I tip-toe up your spine,
a ladder for gentle fingers.
I count each tickled vertebra.
(You flinch at only three.)
Your small body is like a feather in my lap,
yet your spindly legs reach past my knees.
When did you grow so tall?
Nine years I have over you,
and though your child warmth is still heat against my body,
I wonder at the gap
between your world and mine.

When we were kids
they taught the raspberry things
dyed lips blue and rubbed honey
on before kisses, everything was
stale sugar, your breath warm
lemonade and red ochre arms
chilled in the goldenrod shadow

I am forgotten,
As my footprints
melt
in the snow.

Please don't touch the Christmas tree,
Leave all my things in the boxes,
I can hardly bare to look at the door,
I made choices,
I did things because I thought you'd be happy,
I learned quickly that I could never make you that way,
And although the fact shook me to my core,
I thought maybe we could just coexist,
We don't have to agree,
Maybe just stop the arguing,
But then you went and ripped me out of my home,
That was a heavy blow,
A lot to swallow,
I guess parts of me thought I could make the best of this,
As much as you think I don't try,
I did,
I don't know why when life changed for you,
It had to change so much for me to,
Sometimes I don't think you realize how much I gave up,
I know your ready to go,
I swear I won't even try to stop you,
It won't do any good anyway,
I just want you to notice once in a while,
That I'm really hurting,
I just want you to notice,
How much your plans are going to cost,
And for once I want you to see me falling,
And catch me in time.

Well, my daddy left home when I was three,
and he didn't leave much to Ma and me,
just this old guitar and a bottle of *****.
Now I don't blame him because he run and hid,
but the meanest thing that he ever did was
before he left he went and named me Sue.

Well, he must have thought it was quite a joke,
and it got lots of laughs from a lot of folks,
it seems I had to fight my whole life through.
Some gal would giggle and I'd get red
and some guy would laugh and I'd bust his head,
I tell you, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue.

Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean.
My fist got hard and my wits got keen.
Roamed from town to town to hide my shame,
but I made me a vow to the moon and the stars,
I'd search the ***** tonks and bars and ****
that man that gave me that awful name.

But it was Gatlinburg in mid July and I had
just hit town and my throat was dry.
I'd thought i'd stop and have myself a brew.
At an old saloon in a street of mud
and at a table dealing stud sat the *****,
mangy dog that named me Sue.

Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
from a worn-out picture that my mother had
and I knew the scar on his cheek and his evil eye.
He was big and bent and gray and old
and I looked at him and my blood ran cold,
and I said, "My name is Sue. How do you do?
Now you're gonna die." Yeah, that's what I told him.

Well, I hit him right between the eyes and he went down
but to my surprise he came up with a knife
and cut off a piece of my ear. But I busted a chair
right across his teeth. And we crashed through
the wall and into the street kicking and a-gouging
in the mud and the blood and the beer.

I tell you I've fought tougher men but I really can't remember when.
He kicked like a mule and bit like a crocodile.
I heard him laughin' and then I heard him cussin',
he went for his gun and I pulled mine first.
He stood there looking at me and I saw him smile.

And he said, "Son, this world is rough and if
a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
and I knew I wouldn't be there to help you along.
So I gave you that name and I said 'Goodbye'.
I knew you'd have to get tough or die. And it's
that name that helped to make you strong."

Yeah, he said, "Now you have just fought one
helluva fight, and I know you hate me and you've
got the right to **** me now and I wouldn't blame you
if you do. But you ought to thank me
before I die for the gravel in your guts and the spit
in your eye because I'm the nut that named you Sue."
Yeah, what could I do? What could I do?

I got all choked up and I threw down my gun,
called him pa and he called me a son,
and I came away with a different point of view
and I think about him now and then.
Every time I tried, every time I win and if I
ever have a son I think I am gonna name him
Bill or George - anything but Sue.

"Watching The Wheels" - John Lennon

People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing,
Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin,

When I say that I'm o.k. they look at me kind of strange,
Surely your not happy now you no longer play the game,

People say I'm lazy dreaming my life away,
Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me,

When I tell that I'm doing Fine watching shadows on the wall,

Don't you miss the big time boy you're no longer on the ball?
I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,

I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round,
I just had to let it go,

People asking questions lost in confusion,
Well I tell them there's no problem,
Only solutions,

Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I've lost my mind,

I tell them there's no hurry...
I'm just sitting here doing time,

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,
I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round,
I just had to let it go.


"Mind Games" - John Lennon

We're playing those mind games together

Pushing the barriers, planting seeds
Playing the mind guerrilla

Chanting the mantra, peace on earth
We all been playing those mind games forever

Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil
Doing the mind guerrilla

Some call it magic, the search for the grail*

Love is the answer and you know that for sure
Love is a flower, you got to let it, you got to let it grow

So keep on playing those mind games together

Faith in the future, outta the now

You just can't beat on those mind guerrillas
Absolute elsewhere in the stones of your mind

Yeah we're playing those mind games forever
Projecting our images in space and in time

Yes is the answer and you know that for sure
Yes is surrender, you got to let it, you got to let it go

So keep on playing those mind games together
Doing the ritual dance in the sun

Millions of mind guerrillas
Putting their soul power to the karmic wheel

Keep on playing those mind games forever
Raising the spirit of peace and love

*Love...
(I want you to make love, not war, I know you've heard it before)

' 1. I read the online account of a man who, after fifteen years of hitting gascid – nitrous oxide and acid in tandem – developed a B-vitamin deficiency. This may sound rather benign, but it made him begin to lose feeling in his fingertips. The numbness spread up his arms to his core, and he was soon paralyzed. After what he summarized as the better part of a year of ‘psychological horror,’ he emerged from the episode fully functional again, but with one caveat; he had fried his neurons so badly that every single incoming sensation from each nerve in his body was received by his brain as agonizing pain. He has spent the last fourteen years enduring this. He has tried to commit suicide several times, simply to end his constant physical suffering. He is still here today. His will is stronger than I can imagine; I was afraid while reading his story.

2. The guy who said ‘all women want in a man is confidence’ wasn’t ugly or poor.

3. Once, I chugged enough coffee and energy drinks on a long-empty stomach to experience a moderate overdose, to the tune of something between five hundred and seven hundred milligrams of caffeine. This may sound rather benign, but as I laid on the floor of my high school’s bathroom, convulsing, I had, up ‘til that point, never lived through a more unappealing chemical episode. The nausea was all-consuming. At two thousand milligrams, I would die outright. At the level I had ingested, my heart beat three times every second for five and a half hours. During the peak hours, I could have sworn I hit a steady two hundred-plus beats-per-minute. I hammered out a several-page text to my father with the same haste, cataloging my plight. My heart probably aged fourteen years, enduring that.

4. There was a time in my life when I stopped looking into mirrors. It took me seven years to develop a coping mechanism. Ten years after that, I found myself spending minutes with eyes locked in the mirror, examining that foreign face. Some call it confidence. That behavior scares me more than anything else in my life.

5. I stopped looking at your familiar face a couple years ago. I was afraid of your gaze begetting your touch, and those lightning bolts of pain shooting from each of your fingertips, through the front of my torso into my spine. I am afraid to tell you that you’re hardly on my mind as much as myself these days. I am not confident that I could tell you this, were I given the chance. My heart is facing its midlife crisis now, and I am still figuring out how to treat you like an adult would.