Spending a month in a hospital teaches you a lot about people.
The doctor that told me to shave my head or she wouldn't treat me,
The nurses that spent forever chatting to me
And giving me supportive advice about how my illness doesn't define me.
The woman who was given a terminal cancer sentence
And chose not to pay attention to it and defied it anyway.
How she sat next to me on my bed,
Told me that all suffering is valid,
And just because I'm not dying, doesn't mean I don't get to complain.
How she complains more about her skin problems
Than she ever complained about her cancer,
And that's OK, because pain rarely follows rules.
I never even learned her name,
But she gave me the words I hold most closely to me
On those days when I want to fall asleep and never wake up.
I'm allowed to scream and shout and rage against the pain
And the unfairness of it happening to me.
I just have to make sure I know where the line is
Between giving my darkness a voice and pitying myself.

"How am I feeling?- I think I'm fine,
Or at least not as bad as before
I think that I'm having a wonderful time,
Although I really can't be sure.

If I tell somebody I'm feeling OK
They smile and say; "Is that so?
What's made you feel better today?"
And I mumble; "I don't know."

It makes me question what I say,
And confuses me more and more.
I think that I'm having a wonderful day
Though I really can't be sure.

Brother,

  You know now that I have felt
your torment.  A beaten battered
life.  You showed me what to do if
ever I could climb up to the moon.
I remember back in '73 you were
show thrilled about your overalls,
you had to so them to me and rosey
off the great white way, outside an Abc.
I could say a lot of things about you.
And they would all be good.  Like you,
I don't judge people by their faults.
I didn't know what you were saying
earlier this year.  I guess we could have
spent more time but it would not be any
better than time already spent.
My friend
and
                                             BROTHER

The pretty girls know
Why they wear their perfume
The pretty girls know
Why they fill a room
The pretty girls know why
They wear their hair
The pretty girls know why
So men will stare
The pretty girls know why
They wear that smile
The pretty girls know why
With it such aplomb
The pretty girls know
How to wear a hat
The pretty girls know why
They do this and that
The pretty girls know

Like the sheets out on the clothesline
crisp linen
blowing in the breeze
and the smoke from summer
that fills the air
I wish I could be just drifting out
with them floating on the distance off without a care

I've seen so many birds soaring up above
I can feel their freedom dancing
on the Clouds Of Love

Something's Gotta Give
If I'm ever going to live
it's either got to get better
or it's going to get worse
Maybe there's a way
I can break this
curse
If I get called away like
my father on that day
I hope that every person
whom I have loved
they know I did the best I could
Not always that for which I should
have
A mind, a body....a spirit shattered by time
a broken world is such a crime
Too much drama
too much trauma

Some I did to myself
though mostly they did it to me
the blind they just could not see
The forest through the trees

Some are puppets
some are Puppet Masters
Hoping for disasters
That's how they make a living by others dying
by tears they're crying
I'm just a number and I'm sure they're hoping it's up soon

I guess there are too many people
in this world
There has to be some population control
Can't figure out how they decide
who gets to go along for the ride
Did I take a wrong turn
something I learned
that I shouldn't have?

My nephew died the other day
The second one in a couple years
So I guess I should feel lucky
I still feel I want to live
feel I have a lot left to give
When a second feels like a year
When you can't cry another tear
and you can't see any purpose coming on the horizon
When the hole in your body
it finally fails
When the wind has been taken from the proverbial sails
I will float, soar and drift out on the air
out on the sea
that's what it will feel
like to be free
Like a lantern lit and finally let go
Learning what I did not know
I tried to grow
I tried to show you
how bad this was
Don't understand being this alone
I have family
but no one that I can call my home
though I forgive them
they know not what they do
they havent any clue

You don't appreciate life very often
Till It's Gone
Like The Melody of my favorite songs
I know I'll end up where I belong
In the place where I hope to see
A love from my God eternally
waiting for Night or Dawn
to come.


Cherie Nolan © 2016

On the night patrol in some desert never heard of before, a private first class shivers from the cold. On the deck of a ship off the coast in a deep blue sea, a sailor prepares an aircraft to launch, to help those in need. In a war torn nation, a nurse mends wounds and sets broken bones, wishing she could be with her family, but her duty calls her here. Across many time zones and foreign lands, to gardens of stone with memorial walls, many keep watch and pay the price so that we may relax and be at ease. Let us never forget the price they pay, some giving their all. This is what our rights demand, this is freedoms cost.

Today I
Lost my
Temper

Maybe I dropped it
On the way out
Of the store
Where a mother
Swore at
Her five
Year
Old


Maybe I miss
Placed it
When we
Visited
Our old
Church
And everyone
Spoke to me
Like they understood
Me
But forgot my
Name
A lot

Could I have,
Left it
At my dad's house?
Where he
Ignored
My kid brother
And little sister
Told us how much
He
Missed our
Mother
Right after
He had finished
Divorcing her

Perhaps it's
Under the seat
Of our car
Maybe it fell out
Of my pocket
At that red light
The one
When the car next to
Us had a
Man
Screaming
At his wife
In front of their kids
And
One of the children
Cried
And he turned around
And hit them
Really
Hard

This is so bizarre
I can't find it
Any where.

In the old part of town
There are still cobbled streets
And at one time
These streets were surrounded
By living working mills
Marking the towns heartbeat
Twenty-four hours a day
Seven days a week
The machines hammered the air
As the flying shuttles were cracked
From side to side of the weft
On more than a hundred looms
It sounded like a battlefield
And some would say it was

But that was long ago
And now the mills are dead
The buildings still stand
But inside they are broken
Housing many more
Modern endeavours
And in one of these old buildings
Within the same crusty bricks
There's another world that lives
In the dark hours at least
There's a night club that throbs
To the sound of bands playing
Different rhythms for the town
And the neon lights outside
Shine on the same old cobble stones

                                        By Phil Roberts

I want to deal with paperwork
not people anymore

Give me bureaucracy
I’ll give you productivity

No more empathy
or patience with the patients

Need that nine to five
cubicle and a coffee break

Bosses will love my
enthusiastic filing

Can’t service another person
just as mental as me

I need a new kind of crazy
The normal kind, please

To be teased, to be pleasing, to be smiling, or yet to cry
To take notice, after an ecstasy of rage
It understands you, it understands me: Our hearts
Breakfast for two in the ****

Muscles tighten without the pain,
hearing the wishes of our inner self
Pitter, patter on the window pane
to be teased, to be pleasing, to be smiling, or yet to cry
fulfillment, enjoyment, pleasurable moments
Breakfast for two in the ****,
What I wouldn’t give for such a dream