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Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Enduring Spinning: Agriculture, Culture and War
You can feel it spinning
                                         fast
the Chinese, Japanese, American and European junk
orbiting at several thousand miles per hour could
                                                           ­                             punch
a hole in your armor, future. Thanksgiving passes, then Christmas.
A nuclear detonation, we absorb that fact. The scientist in us
delays sadness by recording observations. What is is,
sorrow's for tomorrow.

By reducing probabilities to near zero I hope to avoid sorrow.
In yr suburb.
In history when there were many fewer people we still found reason
to cross space, explore, trade and war. Now
                                                             ­                 overpopulation
may not be the problem but food and water shortages
get our attention.
                              I have Korf's fears.
And hear what I want to hear.

Some hear singing, some hear speeches or complaining.
Martin Luther King sang his complaints, dreamed of a brotherly nation
which came to pass, spinning fast, past Thanksgivings, past jailings
into reconnaissance, small wars, drones, renaissance, inventions.
At the border,
                         where the Juaristas fought Maximilian:
Benito Juarez (1806-1872) Zapotec Amerindian who served five terms as president of Mexico. He was the first Mexican leader who did not have a military background and also the first full-blooded indigenous person to lead a country in the western hemisphere in over 300 years. For resisting French occupation, overthrowing the Empire, and restoring the Republic, Juarez is regarded as Mexicoxs greatest and most beloved leader. 

Each soldier chooses what war at what border, or just
                                                            ­                                   shows up
spinning with the planet.
The neighborhood and surrounding nature is orderly.
But always there is implied force, violence holding it together,
                                                       ­                                                       chaos
is contained
kept out of the playground, government buildings, childrenxs games
but lies within
the force maintaining order, a spinning tumor, a gyroscope of
                                                              ­                                                inertia.
The force of the spinning, the speed of the force bring one to one's
      death
seasons, weather, earth.
                                         While the emperor's being beheaded
enduring seeds are discovered and invented, cross-fertilized and bred.
Corn, yams, potatoes, sunflowers, rice.
                                                           ­       Food is life and a good study,
useful discipline
                           daily meditation.
                                                     ­   The fighting man protects the farmer
and the farmer feeds the fighting man.
They elect the governor
                                        who serves the people. Peace out.

Peace and war are transitory manifestations of spinning
electrons, planets.
                               The sun's a nuclear detonation, essential
to spring and planting. Food is life. Seeds endure
if man goes to his daily discipline. If woman is man.
Birth and death
                           together are orderly, the border can be known,
voluntarily. How we live together, by prayer or force,
is our story.

Knowledge
from laboratory to starry corridor keeps us very
                                                            ­                         versed.
Did Juaristas consider the rights of animals not to be eaten?
Not during that spinning.
                                              And perform the history that surrounds us.
All that can be done
is written in the spinning:
"The people of the land, the Indian farmers of North America - like their counterparts in Mesoamerica, the Andean region, and the Amazon - have continuously cultivated maize, beans, squash and other crops for more than five thousand years. One of the salient features of their traditional farming systems is the high degree of biodiversity. These traditional farming systems have emerged over centuries of cultural and biological evolution, and they represent the accumulated experience of indigenous farmers interacting with the environment without access to external inputs, capital or scientific knowledge. In Latin America alone, more than 2.5 million hectares under traditional agriculture in the form of raised fields, polycultures, agroforestry systems and the like document indigenous farmers' successful adaptations to difficult environments."
--Wikipedia,  "Benito Juarez"
-- Altieri , Miguel A., Foreword to Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation, by Gary Paul Nabhan, The University of Arizona Press, 1989

www.ronnowpoetry.com
#war #peace #prayer #future #hope #nature #food #culture #history #farm
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho Dec 2013
Nelson Mandella is dead
NELSON MANDELA, NUMBER 46664 IS DEAD; EULOGICALLY ELEGIZING DIRGE FOR SON OF AFRICA, HOPE OF HUMANITY AND PERMANENT FLAME OF DEMOCRACY


Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)

