I have always been a quiet guy and did not want to talk before crowds.
The Old Days
Going from country school to city school had its interesting times. We had to take a test to get into high school and I still remember my score being 10.4.  The over and out thing on Car 54.
My brother Ed was the company boxing champ when he was in Korea in 52.  When he returned from Korea and came to the farm he would bring his boxing gloves and he taught me the fine points of the art.

I could defend myself but never needed to prove it. All through my freshman year **** M was always giving me a bad time. Sophomore year it continued until about Christmas time. At that time I had had enough. I was walking up to Main and **** and his two buddies were following me saying their usual bad stuff. Now **** out weighed by 100 pounds at least but enough was enough.  I set my books down off the sidewalk.  Noting I was right next to the morgue and thinking “one of us could end up in there”. Turning around... I motioned with open hand and quietly said to ****...  “ok ****... let’s get this over with”.  His eyes went rather big and he backed up. The three of them vanished back down the street. **** was very nice to me after that. We never had any harsh words. Sometimes you must stand up and confront the problem.

Sometime later kids started calling me Sullivan. I let it go for a while. Then I asked someone “why are you and others calling me Sullivan”?  Did not get an answer other than “your name is John L Stevens so... you are like John L Sullivan.”  Did not compute. Sullivan was a well known prize fighter. I’ve often wondered if the **** thing had anything to do with it.

Coming out of the sticks into the big city school was interesting the first few weeks. The city boys would come up and would put a hand out for a shake. Not chocolate. They would try to squeeze my hand hard but it didn’t bother me.  The third week I decided that I would squeeze back.  Now maybe they didn’t know that I milked cows by hand. So the next one got squeezed... hard.  It hurt some me thinks. Word apparently traveled fast as that was the last fun hand shake I had. I’m old now but I have never been hit in the face in all this time. Except with boxing gloves. No need to cause trouble but be ready to defend yourself and others.  What I taught my kids and grandkids over the years.

Ok enough of that.

Ok Cathy, I did have an inkling
that this could have been the case,
hence, why I pursued those questions.

Having been in that predicament I
fully understand what the foetal
position and dark room means.

Once, it was Christmas week, I was
in a semi squat at 16 Britannia Rd
in Fulham.

Not far from Chelsea stadium it
links Kings Rd to Fulham Rd
near the Broadway.

I was minding ****, a cross between
an Irish terrier and a Kerry Blue, a dog
familiar with Marijuana.

It was many the time he got high on
it while we, Christopher Beresford and
I were marinating in alcohol.

Chris was the director of projects for
Debrett’s Peerage in Mossop St, I did
a bit of work there myself.

Chris went up to Bury St Edmunds
for Christmas, while I minded ****,
it was the first time I ate dog food.

The house had no heating and outside
toilet, gas and electricity had been cut off
due to non paid bills.

What money I had at the beginning of
that week, I spent it on drink and never
bought one morsel of food.

I drank water and spooned sugar until
it was all gone, I slept and woke and slept
all day, **** toiletted in the house.

No phone, nobody called and even if they did
I would’t answer the door, I had grown a stubble
I was ***** and unkempt.

The curtains were drawn, there was a low gutter
by the bedroom window which is what I used as
a urinel.

I was out of cigarettes, even all the butts had been
used up, it was cold and I got the poor mees,
I was ashamed of myself.

There was an old lady next door, she was well
aware the Chris was an extreme eccentric and
I was some sort of an odd Irishman.

In better times, I cleaned snow away from her
door and once I looked through the window and
discovered her on the floor.

She liked us, and no doubt felt as though we were
two lost cats unable to manage our lives because
of alcohol.

On the 25th, Christmas Day, towards evening, she
brought out a turkey carcass for ****, I knew her
voice, so I opened the door (plate width)

No sooner was she gone, and ****, who I had
given it to in her presence, was immediately
forced to surrender the Turkey.

Covered in his saliva, I was not in any state to
be pulling rank on ****’s social standing, we
were all of a sudden, equals.

**** did eventually get to participate in a
communal meal, as he got the gleaners share
of the boney discards being relayed to him.

