631 : A fellow who'd frequently jest...

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.

She provides the first line,

The rest is up to us:

A fellow who’d frequently jest

Has sadly been laid to his rest.

They thought he was joking

When he said he was choking,

As a gag, it was one of his best.

◊◊◊

Godiva was speaking in jest

When she offered to horse-ride, undressed.

But when put on the spot,

She discarded the lot—

Those who peeked were clearly impressed.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

630 : The Professional Woman

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #135) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

race, silky, lanky, whiskey, puddle, pain, mouth

isolate, murky, breath, marsh, razor, befuddled

The Professional Woman.

The Youth

Full of promise

She stands proud;

Tall, lanky, silky haired,

A bloom is seen upon her:

The first warm peach of summer.

The Woman

Life can turn on a razor’s edge,

Decisions taken lightly,

Lead to murky and dark places.

The urgent breath from the mouths 

Of strange men 

Warms her neck 

And pays her bills.

The Old Woman

Her attractions have faded

And she lives in a marsh,
A swamp of befuddled pain

And whiskey driven relief.

Unloved and unwanted

She sits and watches the rain.

The Grave

Life, we are told, is a race

Some win, some struggle

And many lose.

Some lose worse than others.

And take up small plots

In isolated corners, 

Unmarked and unlamented.

Rain pock marks the puddles,

But it too is uncaring.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

629 : Best served cold.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were aggressive, heighten and limited.

Best served cold.

Things can be thrown aggressively

And bridges can be burnt;

In the process the mind shuts down—

No lessons can be learnt.

Sadness follows from this madness

Around a limited sense of right.

Revenge is taken progressively

Which heightens the delight.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

628 : A woman whose morals were lax...

Mad Kane has a regular limerick challenge.

She provides the first line,

the rest is up to us.

Illustration provided by a
New South Welsh reader.

A woman whose morals were lax,

Despite some corrective firm smacks,

Dressed up in deep scarlet,

And lived as the harlots

Who spent all the night on their backs.

◊◊

A duck, whose bowels were quite lax,

Had severe diahorrea attacks.

He thought it unfair

That he missed Medicare

And had to be treated by quacks.

◊◊

A fellow was terribly lax

In filling and filing his tax.

But in the auditor’s pursuit

They missed all his loot

Buried in the garden, in sacks.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

627 : No Man's Land

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #134) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

buckle, gain, miss, instant, navigate, grace

visions, humming, drill, dignity, years, stride

Tomorrow, November 11th, is Armistice Day.

No Man’s Land

The poppies wave in the breeze,

Vibrant.  Enchanting.  

Deep red.  Blood red.

But with black hearts.

Visions of grace and dignity over the years,

They are symbols of missed opportunities,

Symbols of the bloody waste

That is human warfare.

Every year we look at them, 

These beautiful poppies,

And our mind navigates the ugly 

And painful story that they embody,

To a prettier place.

We see visions of young men

Proudly striding in their uniforms,

Cleanly pressed, buckles gleaming,

Marching, in a well polished drill,

Passing through our streets.

Triumphant.

Crowds cheer, wave flags,

Humming patriotic songs 

As the procession passes from view,

Happy that for a brief instant 

They shared the glory,

The clean, crisp sanitized glory.

No battlefield for them,

No cold, wide-eyed panic,

No stench of death and decay.

No holding a dying compatriot.

They do not share these things,

They stay on the warm side of no man’s land.

Where the sweet poppies grow.

But like a low thunder on the horizon,

The threat of war is still there, always there.

One has to ask, for all who have died,

What did we gain?

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

.

626 : Jemima Paddy Duck

Idle thoughts from a Balinese rice field…

Jemima Paddy Duck

(Apologies to Beatrix Potter).

This is the story of a duck

Who lived amongst the rice.

She grew quite fat on worms and snails

And life was rather nice.

But for every ying there is a yang,

For light there is a shade;

A balance in the universe –

What grows must too decay.

And so the duck with the lucky life

Met the axe’s force

And appeared upon the dinner plate

With rice and hoi-sin sauce.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

625 : The Coffee Grinder

Posted from beside a pool in Bali.

The Coffee Grinder

He is old, somewhere over eighty,

Brown, creased and nearly toothless;

Indelible signs of a long life, well lived.

With pride, he showed us his coffee factory,

A wonder of function and innovation.

Filtered through a translator,

He talked of the beans
And their passage through the process.

Of the sorting, the roasting, the sieving and grinding 

That lead to the fine, brown, aromatic powder

Stored in lined, woven bags.