Nelson Mandela, South Africa's anti-apartheid beacon, has died
One of the best-known political prisoners of his generation,
South Africa's first black president, He was 95.
His struggle against apartheid and racial segregation
Lead to the vision of South Africa as a rainbow nation
In which all folks were to be treated equally regardless of color
Speaking in 1990 on his release from Pollsmoor Prison
After 27 years behind bars, Mandela posited;
I have fought against white ******* and
I have fought against black *******
I have cherished the idea of a democratic
And a free society in which all persons live together
In harmony and with equal opportunity
It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve
But if need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die,

Fortunately, he was never called upon
To make such a sacrifice
And the anti-apartheid campaign did produce results
A ban on mixed marriages between whites and folks of color,
This was designed to enforce total racial segregation
Was lifted in 1985
Mandela was born on July 18, 1918
His father Gadla named him "Rolihlahla,"
Meaning “troublemaker” in the Xhosa language
Perhaps  parental premonitions of his ability to foment change.
Madiba, as he is affectionately known
By many South Africans,
Was born to Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa,
a chief, and his third wife Nosekeni *****
He grew up with two sisters
In the small rural village of Qunu
In South Africa's Eastern Cape Province.
Unlike other boys his age,
Madiba had the privilege of attending university
Where he studied law
He became a ringleader of student protest
And then moved to Johannesburg to escape an arranged marriage
It was there he became involved in politics.
In 1944 he joined the African National Congress (ANC),
Four years before the National Party,
Which institutionalized racial segregation, came to power
.
Racial segregation triggered mass protests
And civil disobedience campaigns,
In which Mandela played a central role
After the ANC was banned in 1961
Mandela founded its military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe
The Spear of the Nation
As its commander-in-chief,
He led underground guerrilla attacks
Against state institutions.
He secretly went abroad in 1962
To drum up financial support
And organize military training for ANC cadres
On his return, he was arrested
And sentenced to prison
Mandela served 17 years
On the notorious Roben Island, off Cape Town,
Mandela was elected as South Africa's first black president
On May 10, 1994
Cell number five, where he was incarcerated,
Is now a tourist attraction
From 1988 onwards, Mandela was slowly prepared
For his release from prison
Just three years earlier he had rejected a pardon
This was conditional
On the ANC renouncing violence
On 11 February 1990,
After nearly three decades in prison,
Mandela, the South African freedom beacon was released
He continued his struggle
For the abolition of racial segregation
In April 1994,
South Africa held its first free election.
On May 10,
Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first elected black president,
Mandela jointly won
The Nobel Peace Prize
With Frederik de Clerk in 1993
On taking office
Mandela focused on reconciliation
Between ethnic groups
And together with Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
He set up the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
To help the country
Come to terms
With the crimes committed under apartheid
After his retirement
From active politics in 1999,
Madiba dedicated himself
To social causes,
Helping children and ***-AIDS patients,
His second son
Makgatho died of ***-AIDS
In 2005 at the age of 54,
South Africans have fought
a noble struggle against the apartheid
But today they face a far greater threat
Mandela he posited in a reference to the ***-AIDS pandemic,
His successor
Thabo Mbeki
The ANC slogan of 1994; A better life for all
Was fulfilled only
For a small portion of the black elite
Growing corruption,
Crime and lack of job prospects
Continue to threaten the Rainbow Nation,
On the international stage
Mandela acted as a mediator
In the Burundi civil war
And also joined criticism
Of the Iraq policy
Of the United States and Great Britain
He won the Nobel Prize in 1993
And played a decisive role
Into bringing the first FIFA World Cup to Africa,
His beloved great-granddaughter
Zenani Mandela died tragically
On the eve of the competition
And he withdrew from the public life
With the death of Nelson Mandela
The world loses a great freedom-struggleer
And heroic statesman
His native South Africa loses
At the very least a commanding presence
Even if the grandfather of nine grandchildren
Was scarcely seen in public in recent year

Media and politicians are vying
To outdo one another with their tributes
To Nelson Mandela, who himself disliked
The personality cult
That's one of the things
That made him unique,
Nelson Mandela was no saint,
Even though that is how the media
Are now portraying him
Every headline makes him appear more superhuman
And much of the admiration is close to idolatry
Some of the folks who met him
Say they felt a special Mandela karma
In his presence.
Madiba magic was invoked
Whenever South Africa needed a miracle,

Mandela himself was embarrassed
By the personality cult
Only reluctantly did he agree to have streets
Schools and institutes named after him
To allow bronze statues and Mandela museums
To be built
A trend that will continue to grow.

