MY GOLDEN FRIEND, EMILY DICKENSON 08-05-10

I have not the metaphors, nor the similes
Lined up for the experts in a perfect row
to scrutinize, critique my work with glee,
searching to find some flaw in my flow.
Then my friend brings a light of gold.

A little blue book rests delicately
It sits on my knees beneath me
as I sit on the steps, outside in the heat.

I read, not fearful, I feel her safety.
My mind peers out, I begin to see.
Emily, Emily!  You so humble me!
To an angel, I confess my deepest need.

She conveyed to me, what frightened me
I could not escape my worn out scripture.
Now, I can perceive a bigger picture.

The world does not orbit around me.
It has never been just about me
I exist for it, when will I believe?
My insipid perception has been deadly.

When I accept this fact, I’ll be set free.
I will love me and others willingly.
I'll see the beauty above and around me.
Emily, Emily, your soul surrounds me.

For neither fame nor fortune did you begin
To put down on paper, your thoughts to your pen
You refused publicity, and your fame.
which you held with the deepest disdain
though for you, it was so honorably gained.

You graciously chose a pure heart, instead.
As I crawl into my restless bed,
I place your words beneath my head.

THE MISSED SUN STILL RISES 05-10-10

I Survived, Living Dangerously,
On My Own High Risk Behavior.
To My Chagrin, I Was Not Hindered.
A Savior Did Not Appear For Me.

Pretty, Smooth, Witty, Cool,
As Seen From The Outside.
Angry, Ugly, Sad...A Cynic,
Roiling...Boiling...Burning Inside.

Short, Slight, Blonde, Bright.
A Lonely Loner In The Crowd.
A Walking, Talking Mannequin.
Slowly, Surely I Turned To The Night.

I Saw The Many Sunsets.
So Many, Many Sunsets.
I Saw Fewer Sunrises.
I Was Too Late For Them.

Dark And Black, Was My Slumbering;
No Pain, No Fear, Forever Comforting...
I Slept Through Births, Deaths, Christmas, Easter...
I Slept Through Uncountable Years.

I felt a dog's lick tickle my ear.
Forever I'd felt nothing so near.
I began to awaken, I began to hear
a whisper whistling, "I Am Here".

A foreign light hit my closed eyes.
I raised my eyelids with all my might.
Through curtains I looked at an ancient site.
Wakened, I rose from my own demise,
I would at least watch my last sunrise.

CATTLE CALL: AN ESSAY: 11-02-08

When I lived in New Mexico, I had a horse that was boarded near a swine slaughter house. Pigs are a lot smarter than cattle, they fight what's coming.

CATTLE CALL

The searching, beseeched eyes do not want to comprehend what they see. They want to see what is not there. Nothing is rehearsed, nothing can be reversed. The entrance to the road to heaven is covered and caked with fresh and old blood. It doesn’t matter; it will all be washed away at the end of the day. The cattle on their way…

A flurry of civilized displays of authority betrays the carnage ahead. It is expressed in a familiar foreign tongue. Doom is heard in its cadence and has several meanings, one is relief, and another is surrender. A calm tempo begins among the men up on the ramps. Lips move, softly and firmly encouraging the forced movement into the unknown.

A lilting voice like a psalm is heard “Go on little doggies, go on. Go on little doggies go on…” The cattle need no prodding as they follow an unusually familiar path. Through mazes of fenced corridors going back and forth, a sense of calm spreads through the ranks. Just plodding forward, following and leading the others brings a peace to the heart.

The need to understand gently floats away, replaced by a sense of safety. Gone is the need to comprehend, replaced by a yearning to accept what makes no sense. There is meaning intended but it gives way and sinks under the thousand ideas flooding the limited space of consciousness. Yet, nothing penetrates that brings any value.

Then instinct takes hold and even the most complex mind finds trouble discerning the real from the lies, but doesn’t quit trying to form a sound reason for what is happening. The ones in charge feel no shame, they claim no blame, their motives are clean; their intentions are good. They are human and settle for what gets them by.

At the end of the day the slaughter is done two thousand head killed stripped and hung. Food for the masses, I can’t disagree. I still love beef, but it disagrees with me.