There was a second knock, it was the lady again,
I apologised for not doing a better job at washing the
plate, ****’s tongue had no detergent.

She handed me a large bottle of Guinness, a
a packet of rolling tobacco, papers and matches,
I was in recovery, somebody cared about me.


Ryan.

It's Friday evening from life's cares we'll have a brief leave taking
And lets go to the Basy Pub for hour of merry making
In confines of the Settlers Bar the voice of mirth is ringing
And Pete Atkinson from Dublin Town an Irish song is singing.

The Mckelvey men father and son are talking of horse racing
They know the horses inside out from form and race card tracing
Has Vo rogue gone over the hill, can Horlicks race to glory
Can Almaarad come bouncing back and go down in history?

Phil Cronin go back down the years he flick back through life pages
To friends he knew in Millstreet Town he has not seen for ages
Big Jerry Shea and Mister O, James Manley hale and hearty
And Johnny Sing from Millview Lane the life of every party.

Brave Harry the brave English man the one as tough as leather
You'll only see that man in shorts no matter what the weather
A man of elephantine strength yet gentle and kind hearted
And he has taken life's hardest blow since his son this world departed.

Big **** Kissane the Kerry man he doesn't like Maggie Thatcher
And he feels that for Union bashing that few in history could match her
Still he won't go back to Kenmare to weather wet and hazy
He'd much prefer Mt Evelyn it's nearer to the Baysy.

**** Kelleher and Phil Schofield well into greyhound breeding
They talk of how greyhounds should be schooled and for them proper feeding
Two greyhound trainers and of late their reputations growing
And Millstreet Town keep racing on when others dogs are slowing.

Vin Schofield a Manchester Man he does love Man United
And every time United win he feel proud and delighted
But United not doing well of late of late they're not impressing
And this too much for him to take he find it all depressing.

Galway's Matt Duggan and Westmeath's Sean Fay the hurling game debating
On the first sunday of September who will be celebrating
Can Westmeath make the big break through or will Galway flags be waving
Or will Tipperary still be champs their reputation saving?

And Marty Kerins from Mayo a good and happy fellow
I've never met him in bad mood I've always found him mellow
He love the Bayswater Hotel he say there is none better
And to be kept from Settlers Bar he'd have to be in fetter.

And **** O Shea from Dublin his friends are in the many
And he doesn't have one enemy and he doesn't deserve any
He's given homes to Homeless souls and he's easily moved to pity
And good a man as ever came to live in this great City.

The amazing J D Ellis his name and fame keep spreading
And he has bounced back from the floor and for the top he's heading
Still he is easily stirred up and Garry Carter does the stirring
And el tigre he begins to growl the cat's no longer purring.

It's friday evening from life's cares we'll have a brief leave taking
And where better than the Basy Pub for hour of merry making
In Confines of the Settlers Bar the voice of mirth is ringing
And Pete Atkinson from Dublin Town an Irish song is singing.

