Assisted suicide?
Physician Assisted Suicide is the process of a doctor providing the necessary sleeping pills/lethal dose to allow a terminally ill patient to perform the life ending act. In the United States, all but four states have made physician assisted suicide (PAS) illegal.When in a situation a terminally ill patient is in, they should have the right to commit a physician-assisted suicide.
In 1994, the state of Oregon enabled the Death With Dignity Act (DWDA). With 51% voting in favor of the act, it gives terminally ill patients access to PAS. Attorney General John Ashcroft challenged the act by saying it was not “real” and that allowing doctors to do perform that, violates the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). CSA protects the regulation of doctors from performing unauthorized distributions of drugs and drug abuse. If doctors are able to assist suicides, through Ashcroft’s claim, they would be using drugs as an abuse. In the Supreme Court, petitioner Paul D. Clement argued in the case about the violation of CSA, with 6-3, “we conclude the rule is not authorized by the CSA, and we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals” (Gonzales V Oregon).
Patients of irreversible illnesses often develop disorders that go underdiagnosed causing them to live a life that isn’t happy for them or their family members. According to Dr. Fine of the Office of Clinical Ethics, terminally ill patients usually get depressed when dealing with intense suffering. When the patient is depressed, they may not respond to treatment as expected. If the patient is not responding to treatment well, the doctor may up the dosage of medication or consider adding antidepressants, causing the patient to be reliant on medication for the rest of their life.
Patients who receive a terminal diagnosis usually experience high levels of anxiety.  According to Dr. Fine, anxiety can cause problems such as, agitation, insomnia, restlessness, sweating, tachycardia, hyperventilation, panic disorder, worry, or tension. Sleep deprivation plays a huge part in the anxiety the patients feel. The patient’s sleep is often interrupted many nights and several times to get their blood pressure checked, blood withdrawals, checkings of veins, etc. Because these medical requirements can not be withheld, many doctors may feel the need to heavily sedate the patient to make them feel lucid during the day time.
Studies have shown that patients of terminal illnesses fear that they’d burden their families. The patients feel, “grief and fear not only for their own future but also for their families’ future” (Johnson), researchers say. The feelings of being in the way can cause emotional, physical, social, and financial problems. In  doctors Johnson, Nolan, and Sulmasy’s research, they found that feelings of burden are most likely to affect emotional symptoms, quality of life, and patient satisfaction. Wanting to feel like they aren’t a burden to their families and society was most important to patients seen by the doctors. The research the doctors conducted found that out of a list of 28 qualities, the wish to not be a physical or emotional burden on family, 93% of respondents said that this was very or extremely important to them. The doctors made three categories of experiences that were related to “self-perceived burden” (Johnson). The first one being “concerns for other” (Johnson), then “implications for self” (Johnson), and last being “minimizing the burden” (Johnson). Feeling like a burden can cause “empathic concern engendered from the impact on others of one’s illness and care needs, resulting in guilt, distress, feelings of responsibility, and diminished sense of self” (Johnson).
To let a patient commit an assisted suicide means, they’re freed from pain. To force someone who knows that their time's coming to an end quickly when they do not wish to be in pain anymore should be a crime. In Epidemics, Book 1, it states, “practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient”, by allowing the patient to continue their life is harming them, all physically, mentally, and spiritually. Doctors take an oath, the Hippocratic Oath when practicing medicine. In the oath, there is a phrase that says “Also I will, according to my ability and judgment, prescribe a regimen for the health of the sick; but I will utterly reject harm and mischief”, if the patient has considered an assisted suicide, they’ve been in too much pain and wish for it to end. Refusing them the help causes them more physical and emotional pain; physical being the illness itself and emotional being the feeling of being a burden.
Patients with terminal illnesses have the right to commit assisted suicides because it allows them to end their life from something no drug would be able to fix. With the illness being irreversible, dragging it out will cause both suffering and financial problems. Terminally ill patients have the right to die with dignity. Dying by choice will let their loved ones know that they are ready and have accepted their fate, easing weight off their families shoulders. Having the ability to die will portray the patients as human beings who want to make one last decision before going rather than people who are laying in a hospital bed waiting to die. A patient knows that the doctor’s job is to relieve pain, with a doctor refusing their wish, only cause distrust in their relationship. Letting assisted suicide would allow their families to begin healing. By refusing the patient their right to die, forces them to live a poor quality of life no one would ever wish upon anybody. It is in everyone’s interest to let them go. Doctors have a responsibility to make the patient happy and to relieve them of any kind of pain, letting them go is relieving them of the pain they wish to no longer feel. PAS gives them the ability to go happily and contently.

Bouazizi’s heavy eyelids parted as the Muezzin recited the final call for the first Adhan of the day.

“As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm”
Prayer is better than sleep

Rising from the torment of another restless night, Bouazizi wiped the sleep from his droopy eyes as his feet touched the cold stone floor.

Throughout the frigid night, the devilish jinn did their work, eagerly jabbing away at Bouazizi with pointed sticks, tormenting his troubled conscience with the worry of his nagging indebtedness. All night the face of the man Bouazizi owed money to haunted him. Bouazizi could see the man’s greasy lips and brown teeth jawing away, inches from his face. He imagined chubby caffeine stained fingers reaching toward him to grab some dinars from Bouazizi’s money box.

Bouazizi turned all night like he was sleeping on a board of spikes. His prayers for a restful night again went unanswered. The pall of a blue fatigue would shadow Bouazizi for most of the day.

Bouazizi’s weariness was compounded by a gnawing hunger. By force of habit, he grudgingly opened the food cupboard with the foreknowledge that it was almost bare. Bouazizi’s premonition proved correct as he surveyed a meager handful of chickpeas, some eggs and a few sparse loaves. It was just enough to feed his dependant family; younger brothers and sisters, cousins and a terminally disabled uncle. That left nothing for Bouazizi but a quick jab to his empty gut. He would start this day without breakfast.

Bouazizi made a living as a street vendor. He hustles to survive. Bouazizi’s father died in a construction accident in Libya when he was three. Since the age of 10, Bouazizi had pushed a cart through the streets of Sidi Bouzid; selling fruit at the public market just a few blocks from the home that he has lived in for almost his entire life.

At 27 years of age, Bouazizi has wrestled the beast of deprivation since his birth. To date, he has bravely fought it to a standstill; but day after day the multi-headed hydra of life has snapped at him. He has squarely met the eyes of the beast with fortitude and resolve; but the sharp fangs of a hardscrabble life has sunken deep into Bouazizi’s spleen. The unjust rules of society are powerful claws that slash away at his flesh, bleeding him dry: while the spiked tendrils of poverty wrap Bouazizi’s neck, seeking to strangle him.

Bouazizi is a workingman hero; a skilled warrior in the fight for daily bread. He is accustomed to living a life of scarcity. His daily deliverance is the grace of another day of labor and the blessed wages of subsistence.

Though Allah has blessed this man with fortitude the acuteness of terminal want and the constant struggle to survive has its limits for any man; even for strong champions like Bouazizi.

This morning as Bouazizi washed he peered into a mirror, closely examining new wrinkles on his stubble strewn face. He fingered his deep black curls dashed with growing streaks of gray. He studied them through the gaze of heavy bloodshot eyes. He looked upward as if to implore Allah to salve the bruises of daily life.

Bouazizi braced himself with the splash of a cold water slap to his face. He wiped his cheeks clean with the tail of his shirt. He dipped his toothbrush into a box of baking powder and scoured an aching back molar in need of a root canal. Bouazizi should see a dentist but it is a luxury he cannot afford so he packed an aspirin on top of the infected tooth. The dissolving aspirin invaded his mouth coating his tongue with a bitter effervescence.

Bouazizi liked the taste and was grateful for the expectation of a dulled pain. He smiled into the mirror to check his chipped front tooth while pinching a cigarette **** from an ashtray. The roach had one hit left in it. He lit it with a long hard drag that consumed a good part of the filter. Bouazizi’s first smoke of the day was more filter then tobacco but it shocked his lungs into the coughing flow of another day.

Bouazizi put on his jacket, slipped into his knockoff NB sneakers and reached for a green apple on a nearby table. He took a big bite and began to chew away the pain of his toothache.

Bouazizi stepped into the street to catch the sun rising over the rooftops. He believed that seeing the sunrise was a good omen that augured well for that day’s business. A sunbeam braking over a far distant wall bathed Bouazizi in a golden light and illumined the alley where he parked his cart holding his remaining stock of week old apples. He lifted the handles and backed his cart out into the street being extra mindful of the cracks in the cobblestone road. Bouazizi sprained his ankle a week ago and it was still tender. Bouazizi had to be careful not to aggravate it with a careless step. Having successfully navigated his cart into the road, Bouazizi made a skillful U Turn and headed up the street limping toward the market.

A winter chill gripped Bouazizi prompting him to zip his jacket up to his neck. The zipper pinched his Adam’s Apple and a few droplets of blood stained his green corduroy jacket. Though it was cold, Bouazizi sensed that spring would arrive early this year triggering a replay of a recurring daydream. Bouazizi imagined himself behind the wheel of a new van on his way to the market. Fresh air and sunshine pouring through the open windows with the cargo space overflowing with fresh vegetables and fruits.

It was a lifelong ambition of Bouazizi to own a van. He dreamed of buying a six cylinder Dodge Caravan. It would be painted red and he would call it The Red Flame. The Red Flame would be fast and powerful and sport chrome spinners. The Red Flame would be filled with music from a Blaupunkt sound system with kick *** speakers. Power windows, air conditioning, leather seats, a moonroof and plenty of space in the back for his produce would complete Bouazizi’s ride.

The Red Flame would be the vehicle Bouazizi required to expand his business beyond the market square. Bouazizi would sell his produce out of the back of the van, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. No longer would he have to wait for customers to come to his stand in the market. Bouazizi would go to his customers. Bouazizi and the Red Flame would be known in all the neighborhoods throughout the district. Bouazizi shook his head and smiled thinking about all the girls who would like to take rides in the Red Flame. Bouazizi and his Red Flame would be a sight to be noticed and a force to be reckoned with.

“EEEEEYOWWW” a Mercedes horn angrily honked; jarring Bouazizi from the reverie of his daydream. A guy whipping around the corner like a silver streak stuck his head out the window blasting with music yelling, “Hey Mnayek, watch where you push that *******.”

The music faded as the Mercedes roared away. “Barra nikk okhtek” Bouazizi yelled, raising his ******* in the direction of the vanished car. “The big guys in the fancy cars think the road belongs to them”, Bouazizi mumbled to himself.

The insult ****** Bouazizi off, but he was accustomed to them and as he limped along pushing his cart he distracted himself with the amusement of the ascending sun chasing the fleeting shadows of the night, sending them scurrying down narrow alleyways.

Bouazizi imaged himself a character from his favorite movie. He was a giant Transformer, chasing the black shadows of evil away from the city into the desert. After battling evil and conquering the bad guys, he would transform himself back into the regular Bouazizi; selling his produce to the people as he patrolled the highways of Tunisia in the Red Flame, the music blasting out the windows, the chrome spinners flashing in the sunlight. Bouazizi would remain vigilant, always ready to transform the Red Flame to fight the evil doers.

The bumps and potholes in the road jostled Bouazizi’s load of apples. A few fell out of the wooden baskets and were rolling around in the open spaces of the cart. Bouazizi didn’t want to risk bruising them. Damaged merchandise can’t be sold so he was careful to secure his goods and arrange his cart to appeal to women customers. He made sure to display his prized electronic scale in the corner of the cart for all to see.

Bouazizi had a reputation as a fair and generous dealer who always gave good value to his customers. Bouazizi was also known for his kindness. He would give apples to hungry children and families who could not pay. Bouazizi knew the pain of hunger and it brought him great satisfaction to be able to alleviate it in others.