HOW DOES GOD WORK? 08-18-10

How is it that two young teenage girls can get up early to go to school so they can attend an early morning prayer group in the lobby of their school, only to put themselves in the line of fire of a teenage lunatic who walks in and starts shooting?

Why, God? WHO ARE YOU, GOD? WHAT ARE YOU, GOD?

This is a true account of one of the first school massacres. In Kentucky, in 1997? A kid is so abused and disillusioned with his young life, he freaks out. He kills his mother. He tortures his dog to death.

In preparation for the final payback. An attack at the school with all guns blazing. Heath High School, fourteen year old gun man.

In an interview, he said, “My mother never loved me!”


Why does everyone thank God when they survive catastrophes? Why are they in the catastrophe? Are they thanking God, then? Hell no! They are pleading with Him. The pleading may lead to nothing and they fall out of the sky in an ill-fated airplane “accident”.

Yet, if they survive, they are praising God almighty. Why?

Why do we damm God when we hate life, and praise God when we survive it?

Why is life so ******* haphazard and unfair?

These are my questions:

If God is so powerful, why doesn’t He give us some answers? Why do I have to witness so much ******, mayhem, abuse, and pain? Why don’t I see more miraculous salvations from sure death?

It’s too late for me, but why doesn’t He help the innocents? The creatures we see on TV commercials, who are maimed, beaten, and dying in front of our eyes? Where is His sense of justice? Where is his sense of “Humanity”?

Why do I remain, with no reason to live? Why not take me, instead of that poor abused dancing bear? Or that beat to death donkey? Why?

Am I worth more than His other creatures, much more innocent and helpless than I?

Why?

A *** DEAL MADE ME NOT 01-23-10
Moral Conundrums

Dilemma Number 1:

If you won a million dollars and were told that you could give it all away to the needs of others or you could keep it all to yourself, what would you do?

My Honest Answer:

I’d keep it and sneak it back around from my profitable endeavors. So yes I would keep it, only to further my ability to give back more than a million. Seriously. If I thought I didn’t have the ability to do that, given the chance, then I’d rather quickly fade away and give it all to the Humane Society.

A happy medium, ethically, would be all of the above, or I think I would be happy dying trying!

Dilemma Number 2:  

You pull off the interstate and wait for a green light. You are turning left, so you must wait. It is raining, hard. It’s 55 degree’s, unusual for Florida. The woman outside your window is over seventy, and toothless, wet as a tired sewer rat. But she is not a rat. She is or was or could have been someone’s mother.

She certainly was someone’s daughter, but that doesn’t really matter much, never has, and never will sometimes, always. Out of ten there will always be one sometimes or no-times child. There will always be those with and without. There will always be that “have more or less” mentality based on sentiments of the basest of humanity.  

I have a dollar…until next week. One dollar. Until next week. I have some food and some cigarette butts. I have an adequate amount of liquor…to make it to next week.

None of this really penetrates my brain. I want to feel the cold rain falling on my hand as I wish her the best and silently express my gratitude to God.

In some sort of way, be it the way which is chosen and taken by me… and everyone else. I must stop thinking like this!

I alone can make a difference, I will make a difference; right here, right now! I feel it in my gut, my brain, the burning turmoil inside my soul!

I turn off the exit going east on I-192. My tires were fine moments ago. Now one blows. I skid to a stop in front of a gas station. My hand is out; I need a little change to call for some help. My dollar is gone, but I’m not.

THE COURSE CHOSEN   06-29-10 (In Memory of Rachael Ruinard 08-02-74 – 06-29-00)

I must finally, completely convey to you
There is not one whit that you can do
To stop the course of whatever I choose
Don't worry, there's nothing
that you have to loose

It’s your new beginning, a life without pain
You shudder and quiver; you shake off the pain
You  let all of it go; you sail away to live again

My clowded eyes soon become
insufficient resevoirs,
Drops of heavy salt escape
and weigh heavy on my awkwardly bent  
lower lashes, causing a pain, aching and dull
At long last, the tears slide from my eyes,
followed by untold more
They etch acid rivulets down my  chalky cheeks  

unwsavering watchiung your departures
watching all of my efforts form a pool at my feet
It will soon be as if I have never been
Heavy with tears they remain unblinking It is time to exit, to quit hurting others
I’ll set my schedule after seeing my mother
She’s the only one I don’t always bother
Quick breath, I pull back in time to see.
I’ve led her to the brink of my insanity.

