When I hear myself scream
I hear your echo coming
back at me.
Howling at the moon,
just like you taught me to.
I feel your rage boil away
in my blood.
Running my tongue along
my teeth and trying
not to remember the
comforting burst of copper.
But the way I feel sick
and hollow inside, the hate
I always feel for myself,
that's all me, man.
I worry that the bruises
and the broken bones
and the bloodletting
weren't enough to get
your poison out of me.
I'd lock myself away
on moon bright nights
if it came to that
and often I've felt the
sickening pull toward
rending flesh and shedding blood
felt the unconscious twitch
of a hand raised,
knuckles out,
you *******,
and I know the curse is
strong still inside me.
There is forever an itch
for the easy way.
I know how to circumvent
understanding and empathy.
I know the paved smooth path
to becoming the beast.
I'll always wear your mark,
you ragged old creature,
but I don't have to
live your life.
I don't have to find
someone else to bite.

I’ve always loved music. As a little girl, I could spend hours going through peoples CD collections, sampling them with my little battery-operated CD player. If you showed me a stack, rack or box of CDs, I was in heaven.

When I was 8 (2011), I got my first iPod for Christmas, an iPod Touch with 32GB of memory! The sticker said it was from Santa, but ‘Step’ got a package in the mail from Apple three weeks earlier, so I knew who it was really from. Upon opening it, I rushed upstairs to my older brother’s computer, plugged it in, carefully copied the username and password for the family iTunes account (from a wrinkled post-it note), and the world was never the same.

It never occurred to me that my parents could see all of my playlists and that they were automatically downloaded to their devices - like my break-up playlist, inspired by Antoine, my French-boy fifth grade crush. It didn’t work out because he didn’t have an email account and our recess times didn’t line up, but my playlist helped me through it.

I could burn playlists to CDs and exchange them with friends - or gift them to middle school boys who I hoped to amaze with my awesome musical tastes. There’s an art to the playlist that involves controlling pace and mood - every playlist was both a gift and a seduction.

Today we have Spotify with its unlimited streaming of every song ever made - on demand. Exchanging playlists, these days, is as easy as pressing "Share" and typing the first few letters of a friend’s or lover's username.

Like most of my girlfriends, I consider myself a playlist queen and as I continue to work this career path I’ve chosen, regardless of what's weighing me down, I know I can turn to my playlists to push me through. The band ‘The Narcissist Cookbook ’ assures me that my shocking honesty is fun with ‘Broken People.’ ‘K. Flay’ allows me to dance-out my rage with ‘Blood in the cut’ and ‘New Move’ motivates me to keep-at-it with ‘When did we stop.’

I’ve countless Spotify playlists: one for waking up, one for writing papers, one for doing problem sets, others for walking to class, doing the laundry, for nostalgic reflection, and for embracing the astounding depth of human pain.

Of course, as time passes, I find new favorite songs and older playlists are replaced with updated ones; but thanks to the archival nature of Spotify playlist collections, all my old lists remain intact. I’ve never deleted one. Search my archives and you’d see playlists from my freshie year, when I was new here, feeling insecure and alone, or from my sophomore year when I first fell in love.

This piece is a playlist love story, about how music reflects our identities and allows us to share ourselves through the vibes, melodies and beats that move us. I think playlists have a lot in common with poetry, which uses words, phrases, metaphors and imagery for similar purposes.

with each passing day, I understand less and less, for
who could ever claim to know it all, yet, the simplicity
of our base-ic basest instincts makes evil so easily attractive,
that now, I forgive almost nothing, anyone for the cruelty
inherent in on the surfacial skin of our normalcy, so easily,
revealed, and reveled in, wrecks me, and the poetry
sparks are not doused, but wick and ember shriveled

oh the irony, that foolish me should write of the
commandment to love just as the world displays
old levels of hate historically deep… .I am hated,
to many who would know me only as Jew,
and this refresher course in my brain, reminds me,
that love thy neighbor as thyself, can morph into a
generational opposite, that my former degree of comfort,
beliefs, was only skin deep…and Tolstoy was a naïf, a romantic,
a royal, who hoped for the best in each man, and that
cannot ne achieved for hate is so easy digestible, so sweet a treat
for humans, who desire no compass other than simple baseness
to know which direction to take….

————————————————————————————-
”There can be only one permanent revolution—a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself."

Tolstoy

”To perform evil deeds a person must discover “a justification for his actions,” so that he can regard stealing, humiliating and killing as good. “Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble,” and so conscience restrained him. He had no ideology, Solzhenitsyn observes, nothing like “anti-imperialism” or “decolonization” to allay pangs of guilt. Solzhenitsyn concludes: “Ideology—that is what gives evil-doing its long-sought justification and gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination . . . so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but receive praise and honors.”

**Solzhenitsyn

I’m listening to gentle praising
the wind praises the trees
as it soughs through the leaves
the leaves tremble at the touch

birds praise the gusting air
as it carries their songs across
the nimble land to my ear
a trilling of joys and feathers

my heart joins in, making the trio
a quartet of flute, timbrel, song, and heartstrings
melodiously transporting all who listen
to join the angel choir in windy praise songs

to Life


c. 2023 Roberta Compton Rainwater

Dark clouds overhead on this warm summer evening
Makes the green on the trees bold and heavy.
The contrast of the pale yellow skies make the clouds almost black and seething.

A slowly approaching monolith with its tendrils uncoiling. Silently.
Reaching out.

Those Teeth and Talons buried deep into me
Whatever they belong to has itself planted to the ground.
Almost anticipating the coming storms.
Seems whatever is holding onto me
Is ready to weather what comes my way.

Despite what I've known about them this whole time.. maybe it's here for me.
Am I crazy to think this?

Whatever storm comes into view
Surely they can't tear me away.

I can feel a wind pick up.
The air getting cooler.
And the hair on my neck stands up on end.
A deep slow rumble breaks the silence.

They're not sinking in,
But they are holding fast..
Those **** Teeth and Talons



.....Bring on the deluge..

Through lessons learning, at times hard,
The young man makes note within his personality,
Files it away for later days to work on.
And he continues with life with only a flicker of recall.

Sometime during his 60s he flips through the files
Seeking to amend some deficiency there in
And finds the file on his lack of patience, his lack
Of understanding, his deep-seated prejudices.

Thus, he sets to work.  By the end of his lifespan
He is at long last a decent enough human being.
So late.  But too late?  Those who come to know this man
Think only of the loving, patient, and open-minded man
Which they see before them.  Redemption is sweeter than pride.

I won't say I have the answers
or that I'm the answer to your prayers.
I can't tell you what it's like in heaven
or that I can take you there.
But I can tell you that I'll listen.
And I'll show you that I care
by telling you the things
you've never had a chance to hear.
I won't promise sunshine and rainbows
or that I can make it all okay.
What I promise is I'll try to help you believe
that there's always a reason to stay.