As a man who valued fairness, Bouazizi was particularly proud of his electronic scale. Bouazizi was certain the new measuring device assured all customers that Bouazizi sold just and correct portions. The electronic scale was Bouazizi’s shining lamp. He trusted it. He hung it from the corner post of his cart like it was the beacon of a lighthouse guiding shoppers through the treachery of an unscrupulous market. It would attract all customers who valued fairness to the safe harbor of Bouazizi’s cart.

The electronic scale is Bouazizi’s assurance to his customers that the weights and measures of electronic calculation layed beyond any cloud of doubt. It is a fair, impartial and objective arbiter for any dispute.

Bouazizi believed that the fairness of his scale would distinguish his stand from other produce vendors. Though its purchase put Bouazizi into deep debt, the scale was a source of pride for Bouazizi who believed that it would help his profits to increase and help him to achieve his goal of buying the Red Flame.

As Bouazizi pushed his cart toward the market, he mulled his plan over in his mind for the millionth time. He wasn't great in math but he was able to calculate his financial situation with a degree of precision. His estimations triggered worries that his growing debt to money lenders may be difficult to payoff.

Indebtedness pressed down on Bouazizi’s chest like a mounting pile of stones. It was the source of an ever present fear coercing Bouazizi to live in a constant state of anxiety. His business needed to grow for Bouazizi to get a measure of relief and ultimately prosper from all his hard work. Bouazizi was driven by urgency.

The morning roil of the street was coming alive. Bouazizi quickened his step to secure a good location for his cart at the market. Car horns, the spewing diesel from clunking trucks, the flatulent roar of accelerating buses mixed with the laughs and shrieks of children heading to school composed the rising crescendo of the city square.

As he pushed through the market, Bouazizi inhaled the aromatic eddies of roasting coffee floating on the air. It was a pleasantry Bouazizi looked forward to each morning. The delicious wafts of coffee mingling with the crisp aroma of baking bread instigated a growl from Bouazizi’s empty stomach. He needed to get something to eat. After he got money from his first sale he would by a coffee and some fried dough.

Activity in the market was vigorous, punctuated by the usual arguments of petty territorial disputes between vendors. The disagreements were always amicably resolved, burned away in rising billows of roasting meats and vegetables, the exchange of cigarettes and the plumes of tobacco smoke rising as emanations of peace.

Bouazizi skillfully maneuvered his cart through the market commotion. He slid into his usual space between Aaban and Aameen. His good friend Aaban sold candles, incense, oils and sometimes his wife would make cakes to sell. Aameen was the markets most notorious jokester. He sold hardware and just about anything else he could get his hands on.

Aaban was already burning a few sticks of jasmine incense. It helped to attract customers. The aroma defined the immediate space with the pleasant bouquet of a spring garden. Bouazizi liked the smell and appreciated the increased traffic it brought to his apple cart.

“Hey Basboosa#, do you have any cigarettes?“, Aameen asked as he pulled out a lighter. Bouazizi shook the tip of a Kent from an almost empty pack. Aameen grabbed the cigarette with his lips.

“That's three cartons of Kents you owe me, you cheap *******.” Bouazizi answered half jokingly. Aameen mumbled a laugh through a grin tightly gripping the **** as he exhaled smoke from his nose like a fire breathing dragon. Bouazizi also took out a cigarette for himself.

“Aameem, give me a light”, Bouazizi asked.

Aameen tossed him the lighter.

“Keep it Basboosa. I got others.” Aameen smiled as he showed off a newly opened box of disposable lighters to sell on his stand.

“Made in China, Basboosa. They make everything cheap and colorful. I can make some money with these.”

Bouazizi lit his next to last cigarette. He inhaled deeply. The smoke chased away the cool air in Bouazizi’s lungs with a shot of a hot nicotine rush.

“Merci Aameen” Bouazizi answered. He put the lighter into the almost empty cigarette pack and put it into his hip pocket. The lighter would protect his last cigarette from being crushed.

The laughter and shouts of the bazaar, the harangue of radio voices shouting anxious verses of Imam’s exhorting the masses to submit and the piecing ramble of nondescript AM music flinging piercing unintelligible static surrounded Bouazizi and his cart as he waited for his first customers of the day.

Bouazizi sensed a nervous commotion rise along the line of vendors. A crowd of tourists and locals milling about parted as if to avoid a slithering asp making its way through their midst. The hoots of vendors and the cackle of the crowd made its way to Bouazizi’s knowing ear. He knew what was coming. It was nothing more then another shakedown by city officials acting as bagmen for petty municipal bureaucrats. They claim to be checking vendor licences but they’re just making the rounds collecting protection money from the vendors. Pocketing bribes and payoffs is the municipal authorities idea of good government. They are skilled at using the power of their office to extort tribute from the working poor.

Bouazizi made the mistake of making eye contact with Madame Hamdi. As the municipal authority in charge of vendors and taxis Madame Hamdi held sway over the lives of the street vendors. She relished the power she had over the men who make a meager living selling goods in the square; and this morning she was moving through the market like a bloodhound hot on the trail of an escaped convict. Two burly henchmen lead the way before her. Bouazizi knew Madame Hamdi’s hounds were coming for him.

Bouazizi knew he was ******. Having just made a payment to his money lender, Bouazizi had no extra dinars to grease the palm of Madame Hamdi. He grabbed the handle bars of his cart to make an escape; but Madame Hamdi cut him off and got right into into Bouazizi’s face.

“Ah little Basboosa where are you going? she asked with the tone of playful contempt.

“I suppose you still have no license to sell, ah Basboosa?” Madame Hamdi questioned with the air of a soulless inquisitor.

“You know Madame Hamdi, cart vendors do not need a license.” Bouazizi feebly protested, not daring to look into her eyes.

“Basboosa, you know we can overlook your violations with a small fine for your laxity” a dismissive Madame Hamdi offered.

Bouazizi’s sense of guilt would not permit him to lift his eyes. His head remained bowed. Bouazizi stood convicted of being one of the impoverished.

“I have no spare dinars to offer Madame Hamdi, My pockets are empty, full of holes. My money falls into everyone’s palm but my own. I’m sorry Madame Hamdi. I’ll take my cart home”. He lifted the handlebars in an attempt to escape. One of Madame Hamdi’s henchmen stepped in front of his cart while the other pushed Bouazizi away from it.

“Either you pay me a vendor tax for a license or I will confiscate your goods Basboosa”, Madame Hamdi warned as she lifted Bouazizi’s scale off its hook.

“This will be the first to go”, she said grinning as she examined the scale. “We’ll just keep this.”
Like a mother lion protecting a defenseless cub from the snapping jaws of a pack of ravenous hyenas, Bouazizi lunged to retrieve his prized scale from the clutches of Madame Hamdi. Reaching for it, he touched the scale with his fingertips just as Madame Hamdi delivered a vicious slap to Bouazizi’s cheek. It halted him like a thunderbolt from Zeus.

A henchman overturned Bouazizi’s cart, scatter

Forty Days

A Season of Grief, a Season of Rejoicing

November 9-December 20, 2014

For Barbara Beach Alter 
It is Christmas morning in Saco, Maine, where today Bett, Aaron, Emily, Thomasin and our beloved cousin Marie find ourselves gathered to celebrate our first Christmas without dadima (our name for Barbara Beach Alter).  Brother Tom writes that already in India he and Carol with Jamie, Meha and Cayden (the only of her seven greatgrandchildren Barry never held) have celebrated.  Today Marty and Lincoln join us in Maine.

This gathering of documents—notes, drafts of memorial services, poems, homilies—is my christmas present to each of you.  It is a record, certainly subjective, of grief and rejoicing.

John Copley Alter
1:14 a.m.
Saco, Maine 
November 9

Loved ones,
Barbara Beach Alter died peacefully at 2:55 Sunday morning (today).  Bett and I had the good fortune to be there for the final beating of her good strong heart.  She murmured charcoal.  The nurse who was bathing her afterwards noted how few wrinkles there were, and it is true.
For those of you nearby you may if you want visit Mom in her room at hospice this morning (until noon).  Visit? Darshan? Paying respects?
Bett and I plan to be there around 11:00.
Much love to all. A blessed occasion.
John

 
November 10

Matthew 5:13-19
Jesus said, "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

yesterday in the early hours my mother died her saltiness
restored all that had through the months of her old
age and convalescence obscured the lens of her life cleaned
away so that for us now more and more clearly
as we hear about her through the memory and love
of so many people her good works shine forth in
their glory but it is to the days of her
convalescence the days of her dementia I would turn our
minds those of us who spent time with her at
Wingate long-term care facility remember that Barbara Beach Alter became
at times fierce in her commanding us that ‘not one
letter, not one stroke of a letter’ of the commandments
should be altered do you remember that those of you
and us who were given the work and gift of
spending time with Barry in those days in that condition

remember for instance how fussy she became about the sequence
of food on her tray how impatient with us for
our trespasses and violations how adamant that we look forward
for instance and not back at her how she would
say stop holding my hand and saying you love me
you have work to do o she was almost impossible
and certainly incoherent and demented in her obsession with law
and procedure fussy impatient imperious I do not forget being
scolded reamed out put in my place for having somehow
failed to do what the ‘law and the prophets’ demand

Barbara beach alter in the days before hospice in the
nursing home and hospital and even if we are honest
in the final years of her life found herself caught
up in the rigidity of her anxious desire to be
faithful to the laws and commandments of her life and
that made her at times extremely demanding to be with

amen and the epistemological confusion of course the clash between
her reality and ours it was all an ordeal for
her and for those of us who kept her company

and yet and yet through it all and now as
that ordeal for her is no longer paramount as she
dances in heaven all the wrinkles and discomfort of her
life removed and forgiven Barbara Beach Alter kept the faith
living in the midst such that those who cared for
her most intimately the strangers all professed your mother blessed
us


Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.



So, brother and sister, here are my thoughts about the memorial service(s).
Let’s find a time when we three can be present; that’s the most important thing.  My life is currently the least constrained by agenda and schedule.  And then the grandchildren, recognizing that Jamie may not be able to come.  So, our work is to find our when our kids are able to come. Bett and I are exploring that with our three, each of whom has some constraint: Emily, the cost; Thomasin, the piebaking demands, Aaron school.  But we are flexible.

Much love.