He repeatedly pointed
To the collective achievements
Of the resistance movement
To figures who preceded him
In the struggle against injustice
And to fellow campaigners
Such as Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Luthuli
Or his friend and companion in arms
Oliver Tambo who today stands in Mandela's shadow,
Tambo helped create the Mandela legend
Which conquered the world
A tale in which every upright man
And woman could see him
Or herself reflected,
When Prisoner Number 46664 was released
After 27 years behind bars
He had become a brand
A worldwide idol
The target of projected hopes
And wishes that no human being
Could fulfill alone,
Who would dare scratch?
The shining surface of such a man
List his youthful misdemeanors
His illegitimate children
Who would mention his weakness for women?
For models
Pop starlets
And female journalists
With whom he flirted
In a politically incorrect way
When already a respected elder statesman?
Who would speak out critically?
Against the attacks
He planned when he headed the ANC
Armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe
And who would criticize the way
He would often explode in anger
Or dismiss any opinions other than his own?
His record as head of government
Is also not above reproach
Those years were marked by pragmatism
And political reticence
Overdue decisions were not taken
Day to day matters were left to others
When choosing his political friends
His judgment was not always perfect
A Mandela grandchild is named
After Colonel Muammar Gaddaffi
Seen from today's perspective
Not everything fits
The generally accepted
Picture of visionary and genius,
But Mandela can be excused
These lapses
Because despite everything
He achieved more than ordinary human beings
His long period of imprisonment
Played a significant role here
It did not break him, it formed him
Robben Island
Had been a university of life for Mandela once posited
He learned discipline there
In dialogue with his guards
He learnt humility, patience and tolerance
His youthful anger dissolved
He mellowed and acquired
The wisdom of age
When he was at last released
Mandela was no longer
Burning with rage,
He was now a humanized revolutionary
Mandela wanted reconciliation
At almost any price
His own transformation
Was his greatest strength
The ability to break free
From ideological utopia
And to be able to see the greater whole
The realization
That those who think differently
Are not necessarily enemies
The ability to listen,
To spread the message of reconciliation
To the point of betraying what he believed in,
Only in this way could he
Serve as a role model
To both black and white humanity
, communists and entrepreneurs,
Catholics and Muslims.
He became a visional missionary,
An ecclesiast of brotherly love
And compassion
Wherever he was, each humanity was equal
He had respect for musicians and presidents
Monarchs and cleaning ladies
He remembered names
And would ask about relatives
He gave each humanity his full attention
With a smile, a joke, a well aimed remark,
He won over every audience
His aura enveloped each humanity,
Even his political enemies,
That did not qualify him
For the status of demi-god
But he was idolized and rightly so
He must be named in the same breath
As Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama
Or Martin Luther King
Mandela wrote a chapter of world history
Even Barack Obama posited
He would not have become
President of the United States
Without Mandela as a role model,

And so it is not so important
That Mandela is now portrayed
Larger than life
The fact that not everything
He did in politics succeeded is a minor matter
His achievement is to have lived
A life credibly characterized
By humanism, tolerance and non-violence,
When Mandela was released
From prison in 1990,
The old world order of the Cold War era
Was collapsing
Mandela stood at the crossroads and set off in the right direction
How easily he could have played with fire, sought revenge,
Or simply failed; He could have withdrawn from public life or,
Like other companions in arms, earned millions,
Two marriages failed because of the political circumstances
His sons died tragically long before him
It was only when he was 80 and met his third wife,
Graca Machel,
That he again found warmth,
Partnership and private happiness,
Setbacks did not leave him bitter
Because he regarded his own life
As being less important
Than the cause he believed in
He served the community humbly,
With a sense of responsibility
Of duty and willingness to make sacrifices
Qualities that are today only rarely encountered,