He urged us to smell and we obeyed.

Coffee will never be the same again;

All future cups will be infused with the echo

Of the memories

Of the aroma 

Of the old man

Met in that dark building

In the Balinese jungle.

He also talked,

Through the translator,

Of his love for his wife,

Of his loneliness since she had died.

As we left, I went to shake his hand.

But instead he put his arms around me,
Embraced me warmly

And, with tears in his eyes,

Asked “When will you be coming back”

No translation was necessary.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

Gone Troppo

Running off to the tropics for three weeks.

Play nicely while I'm away.

-

624 : The Cinema

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #131) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

amalgam, gravel, trash, nothing, cheat, vacant, 

brick, mouth, tentacles, fence, notices, everything, balance

The Cinema

We sit, as zombies,

Focussed on the screen in front.

Watching everything

But noticing nothing.

Cars explode, as they never would.

Slimy and cupped tentacles explore.  

Prodding.  Hunting.  Threatening.

Husbands cheat on wives,

Ruin lives. Or not. 

Singlets and bras survive explosions.

While brick fences offer scant resistance.

Ammunition is in plentiful supply.

Story lines vary.  Some trash.  Others more so.

All is black and white, good guys bad guys,

There is no balance.  No shades of grey.

We sit, as zombies,

Focussed on the screen in front.

Our faces, not vacant, but animated.

We laugh as one,

We scream as one,

Like a room of ruminants, 

We eat as one.

The rhythmic passage of crisps, bag to mouth,

Replicating a battalion of troops,

Marching on a gravel path.

Toffees, the arch enemy of amalgam, 

Sucked in open-mouthed absorption.

Popcorn, in vast tubs, comes and go.

The low nutritional input from the screen

Closely matches the viewer’s diet.

Which, I wonder, does the most harm?

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

623 : No wonder he never married.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were daunting, fastidious & intensify.

No wonder he never married.

A habit that’s daunting to relate,

Intensified to a daily debate:

With precision most hideous,

The guy was fastidious

How peas were arranged on his plate.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

622 : The Nest

Artist - Lucy Newton

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #129) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

chance, nest, secret, clever, swept, ripe, 

blinked, stars, basket, flesh, saw, hand

The Nest

It was a chance meeting,

All first meetings are.

She saw him before he saw her,

Saw him walking alone 

Along the unswept, 

Flower-edged country path

That skirted the copse.

The copse where the first berries appeared,

Where small and noisy children

With sticky hands and wicker baskets

Fossicked for the plump flesh of ripe fruit.

She saw them as they reached past her

But they didn’t see her.

Anxiety fluttered her breast

But people, no matter how clever,

Don’t see what they are not looking for.

That’s why they no longer see the stars.

The man was different.

He walked as if it was all that he had to do,

As if it was the most important thing in the world,

As if, at that moment, it was his world.

He saw her, of course.

Their eyes met.

And, as if sharing a secret of the universe,

Locked together for a moment,

Acknowledged each other,

Blinked,

And moved on.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

621 : The Clocks

The Mag had the above illustration (image by crilleb50) as a prompt.

It reminded me of Segal’s law:

"A man with a watch knows what time it is. 

A man with two watches is never sure."

Which then morphed into a limerick:

The Clocks

The dreadful tyranny of clocks

Is worst when they travel in flocks;

With one you’re aware

Of the time it declares

But more are sure to flummox.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

620 : The Hill

A slightly modified Mark Haley photo.

The Mag provided the above picture as a prompt.

The Hill

Life is seldom black and white,

And seldom cut and dried;

Trudging slowly up life’s hill

We see others lying to the side

And swear!

Why, we ask, is life unfair?

But still—

Examination will find

They have their own fights to fight,


And daunting hills to climb.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

619 : A woman was trying to place...

Mad Kane has a regular limerick challenge.

She provides the first line,

the rest is up to us.

A woman was trying to place

A flasher who’d been a disgrace.

But the guy was acquitted

When she finally admitted

She hadn’t really noticed his face.

◊

A guy was awarded first place

For a stunning three-legged race

But the win was contested

When the others protested

That his partner couldn’t be traced.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

618 : The Murmuring

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #128) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

ghosts, exact, patches, gathered, worship, spill

unbidden, hillside, where, swarm, edges, sharp

The Murmuring

A tide of human misery

Has gathered to the north of us,

Mountains of humanity

Ready to spill over

And flood us,

Ready to swarm down,

And destroy us.