John



Walking in my mother’s wake today some trees
a gentle breeze some dogs a little boy
the neighborhood and I took joy from interaction

we are at best a fraction in love’s
calculation after all heaven I realize is not
above or below cannot be taught comes naturally

as death does walking in my mother’s wake
I found new allies learned yet again not
to take myself too seriously to be caught

off guard as a matter of principle and
not to insist that I understand but live
in the midst of forgiveness


in my mother’s wake I am reading these books for
some way to continue to knock on her door Wendell
Berry he can tell me some things and William Blake
he can take me closer and I remember she described
me once as an unused Jewish liberal so I am
reading about protestant liberalism but ham that I am also
reading Carl Hiassen’s Bad Monkey and Quo Vadimus that my
daughter left behind and mythologically Reflections from yale divinity school
no fooling Denise Levertov David Sobel Galway Kinnell’s translation of
Rilke some wake
 
November 11

Matthew 25:1-13
Jesus said, "Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, 'Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.' Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.' But the wise replied, 'No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.' And while they went to buy it, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet; and the door was shut. Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying, 'Lord, lord, open to us.' But he replied, 'Truly I tell you, I do not know you.' Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour."

this morning in the wee hours my mother died one
of the wise bridesmaids whose lamp to the end was
full she carried always the flask of oil that is
joy that is the love of the kingdom of heaven
and of the bridegroom a flask always replenished by prayer
by devotion by a humble courageous living in the midst

she expected every day the bridegroom to come in other
words and she was also one who would never refuse
to share even the last drop with somebody in need

and at the end it is so clear the door
into the banquet hall was not closed to her as
it is not closed to any one of us foolishness
is to believe otherwise to believe that the bridegroom will
not come today in the early morning in the wee
hours that is when he comes in the midst of
other plans is when he comes even when we are
doing what we assume to be good work when we
are doing what gives us pleasure our duty joy comes
then unsummoned unpredictable random even according to all our best
laid plans my mother loved so many things her pleasure
included dancing late in her life terminally unsteady she invented
what we loved to urge her to do namely the
sitting jig and we grew up with images of her
Isadora Duncan dancing with white scarves in an enchanted forest

Barbara Beach Alter aka Barry aka dadima bari nani aunt
and daughter wife missionary is now I know dancing a
rollicking boisterous jig on the shores of a lake that
is as her grandson once confided to her god in
liquid form spilly Beach of course also dyslexic executive function
compromised she was but one who loved to be always
in the midst surrounded by loved ones some of them
absolute strangers she shared her oil because for her it
came welling up from an inexhaustible source a deep eternal
well of such illumination and laughter such giddy divine chuckles

for her there was to be no exclusion she would
not find the awful idea of being one of the
foolish applicable to anybody but happily she welcomed into her
midst so many it is hard to imagine how many

so there she is now a bridesmaid dancing for joy
in such elegant clothing with such perpetual brightness

amen hallelujah rejoice


sometimes I think she pulled us all out of the
magic hat sometimes I think she knit us all into
one of her theologically impossible sweaters and then with a
wink she passes through the eye of the needle and
is gone and we are left to play in her
honor endless hands of solitaire sometimes I think we are
no more than the hermeneutics of her life the epistemology
artless she was not her heart like one of those
magical meals for her then a doxology praise then praise
she knows salvation

what is a life’s work it is like a landscape
dotted with oases and gardens for the thirsty and the
lost it is like scraping through dry barren ground and
finding there suddenly not only the theology of paradise but
such seeds your hands ache to begin the planting what
is a life’s work what has been shut for too
long opens what has been shut for too long opens

a life’s work renews itself then with death the kernel
of hope that dies in springtime sprouting is what a
life’s work becomes
 
November 12

John 21:15-17
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep.

I know my mother very much enjoyed having breakfast with
god and that the meals of her nursing home drove
her nearly crazy and that when at last she found
hospice o she again could imagine the feast of heaven
at which Jesus breaks bread with us and speaks with
such clarity do you love me more than these I
know it was questions as simple and overwhelming as this
that dominated her final days do you love me love
being  one of the last five words she attempted to
speak do you love me she wrestled in her last
months with epistemology and psychology and theology and all had
to do with whether she could answer unequivocally you know
that I love you and that she could say of
her life that she had broken bread with god we
all remember in her life those moments when there was
a great gladness an innocent acceptance of what lay immediately
in her presence now those months in the nursing home
tormented her in precisely this fashion that it was hard
to accept to be in the midst of such mediocrity
and woe to be innocent and accepting but now praise
god there she is a happy guest at the great
feast and we left behind bereft can acknowledge that she
loved god in her own fashion as best she possibly
could and do you remember being with her there in
hospital or nursing home and she commanding us to move
beyond holding her hand and saying we loved her and
to feed the sheep to do that work which will
make of this earth this here and now an outstation
of heaven Barbara Beach Alter loved god in her own
fashion as best she possibly could we remember that and
that memory is today like a great network a web
of love and inspiration o we would gladly one more
time hold her hand and say I love you but
we know also clearly I think today what the work
is to love our neighbor as ourselves to work for
peace and justice I think of my sister with her
colleagues in WEIGO and how her sisters have understood her
grief  let us break our fast together then glad for
the worldwide web that in these days is reading the
gospel of the life of Barbara Beach Alter praise god


feed
tend
feed
in exchange for his three denials Peter is given three imperative verbs
feed
tend
feed
this is the commission Jesus after breakfast on the shore of the sea of Galilee gives to Peter
twice he says feed
in the commonwealth of Massachusetts 700,000 people are hungry
1 in 6 americans are hungry
living in uncertainty about their daily bread
more than 18,000,000 in Africa
842,000,000 around the world go to bed hungry


Marty and Tom
The thinking about the memorial service is taking this slow and cautious turn, namely that we have three services (at least), one in Sudbury, one in New Haven (allowing Stan and Chuck and others to come) at First Presbyterian (with Blair Moffett we hope), and of course one in India.
The date frame appears to be somewhere between December 17 and 20, unless you have other thoughts.
The actual cremation happens tomorrow.  Lincoln, Bett, Alexis and I will attend, and then of course there is In the Midst on Friday.
Love you more than tongue can tell.
John


the thing with a life well lived is that many
people have partaken the way let’s say a river moves
down through any number of different lives all the time
sedulously seeking the shortest path to the sea to steal
a line from somebody or other meandering a watershed within
which so many of us find a way to live
our own lives nourished and for each of us the
river distinct and different white water the slow fertile meander
the delta and we say to each other this is
the composite river


sometimes I feel like a sleepwalker trying to run a
marathon sometimes I feel like a speedbump in a blizzard

an arrow in a wind tunnel sometimes I feel like

a hazard sign in an old age home sometimes I
feel like a tyrannosaurus rex trying to ride a tricycle

and sometimes those are the good days when identity is
strong like an icicle in a heat wave is strong

I try to read wisdom literature at happy hour scotch
and Solomon can’t go wrong I think and sometimes I

feel like crying
 
November 13

four days ago we were left alone there with your
body after your breathing ceased and the proud stubborn beating
of your heart and in those four days beloved mother
so much I would love to say to you and
share the antics of the squirrel late leaves on the
neighborhood trees music Orion the network the atlas of love
your life has left behind and all the words we
are the gospel of today and I would sit with
you there then in silence as I sit now four
days later vigilant insomniac aware that the kingdom of heaven
is not more complicated than singing than love than dancing

we are all dancing the dance lord siva teaches and
the s

this will make sense in the end, or at least along the way... a modern version of the Ruben's judgement of Paris, although if you watch the debate, the mediator already insinuates the "confusion": to my left or to my right, ha ha, left to right, right to left, 1st 3rd 2nd... that's putting it mildly, if i were Paris i'd have given the apple of knowing to Hera, queen of the goddesses... naomi wolf... beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and your phallus in the hand of... mhmm... softer than the flesh of an oyster at the end of the day... they did say once in times just after Pericles: make my inner as beautiful as my outer, and my outer as beautiful as my inner... then take art as not representing images: or the "shallow" arguments... any man would have given the apple to the intellectual Aphrodite (karen straughan)... we all know that antigone darling is Athena: who speaks so little you start to equate wisdom to be a distant synonym of needing courage to engage with a plebiscite crowd... oh don't give that prize to her: she'll probably tongue-tie herself and will never be able to speak into a microphone, the intellectual Aphrodite knows all too well the conundrum... it's the cougar attired in crimson that fuels the whole debate... she doesn't need to have inner beauty, you phallus is already shouting 'sir! yes sir!' at the drill sergeant anyways... you take Aphrodite as a paradoxical beauty, namely that of long conversations and not long interludes of ******* and baking cookies... you'll leave Aphrodite confused... i once heard an English motto: don't take for a wife a woman that's too attractive... that wasn't intended to be within the bias of intellect, i mean a beautiful woman within the bias of being able to manage a harem of 72 male virgins... well **** yeah, artists leave clues, whether knowing or unknowing... they're working from triangles, poets end up writing from Δ, they obscure textures and antonyms of what appears to be monochromatic, we say: red, crimson, burgundy in x-ray confines... the point being: there's no intellectual debate to be had with someone representative metaphorically or not of Hera... you can't have a Parisian fashion week catwalk where you find dehydrated beauty on the outside and an anorexic ego on the inside... what you find in Hera is a volume (voluptuousness) on the inside, within which there's a leech libido that transgresses all demands for intellect... unless it's pistons-well-oiled orientated... please, read some Marquis... if you get an ******* having read a few of his works: you're qualified - or as i like to call it: neo-classical *******... ever masturbated over Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time? well, if you haven't i guess **** ******* and gang-banging is your outlet: mine are pictures of Aria Giovanni and Chloe Vevraire (googlewhack no. 3!): Chloe Vevrier... but if you're never done the Odysseus pokes fun at Polyphemus... yep: the ghost hand: nobody!