How small and pathetic his successors now seem
Their battles for power will probably now be fought
Even more unscrupulously than in the past
How embarrassing are his own relatives
Who argued over his legacy at his hospital bed
Mandela was no saint
But a man with strengths and weaknesses,
Shaped by his environment
It will be hard to find a greater person
Just a little bit more Mandela every day
Would achieve a great deal
Not only in Africa
But in the bestridden geographies
Epochs and diversities of man,

In my post dirge I will ever echo words of Mandella
He shone on the crepuscular darkness of the Swedish
Academy, where cometh the Nobel glory;
Development and peace are indivisible
Without peace and international security
Nations cannot focus
On the upliftment
Of the most underprivileged of their citizens.
Continue reading...
Poetic T Nov 2014
My Brotherly Angel
My angel always by my side
You have shown me how to be
Respectful,
Helpful,
Truthful
Through my childhood days,
He would tell me stories
When I was down, tears would fall
Upon  that  sorrowful day  tears came around,
My parents would see me
Hugging,
Silent,
Tears
Flowed always out of view,
My angel would wipe away
The sorrow, turning tears
In to snow flakes that floated slowly around
Me
&
You
I could see your outline where the snow flakes fell,
I would stick out my tongue to try & catch a few.
My parents catching a view
"If you keep that funny face it will stick"
Everybody laughed,
I played
Hide
&
Seek,
My brotherly angel would be sneaky
I though I had found him giggling
but he could walk through walls,
"My brother"
"My angel"
"My hero"
You were there for me in life,
And now your my guardian angel
I miss you,
Mum
&
Dad
Miss you now that your gone,
"But your still here"
My invisible friend, My brotherly angel
Always here when needed, I so happy your still in my life.
#tears #fun #angel #cuddles #protector #snowflakes #briother
Continue reading...
Dorothy A Oct 2013
Beyond The Dark (a short story of fiction)
Everything faded to black. He had a hard time remembering just what the hell happened. He wasn't sure of downing some random pills from of the medicine cabinet-- his first attempt to end it all. Making sure he would not recover-- if the pills didn't do the job-- he had already devised the set up of the noose in his bedroom. Definitely, he didn't recall anyone cutting the rope, forcing him down to the floor.

Lacie joked with him. "Dude, you've got nine lives! You must really be a ****, fricking cat in disguise! That's why you'll eat those nasty tuna fish sandwiches they serve in the nuthouse! "

Chris grinned at her.  He had to agree. To refer to it as the psych ward at the hospital made it seem like more of a jail term, but calling it "the nuthouse" lightened up the severity of the situation. As grave and nearly tragic as everything  had become, it was kind of laughable to him.  He supposed he had more chances than a cat's fabled life. It all seemed so crazy that it must be funny.

Well, what could he say? He had flirted with death, but unwillingly managed to escape its grip. "Pathetic..."--he commented. "I don't not even know how to die well..."

Chris  eventually realized that he had been rushed to the hospital, but wished it wasn't true. Since then, everything was either a total blur or a bizarre state of mind . Even waking up in his room was like a remotely vague memory, almost like a long ago dream that might not really have happened.

Maybe, he was somewhat aware that his sister was screaming in shock and horror at the sight of him, shouting out downstairs to her boyfriend to help her. But the walls were turning red, a glowing scarlet- red, with an added fiery orange and yellowish-gold-- all joined together in pulsating embers. He was quickly losing consciousness. It was like some, bad acid trip. Not that Chris knew this firsthand, but it sure was like something he saw on TV or at the movies.

And now he was the star of the horror show.

Did he die?  Death was what he planned on, so waking up was not a relief, or a reality back into motion--just the opposite. It was as if being awake was the real nightmare, a delusional time when everything was not true, and was only an scary, offbeat version of the life of Chris Cartier.

The bad acid trip continued. He recalled hospital staff rushing about him, seeming like real people-- sort of. Then they morphed into fish in scrubs. From overhead, an IV was dripping into his arm. Tubes were shoved down his throat. His vital signs were displayed on a screen that made beeps and sounds, increasing the chaos and adding to the mayhem to his mind. Soon, the vital signs machine started talking to him that he was a "very bad boy" and other such scoldings.

He was thoroughly freaked out. If he was still alive, he'd rather be dead.