This year has been... So hard. It's been so ******* hard. There were times when I didn't know if I would make it. Times when I didn't think I had it in me to keep going and going after what I want and what I need, when they're always such long shots. Such dreams. Such ambitious dreams... I wanted to quit so many times. When **** left, I wanted to quit. I wanted to crawl under the blankets and stop being. I spent 3 days on Angela's couch after that night. I can never sleep in my own bed when I am truly broken down. I lose my home when I am raw inside. Couches, empty rooms, it doesn't matter where I hide but it can't be where I live. I wonder why that is. She couldn't have picked a worse time to tell me she loved me as much as I loved her and that it didn't matter. And then you... you were off in another world, off in another country finding yourself and your footing and everyone but me. You stopped answering my How Are You's. You didn't tell me happy birthday. Neither did ****. That was the first time I realized why holidays are the hardest for people who are sad. If you love someone and you are waiting for them to forgive you for being who you are, birthdays, Christmases, every holiday becomes a ticking clock: She has to say something. Will she say something? Will she really ignore me TODAY? Today, when the person who hated me most in high school said "Happy Birthday!! :D" on my wall on facebook? Today, when even my neighbor who grumbles about us being too loud grumbled a Merry Christmas? It becomes an agony when you realize that the answer is yes long before the day is over. Then you have to watch the hours tick by, trying not to hope, and by the end of it you just want it to be over, you don't even care anymore- you just want her not to have a reason to speak to you again, so that it won't mean QUITE so much that she is silent.
I had a lot of special days like that this year.
I wanted to quit when they told me I was small. When they told me I was quiet and bland, like vanilla icecream. The beast that lives behind my ribcage shook the bars that day and howled. (I spent a lot of time with it this year. We still hate each other, but we have uneasily realized that we are all we have.) That was the day I truly broke. **** was gone. You were gone. And the only thing I had to truly count on was suddenly in question. It was now or never, it was be better than your best, and I was barely hanging on. It was be a hundred and ten percent, when the past few months had whittled me down to a shadow of a person who barely remembered what it was to be fifty. It was push harder than you've ever pushed at the moment you are about to collapse and you thought you were going to be able to rest.
Those days made me. I hate that they made me. I hate that the biggest parts of me come from the days that eviscerated me, but they do.
I wanted to quit when **** came back and saw what I'd become. "You're wearing fake eyelashes?" she said, because she always did notice any weakness. She didn't say she saw my sunken cheeks, and the fire behind my eyes that meant I was afraid to die. "PROMISE ME you'll stay this time." I said, and I grabbed her shoulders. "But only if you mean it."
"I promise." she said.
She didn't mean it.
I knew, though. Somehow I knew that the girl I loved had left her behind, a changeling, a stranger. I tried to believe, but when she left the shock was only surface: I was too tired to be rocked to the core.
Then came the days when I truly didn't have a plan. I spent a few weeks on the couch. Anyone who reads this will not have seen me with ***** hair, in week old clothes, skinny and sleeping all the time. I make sure they never see. But for a few weeks, I had no one to pretend for and no reason to pretend and no reason to live. I only knew I WANTED to. Even then, from the couch, with my show babbling in the background, I thought, "There's gotta be something. A reason will come. I just have to wait." And a reason did come. It wasn't a very good reason, but it didn't have to be: Reasons to live are not really the reasons we live. The truth is that if you want to live, you will FIND a reason, every time. You will create one. My reason didn't mean a thing in the details. All it meant was that I was ready to rejoin the world, and live again.
I spent a lot of the in between months living on the surface of myself, just getting my feet wet. I went to work. They didn't know me there. Didn't ask. I liked that, it was simple. I waited tables, I cleaned up, and if I quietly did what I did, nobody bothered me. The biggest thing I could **** up was somebody's lunch. It was comforting. I chatted with customers as if I wasn't who I was. I was their smiling waitress with her hand on her hip, a hot *** of coffee, and a clever quip. That was a part of learning to live again, too. It was hard to stand there all day and listen to the radio. Memories would hit me and I would be unable to run away from them the way I could elsewhere. I learned to breathe through the pain, and discovered that it became muscle memory to endure it. It was almost easy by the end. The only deep thing I did with this time was to read Girl, Interrupted. As with most life changing books, I hadn't thought much of picking it up. I hadn't expected it to change me. But reading it, I could have wrote it myself. I knew how she felt, every moment, and the things she said stuck with me, stuck to me- the raw wounds that were still healing  inside me scarred around her words.
Then came the reckless stage. I was waking up. I began to listen to music again. I began to drive without knowing where I was going. I began to make choices just to see if they'd jar me enough to snap me back to my old self. They didn't. I didn't find myself again until just before school started.
Poor Giles (my car, the car that saved my life) was the cost of it. A rainy night, a loud song, and too much grief. Things really do slow down when you crash, you know. I thought they just did that in movies to be dramatic, but they don't, it's real. When I went off the road I knew I'd lost control. My mind was way ahead of me. My body wasn't in the place I thought it should be, and I remember distinctly but calmly wondering why it wouldn't listen to me and do what I wanted (it was, in fact, being thrown around by the force of the crash, and the signals from my brain saying "Move your arm!" couldn't compete with whiplash.) I woke up with the car crunched against a tree, on the driver's side, and the frame 6 inches from my face.
I didn't feel anything.