you know, you can cram a lot into a 30 hour "day",
which results in the complete erosion
for the capacity to dream afterwards,
to actually work from the unconscious and create
a subconscious medium vector that connects
to points of consciousness: 30+ hours awake,
however many hours asleep, and then awake again
for another 30+ "day" to digest...
the classical definition of the subconscious, in theory,
is that you get plenty of sleep,
and it's a bit like that schematic A x B (algebraic)
A knows x     and B knows x...
   something mutual acknowledgment
via the same schematic but
A knows x, B knows x,
A knows that B knows x,
A knows that B knows that A knows x,
   which is all very Aristotelian to be frank,
it's this hyperlogic of having to acquire
great technological feats and reduce such
complexities to cat-videos on the internet as
the Egyptian partake in the genius that actually
made it possible... the slogan goes
Moses, you fool! said Nefertiti...
    so B knows x and knows that A knows x
and knows that A knows that B knows x
and B knows it's not necessarily anywhere
alphabetically less, even though the French said
a, b, c... which was very imperial of them,
that's the imperial version of what the mathematical
imperialism proved with the English inches, miles
and furlongs... but in this French case of imperialism
it wasn't a e i o u, b c d f g h j...
            that's what 30 hours awake does to you,
you wouldn't think of alcohol as a party drink,
a social barrier deconstruct... after 30 hours
you're hoping to meet Vladimir Klitschko on your
way to bed... aye pleasing Cossack, give us a
smacker goodnight... one glove it filled with
whiskey, the other with naproxen and amitriptyline...
boom! k.o. snooze, baby:
you gotta love buddhist honesty...
at least you get to see the bright side of life...
  and if people start thinking that Kant was the harbinger
of ill fate... you obviously haven't met a necromancer...
it was only von Kleist for ****'s sake!
       and he had the American option of a suicide
pact with a terminally ill woman and a bullet from
a pistol in a ditch... you can't get more romantic than that...
and there i was, mid-afternoon, having done a few of
the household chores: the washing, the ironing and
cooking a two-course meal while my mother did
the taxes (seems only mothers understand their sons
these days... women my age?
   ever see David Attenborough describe Emperor
penguins? money was invented for women,
because it brokered the end of the brotherhood of man,
we became famished by feminine needs
and have reduced inherent sports in us (hunting)
to sledgehammer bashing entertainment...
i'm the "drunk" that would rather watch ten hours
worth of ping-pong that tennis...
    i don't know why they resurrect the Olympics
every four years, have a **** coverage of it anyway
and then go back to that Glaswegian diet
of deep-fried pizza and haggis... and i hope to never know,
maybe Sepp Blatter knows...
but that's 30 hours of being awake, and only not
able to relax, by writing...
                 you wouldn't see this sort of "abuse" of
alcohol anywhere in the world...
the Soviet sleep experiment is actually not that silly...
too much sleep can also make you feel the minutes
upon your wake as if you've been stung by a bee...
three of my all time favourite songs?
the stone roses'* i wanna be adored,
    chromatics' cherry,
and finally: i can be forgiven for having missed this,
i got into them seriously with the album aufheben
and didn't really move anywhere else,
the dandy warhol effect got me...
but this song out of obscurity, 20th century technology
translated into mp3 and then onto c.d. and then
back into mp3... a song from an album that doesn't
even appear on their discography...
the brian jonestown massacre's pol ***'s pleasure penthouse,
the song in question? fingertips.
so there's that three...
      but **** on me, i half expected android (2015)
to be like ex_machina (whatever year that was)...
same topic... what the difference between android
cyborg and robot?
                                  aren't robots the proper a.i.?
as in: in production, the thing that's not hand-crafted
is artificially crafted, because it is crafted to a large yield
of a product? isn't that so? i can't distinguish (as of yet)
the difference between android and cyborg, i guess
as a Latin man (a - z user) i have to condescend the Grecian
pompousness of demeaning Hebrews (original anti-semitism
originated in Greece, not Rome, the Romans gave
the Jews not elaborate architectural schemes to abide by
in honour of Octavian, but the supposed pride in Greek
thought, undermined what later science would provide
a Latin man with, given the translation of יחֵוָחֵ,
indeed variables... i once wrote a piece about
the two Adams... namely how אָ (alef)
and עַ (ayin) are prominent letters among consonants,
but no vowel kindred of Eve is equal...
or how Eve is covered in both mainstream Islam
and orthodox Judaism... and Christianity is
a Rastafarian dream for more jerky reggae reggae...
they never sing down with Rome, judgement upon
Rome... they always sing about Babylon...
well, polytheistic or poly-schismatic,
it's all Hindu from hereon in - apart from that
here's a very tiny heresy... is that yod he vav he
or is it yod he vav het?
         there is a difference, afterall:
he (ה)        and het (חֵ) obviously differ... oh!
xet!                   god this garden is a mess,
               i guess the fruit of knowing good from evil
was intended to say: till the land, deforest,
learn agriculture... that's good, the **** you do to each
other... well: that's hardly a tonne of grain...
but they so alike though, even when you apply a noun
to these two symbols!
  could have said he xet but instead it's known as he het:
no wonder the Hittites came along for a curious look...
mind you, had not a prominent Roman, a centurion,
asked for help... we'd be prudish in runic from the northern
invaders... so thankfully no one within the Roman confines
of encoding sounds didn't have the bright spark idea
of looking at the very tiny little island of Israel and that
four lettered word and how it became known
to say o = omicron, ε = epsilon and γ = gamma,
   and cutting those things apart leaving only letter
having done plastic surgery on the noun that denotes the
letter that's denoted by the symbol, rearranged it
and got the idea of εγo: ****** marvellous!
- this is not brian pallenberg's story about the pleasure
penthouse album...
but you know what really got me in those 30 hours:
day, night, day, night: a NHLF debate between
naomi wolf, karen straughan & antigone darling,
the part where karen makes the point that
once upon a time men who beat their wives
in Scotland were publicly whipped (dhaal,
straugan), and if they were beaten-up instead by
their wives, a plebiscite of good-wishers would turn up
at the house and apply the Freudian theory of
a castration to the man, bang pots and pans,
and then in public display him having to ride on a
donkey backwards, having to hold the donkey's tail
for stability...
     see that woman in red in that debate? a true political
man-eating beast of ***** readied in atom bomb
explosions... the one next to her isn't wearing any tights...
unconsciously you're thinking: i like her french freestyle
of not having shaved her legs... the smart one is wearing
jeans and she looks oh so desperate to get out...
    the discussion doesn't even enter the realm of ideas...
hen-picking is discussed... all poetry ascribed to language
is gone... is it politically correct to ascribe the sexuality
of female chickens with the word hen to women?
behind me in Blackpool stag-dos (dos? no does...
there isn't even a ******* spelling for that phrase...
hen-nights and the inflatable Juan)...
well obviously your mind is working out why you'd
**** the middle 'un right away... she doesn't say divorcee
which is so "unsexy" but say she's a mum twice,
a mum, a single mum... polly wants a *******...
her address is new york city? ******! i'm heading there,
right now! can a white guy use urban colloquial
in the suburbs on a piece of pixel paper, which he claims
is mere the cartesian extension of his thought
and disinterest in rhetorical skills? i hope so...
it's not like herr adolf wrote a disclaimer saying:
read this or a thousand volts up your ****!
that really was a constipated debate, plus the red was all
provocateur and peppered with "you know",
   and "i know absolutely nothing": there were no ideas
in the debate! whenever there was a chance to debate
ideas, the debate turned into a debated about words,
and what words to use: to simply brush aside any clinching
to a idea-debate... perhaps because feminism is
an ideology without any coherency of ideas, as stated
from the debate: a coherency of wording: and that better
be hen = an asexual chicken, rooster = an asexual chicken...
it's still a chicken kiev at the end of the day.
now? i might squeeze in another poem...
     but it would still be great to get any kind of analysis
comparing the movie android and ex_machina...
the only problem would be: both creators are men...
so that's gender-stereotyping already...
but hell! she gets to build a buggie that she directs with
a laser pen... so that's nice...
but i'd love a discussion on these two films,
given that the music in both films is very oomph!
thriller genre always had better music than horror...
horror music is too romantic... thriller music?
***** back-stabbing you whenever you think you're
going to get a comfortable 10 minute slot...
but it's there... aside from both robotic creators being male...
woman: ex_machina - out of the machinery of man
          ergo? deus, or woman as...
i actually have a problem with the word android...
the woman is a factor of playing the two men against
each other... the android actually find a mechanical
part of himself in the way the "human" talks to the woman,
while the "android" is prejudiced against the rigidity
of his ****** movement: unlike the "human" having
an intellectual rigidity... the woman plays the two against
each other... well, 30 hours no sleep...
  i'm doing the helter-skelter trying to throw ideas
by way of remembering the actual plot of the film...
this obviously adds nothing to the discussion:
meaning i probably gave away a "spoiler" -
but more the point, i need a refill and some fresh air
to breath, having farted into a leather chair for the past
hour.

A terminally ill 5-year-old was given a dream day — an amazing birthday, prom and a wedding all in one.

Lila May Schow has spent most of her life in the hospital or at the doctor’s office. She has a rare childhood cancer, neuroblastoma, and doctors have not been able to successfully treat the disease.

Lila has stopped receiving chemotherapy treatments. Doctors told the family treatment is no longer an option because her body is not strong enough.

Sadly, she is not expected to live past Thanksgiving.

Lila’s parents, assuming it could be her last birthday, decided to make the day extra special. With the help of local businesses and volunteers, everyone gathered on July for the huge party.

“We don’t know how much time we have left,” Lila’s dad Ryan Schow tells KATU, “and we have put up one hell of a fight. We just want to give her everything she deserves.”

The family started a Facebook groupto ask for help. A local bank donated the use of their building, a DJ offered his services, women dressed as Disney characters volunteered to appear and bakers donated cakes. Over 1,000 people attended the huge bash.

Lila, dressed as her favorite princess Cinderella, attended her birthday/prom/wedding. The sweetest moment of the day was when Lila’s dad proposed and married his daughter.

“We wouldn’t have gotten this far and been able to fight this hard without all the help we’ve been given. We’re so very grateful for that. It’s all about making a little girl smile,” Lila’s dad, Ryan Schow, tells KATU. “It’s all about making a little girl smile.”

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/long-formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/bridesmaid-dresses

I’m not allergic to bee stings – I never have been, I probably never will be – but I am more afraid of bees than anything else. More afraid than heights, than fire, than opening up to others, than death by drowning. I have been stung more times than I will ever be able to count. My skin has since grown thicker, but I remember when it was soft, and I was small. I used up the entire allowance of pain I was given for life in less than four minutes.
Perhaps I should specify that it’s not bees that I am afraid of, but wasps.
When I was nine years old, much younger than I am now, I stepped on a yellow jacket nest. My bare foot went into the hole and came out covered in their little striped bodies. There was this buzzing noise that at the time I’d thought was normal, but I now know that it was the sound of the wasps that were in my ears. They had been trying to crawl down my ear canals. I wonder if they had mistaken my canals for their burrows, and had been trying to get back to their queen, but were disappointed to find my ear drums, instead.
My sister – the same age – covered in wasps alongside me, screamed and screamed, but I made no noise. By the time I even thought to cry, I had been stung so many times it would have been pointless to weep for my swollen, red toes. I remember being unable to feel the wasps’ venom running through my veins because I couldn’t even feel my veins. If I would have cried for anything, it would have been for fear that, being unable to feel them, I might have lost track of my tiny feet. They could have walked away without my body and I wouldn’t have known. They could have walked to school and back without me.
Of course, my feet could barely walk. After my initial disgust, I watched my sister run away from where we had been standing and I knew that I should run, too. I could still feel the wasps crawling, clamoring, on my skin, in my clothes, in my hair. I remember the feeling of these bees crawling around among the roots of my hair, making themselves well-acquainted with the tender skin of my scalp. I remember being unable to get them all out of my hair before I walked into the house.
I knew that I should run, and so, balanced precariously on my numbed feet, clambered after her.
I followed my screaming sister down to our farmhouse, past my stepmother who was also screaming, even louder than my sister. I don’t remember where my father was that day.
We ran down the dirt road that led from the barns to our house, removing our shirts as we went and stopping to strip down to our underwear on the front porch. I remember the honks from cars as they passed by. I remember not knowing why they were honking, but knowing that I was angry with them for honking, for ogling, rather than stopping to help. I remember not knowing how they would help, just knowing that I needed help, desperately.
The irony of our stings is that my sister, a year later, was cast in our school’s operetta, and ended up playing the part of a yellow jacket, a sort of elementary-school-gangster, part of a group of them, who wore – you guessed it – yellow jackets and stole other bugs’ lunch money. I would say that, if the wasps that attacked me had been human, they would definitely have been after the money I used to buy Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pies in the lunchroom.
If I had been stung even three years later, I would have been big enough to know that one doesn’t run around in untrimmed grass with no shoes on their feet for precisely this reason. If I had been stung three years earlier, I would have been too small, and dead. So I am grateful for even the smallest of coincidences, the tiny droplet of fate that had given me those stings on that day, at that age.


I would like to talk about pain transference. In your body, nerves often run between parts of yourself you never thought would be connected. If something hurts in your elbow, it wouldn’t shock you to find that your fingers hurt as well, but if your elbow hurt and so did your lower spine? You’d be a little confused.
This is pain transference.
It’s a form of generalized pain; you can locate the pain, it’s just not coming from any one place. You can feel the pain in more than one part of your body, though there’s no reason for anything other than your elbow to ache. This is also your body’s way of protecting you from pain. It’s not that this pain is more manageable, but that it is easier to understand. Your elbow might be more hurt than the ache lets on, but you can’t tell, because your lower back is throbbing.
Now imagine your body as a hive of wasps. Imagine each of these wasps as a nerve inside of said hive-body. Imagine the queen as this hive-body’s brain. What is your body’s goal? To protect the brain. What is a hive’s goal? To protect the queen. Each wasp is born with an instinctual dedication to the queen. They must protect this individual at all costs. Your body, on the other hand, does everything it possibly can to protect the part of you that makes you so unbearably you.
Yellow jackets are social creatures. Each wasp has its own purpose in the hive, and the three different ranks within this hierarchy are the queen, the drones, and the workers. The queen (who is the only member of the colony equipped by evolution to survive the winter; every other wasp is dispensable) lays eggs and fertilizes them using stored ***** from the spermatheca. Her only purpose is to reproduce. Occasionally the queen will leave an egg unfertilized, and this egg will develop into a male drone whose only purpose is also reproduction. The female workers are arguably the most important part of the hive. They build and defend the nest.
Only female yellow jackets are capable of stinging, and wasps will only sting if their colony is disturbed. This fact is new and interesting to me. I remember thinking that it would make so much sense if the only wasps in the colony who could sting were the females. Females have a motherly, nurturing nature about them, but they are protective and willing to make sacrifices as well. Lo and behold.
The females are the nerves. They transfer the pain from the queen to themselves (and then, if disturbed, to the third-party individual who has disturbed them).
Psychics view pain transference as the transferring of pain between bodies rather than the transferring of pain between separate parts of the same body, but it works in a very similar way. Different types of energy vibrate at different frequencies; loving energy vibrates at a higher frequency than dark energy, therefore they transfer between people at different rates. Pain is simply dark energy that holds a fatalistic power over us.
According to psychics, energy can be transferred through the mind, the body, and the spirit, but pain is mostly transferred through physical touch. To transfer pain to another human being, you must touch them in a way that is not beneficial to their own or your spiritual growth.