He wanted to run. One of the fish pushed him back down and muttered out undecipherable utterances-- like underwater gibberish . Then that fish used its slimy fins to inject him with a needle in his arm. The other fish circled around him like fish out of water--with opening and closing mouths-- as if gasping for air.

As they surrounded him as rubber monkeys shot out from the walls and bounced all over the room. On top of all this madness, the florescent lights above were flickering on and off, in sync to the wild music, like the drum beats of a distant jungle. It was one bizarre tangle of events, a freaky, crazy, out-of-control ride in which reality could not be distinguished from the animation and mass confusion. It was one overpowering ride that he would much rather forget.

When Chris got out of critical condition, he found out that he could still not go home. That would take a few weeks more. Dr. What-The-Hell's-His-Name assured him that he needed to start on the path to his psychological healing--just as grave as the physical--right here in a safe place.

It didn't seem so safe to him.

The enemy wasn't what was out there in the world, but the big, bad wolf was actually him. He had to be protected from the true culprit--himself-- and that was a mind-blowing concept. Just what did he get himself into?   

He never had been a patient in a hospital before. In all his twenty-six years, he didn't so much as even have his tonsils out. Feeling now like a prisoner,, he was still scared out of his mind-- as if it was day one all over again. When was he going to get out of here? Chris began to fear that they would never let him out. No professional had a definitive answer, as only time would tell of his improvement.

Man, why couldn't he just be dead?

His parents visited almost everyday, but it was of no reassurance to him. His mother always left in tears, and his father was lost for words. This was nothing new. When it concerned their troubled son, they felt inadequate to help him. The best his dad could say was, "Hey, Chris, we're pullin' for ya". That was of no comfort, whatsoever, like he was some fighter in a boxing ring that his old man had a bet placed on . His mom always clung to him as she said goodbye, like she needed the hug more than he did, saying to Chris through her sobs , "Miss you....love you". Her emotional state just unsettled him to the core, and he was worried for her more than for himself.    

At best, his outlook was grim. But then he met Lacie Weiss, and things started looking up.

Lacie was one of the quietest psych patients in the ward, always sticking to herself. But then he found himself sitting right next to her in group therapy, and they hit it off. He had no idea that she had a fun side. She usually looked apathetic and quietly defiant to society, a nonconformist in the form of a Goth, with edgy, dyed black hair, dark eye make-up and some ****** piercings of the eyebrow, tongue and nose. Her look was quite in contrast to his light blue eyes and sandy-brown hair. Chris never was into Gothic, viewing those who were as spooky creeps.  

It was obvious that Chris was scared and confused. Now although trying to seem tough and stoic, Lacie seemed so little, almost fragile, yet obviously trying to hide her broken self together. Petite and somewhat girlish in appearance, she was barely 5 feet tall. Chris was 5 feet 11 and a half inches, close enough to the six foot stature that he wanted to be. Only a half inch less really didn't cut it for him, though, even though his slim build gave the impression of a lankier guy. He would have loved to be as tall as the basketball players he so emulated. But such was life. He was never used to having the advantages.  

At first, Lacie never opened up, not to a single soul. Like Chris, she certainly acted like she didn't need this place, and nobody was going to help her--or be allowed to help her. As stony and impenetrable as she tried to be, group therapy it was hard to disappear in. Everyone was held accountable for opening up, and the leader was going to see to it.  No way, though, did Lacie want to crack or look weak in her turtle shell composure, in her self-preservation mode. So it was agony for her.

She first spoke to him, whispering loudly to him, onc,e in the group circle "This is all *******!"

Hanging with Chris was the one salvation that she had in this miserable experience. They both could relate more than he ever realized. They both really liked motorcycles and basketball. He had his own Harley, and it was something he loved to work on and go on long rides with it, his own brand of therapy.  In spite of how she looked, Lacie was also actually close to his age. He was twenty-six. and she was twenty-two.

They first broke the ice with casual introductions. "No, the name is not pronounced like Carter", he corrected her about his last name. "It is like Cart-EE-AY...... It's French".

"Yep", she replied. "Like mine is the same way, but as German as brats and sauerkraut,  Ja dummkopf?"