Like so many unbidden

And unpleasant vermin,

Illegal boat people,

But not real people.

Well, that’s the message,

But not the exact truth,

It is repeated over and over:

Hard, sharp and callously cold.

A demonization of desperate people

That edges on the paranoid,

And centres on the deceitful.

On vast patches of the Indian Ocean

People are dying.

Dying for no other reason than

They wanted something better

And political expedience demands

That they do not get it.

You, our glorious leader,

So proud of your saviour

As you worship each weekend

And dream of your paradise to come;

Where you walk on the hillsides covered

With flowers, young kittens and trilling birds,

Skipping through meadows with flaxen-haired children,

Pointing with joy at the clouds of butterfies…

Do you hear the murmur of the ghosts?

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

617 : Huzzah!

I was thrilled to receive an email from a lady at work recently that included the word ‘huzzah’. 

There is hope for the world yet, when brave people use more than the standard vocabulary.

The poem is not specifically about her, it is more broadly meant, 

but she does has the honour (or otherwise) of being the sixth person at work 

who has been responsible for prompting a poem.  

Wildflowers – pick them where you find them.  

Huzzah!

If there is one thing that I fear,

Alone, within a crowd,

It’s having no one to receive

My messages, as put out.

I’ve found 

No seeds grow 

On barren ground.

Relief, however, 

When from afar,

A message comes through 

Loud and clear,

There’s life out there!

Huzzah!

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

616 : The Snail

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were earthy, grotesque & nonchalant.

The Snail

They are just creatures of the land,

Earthy, thick, rather slow.

And have just basic needs and wants,

The snail or escargot.

They take their name as their brand,

A gastropod, and so

Unhurried and quite nonchalant

Eat everything you grow.

As lettuce seedlings shake with fear,

The stomach glides on by

On the hunt for greens to eat,

A grotesque passer-by.

Snails seem to have only low gear

No matter how hard they try;

Speed is one dream they keep discrete.

The other is to fly.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

615 : The Power of Three

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #127) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

claws, peering, spirits, stories, apples, secret

cradle, pile, clues, exile, three, rash

The Power of Three

Superstitious stories abound

And make our life a tease;

Never more so than when they say

That bad things come in threes.

The origins are an old, dark secret,

Few clues point to the facts.

What evil spirits once declared 

That misfortune hunts in packs?

But misfortune is a two edged sword

Not everybody shares;

Are we, by a rash assumption,

Comparing apples to our pears?

We’re in the claws of mad folderol:

From the cradle ‘til depart

Believing that the universe

Is disharmony, in three parts.

Peering through the perceived clouds

We miss the silver lining,

And exile our hopes to despair,

With superstitious whining.

But what if groups of three pile up

And then sneakily combine?

What if groups of threes, come in threes?

And misfortune comes in nines?

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

614 : The Fountain

Poets United had the prompt ‘Just past centre’

The Fountain

It’s not apparent to us then,

We’re riding on the wave.

The mid point slips quietly past

And we approach the grave.

No bell marks the point’s farewell.

Aghast that we are in decline

We look to find our youth again

And fight the march of time.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

613 : Telegraphist's Shorthand

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were Easygoing, Fact & Handsome.

Yeah, ‘easygoing’ is really two words, I know, but that was the prompt.

Coincidentally, the prompt was put up on the fifth 

anniversary of my father’s death.

Telegraphist's Shorthand

Of course he was handsome.

Strong.  Clever.  Funny too.

Looking back, I never thought of him

As easy going but he wasn’t stressed either.

Not on the surface at least, 

Not on the layer he showed the world.

There didn’t seem to be anything that

He couldn’t do if he tried.

I marvel at the fact that he built

A dog kennel, 

Then two sheds, 

Then a garage,

And, finally, a house.  

All with no power tools

And holding a high school carpentry book.

All the while driven by the love for 

A very special woman.

The last thing he wrote to her,

In intensive care,
On a small scrap of paper,

In shaky writing,

Was ‘CUL’.

Telegraphist’s shorthand.

'See you later.'

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

612 : September 7

September 7

The vandals have taken control;

Capricious, mean and grim.

One by one, across the land,

Lights flicker out, or dim.

Beacons, once so strong,

Now weaken,

Unmanned,

Spurned by the new regime.

It will take time time to count the toll

Of the night we failed to dream.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

611 : The Map

The Mag provided the above map as a prompt.

The Map

Every inlet, 

Every bay,

Every contour line

That shows the way 

That the land lies.  