I would like to talk about smallness. I was nine when I was stung by these yellow jackets. I was nine and the first time I’d ever been stung was at a friend’s birthday party at maybe the age of seven, behind the knee, and it’d swelled up so large I couldn’t bend my knee for two days. I knew the dangers of disturbing wasp nests; I’d watched my friends all through elementary school getting stung on the wooden playground on the premises. I, myself, stuck to swing-sets and splinters.
I was always so careful. I never went near trees if I saw a nest in its branches. My teachers had told me that I should stay away from the part of our playground made up of tires, because the hornets liked to nest in the rubber. I was terrified of being stung again after that first time because all the mud in the world didn’t seem to make a difference. The wasp’s venom, even after drying up pile after pile of soft, wet dirt, made my limb stiff and sore. I was always so careful; it seems appropriate that the one time I’d been careless, I’d been stung enough times to make up for all the times I had avoided wasps as if my life had depended on it. Maybe it had.
I was small enough when I was nine. If I had been stung at six, or three, I would have been in a lot more trouble. I would have been in a lot more pain. At nine, my stings required calamine lotion and mud for the venom, and ice baths for the swelling. At six, they might have required a trip to the hospital. At three, they would have been much more alarming, considering I had never been stung by a bee by that age.
I was careless. It was summer and I was old enough to wear denim shorts and I had kicked off my flip flops so I could feel the grass under my feet and I was careless and I was punished for it. Now I watch my cousins and my niece play outside and I have to hold my tongue, remember that I am not responsible, that I cannot prevent their being stung, their stings, no matter how badly I want to.
I would like to talk about fate. I would like to talk about how, if I hadn’t been running barefoot, I wouldn’t have gotten stung so badly. I would like to talk about how if my father had been around to tell me not to run barefoot, at least my feet would have been safe. How, if I hadn’t been too stubborn to listen to my stepmom, too, I probably would have had shoes on. How, regardless of all of these things, I probably would have been stung no matter what.
In a world where people are stung by hornets every day – where people are stung by as many as I was, at once – I would like to say that I know now that this experience is not as unique as I had previously thought it to be. I know more people than I thought I did whose trauma involves insects smaller than their pinky finger but together cover their whole body, and venom. I know people who, when I tell them I was stung by hundreds of yellow jackets at the age of nine, shrug and say nonchalantly, “Hey, me too.”
I would like to talk about smallness, and fate. I would like to talk about not only physical smallness, but the smallness one feels when they are in pain.
Belittled might be the word I am looking for. My pain wasn’t belittled, per se, but my pain belittled me.
My pain made me feel small. My pain made me feel small when I was stripping my clothes off on my front porch, cars racing by on the state highway that ran past my house. When I was running my fingers through my hair under the faucet in my kitchen sink because my sister was older and always got first dibs on the shower. As these wasps that hadn’t suffocated under my hair stung my fingers, too, until they were as swollen as my toes. My pain made me feel small when it made me pity myself.


I would like to talk about standing up for yourself as an act of causing pain.
Honeybees, when they sting, are defending themselves and their queen, but they don’t know that when they sting, it will become lodged underneath the skin of whomever they sting and it will pull them apart and they will die.
I imagine the first time a wasp stings to be a sort of power trip. Female wasps can – and will – sting repeatedly to protect the colony. I also imagine they don’t know that their relative the honeybee dies after it stings, but it must be strange for them, nonetheless.
Have you ever seen a video of a woman protecting herself and those she loves? She’s vicious. She won’t stop until the perpetrator has retreated.
When a woman stands up for herself, though, it’s as if she’s tearing herself in half.
A woman standing up for herself is a dangerous thing, both dangerous for her and for those around her. It is an act of bravery and defiance and saving grace all in one.
A few weeks ago, I overheard someone equate being female with being terminally ill, as if we have no place to go but down. As if we are dying creatures, on our last leg of life, with no will to fight for what we want.
As if the pain of the world is being transferred into us all at once.
I would like to argue that it is the exact opposite. There is nothing more alive and breathing than femaleness.I am inseparable from my femaleness. I am inseparable from the that leaks from me when I think of all of the times I have been harmed But I am not inseparable from the pain that I have caused others. I cannot forget that.


I like to imagine sometimes what my stings would have been like if I had gotten them ten years later, as well. I am much bigger. I am much stronger. I am much more capable of handling pain than my nine-year-old counterpart.
I wish I could have been the one to have to handle that pain. I wish my nine-year-old self had known better than to let her foot fall into a yellow jacket nest. I think it’s unfair that, at such an early age, I had to deal with something so terrifying and painful and traumatic. My extremities were swollen for over a week. I couldn’t write, I could close the zipper on my backpack, I couldn’t turn the pages of a book. I couldn’t go to school, and I couldn’t read in bed, so it might be enough to say that the week I was kept out of school to elevate my legs and let the swelling go down was the most boring week of my entire life.
Sometimes I look at my ankles, swollen from blood flow, from standing too long or from sitting too long or from doing anything except elevating them, and I’m reminded of this time when my ankles were much thinner and I watched them on the end of the couch, my toes pointing toward the ceiling. I remember how terrified my mom was. I imagine that phone call must have been harrowing for her – Hi, Michelle, Em’s been hurt. No, she’s fine. Just a few bee stings is all. – and for her to see me for the first time, red and splotchy and itching myself like mad must have been even more so.
I think about my father’s reaction, how I hadn’t been around to see it, but how he must have been heartbroken at knowing he wasn’t there to protect me, to prevent the bees from attacking me. I believe, however, that there was no protecting me, that there was no preventing these wasps from defending their home against me, an infiltrator. I had stepped inside of their burrow and was instantly seen as a threat. Anything I see as a threat to myself, I instantly want to rid myself of.
This is the way of the world: we see something, we determine it to be good or bad, and we either bring it into our lives or defend ourselves from it depending upon which it turns out to be. I happened to be the ultimate evil in these wasps’ lives. They were simply protecting their queen, without whom their hive would no longer exist. I was dark energy, vibrating in a way that spoke to them as threatening. I was transferring pain to them when my foot stepped into the hole, and they were transferring it back to me when they stung me. I transferred energy into the ground as my feet thumped against it. Water transferred energy into me as it helped me rinse wasps out of my hair.
From pain to protection to pity, back to pain. From bee stings to womanhood to sadness and back again. One shouldn’t be afraid to introduce the things they’ve lost to the things they’ve loved, or the things they love to the things they’re afraid of. And I am afraid of wasps. Petrified, even. The other day, driving in my car, I rolled the window down and in, immediately, flew a yellow jacket. I watched as it she flew past me and then around the back of my head. I heard her and was immediately transported back in time. I wondered what she was doing in my car, so far from her queen. I wondered what was in my car that she possibly could have wanted. But I knew that she wasn’t there to hurt me, because I hadn’t invaded her home. I hadn’t made an attack on her queen. I knew there was no sense in panicking, so I didn’t. I didn’t panic.
I am afraid of things even though they won’t **** me, but I have watched myself face these fears. I have stumbled onto a Ferris wheel and then walked confidently off. I have left candles lit without standing to check on them after every episode of The Office I watch. I have loved people I never thought I would, and I have seen the other side.

The lion had just lost his dear wife,
Madam lioness a couple of years ago,
She was in the prime of her life,
When she succumbed to deathly udder cancer,
Mr. Lion grieved with all energy of the bereaved beast
To make it worse, he was also terminally ill
Of the vicious lung cancer, boring his windpipes,
That when he respired sweet music came out,
Like classical xylophones of eyeless Mehrun Yurin,

His sons were away commanding respective territories
Each son a territory in the order of traditional monarchy,
No one was to cook for the sick lion, don’t mention washing,
Hence the sons hired the squirrel alias madam Caroline,
She cooked as she did all other chores in the palace,
She was good in a concocting a matchless soup
From white mushrooms and cured goat’s meet,

As Caroline cooked she also sampled by tasting for her perfection
This little by little tasting made her to increase the strength,
Her skin became smooth, her buttocks swell
Her tail became shorter and steady, but very clean,
Her skin very oily and comely, exuding no evil smell,
Her walking style purged to majestic fashion
Even the type of songs she sang
Were not peasant spirituals,
Mr. Hyena wondered and wondered;
Is the squirrel pregnant?

Only to discover she was not,
But she has a new job;
Of cooking for the sick king lion,
Hyena also heard from the public domain
That she often cooks, goat meat and mushrooms,
But the ram tail twice in week; Tuesday and Sunday,
Jealousy and bigotry, malice and prejudice ganged up at once
And gripped the hyena simultaneously,
And swore to himself that come anything;
Spells of sunshine or blizzards of snow,
He must and must; root out the squirrel
From the palace kitchen,

That bright morning he went to the palace,
Singing a Christian song in praise of Lazarus,
Who resurrected from the dead,
He entered the palace still singing,
He commanded every to stand, put off the laurels,
For he wants to pray for the sick,
He made long and noisy circumlocutions of a prayer,
With regular stamping of feet and amen,
Commanding the devil of cancer to leave,
The lungs of the king, the mighty lion.


He said final amen and all sat down
Two sons of the king, the young lions,
Were all in somber moods, their father was sick,

From the kitchen, the squirrel surfaced,
With goats meat on a metallic platter,
He served the sick lion first,
Then each of them present,
On the first taste of food,
Hyena lost control of nerves
His tail jumped out of the white trouser
That he was wearing that day,
He ate voraciously with a crazy appetite,
No such delicious food had ever crossed his way.

He cleared his food first as expected,
Then he kept mum like a stooge,
Only wagging his long tail
His long tongue hanging out
Flagging in avarice like leaves of banana,
When all others stopped eating,
Hyena began in form of a question,
To which the lion’s family listened
Indeed with kingly caution;
Am asking you the king,
Why is Madam Caroline the squirrel,
Eating your food everyday,
And you are dying of a treatable disease,
To which she has the medicine,
Why is she betraying you?
To such a simple death?

All the lions plus the sick one
Jumped to the squirrel with all horror,
For the squirrel to bring the cure
Or the be killed first be the lion dies,
She pleaded for a minute to bring the drug,
Hyena in full gear of happiness
As his friend chews misfortune,

She blamed her small body size to be the  barrier
To bringing the medicine for king lion,
But nonetheless medicine was available,
Lions roared tell us! Where is the medicine?
In a soft voice the squirrel said;
The only cure for this disease of the king,
Is a fresh liver of a male hyena!

The hyena was frozen with surprise,
Like any other foolish bigot,
He begged to leave as his time was over,
No answer came to his request,
Other than abysmal darkness
Of violent death gulfing his body,
King lion drunk Hyena’s blood
In addition to the liver
On the squirrel’s instructions,
The lion became well
And began walking strong,
Out of this joy
King lion  promoted the squirrel
To be a minister of health
In the kings palace.

The **** kids gaol



Once upon a time there was this kid named Brian Mandler who was 14 years

Of age and was sort of obsessed with figuring out a way to catch and reform

Really dangerous criminals.   When he explained how he’ll do it to his family,

They told him that they don’t want to hear it and they all leave the room and

Brian went to his room and got onto his computer and started to track

Down some dangerous criminals and as well as that he will watch Australia’s

Most wanted and unsolved mysteries to make sure he is up to date with the

Goings on and when he catches them he will give them a pill which puts

Them to sleep and it makes them dream that they are on TV and Brian

Can watch it to keep him informed on their goings on.

When he saw the first criminal who was named David Perton Brown who

Was a real evil child snatcher who loves to pray on vonerable kids who

Haven’t got good lives as well as robbing them  and leaving them to die

and then he’ll do about 180 on the freeway trying to **** families

On their way to their holiday destination and quite often he succeeded but

This time Brian got onto his computer and said that he wants to get David

And put him on a early morning childrens show called the Saturday Morning

Cartoon hour where he’ll meet people left, right and centre and most of those

People will be children and he’ll have guests who will give him heaps for the

Crimes that he did and also he’ll have a visit from the police every 4 Saturdays

To really check up on him but he had to make the kids unaware by posing to

Make sure that kid’s say no to drugs and lifts with strangers and that meant

That the host could try something outside.