Chris gave her a weird look. She continued, "My mom's dad was from Germany, and I got my mom's name. Ya don't say it how it looks. You would say Weiss like Vice, but I couldn't give a **** how anybody says it. Nobody gets it right and original, anyhow." Her dark brown eyes flashed at him as she said, " But I think I like Chris Cutie, myself, better than Cartier.....cutie it is for me. Huh, cutie pie? "

Chris laughed hard. She was pretty coy for a die-hard Goth. She batted her eyes playfully at him and winked."You're worth being in here for, ya know", he told her, blushing, still laughing at her silly remarks.

She studied his face in response, all laughing aside. Suddenly, her mood turned solemn.  "I'll bet".

They began hanging out in the commons, walking down the halls for exercise, and swapping stories of their plights. Chris quickly found that she Lacie wasn't so steely and unapproachable as the day he first saw her.  And she discovered that he was more than a pretty boy.

"My parents weren't home when I tried", he told her one time after lunch was done. They were sitting in a corner, trying to be as private as possible. "Twenty-six years old...and I still live with them. Yeah, that's my life. I got a twin brother, and he's moved out and doing alright for himself. My sister's younger, is going to college. Wants to be a doctor".

Lacy didn't have any siblings to compare herself to. "Must be cool to have a twin", Lacie said. "I always wondered how that would be to have two of me running around! Scary, huh, dude?"

Chris shook his head. "No, it's nothing like that. Jake and I aren't identical. We are just a two-for-one deal...I mean  is that my parents got two babies in one, huge-*** pregnancy. Jake and me don't even act like twins. Half the time, I don't want to be around him."

No, it wasn't like his cousins, Adam and Alan, who were identical friends, mirror images, and best of friends. Chris never identified with that kind of brotherly relationship. He and Jake never dressed alike, or knew what the other one was thinking. And Chris felt that his brother always felt superior to him. He was the popular one. He was the ambitious one who landed a great job in computers, as a system analyst.  To add to Chris's feelings of inferiority, his little sister, Kate, had surpassed him, too. She was acing most of her classes, and boarding away at college. She was well on her way to becoming a doctor.    

"So if your mom and dad weren't around...who saved you?" Lacie asked. She stared into his eyes with such a probing stare that Chris almost clammed up. Just thinking about that day was overpowering.

"Uh...my sister and her boyfriend were hanging out in the basement. She was home from college, and I didn't know it. My parents were out-of-town. Our dog, Buster, was acting funny. He knew something was up..."

Chris stopped abruptly, but went on. "Kate, my sister, explained to me that she saw me in my room, getting up on a step ladder. She says she yelled at me to stop. I don't remember...but I guess..I guess I was going to do it anyway, and she wouldn't be able to stop me....stop me from...so I hurried up and jumped off before she could stop me."  

Lacie could almost picture it, as if she was there with him. She said, "But she did stop it. She saved you."

"Yeah", he agreed. "Buster started it all...barking, alerting my sister to come upstairs from the basement, and upstairs by my room...." All of a sudden, he felt so weird, like he was having an out-of-body experience.

"Hey, it's OK", Lacie reassured him. "It's over now. You aren't there anymore".

Chris started to cry, but tried not to. "If it weren't for Brian, Kate's boyfriend....she would not of had the strength to hold me up by herself, and cut the rope, too. I must have been like dead weight, and Brian grabbed a kitchen knife and told her to stay cool about it. Yeah, sure, like that could have been possible ! She was trying to keep the rope slack, while trying to save my sorry ****...and she was scared, shitless! "

Lacie opened up, too, relating her tragic past. She had an unbelievable tale, one hell of a ride herself.  It was amazing how detached she was when relating it, though. "Well" actually I got to fess up" "I'm not really an only child....I mean I am...but not really. I know that sounds weird---hey--but I am weird. Oddly unusual is the story of my life-- even before day one. "

Chris had no idea what she was talking about. "What are ya' trying to say?"

She added another surprising bombshell. "Also,  I have a two-year-old boy. His name is Danny. He don't see his dad--ever. The guy's a waste of space. Anyway, my mom has him. She can afford him more, and can do a better job raising him than me. Well, she does OK money-wise. Anyhow, my mom deserves him because she lost everything. And I mean EVERYTHING! Her whole fricking family practically wiped out!"