Lies.

It is not that way,

Not at all.  Not even remotely.

The land is not an inked outline, 

Not a flat, numbered grid

Of creased and yellowing paper.

The land lives, the land grows.

And decays.  The cycles of lives

Lives lived and loved on the fields

And meadows of a rich, warm country.

There are birds, and small inquisitive mammals,

And colourful, multi-legged insects

And streams and fish and furtive rodents


Scurrying from tuft to tuft,

And fruits and berries 

And shady glens beneath the trees.

These are things not caught by the cartographers

Nor sought by the lovers 

On the rug on the grass.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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610 : Blocked Out

Blocked Out.

Written for my mother.

The atmosphere has been freezing,

No day has been exempt;

What familiarity that persists

Breeds little but contempt.

Go! Go to where the goblins go.

Dismissed, if you are so inclined.

The current state is more pleasing—

Out of sight and out of mind.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

610 : Two Blokes Talking

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #126) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

vivacious, vibrant, vacuous, manipulative, vision, single,

sumptuous, slather, spread, short, sassy, violet, master.

Two Blokes Talking

In vino veritas, in cervisia fellatio.

There’s a flat truth in wine but, if you like a good head, drink beer.

The scene: two men enter a quiet pub in a quiet suburb
for a quiet beer and a quiet chat.

Ah, here’s a table.

(To the waitress) Two beers, thanks love.

So, do you really want to hear my thoughts on her?

Well, you used to like her…

(laughs)  Like? An awful, stodgy word, like. 

But stodge is sort of an appropriate word for her. 

Let’s just say that she had her attractions.

So you would have…?  (makes crude hand gesture)

Her?  No, about as sexually appealing as yesterday’s porridge…
some rumours about that she is a lesbian…(shrugs)...as if that’s important…
the commentaries are pretty vacuous at times...I will grant you though,
when she was in full flight, she could be really vivacious and vibrant…
but turned it on and off at will, which was a bit disconcerting.
Never felt it was deeply felt.  Nevermind.  But, you know,
she could be really pretty…sort of doll-like pretty…

…what?  Inflatable? (smirks)

(laughs) No, no, porcelain…lacked that sassy something that, you know,
makes you want to bite off  her buttons…

Not a lot on the other side of the shirt, from what I can see!

(Nodding) Yeah true, but as a friend says anything more than a handful is a waste.
Mind you that friend doesn’t have a lot either so perhaps she’s not a good authority.
Physically, she wasn’t a particularly sumptuous feast, more the single course,
dieter’s special…you know, ricotta on rivita

Oh, tasty!  Did you know she had a tattoo?

A rumour I heard said it was a violet...sounds elegant enough.

I thought it was something fiercer—a bulldog perhaps.

Yeah. Maybe. I’d heard something about that too.
The rumour mills run rife with these things...what's it matter in the end?
Never understood why people get tattoos, though.
At least you can change a numberplate that says SPANKY,
or some such, for something else when you grow up.
Not a good look when your position requires judgement.

Yeah…true…didn't you find her a bit manipulative?

She had to be, surely?  Ruthless too.  Anyway most women are. 

You expect it.  Besides, she’s Welsh and they are notoriously short tempered

and single minded.  It’s to do with the hair colour, I think.

I suppose so.  She certainly managed to get the powers that be

to give her open slather to spread her vision of the future…

…of the past, too…

…true…they love this sort of thing, for a short while anyway. 
Do you miss her?

(Laughs) Nah.  Just an interesting diversion.  Her time has passed.

We have a new master now! 

Oh, please don’t…

Yes, it’s The Year of the Gloating Lizard and…

Don’t say it!

…budgie smugglers! 

Our coat of arms will be replaced by a pair of Lycra Speedos.

(weeps)

Waitress!—Two more beers, thanks love. 

Oh...and a bag of nuts.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

609 : A Digression

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were Digress, Cringe and Blunder.

A Digression

It’s a blunder that we all make

From time to time through life:

To carry baggage for too long.

It’s easier that the strife

That comes 

That subdues

Beguiles and numbs

The strong,

The weak

The proud,

The slow

Those who cringe

And those who’s sole mistake

Is just to not let go.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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608 : Can you hear the children cry?

Lolamouse at "Imaginary Garden with Real Toads" invites us to write

in response to one of the inkblots that she put up. 

This one made me think of Syria and the US's headlong rush to bomb the Syrian people,

to punish them for being bombed by their own government.