As well as that Brian put him on a nightly music show because some of his

Victims are now teenagers who like music and Brian made him the sort of

Host that will constantly goof up a lot.  The program was called The Talent

Quest and he’ll be teamed up with 2 police officers who are making sure there

Is no funny stuff going on.

Brian planned to keep him in his little gaol for a long time till he starts to settle

Down a bit.

The next criminal is Joshua Tartwright who is a vicious modern day pirate who

Takes adults over 40 and holds them captive in his little boat and he has been

Doing this for about 12 years and Brian got onto his computer and told it

That he wants Joshua to on the pirates of the Carribean TV series and keep him there till he realises that he is no match for those pirates

And he doesn’t feel like kidnapping them anymore but this was hard to get him

To take the drug and Brian had to get to rough police officers to hold him down

And then force feed him till he his knocked completely out and then his life as

A television star started.   Joshua was excited about being on a pirate show and

He wanted to email all his friends but he was stuck in another world and also

He was the one the pirates wouldn’t leave alone and he felt weird and wanted

The drug to wear off but we all know that when it wears off it’s dinner time.

As he started the pirate show it was hard for him to be his own man because he

Was kidnapped straight away it was hard for him to understand what this

Dream meant and was trying to tell Brian that he wants his blood.

Brian jumped on the computer and said how about we keep him captive there

For 2 hours and then it would be dinner time and h’ll enjoy that.

Meanwhile Brian wasn’t scared one little bit and watched the television to

Catch another criminal and it was Mark Dellar who tried to make John the

Baptist (the religious fellow) look evil by coming into the Christian church and

Preaching that John the Baptist was evil and every thing that he did

John the Baptist was telling him to do it and the Christians were very

Upset and screamed so loudly as Mark stole money from everyone in

There and Brian got onto his computer and said that he wants to put

Mark in his gaol and make him a religious guru to be put onto Television

At 5 am every weekday morning as well as listen to good people’s

Prayer requests and he must help them as well.   The first request was a

Man who is terminally ill and there is no way he will get out of it and

This man yelled at him in the prayer request that he sent and Mark

Tried to tell him that he has nothing to worry about because God

Is on your side and Brian got onto his computer and made the walls

Cave in and knocked Mark out and the man just ran away saying

We won the first battle and Mark woke up and he had a cup of coffee

And a biscuit waiting for him and he was relieved but there were more

Strange cases in his dream and Brian is there to reform him.

Brian thought it was a good job he gave him as a Television preacher helping people get better than making people feel Worse which what he was doing..

Brian watched more of Australia’s most wanted and saw a group of

Violent and dangerous armed robbers who were knocking over 7

Eleven stores and rich people’s houses as well as stopping the

Families from going out and having fun and Brian had his little

Plan to get them in his little gaol.     He wanted to play them at their

Own game by pretending he was a rich powerful man because

He had more dangerous things than any robber like his booster

Shot in which Brian wanted then to be cops in televisions cop

Drama ‘cop department” in which they deal with dangerous criminals

Like them each day and Brian thought that they will reform if they

Knew the kind of trauma they were putting their victims through and Brian

Keeps them there forever if they don’t reform even if it eventually kills

Them so the crooks can’t escape because Brian is too powerful for

Any of them.

Brian sat their laughing at the armed robbers playing cops and at

One moment they were locked in a security vault which had a

Bomb in it which is set to explode in 20 minutes and Brian went

On the computer and said let the bomb go off and then they will

Be put back in their beds and we will have lunch for them before

We torture them some more and then Brian sat down and said

What a job well done but there are still heaps of dangerous criminals

He needs to catch yet

Brian turned on America’s most wanted and there was the Texan ******

Who preys upon women in their 20s by luring them into his panel van

And keeping them ******* in his back shed till they are killed and Brian

Said that he wants to catch the Texan ****** and start him on stint on

General hospital where he will play a young woman who is the target

Of a never ending ****.

The police took the drug off Brian and went straight to the Texan rapists

House to give him the drug and at first he wondered why he needed to

Take these drugs because he wasn’t mental he said and there is nothing

Wrong with him and he refused to take them and tried to escape and

Then Brian got onto his computer to make him too slow to get away and

Brian was happy to get him onto General hospital and make the old ladies

Very happy.

When he first fell asleep there was a ****** at the end of his bed and wanted

To get within his sheets and really let him have it and the Texan ****** was

Screaming so loud stuff like” Let me go I’m a man not a woman but this

****** just heard the innocent lady scream and there was no way that he

Was to escape and Brian was laughing like crazy at the Texan rapists bad ordeal

And went onto the computer and said I want him to be attacked every day

To understand what it was like for his victims and they started to employ

People to play the rapists straight away and Brian was happy to see that this

Plan of his is working very well.

Brian was the envy of all his friends but noone apart from his best friend

Thomas knew about it because of the closeness of their friendship,

Brian’s secret was safe with him.

Brian and Thomas went to the park to have a drink under the tree

Together and talked about their lives and Brian isn’t aloud to talk about

His gaol life just in case anyone was around and at the moment noone

Could suspect anything.

After Brian had a break he watched more of Australia’s most wanted and

Saw there was a man wanted for bank fraud who is on the run in Brisbane

And Brian wanted to track him down and give him the drug that puts

Him in his little gaol where Brian will put him on as victim of fraud who

Was on Brian’s fake edition of 60 minutes until he realises that what

He did is wrong and that he will never do it again and when the police

Arrived at his house to give him Brian’s magical reforming drug he put

Up a fight and started to flee away on foot down the street that he lives

In with some police following him and others contacting Brian to use his

Powers to make him slower and catch him and give the drug to him and

Put the fraud man who doesn’t tell people his name into his little gaol and

When they did Brian was so happy of all the crooks he caught without

A worry in the world , Brian watched the episode of 60 minutes and

Really enjoyed him suffering because of all the people he made suffer

He needs a taste of his own medicine.

They asked him what is it like to be a victim of fraud and do you think you will

Ever see that kind of money again and he told them that he wants the money he

Stole so he could go to the Bahamas and cruise around looking for chicks and

Brian went straight to the computer and said keep ribbing him because it’s fun to

Make this guy suffer because what he did was terrible so rib something fierce.

Brian watched this music show and He was happy that the young people who were at the music festival were

Really letting him have it and this really entertained Brian a lot and

Then he switched it over to the Talent quest where our criminal was being

Told he was talentless and was upset with the whole outcome of it all, he

Threatened to jump off the top building and be dead forever and Brian

Went onto the computer and said that there is no way that he will die if he

Jumps off the roof to the ground, in fact he will just wake up and a guard will

Be there to keep an eye on him and now he was aware of the fact that noone

Could escape from Brian’s little gaol.

The Saturday morning cartoon show went very well with the child snatcher

Being teased by 2 11 year old girls and one 7 year old boy  and he nearly lost it and Brian was so happy that they were teasing him.  Then he told the kids that

He will **** them all and Brian went onto the computer and said don’t try any

Funny stuff because there is no escape for you now fella,and then he put

one of the cartoons which was our modern day pirate who was being tortured by Blackbeard and Brian was happy because this man needed to know why he is

in this little gaol of Brian’s, and then he went onto his computer and said to

Blackbeard too never let him get free because what he was doing to these

Adults was a very bad thing and then he went back to his chair and laughed at

Blackbeard the pirate torturing this modern day pirate like a lamb to the

Slaughter.

Blackbeard also made to walk the plank and Threatened to cut his head off

Agreed that it could be fun to see him suffer.   Like what it was like for him

In the end of his life and the pirate said “please don’t **** me please don’t ****

Me I am a modern pirate and in days to come pirates have a lot of vegeance

Than in these times” and Brian went to the computer and told them to

Chop his head off once and then keep trying to do it so he could suffer

And that would be heaps of fun Brian thought.

Brian turned it over to general hospital where his Texan ****** was screaming

In the back boot of a car and noone could hear him except for Brian who was

Watching him and he got up and wrote on the computer “He wants them to

Feed his body to the sharks at 11.59 am so he could be ready for lunch.

He switched the TV over to the cop show where our armed robbers thought they are in the perfect job because there were no crimes around so they just sat down

And relaxed and Brian wasn’t happy and went to this computer and told

Everybody to put on a few situations to make them really suffer like they

Did to the police on Earth and then suddenly there was a call on the 000

Saying there was a mother and her 13 year old son locked in their panic

Room while the robbers were having a field day robbing the place

and the cops went straight there only to find out that this was their first

test, because when the reached them the crooks turned on them and

left the mother and 13 year old son in the panic room and Brian went

to his computer and said I want these so-called policeman to try to save the

mother and son instead of trying to **** the police and if they don’t they will

flunk the test.  So one of the policemen went into the house and tried to

save the mother and son while the other two were having a gunfight and the

policeman who was in the house saving the victims couldn’t get the door

opened and screamed for his mates to help him but they were too busy

having a gunfight in the front lawn with the neighbours scared for each others

safety, and Brian went to his computer and said give these ****** gunfighters

a wake up pill because they don’t seem to realise what is really important

here and that is saving the victims and not killing the cops like cowboys

and Indians you ****** fools.

While all the caught prisoners eating their meals Brian watched Australia’s most

Wanted to try to catch some more crooks and they told him about the

Charnwood child snatcher who lived in “as the name suggests” Charnwood

And he took street kids off the streets and he would tell them that he has the

Perfect home for them and as a matter of fact he would tie the kids up

And when they die of starvation or dehydration he would take them out

To the cow paddock and let the cows pick at them and When Brian heard

The details he got straight up to his computer and said that he wants to

Put the Charnwood child snatcher on a new show called Sugary who is

A very witty and smart seal who is befriended by this 8 year old boy who

Is the Charnwood child snatcher because Brian wanted to teach him

Not to destroy the family’s lives, like he did when he kidnapped their

Children from them.

Brian sat down and watched the first episode and they had this evil

Genous who wanted to take the seal and sell him for seal meat and

The boy was so determined to stop this crook he would stay out and

Guard Sugary all night and hours and hours went by and noone turned

Up and the boy was determined not to leave because Sugary was his

Favourite pet.

When the crooks got there the boy jumped up and said” If you want

Sugary you have to take me as well” and the men said “Whatever”

And shoved the kid in a bag with the attempt the **** him and then

**** Sugary soon after and Brian got up to his computer, don’t let them

Be killed, just keep him ******* till the end when the parents come to save

Them and make sure that sugary is safe as well.

Then Brian sat down and saw The father rescue the boy and Sugary from

This evil genious and the evil genious said I will get you next time boy

Next time heh heh heh and then you won’t escape from that.

The Charnwood child snatcher woke up and found himself locked in a room

And he looked outside and a lady has a cup of coffee for him and he took

The coffee and thanked the lady and sat down until it was time to take his

Reforming pill.

Brian was happy because the Charnwood child snatcher was forced to learn

The perfect family bond between parents and children.

About 5 hours later than that Brian sat down and watched the 6 o clock news

And they informed everybody with Christmas approaching there was man

Who escaped from prison who is a good santa claus impersonator and every

Christmas he would go to Santa School and pass the test and then he’ll be

Assigned to working in one of the shopping malls and that doesn’t sound

Like such a crime and Brian was thinking this is a happy story until he heard

The next bit where he will get the kids to put their name and address so he

Knows where to go on Christmas eve and then he studies when the kids

Will be alone in the house and comes to their homes

The one I love's no Achilles
No massive strength or bravery,
No leader of the cavalry,
yet he leaves me searching, endlessly
for a  single drop of nepenthe
to cure my heart of this disease
called love.

I am no Aphrodite.
But still I hope that he can see
The good I know's inside of me.
And then maybe he and I can be
A flawed Megara and Hercules
And somehow thrive, terminally,
in love.