The shock that Chris had on his face-- his widened, blue eyes and open mouth were expected.   Most people had a hard time believing her.

She explained, calmly, "I mean she nearly died--way before I was born--in a car accident. And her two, little boys were with her in the backseat...and they died that day. "

Chris looked pale. "That is so awful!" he said, hoarsely, barely able to say it.

"Yeah", she continued. "Not a **** thing she could do about it, too. She was like in a million pieces. I know a part of her died right there and then, too. I just know it.  You know, dude, my mom was once really, really coasting along, just doing fine. A typical wife and mother-- a bit older than me now-- life was good. Her little boys were just cute, little toddlers--like Danny. I found out from my grandma that she was  pregnant, too, just a month or two. Nobody could have imagined it coming. She was just driving--doing nothing wrong-- when some idiot broadsided her.  I don't know if it was a guy or a lady, if they were jacked up on ***** or drugs, but they were speeding like a demon out of Hell. Her husband was at work and wasn't around."  

The boys were Benjamin and Gerard, but Lacie couldn't remember their names, for her mom could barely mention them without breaking down. It was an unbearable loss.

Chris was so horrified, amazed that Lacie related this like it was someone else's story. She was almost too cavalier about it.

"And they died ?!" he asked.

"Yeah....*****, don't it? Pure, pure agony. Downright Hell on earth. My mom had to learn to walk again. It took about year, I think."

"Oh, no! What about the baby she was supposed to have?"

"Miscarriage. Worse yet, the **** doctor told her she'd never be able to have kids again. She lost everything, man! Her husband couldn't handle it and left her. **** on top of ****, on top of more ****, on top of more. If it wasn't for her parents, and her sister's help, she would never have made it.

"But she had given birth to you, right? Or were you adopted?"

"Yeah, she gave birth to me. I was her miracle baby, and she didn't give a rat's rear end if my dad wanted me or not. He'd send her money, once in a while, but he wasn't really into either of us. Who cares though? She didn't give a **** what he thought. I was her baby. Truth is, before I came, she ended up slitting her wrists--just like me. What was the use? At first, there was nothing to live for. But now she has Danny.

"And you!" Chris quickly pointed out.

"Dude, are you kidding me? I have been NOTHING but grief for her, a real pain in her ***!"

Unlike her deceased, half-brothers, Lacie grew up before her mother's eyes, from a shy girl to a ******* rebel. Since the age of twelve, she would sneak drinks from her mom's liqueur cabinet. Eventually, she smoked *** and tried ******* and ******. Dropping out of the eleventh grade, she soon away from home, living with friends or boyfriends ever since.  Thankfully, she wasn't doing drugs when she conceived Danny. And her drinking wasn't as prevalent as it was in her teen years of partying and binge drinking. That didn't mean that her drinking problems magically disappeared, or that she was cured. Immediately, though, when she knew she was pregnant, she refused to touch a bottle, but it was just a white knuckle process that was effective momentarily--a band aid on a more serious wound. And going months without a drop of alcohol didn't deaden her urges--quite the opposite--as it only made her crave what she could not have. Often, her fears caught up with her--of especially becoming
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Dorothy A Jun 2012
Flash Gordon and Poison Ivy (a short story of fiction)
With great recollection, there were a few things in life that Ivy Jankauskas would always remember—always.

She would never forget where she was when 9/11 happened; she was in her algebra class, doodling a picture on a piece of notebook paper of her dog, Zoey—bored out of her mind by Mr. Zabbo’s lecture—when she first heard the shocking news. Certainly, she could remember when she first properly fell in love; she was fresh into college when she knew that she loved Trevor Littlefield—the day after they agreed to get back together, right after the day they decided to split up—after she finally realized that she really loved him, much more than she ever, really, consciously thought. She would forever remember when her parents first took her to Disneyland; she was seven and got her picture taken with Snow White and Mickey Mouse, and she instantly decided that she wanted to become a professional Tinkerbelle when she grew up.

