deals with the ultimate price paid by my maternal grandfather's non-violent support for the doomed Republic in opposition to the fascist forces in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and the ultimate price he and his family paid in following the dictates of his conscience.
This is one of the 13 short stories in my Echoes of the Mind's Eye collection. It involves a young, successful professional in NYC who learns an important life lesson at a friend's birthday party from an uninvited guest.
Poetry reading
This is a reading of some newer poems from my Echoes of Dawn at Dusk collection (C) 2020, 2024
Poetry reading