Just because she's thin it...
Doesn't mean she has nothing to eat.
Doesn't mean she's anorexic.
Doesn't mean she's terminally ill.
She has fast metabolism, that's why.
And you have no right...
to judge her, just because you're normal
to make her feel like she's different
because your body's great.
You made her feel worthless,
By calling her, "flat"
       "skeleton"
                         "malnourished"
Thanks to you and your
filthy attitude, bodyshamer.

we soldier on in the endless march of our quietude sprawling the width of our last fake smile.
staring at a focal point so pointless you hardly explode without vanishing.
but never write letters. you tumble into tomorrow's womb like an orphan of yourself.
terminally accidental on purpose
unfathomable.

there is a legend that says if you fold a thousand paper cranes and make a wish, it will come true.

I could fold ten thousand paper cranes and make ten tiny wishes and not one of them could cure you

I see your bones, your sunken eyes, your thinning hair

and it makes me so ******* sick that I have my health, my happiness and my life ahead of me.

you're terminally ill and I'm terminally guilty.

so although there is no hope

I will fold paper cranes and make paper wishes

because sometimes we all need something to hold onto

All are limitory, but each has her own
nuance of damage. The elite can dress and decent themselves,
are ambulant with a single stick, adroit
to read a book all through, or play the slow movements of
easy sonatas. (Yet, perhaps their very
carnal freedom is their spirit's bane: intelligent
of what has happened and why, they are obnoxious
to a glum beyond tears.) Then come those on wheels, the average
majority, who endure T.V. and, led by
lenient therapists, do community-singing, then
the loners, muttering in Limbo, and last
the terminally incompetent, as improvident,
unspeakable, impeccable as the plants
they parody. (Plants may sweat profusely but never
sully themselves.) One tie, though, unites them: all
appeared when the world, though much was awry there, was more
spacious, more comely to look at, it's Old Ones
with an audience and secular station. Then a child,
in dismay with Mamma, could refuge with Gran
to be revalued and told a story. As of now,
we all know what to expect, but their generation
is the first to fade like this, not at home but assigned
to a numbered frequent ward, stowed out of conscience
as unpopular luggage.
As I ride the subway
to spend half-an-hour with one, I revisage
who she was in the pomp and sumpture of her hey-day,
when week-end visits were a presumptive joy,
not a good work. Am I cold to wish for a speedy
painless dormition, pray, as I know she prays,
that God or Nature will abrupt her earthly function?

Terminally upset,

terminally emotional.

Plagued with multiple personalities,

Plagued with a desire to maintain

my last clutches of scarce sanity.



Brushes with a simple reclusive state,

Slowly but surely morph into

brushes with a razorblade.

Trying to escape myself,

Trying to find a safe haven.



Breaking out of my façade,

Breaking out of the asylum.

Screaming loud, with everything left in me,

Screaming loud, but I know

No one can hear me.



Crying out for her,

Crying out for help.

Falling out of my sorrows,

Falling out of tomorrow.



The world growing increasingly violent,

The world growing eerily silent.

Seeing the cruelness in my last breaths,

Seeing the shards of pain in the shattered mirror.



Suddenly, a pale hand zips the body bag that holds me,

Suddenly, my vision fades to white.

Gently, the music of mourning begins to play,

Gently, my coffin in lowered into the ground.

Family is that  familiar word for the go-getters, the thoroughbreds of the families, those nearest and dearest applaud the strong to thrive, and yet a painful  forgotten word, for the lost generation,  ignored and despised,special and different, terminally unique, were only as strong as our weakest link lost black sheep and shepherds sanity on the brink of exposing the lies, waiting for the train that will never come to the station;
In time...

Forget
About
ME
I
LOVE
You

Screaming "Do I even exist? ******* LOVE ME!"As he tightens his headlock, begging to be loved, from a desperate rage of rejection.

"But why won't you love me the way that you don't? I'm a lovable hopeless drunk loser ,who hasn't washed in months, I'll be the prodigal son  if you want ,coming home and we can sit at the table for lunch ...wishful thinking! If only! you could love me unconditionally ,and not just on a hunch!
If  you want me, Just a touch of acknowledgement will do! I'll give you my soul on my sleeve, just some crumbs from your lofty plinth, to my slum will suffice!
I'm so ******* lost in the dark of the night, I forgot I was looking for love  and soulmates at first sight!"

Screaming to be acknowledged from the four corners of the globe since time began, everybody knows there's a pink elephant in the room being ignored, like the emperors new clothes.  Couples desperate to procreate, using frozen embryos. Those still remembered ,who died ages ago,
Forget me not , everyone wants to be known,Everyone misses someone, and children yearn to be grown. Don't forget all those lost childhoods, Once my heart was my home, a long long; long time ago!The machine advertises  the have's and the have not's ...all those special qualities, some of us just don't got.... were what's  lacking in our family units cost... and immediate vicinities. Thank God for the internet, hounding us  to forget our inherent need to be loved and belong, feeding us with toxic seeds of disconnected, anti-life and discombobulated lifelong wrongs, from  a plethora of sources transmitting The current Perfect archetypal family systems ,propagated  through the myriad of deadman tv shows, and films ,promoting an unblemished, should be family values and traditions, most of us know we will never live to experience. Force feeding us with a yearning of an unachievable contentment in our innocence , hoping in our wildest dreams ,we try to ignore the facts displayed in the constant narrative dictated through the mean instrument of mental emotional and spiritual propaganda...**** your tv licenceS! and smash the ******* thing into public artistic scenes!, smash them into smithereens!don't be ambivalent! No one wants to sit down on the fence as a family and watch on the screen the colour purple riddled with ****** and seriously toxic themes for participants.

Forgotten and ignored are the origins of the word family... famula-serving woman or famulante-servant or even familiarcus -house hold slave...So it should come as no surprise that the human race has been plagued and fractured with slavery throughout our brief brutal AGE.From a creative perspective I can understand the widespread epidemic curse in the hearts and minds of manhate and mankind,of the feeling that we do not belong to our very own families our communities and the societies structured to evoke the black sheep syndrome .It is this lack of feeling apart of, and that we do not exist , that has inspired an overwhelming need for us to persist and create our own families,tribes,gangs,communities, groups and fellowships. From the tower of babel, its as if  we have  been programmed to automatically divided, segregate and become as alien as possible to each other sides.Separating cultures with borders and religion,class and access all areas for members only. Blood is running through my body just like yours, and I done a big massive **** this morning! Do you identify? Nothing like a good ****!
This has become one of the defining factors of the human experience our evolutionary process and diversity.Not our **** similarities! Yet it is these differences that have caused over a billion to be killed! Thats a lot of hate and anger,pain and suffering ...And I'm adding up everyone whos ever been killed because of there differences...Just imagine?..Its probably a lot more! why can't we just get along? and stop all the wars? Everybody wants to be right, Everybody yearns to be wanted ,needed and loved,to feel they exist and that they belong.But with a record number of divorces,broken families and runaways in a culture spiraling further and further away from the original family structures intention, where do we go from here?What is our inheritance? Why do we always fight over money? Why not just care to dare to share?

I find in this day and age, we the broken human family, searching for all these possibilities of experiencing the human experience in the wrong social utilities . Such as gang warfare,militia, online gaming and the plethora of virtual communities available from facebook and myspace to mental health and suicide forums, social toxic rearing, which mimic a sense of divergence,preference, belonging and being apart of something other than feeling so alone! Which in reality we are!  Deepening our deepest wounds the one thing that we yearn for more than anything on the face of the earth is to feel connected,wanted ,needed and loved, everything a family is supposed to provide, not ruin and despise.

The most horrific emotions, I have ever felt was the rejection and abandonment by my mother, when I was just a special wild child, the terror and dread of not being wanted was horrific, and created a deeply destructive state which infected my core, and has grown into a great toxic spiritual tumor 30 years later. I fear I will never get over it! With my head in the sand, so many relevant individual grains just swept under the carpet like a hidden beach, and so I search for the love I was denied in a thousand ways and a million times I seek. From hunting for my mothers love in another woman or a man. I can't even begin to explain the pain my father inflicted upon me. lest I curl into a ball and die right now! Its as if he hated me more than words ,and yet I loved him so much. Left me seeking comfort in despair in the pit in the belly of the beast, through alcoholism and addiction of every kind! none of these methods was sufficient in filling the void inside,The hole in my soul can't breathe,for all to see, especially me ,can't hide but only these things expanded it , creating a deeper hunger and leaving me more broken and empty. My desperation to remain part of the family was displayed in my familiar slave like demeanour(desperate to please my mother) by cleaning the whole house  from top to bottom with a toothbrush. I would lose myself in the neverending chores, it was never a bore, as long as mother didn't let me go, but it was never enough, and it seems as if I was doomed to be a cast out! on my own, exposed to the harsh reality of being alone my worst nightmare coming true... me dying from loneliness! They say its true! and I can understand now how that could be possible ....

There are so many different types of families, and ways for us to feel as if we are connected to a greater community, to feel as if we fit in. But often children grow without a father figure to balance ,protect and nurture them ,lead them! But what if there father is a drunken ,violent,gambling ,deranged bully? what then? Surely they would be better off without such a toxic head of the family, infecting his sons and daughters with the sins of the father. Who of us is cursed with being the blacksheep of the family ? having to toil for the rest of our days in the vastness of our existence, primarily alone ,we search in vain for surrogate mothers and sisters and fathers and brothers. But we find them not, because substitution will never suffice in order for us to truly count and heal within and feel alive ! We must heal this broken bridge that has crippled us to the core in our very short miserable lives.

Its up to us to give love where we have been denied. Invite the broken souls inside, shelter them from the  bitter cold, Just to see another friendly face can mean so much! why is life so tough?, leave us like Lazarus risen from the grave,or Adam and Eve and able and cain to the prodigal son, we have always suffered when we were on our own and alone, I know you prefer your own company, but we were born to surpass ourselves and continue to co-exist beyond our own morality...Ub3

The oddly abrupt crack; I turned to look,
Seeing a pigeon squirm in the driveway,
Crippled somewhat; terminally injured.

Unsure, I stared. Death -- for the first time -- seemed
Welcome; the better choice. Quickness is key
In difficult decisions. Scared, I gave

Chance control, putting the bird in the street.
A car passed, killing it. This conclusion
Appeared obvious, even at fourteen.

Maybe accepting this final release
Helps us help others pass away in ease.

You are witnessing a prodigious talent and promise, and to a lesser extent but still to the degree whereby it should keep you awake at night writhing in cold sweats, your life, slip agonisingly through your open and clammy palms. Promise means so little if not actualised. You have been granted chance after warning after fortuitous escape yet have blithely spurned every omen and will one day fall, swiftly and perhaps terminally. You are almost certainly depressed. You say you love your girlfriend, and you mean it wholeheartedly when you do, but you worry that the relationship perpetuates as without her there would be no reason to rise with the sun. Even if the relationship is  unstable, and at times verging on the unhealthy, you believe you love her but are too great a coward to consider decisive action if that belief is to reside or subside. Your friends range from kind and honest yet deeply flawed to somehow toeing an inextricably thin line between dependability and duplicitousness. Conversations with a certain few of your friends necessitate decrying every undercooked ethos you've every conned yourself into believing you hold (you could well be the most hypocritical liberal to walk the earth, for you are innately and irrepressibly selfish) yet you still nod placidly as your conscience squirms. Grotesquely, like a beaten spouse, you crave the gaze of those who have treated you with the most insulting derision, but are too proud (of what?) and, a running theme, too cowardly, to stoop to a simple detante. You must change, for it pains you on a most base level to have to accept the feeble, whimpering, simpering spectre you have become. You must be bold, brave, unashamed in your convictions, anything but pursed and silent lips. You have a voice, and you must now speak loud enough for them to hear, for that which has become blunted must be whetted, sharpened, readied for battle to be unsheathed at an utterance. Heed the signs and change, for our sake. You, a milksop who attentively notes the sophistry of courage, you can still be brave, and you must be.