My body cried and shook as they strapped me to a stretcher, but inside I wasn't in control. I was sitting back quizzically. The moment they got me out of the car I knew I was unhurt. They cut off my clothes. My favorite bra was another casualty of that day. Cut right in half- the leopard bra I wore in the first scene I ever did in front of the UConn faculty for midterms last year. While they were wheeling me from test to test, I wondered if that was somehow symbolic. Flash forward to being in bed in a tiny room, a doctor giving me back my bellybutton ring, me asking where the pentagram necklace that **** gave me the night we met was, getting it back, putting it on. The IV in my arm was cold. I hate IVs. My mom cried, and I cried, but I still wasn't scared or sad. I cried because tears came out. It was a surreal experience, crying like that.
I didn't wake up fully from my brokenness until the nurse came in and said, "I'm so sorry, but we need your room. I'm going to have to put you in the hall." I shrugged, and they stuck me in the hall just outside. I watched them wheel a bedraggled looking man in. He was muttering. He reminded me of my uncle, the alcoholic, the one who had died the previous fall. I had a hunch that they probably had a lot in common. Interest piqued, I eavesdropped as they bustled around and talked to him. He had tried to **** himself.
That was when I woke up. I didn't really know it, but that was the moment. It was the first moment in months that I remembered my real reason. I asked my mother for a piece of paper to draw on, and she dug in her purse to find it. Ten minutes later I faked having to go to the bathroom so they'd unhook me from my tubes. I had a feeling my mother would think it improper if I told the truth. Before she could object, I slipped into his room, and handed him the paper. I said, "I made this for you. I hope you feel better." I wish I remembered exactly what I'd written. It was a simple little note and a doodle of a rose, and it said that he mattered, and that I cared about him. I got back in bed, sheepish, and my mom was as nervous about my infringement on someone else's life as I'd guessed she'd be. Five minutes later, though, the nurse came over with a piece of torn paper. He had written back to me. His handwriting was shaky and simple, like a child. I have that note hung up in my bedroom at home. He said, "You have touched my heart. Thank you! I will keep your rose in my heart. This is a life changing moment for me... Thank you!" I wondered if there was a plan, then. I wondered if all of that, the sadness, the crash, everything, had led me to be in that hospital and say something to that man that changed his life. And maybe it didn't change at all, I don't know. But I know that that moment changed me.
Back at school, I had a few blissful moments with you. A few nights of hand holding, a few beautiful kisses. I slowly taught myself not to run from you when I felt the gravity of my love separate me by the molecule. I found that I did have the courage it took to be in your arms, and that is when you lost the courage to hold me. Still, I'd take all of my grief and more for one moment with you, and I'll keep you in my heart till the day I die, whether or not you stick around.
In class, I was the first to break. To cry. Over months, I cracked open and a lot of the tears that fell were very old, and scalding. I hadn't known I was suffering until the cracks in me were widened and focused on. One day after a particularly raw moment, I walked across the street to the tattoo parlor. I didn't stop, I didn't think, and I got a tattoo that very moment. My butterfly, on my shoulder, to remind me that changing hurts, growing hurts. I loved how much it hurt. (Nobody said I was recovered fully.)
Suddenly then there was a choice before me. An opportunity and a challenge. Do something to make them remember why they chose you. Fight. Win. I dug deep. I thought, what can I say that I mutter to myself in the shower when I am not thinking about anything? What words have stuck to me? I dug, and I found Susanna Kaysen again. At 3 in the morning I sat in a chair, in the dark, in the center of the bare rehearsal studio and tore myself open.
I found the girl who, this past summer, in the thick of everything, had called McClean and tried to get a bed. Who for a week had begged to be somebody else's problem. I called a hotline. I wasn't suicidal, but only because I don't have it in me, no matter how bad I feel. I called and got a voicemail. Desperate, I called UMASS Memorial. I remember they told me that if I wasn't a physical danger to myself or others they couldn't help me, and I remember this phrase tumbling out of my mouth before I could filter it, "Should I just go slit my wrists and call you right back, then?"
I had asked for help, and the answer, resoundingly, was no. And so I spent those weeks on the couch, and then I got up and dealt with the fallout. There was no other way.
I found her and I invited her to say something. And what came out was... The biggest ******* to the things that had beaten me down those past months. I kept the lights off. I put on Bleed Like Me and danced without looking where I was going. I held myself to the chair and tried to escape. I screamed into a pillow until no sound came out. And I found Susanna Kaysen. And I freed the part of me that wanted to talk with all those wiser than thou gods who toyed with the thread of my fate, teasing it with blades- I found **** this. **** being hurt. **** being broken. **** being judged. **** anyone who looked at me and thought they knew what was inside, because Susanna was inside, no, someone different, even, than her- someone, something, angry and wild and powerful and dangerous, and she laughed, and I laughed, and we began to plan just how to say "**** this."
I spent a night with you, during that time. You held my hands. You said they were beautiful. You told me about yourself. You kissed me. You wrote, "Galaxies" on my thumb. I didn't write it on my ribs until I was sure that I'd want it there whether or not I was mad at you. I didn't have long to wait- you ran away again, and I tried to love you anyway, and I succeeded. I still try. I still succeed. It's not getting much easier, but if I know one thing it's that if I
Just
Don't
Give
Up
SOMETHING will happen. Something will come to me. If I know one thing it's that I can keep going even when I have no reason to, even when I have no fuel, even when I am utterly empty. If I just take the next step, and the next, one by one, I will end up SOMEWHERE new, and I will find SOMETHING to love. That is what I learned this year. By all accounts.... this year kind of ******. Although I had scattered moments of utter joy, I had long, smudged months of misery. But having gone through it, I am almost nostalgic. Because it proved to me, even more, that I am not fragile. I'm emotional, I'm intense, I'm unstable, but ******, I am NOT fragile. Like iron being smited, I went through the fire, I was hit over and over in my weakest places, but... in the end I have emerged, and I am not gone. And I am not fragile. Welcome, 2015.