No, I don't understand it either.

Sung to the tune of 

"Do you hear the people sing?" 

from Les Miserables.

Can you hear the children cry?

Chorus

Can you hear the children cry?

Feel the terror in their hearts?

It’s the horror of a war

And the suffering it imparts. 

When the dropping of the bombs

Matters more than who they kill

You’ve gone and lost the plot

As well as all goodwill.

What do you think you’re doing

With your democratic zeal?

Why do you blindly follow

The war-machine’s big wheel?

The killing of the fathers

Makes the sons take up the steel.

Chorus

Can you hear the children cry?

Feel the terror in their hearts?

It’s the horror of a war

And the suffering it imparts. 

When the dropping of the bombs

Matters more than who they kill

You’ve gone and lost the plot

As well as all goodwill.

You cannot make them love you

With your bombs and endless fear.

You have never learnt the lesson

And think force a panacea:

For every child you massacre

Six fighters will appear.

Chorus

Can you hear the children cry?

Feel the terror in their hearts?

It’s the horror of a war

And the suffering it imparts. 

When the dropping of the bombs

Matters more than who they kill

You’ve gone and lost the plot

As well as all goodwill.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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607 : A Woman with Beautiful Eyes

Mad Kane has a regular limerick challenge.

She provides the first line,

the rest is up to us.

A woman with beautiful eyes

Enchanted the neighbourhood guys.

But her angelic demeanour

Covered a sick, mean whore;

A nasty old witch, in disguise.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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606 : The Old FJ.

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #125) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

pay, stains, center, bell, dimension, intrigue,

magic, only, used, avenue, answer, change

For the non-Australians: the FJ was a model of car made by

General Motors Holden in Australia in the mid-1950’s.

The Old Holden.

Only a faded shell of a former glory,

She rusts in a weedy paddock.

The headlights, broken:

The aimless stare of the dazed;

The upholstery cracked

Like an old woman’s pouting lips,

The paintwork flat, dull

Faded and chalky.

She is showing the ravages of time

The ravages of being unloved

And unwanted.  

A wreck.

Once though, in her heyday, those magical days,

She would have been the centre of attention.

Driven with love through the streets,

Through the avenues of admirers,

A young boy’s answer to awkwardness:

A life changing, status making addition,

A new dimension to the male ego.

I wonder how many women 

Succumbed to her intrigue?

Who’s counting? One?  None?  Nine?

Best not ask, I guess.

Stains on the fabric of time.

The price you pay for being used.

Now, with us salivating like Pavlov’s dogs 

To the ringing of the bell of the new,

The Old Holden has a special place

In the paddock of our memories,

We are no longer beholden to her.

There are better models,

And better rides, to be had.

Rust in peace.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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605 : The Loss (revisited)

Back in March, dVerse Poets challenged us to write a 'cinquain', 

a five line poem with 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables in the five lines.

My original version caused one of my readers of the time to complain

and I removed the poem.  I regret doing that now and have recreated it

but built around what was probably the hardest phone-call

I ever took as a Life-Line counsellor. 

A man had found a book when tidying his garage.  

It had belonged to his son who had drowned a few years earlier 

and brought his grief back in full force.

The Loss

The book

Was in a box

When he found it one day; 

He held it tightly to his chest 

And cried.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013 

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604 : A Good Deed

Mad Kane has a regular limerick challenge.

She provides the first line,

the rest is up to us.

Here's a clean one.

A woman had done a good deed

By helping her neighbour to weed.

But, as she couldn't discern

A rose from a fern,

The results were not guaranteed.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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603 : Mob Rule

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #124) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

inky, wet, close, hole, sparks, feathery 

shoots, scarlet, doubt, sway, oiled, lost

Mob Rule

The banners flutter brightly

And define the fighting teams.

Scarlet, blues, blacks and greens

The left, the right, dry, the wet.

Steel will challenge flint

Both hard and cold and yet,

While sparks are pretty certain,

Warmth and light are not.

Self-opinionated bystanders

Cheer with inky fingers,

Shooting letters to the papers.

But in times of doubt,

When uncertainty is king

And insecurity lingers,

Where manufactured fear prevails,

And all reason is lost

To the warm and feathery words,

Well-practiced and well oiled,

Of the opportunists

Who attempt to sway good people

To support the unpalatable,

To draw ranks,

To close holes,

To fend off the 'enemy',
An enemy

More perceived than real:

Humanity is lost from the beginning

Subservient to the only goal—

Of winning.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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