I know you.

Sitting behind a screen in your room,
Sipping in the shadows of a coffee shop.
iPhone, iPad, iAm "Anonymous".

The most dangerous word you can be labeled,
The most double-edged of weapons-
Anonymous.

You're never really as untraceable
As the cleared browser history says you are,
Never as untraceable as the chain of destruction you cause is traceable.

You're never really as invisible
As the checked box lets you think you are,
Never as invisible as the scars you direct a hand to make are visible.

One word can't be all that.
Anonymous can't be so dangerous.
Some clicks on a keyboard can't be so devastating.

There's a reason it used to be difficult to avoid responsibility.
Because responsibility for your words, for what you cause,
Is what allows you to see a few steps ahead.

Your signature is what allows you to learn from mistakes,
To vow after you've learned the hard way to think before you act.
To see that those words have two names attached to them now.

The writer, and the subject.
Two traceable, visible people.
Two hearts beating and breathing, now connected.

Anonymous constructs a wall between action and reaction.
It robs you of responsibility.
Yes, responsibility is a prized possession, there to teach and show.

Anonymous allows you to settle.
It robs you of the greater person you could become.
Yes, your future holds more than this, there beyond the wall of cyber bulling.

I hate that I was once Anonymous like you.
I hate that I unknowingly controlled the strings
Of a self-destructive marionette hand miles away.

But I don't hate you. Because I know you.
I know you are more than the mistakes you've made behind that screen.
I know you are more than Anonymous.

So prove it.

There were three in the meadow by the brook
Gathering up windrows, piling ***** of hay,
With an eye always lifted toward the west
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger
Flickering across its *****. Suddenly
One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground,
Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed.
The town-bred farmer failed to understand.

“What is there wrong?”

“Something you just now said.”

“What did I say?”

“About our taking pains.”

“To **** the hay?—because it’s going to shower?
I said that more than half an hour ago.
I said it to myself as much as you.”

“You didn’t know. But James is one big fool.
He thought you meant to find fault with his work.
That’s what the average farmer would have meant.
James would take time, of course, to chew it over
Before he acted: he’s just got round to act.”

“He is a fool if that’s the way he takes me.”

“Don’t let it bother you. You’ve found out something.
The hand that knows his business won’t be told
To do work better or faster—those two things.
I’m as particular as anyone:
Most likely I’d have served you just the same.
But I know you don’t understand our ways.
You were just talking what was in your mind,
What was in all our minds, and you weren’t hinting.
Tell you a story of what happened once:
I was up here in Salem at a man’s
Named Sanders with a gang of four or five
Doing the haying. No one liked the boss.
He was one of the kind sports call a spider,
All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy
From a ****** body nigh as big’s a biscuit.
But work! that man could work, especially
If by so doing he could get more work
Out of his hired help. I’m not denying
He was ******* himself. I couldn’t find
That he kept any hours—not for himself.
Daylight and lantern-light were one to him:
I’ve heard him pounding in the barn all night.
But what he liked was someone to encourage.
Them that he couldn’t lead he’d get behind
And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing—
Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off.
I’d seen about enough of his bulling tricks
(We call that bulling). I’d been watching him.
So when he paired off with me in the hayfield
To load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble.
I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders
Combed it down with a rake and says, ‘O. K.’
Everything went well till we reached the barn
With a big catch to empty in a bay.
You understand that meant the easy job
For the man up on top of throwing down
The hay and rolling it off wholesale,
Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting.
You wouldn’t think a fellow’d need much urging
Under these circumstances, would you now?
But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands,
And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit,
Shouts like an army captain, ‘Let her come!’
Thinks I, D’ye mean it? ‘What was that you said?’
I asked out loud, so’s there’d be no mistake,
‘Did you say, Let her come?’ ‘Yes, let her come.’
He said it over, but he said it softer.
Never you say a thing like that to a man,
Not if he values what he is. God, I’d as soon
Murdered him as left out his middle name.
I’d built the load and knew right where to find it.
Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for
Like meditating, and then I just dug in
And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots.
I looked over the side once in the dust
And caught sight of him treading-water-like,
Keeping his head above. ‘**** ye,’ I says,
‘That gets ye!’ He squeaked like a squeezed rat.
That was the last I saw or heard of him.
I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off.
As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck,
And sort of waiting to be asked about it,
One of the boys sings out, ‘Where’s the old man?’
‘I left him in the barn under the hay.
If ye want him, ye can go and dig him out.’
They realized from the way I swobbed my neck
More than was needed something must be up.
They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was.
They told me afterward. First they forked hay,
A lot of it, out into the barn floor.
Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle.
I guess they thought I’d spiked him in the temple
Before I buried him, or I couldn’t have managed.
They excavated more. ‘Go keep his wife
Out of the barn.’ Someone looked in a window,
And curse me if he wasn’t in the kitchen
Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet
Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer.
He looked so clean disgusted from behind
There was no one that dared to stir him up,
Or let him know that he was being looked at.
Apparently I hadn’t buried him
(I may have knocked him down); but my just trying
To bury him had hurt his dignity.
He had gone to the house so’s not to meet me.
He kept away from us all afternoon.
We tended to his hay. We saw him out
After a while picking peas in his garden:
He couldn’t keep away from doing something.”

“Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead?”

“No! and yet I don’t know—it’s hard to say.
I went about to **** him fair enough.”

“You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you?”

“Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right.”

Wake up to the AA, never a day without.
look to the news, schools out?
Its only April.
Another protest i cant make,
another protest
another protest,
yet no change.
My youth being killed everyday unjustified because of people's hatred.
A threat he was
12 he was, 14 he was,15,16,19,40,36,32.....he was a threat.
17 killed today because of "bulling" i suppose, he was just ill an broken,
poor him right? right.
1000 more suicide a 1000 more hate crimes at its lowest this month.
more murders than anything against the people who just want to love; who want to live the way they want.
My friends heartbroken
families being ripped apart, wondering if they'll be the next to go.
Our leaders are full of hatred, making fun of the ill, no respect for the women.
because of that i no longer have rights to my body, not like i had them really anyway.
No means No,
but your distracting the staff ma'am that's against school dress code,
go home and cover up your collar bone.
I'm 14.
You'r making it hard for the adult staff... ya'know
The ****'s we hired to teach you, the ones that make YOU uncomfortable.
cover up,
that'a all we ask. ;)
                                                   yours truly,
                                                          ­          . . .