One each end of a shelf
Victorian figurines
A boy and girl
Like crystalline
With stiff edged lace.
Never fell in love
But still precious
Bought by a Godmother
Who did not have children.

Then the plaster dancers
Spied in a box of my father’s
Given by a poor grandmother
Loved these two
With their net “tutus”
Such graceful arms
Long pointed legs
Felt their life twirling.

The difference between
Two worlds
The rich and stiff
Poor but beautiful.
My bedroom shelf,
With a poster of
**** Jagger,
in the middle,
smiling.

Love Mary x

Walt and ****

always squeaky
never sneaky
always fun
never glum
funny mouse
kinda skinny
squeaky girlfriend
name of Minnie
always happy
though the years
always funny
never tears
all his cartoons
filled the house
Walt's favorite buddy
Mickey Mouse
At Disneyland it was always
Walt and Mickey holding hands
a friendship
that never ends
Walt and Mickey
always friends
He left us all in sixty six
but Mickey keeps
on playing his tricks
Walt said I have to leave you ****
it’s just not my fault
Mickey said
I Know
I will always
love you Walt

am not a ****

i am a cool person

i helped **** fanning get out of danger from that shark attack

by using my powers of cronus

you see, i check the world when i sleep

to make sure people are safe

and of all the shark attacks which slip through the cracks

this one worked very well

i saved **** fanning from this shark, despite it being ****** hard

like i made sure this boy would be alrighj who was lost in the bush

you see i am cronus, and if cronus has a messed up head, it’s because

he hasn’t told of his ordeals

i saved **** fanning, i saved that little boy

i saved everyone, oh yeah

ya see i am not a ****, i am cronus, the one who saves you all

**** was a Tin Smith
Tinkers colloquially
but since the advent
of political correctness
we are obliged to call
them Travelling People.

Well anyway, **** was
sittin on a shtump be
the river hittin away with
a hammer straightening
the dents when a tooth-
sayer came by and told
**** that he was after
winning the lottery.

**** untied his *** and
headed off sparks flying
from the cobble stones.

But of course, it was a
rogue Leprechaun what
told him dat and there
was no winnings.

When he came back, the
Pan was gone and ****
said to himself, W.H.O.
in the **** was that what
told me about me winnings.


Ps.

The moral of story is.
W.H.O. cannot be believed.
The Pandemic is a hoax.