I tell her goodbye once more to soothe her
I spare her the knowledge, my agony wounds her
There really is no need to tell her
that none too soon, I'll be six feet under

I have no more will with which to conspire
A certain something is now required
A trickle of strength from those I’ve inspired
I’m tired, tired, just deadfully tired

My path is written in a fat wide ink
A river unwritten, of which I can’t speak
I agreed with you on an indivisible pact
It is broken now, by your unspeakable act

I try to drive off the causeways sometimes
But I live another day, which is no surprise
I think back to the moment of my demise

At that very last moment, at the end of my life.
After  convincing myself be to numb and blind.
Some sort of enigma rearranges my mind

Instead of watching my certain fall to death
I wake up to the smell of my acrid sweat.
In the nick of time, a blink of an eye.
I pull myself back from the electric fence.

I’m too scared to let go, please do me a favor
When I near the fence, push me into the wire
There I will leave towards my destiny, higher.

I’ll have gone with peace, not just one desired.
Soon I will be pulled from the eclectic wires
and tossed into licking pits of their fire
Or the dogs may eat me when they so desire

You build false conventions; you massage your convictions
I’m not just a patient with all sorts of addictions
I am your social condition with all its afflictions
I am hurt. I am real. I am not your fiction
Leave if you want, my path is clear
your trepidation is ugly, I sense your fear
You have no experience of what you see here
I do. I react to the evil that’s near.
You gave me up, you turned me out.
You did not know what my life was about
I believed you cared; I felt your concern
Only I decide, now, which way to turn.
You had to let go, my hand slipped out of yours
My life was quick, my thoughts endless hours
It is right for me, I don’t feel God’s ire
I will sleep better, I am not a liar

Above the gloom, doom, and my own deception
my unknown spirit is once again woken
Your eyes try to say something unspoken
But its not really you, you’re a humble God’s token
I will never again bow beneath myself
To gain the acceptance of someone else
I do what I do, I take my chances or else
Mother will bury me under an Oak’s dark shelf.

Once you held on, but your hands became wet
You haven’t learned the real lesson yet
The blame is a claim I own and regret.

EVIL IS AS EVIL DOES 10-13-09

Evil is as Evil does. Thoughts are just that.... thoughts. Deeds are deeds. A thought is not a deed unless it is carried out.

I am a good person; I know that for a fact.

BUUUUT...........it doesn't mean I always do good things.

Still, most of my crimes are altruistic. I risked my entire sanity the other day as I left  Sam's Club/Costco, etc.

I was walking back to my truck and parked next to me was a BEEAAuuutiful Porch convertible, Black; doe skin interior, all leather and polished wood.

16 inches away from me was an 800.00 Dollar Ipod, resting peacefully and securely in its little Ipod holder mounted to the dash. SIXTEEN INCHES.

I got in my truck and got out of my truck. Again, I got in my truck and out of my truck.

My Godchild, K had just had her Ipod stolen.

So, I figured "*** for Tat".

Being as stupid as I can be (on record), I went for it. The car alarm raised me higher than my truck. Panicked, I sped out of the parking lot and called my therapist. In a frantic voice, I disillusioned "OH, My God! I've just committed ******!!!”  Or at least that's how it felt.

My neighbor was swimming in my cheap above ground pool when I got home.

She asked a simple question: "Well, Hmmmmm....did you take the Ipod from the vehicle?"

Now this puts a completely different spin on my sin.

"Uh, noooooo, uuuhhh, I was just looking at it!"

I couldn’t believe how easy it was to change my view. But she was right, I hadn't committed theft, I almost did. And I'm the kind of person that would chase someone down in a parking lot to return his unknown, dropped, wallet.

This one always get my head spinning: …”Even though I walk In the SHADOW of the Valley of Death”….

Uh, wait a tic. The SHADOW of a bee can not sting you. The SHADOW of a cat can not scratch you. The SHADOW of a snake can not bite you.

What the fuuuh?  I kind of get it. Our brains are weird. Our thoughts are strange. Thank God for that...most of the time....

Love, Susan

PS: But I'm still kind of ****** at the arrogant *******, who so blatantly demonstrated how rich he was.