Books left on bookshelves
Might as well be dead....
To bring them to life
They have to be read!

It really doesn't matter if you love a human or an animal
If only that love is sincere
And love can be expressed
In many different forms
Like patiently waiting for mommy to come back from work...
like listening to all her grievances even if you don't
Understand a thing...
Even if it means
One day you have
to say good bye...
Love is queer in many ways
In happiness comes sadness...
In pain is sweetness...
Bitter and sweet
Part and parcel of life
And letting go
Is inner peace...

Slice slice slice
All over my arm.
Slash slash slash
All over my thighs
Cut cut cut
All over my hips

Making Roman numerals all over my skin
Hoping it will silence the voices within
Letting the blood run down and around
Hoping agony will drown and run aground.

My skin will mend
My bleeding will stop
But scars will remain
Penned onto my heart.

Bell bottom hip huggers
And my Frankenstein shoes
That had stack soles and heels
That I could only barely use.
A crop-top sleeveless tee shirt
With a superman emblem on it
And diamond ring on my hand.
In case I might have to pawn it.

Because we were picketing
Downtown at the City Hall
And at some police stations.
It was the seventies after all.
Our parents raised us to acquiesce
It was their America they protected.
And it was just exactly this blindness
That we, en masse, all rejected.

We failed to understand them
The generations that came before
That prized prejudice and bias
And celebrated sending us to war.
We felt there was another way
To go about sweeping social change.
We saw beating and fire hosing
As nefarious and more than strange.

We got beaten ourselves and jailed
For just pointing injustice out to them
And watched our sit-ins and love-ins
Turned into scenes of ****** mayhem.
We heard them call us all criminals,
Long haired ******* was a favored taunt.
It seems we were entitled to our opinions
As long as we didn’t chose to flaunt.

It felt so very much like **** Germany
Including storm troopers and jack boots
And the local politicians were obviously
At least agreeing if not in cahoots
With the police in their fear of rebellion
And protecting their good paying jobs.
So, they beat us and vilified the students
Calling them ***** communists, and slobs.

And, yes, some of us were getting high
Back in our homes and apartments.
Sometimes it seemed the only way
We could deal with the estrangement
Between what our country said it was
And what it turned out it really was.
It was hard to realize our land wasn’t free
And there was no social Santa Claus.

The myth comes alive without asking for any help
It doesn’t care if it’s real or not, only that you believe
We steal from the dead, they can’t defend themselves
The only difference between us is that we can still breathe

I once carried a flower in my hand with no intention
And stared at a painting wondering if it made him cry
The strangest moments give a memory a long life
But the last time I smiled I couldn’t remember why

I’ve never made someone up in my life, only their feelings
I didn’t know it at the time because I thought it was true
The only thing I know about a walk on scattered sea shells
It’s the best place to narrow my feelings down to a few

I can’t decide if I should fly across the ocean again
I know everything about them, they’re only human
It’s not what they believe or why they  believe it, but
Maybe a different language makes a different woman

Being so far apart gives the smoke a chance to settle
It’s as if being weird is normal instead of like it is here
The sun sets and rises at the same time for two people
Like a life of laughing and crying both far and near

Don’t tell me what you know unless it made you bleed
All the rest was something you read or left behind
I could walk past you again but I’d rather get involved
Tell me what you see in me, I need to know what you find