For one day you will be swelled with a courage and fortitude to fill your sails taut, enough to leave this place, forget these people and bear you away.

You were diagnosed with Leukemia and sadly, you didn't survive.
If you hadn't died 111 months ago, today you would've turned 75.
You were born on October the 18th of 1947.
But 111 months ago, you went to Heaven.
Your hair grew back after chemotherapy made it fall out.
When you were told you would die, there was no doubt.
It must have been terrifying when you learned that you were terminally ill.
You had to battle cancer and it was not easy to go through such an ordeal.
Today would've been your 75th birthday.
But 111 months ago, you were taken away.

i wish happiness was a given
but it's not a universal gift
you aren't born and given a lifetime of happiness
you have to work for it, fight for it
you can be sad, with no effort at all
you only have to wake up

i wish i was happy
all the time
i have my moments where i wish i could just take a picture of all of these moments
maybe i'll start too
so whenever i'm sad
i can relive happy times
like when i get to drink tea and read
or it rains at night

i remember when i was four
i had an uncle
a best friend really
who looked happy
he wore a mask every **** time he saw me
maybe that's why i do it
every **** day
but when he came, once a day
in the evening, when the stars would start to come out
he always brought his partner, "map"
i just thought he was my second uncle
like my uncle kevin's wife was my aunt
but one night he didn't come
the next day i found out he died
years later i would find out he swallowed a bottle of advil and just waited
i thought it was because of me
but no
he was terminally un-happy
so i wish i had pictures of happy times, i could show him
could of showed him

i wish i had pictures i could show myself
i wish i could be terminally happy
but i guess being un-happy runs in the family

dear whoever-made-the-world,
please make happiness a gift that never fades
is never like a shooting star that barely catches our eye
but when it does, it's already gone
dear, a girl who might die un-happy

After My Little Black Dog Died of Melanoma.
After the Lumps on Her Small Brittle Body Slowly
Burned to a Pile of Ash in the Vet’s Office.  After My Step-Father
Drove in His Ostentatious Truck to Pick Up Her Remains.  After I Cried
in My Dorm Room and Tried Not to Wake My Roommate.  
Realization that My Loss Does Not Make Me Different.  There Are
Graveyards That Span For Miles and They Are Filled With More
Dead Bodies Than I Have Ever Seen.  There Are Hundreds of
Thousands of Children in the Foster Care System That Have
Never Met Their Parents or Maybe They Did and it Just Didn’t Work Out.
Kids Who Might Have Lived With Their Terminally Ill Parent(s) For Years
Not Just Days.  Kids Who Never Sat in the Opened Up Trunk of Their
Mother’s Black Nissan Pathfinder at the Drive-In Movies.  Kids Who Lived Too Far From Their Too Old Grandparents or Who Lived Too Far From Their Too Dead Grandparents.  Kids Who Were Never Told Not to Throw Snowballs Because There Might be Big Chunks of Ice in Them.  Kids Who
Never Had a Childhood Dog to Cry Over.  Kids Who
Don’t Like to Read Because They Were Never Read
Bedtime Stories When They Were Younger.  Kids Whose
Mothers Never Called Them Tweetie or Pumpkin or Honey or ***.  
Kids That Were Not Told to Just Go to the Bathroom When
Their Tummies Hurt Instead of the Health Room.  Kids Who Never
Listened to the Spice Girls’ Album Spice World on Cassette on the
Way to the Store.  Kids Who Never Got a Peach Drink Out of a Vending Machine at the Pick’N’Save on 27th  Street and Still Don’t Know
Exactly What 50¢ Peach Drink Their Mother Bought For Them.  
There Are Thousands of Dogs Euthanized Each Day Because of
How Sick They Are or Because They Were at a Shelter For Far Too Long
or Because They Are a Pitbull or a Rottweiler or Some Other
Irrationally Feared and Disliked Dog Breed.  We Didn’t Euthanize My
Stage-Four-Cancer-Stricken Dog or Even Get Her Treatment Beyond
Pain Medicine Because We Were Selfish.  We Do a Lot of Things Because
We Are Selfish.  We Waited Five Days to Pull the Plug on My Vegetable
Mother Because We Were Waiting For a Miracle That We Knew Would
Never Happen Because She Stopped Breathing the Moment the
Aneurysm Burst.  My Sister is Getting Married in June and My
Grandfather is Going to Walk Her Down the Aisle in My Mother’s
Place.  My Grandparents Had to Move In With My Sister After My
Grandmother Fell Down Too Many Times and Didn’t Take Her Health
Problems Serious Enough.  There Are Repercussions For Thinking
You Are Safe When You Are Really Not.

It started with the high levels of uncertainty
Followed by the flu of broken trust
then the cough exploited emotions
Next came the fatigue of betrayal
She was sick more sick than she had ever been before
My words and actions were the antidote to this sickness.
The prescription.
But instead ,she kept on swallowing the poison her lover fed her.
When the poison had kicked ,the "lover" was out of sight
She laid in bed terminally sick
The next poison her way death

time is a healer
but alas I've always been
terminally ill

Terminally ill,
infected with lust
curiosity and nerves.
Spreading like a virus,
your words crawl deep
into my veins.
Tongue numb,
lungs struggle
in the midst of this plague.

Embedded in my marrow,
festering in my throat
enclosed by bones,
guarded by ribs

The ache won’t leave, and I’m starting to wonder,
if my chest cavity is better off empty.

i miss the way
coffee used to taste

i used to take the dregs
at the end of the morning
*** and pour them into a
steel tumbler

mix in handfuls of
refined white sugar
to fight the bitter
flavor i had not yet
learned to accept

then it went into a large
glass receptacle with
terminally stained
interior corners

mixed with milk until
pale and creamy
left to sit in the fridge
for a week

drunk from shimmering
crystalline glasses at
any hour of day or night
because consequences
didn't matter to me

my summer coffee tastes
different now
not so watered down
and drunk early
from plastic cups
through straws that crack

just because
it's there, not
because i took
the time to make it

and i miss something a lot deeper
than the way my coffee used to taste
but i cannot for the life of me
remember what it is

Dear those who have been given that message,
From a doctor or from your lover who was told by a nurse.
I am so sorry that you have to end.
I am envious though, that you have a time frame;
I am scared of living and not knowing when I will die.
Will they find a lump in my lung,
Or me as the lump on the side of the road?
I fear not knowing that this breath, or the next is my last,
And though I am jealous that you know this,
I am so **** sorry that you do.

Once I broke my left foots ankle
snapped the tendons from the inside bone
Now I wear the burden shackle
life dampened, imprisoned by this supportless zone
The things I used to do cannot be done today
When I jump or run with unattention
the earth moves and I become the fallen one
Near the wheels of zero gravity
is the only likely remedy
Straps to boots super stiff
a way to ride my lifes riff
Happyness found in action
soft social atraction
from genuine interactions

Im happy that I can walk still
and that Im not terminally ill

am I clinically depressed
or am I just crazy

chemically imbalanced
motivationally challenged
or am I just lazy

attention deficit disorder
hyperactive distracted
interactive media addiction

progressive techno optimist
idealistic unrealistic
future obsessive affliction

am I terminally indecisive
or am I just manic

in need of professional help
to just get over myself
or should I just panic

am I clinically depressed
or am I just crazy

Would you rather the majestic pure white polar bear had a home in this world or that Paul Ryan took a slow, slow boat
to China & then turned around & came back, & then again,
& again?

... the humble Praying Mantis was able to bask in the sunshine
on a leaf of its choosing or that Trump was locked away for
70 years in a dank & dismal people's cell?

... all the bees, & all the dainty flying creatures could buzz here & there as was their want or that Mitch 'Gruesome' McConnell was marooned forever on a distant deserted isle?

... the startling life-form that is coral could take its own sweet time covering rocks & outcrops & undersea crags or that Mike Pence quite suddenly & terminally lost his ability to function in any way whatsoever?

... the soon-to-be starved nomadic people, the soon-to-be flooded
coastal peoples & the soon-to-be parched farmers of India were to be given direct financial & physical assistance by expropriated & toiling Masters of Industry & sundry media lackeys?

... that the delicate flowers, the tall & mighty trees, the vital green, green grass could just a go on going on, & anyone, anyone at all who ticked that box declaring Climate Change a hoax be pitilessly overseen constructing vital networks of deep, deep canals, oh for the remainder of their natural life?

... Would you rather one less Republican politician or one less soaring & majestic wind-tumbling vulture?

... Would you rather ...

Stares down the worst nightmare
Frustrates your favorite reality show
Cannot be contained by a wall
Is a blend of church and state
Contains 50 years of Star Trek
Drives on the right side of the road
Rarely says “Hold on, slow down!”
Is no longer gender-specific
Sometimes prays en español
Allows girls to play football
Can be painted, sung or rhymed
Was born in the days of Hamilton
Celebrates the strong and the weak
Exists as a circle inside a triangle
Hears a whisper in the dark
Often survives the winter alone
Recycles its creation with glee
Worships a blue-eyed God or none
Wrestles its problems in private
Respects its gray-haired flag
Avoids front page truth
Imagines a rainbow during a storm
Invites a homeless woman to dinner
Permits free speech as protest
Welcomes immigrants from Syria
May be terminally happy
Calls the zoo a favorite place
Hums the sound of crickets at night
Put the words in Whitman’s mouth

© Lewis Bosworth, 2016

When life's going well and our health is good,
We've got the drive and means to go far,
And we seem to have the world by the tail,
Do we appreciate how lucky we are?
 
My thoughts are on a particular person:
Brittany Maynard--a daughter, a wife--
Young, vivacious, compassionate, caring,
Full of dreams, at the prime of her life,
 
Until she found she had brain cancer--
Glioblastoma--an aggressive assault--
Which turned Brittany's life upside down
And brought her dreams to a sudden halt.
 
Given six more months to live,
She pondered her options and moved to a state
Where she could decide to die with dignity
Before it ended up being too late.
 
Terminally ill Oregon residents
Who are mentally competent can make use
Of the Death with Dignity Act of Oregon.
Established safeguards prevent its abuse.
 
Verbal, cognitive, and motor loss,
Possible morphine-resistant pain,
Major changes in personality,
Paralyzing seizures--hard to contain--
 
Were what Brittany had to look forward to.
Such an existence, so grim and so bleak,
Was not what she wanted her family to experience:
Her constant suffering, week after week.
 
In her last months, Brittany had traveled.
She'd shared her feelings; for example, she'd say
It's important to do what's important to us.
In other words, we should seize the day.
 
To her family in November 2014
Brittany said her final good-byes
And peacefully went on the final journey--
The one that transcends both the earth and the skies.
 
I wouldn't wait around for a miracle
If I had to deal with what Brittany went through:
Inoperable brain cancer!
I'd hightail it to Oregon, too.

- by Bob B

I am the ghost in the machine
You raise the curtain and what Tim Burton told you would be there is
I will feast on your Innards and cast without regard to your suicidal aunt
a hand gun and tell her to have fun
I am the devil and it's not evil I seek it's retribution.
Join my clan; you don't still believe you're part of some godly plan!
Ahahahahah! You're so cute when you’re terrified. Go on try and run, you'll never hide.
but behind your eyes I smell desperation.
And any chance at rehabilitation would be *******
And yet you have hope behind those eyes. Your mind racing with possibilities that I might be lovable and changeable.
But I’m the devil and hell is my navel
I control the universe.
Your dog got hit by a car.
Blame me,
He looks better as tar
he makes a great floor mat. Should have trained him in hand to paw combat.
Your mum is terminally Ill
Send me the bill.
You best friend dies, hate to say it but did he even try.
I control and contort; I do not send hope or
Comfort. I am the devil. They say third times the charm
Maybe this Time you'll remember I'm here only to do harm.
I'm the ghost in the machine.
But I'm only as strong as you make me seem.