And, like it or not, she could remember her very first kiss. She had just turned five, and it was at her birthday party. How could she ever forget those silly paper hats, and all her little playmates wearing them? They were a good sized group of children, mostly from the neighborhood and her kindergarten class, which watched her open present after present. Ivy remembered her cherry cake, with white frosting, and the stain she had when she dropped a piece on her pretty, new dress that her mother had bought her just for the occasion.  

It was later that day, behind her garage, that Gordon Zachary Durand, the Third, a boy her same age, planted one on her. It was a strange sensation, she recalled—icky, wet and sloppy, and Gordon nearly missed her mouth. Not expecting it, Ivy made a face, puckering up her lips—but not for another kiss—as if she had just ****** on a spoiled lemon. Ever since then, it was the beginning of the dislike she had for Gordon Zachary Durand, the Third. She didn’t exactly know why—there was just something about him that bugged her from then on.

There grew to be several reasons why Ivy knew that Gordon was a ****, something she first sensed at her birthday party behind the garage. Since about third grade, children picked on Ivy’s name, teasing her by calling her “Poison Ivy”.  And the one who seemed to be the loudest and most obnoxious of the name callers, chiming in with the other bullies, was Gordon Zachary Durand, the Third.  Ivy was proud of her name up until then, but the taunts made her self conscious. Her mother told her to be proud of her name, for it was unique and different, as she was unique and an individual. Still, Ivy felt uncomfortable with her name for quite a while. Only in adulthood, did she feel somewhat better about it.

A bit of a tomboy back then in school, she would have loved to punch Gordon right in the nose. If only she could get away with it! What a joke! Who would name their child Gordon anyway? She had thought it was far worse than hers.

So to counter his verbal assaults to her name, Ivy called Gordon, “Flash Gordon”, after the science fiction hero from TV and the comics. But Gordon was no hero to her. He was more of a villain, creepy, vile, and just plain mean!

Soon, new name of him caught on, and other kids were joining her. She had a smug sense of satisfaction that Gordon grew furious of the title, for it stuck to him like glue.

Gordon’s family lived right around the block, just minutes away from where Ivy lived. Ivy’s mom, Gail, and Gordon’s mom, Lucy, both went to the same Lithuanian club, and both encouraged their children to take up Lithuanian folk dancing. Ivy remembered she was eight-years-old when she began dancing. It was three years of Hell, she had thought, wearing those costumes, with long, flowery skirts, frilly blouses, aprons, caps and laced vests, and performing for all the parents and families in attendance. Worst of all, she often had to dance with Gordon, and he was one of only three boys that was dragged into taking up folk dancing by their mothers. Probably all of those boys went into it kicking and screaming, so Ivy had thought.

Many years have came and gone since those days. Ivy was now a lovely, young woman, tall and dark blonde, and with a Master’s degree in sociology, working as a social worker in the prison system. Ivy’s parents would never have imagined that she would work in a field, in such places, but she found it quite rewarding, helping those who often wished for or were in need of redemption.    

When Ivy came over to visit her mom one day, her mother had told her some news. “Gordon Durand’s mother passed away”, Gail announced. It was quite disturbing.

“What? When?” Ivy replied, her face full of shock.

“Well, it must have been a few days ago. I saw the obituary in the paper, and a couple of people from the Lithuanian club called me to tell me. The funeral will be Friday. Why, I didn’t even know she was sick! She must have hid from just about everyone. If only I knew, I would have gone to see her and make sure she know I cared”.

It had been a long time since Ivy saw Gordon, ever since high school. Now, they were both twenty-six-years-old. It never occurred to her to ever think of Gordon, to have him fixed in her mind like a fond memory from the past.

“Could of, would of, should of—don’t beat yourself up, Mom” Ivy told her "I guess I should go pay my respects”. But Ivy was not sure if she really should do it, or really if she wanted to do it. “Mrs. Durand was a nice lady. Sometimes, it is the nice ones that die young. What did she die of anyway?”

Ivy’s mom was pouring herself and her daughter a cup of coffee. “I believe it was leukemia. In the obituary, it asks for donations to be made to the Leukemia Society of America”.

Ivy shook her head in disbelief.  As she was sitting down with her mother at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee, her mom shocked her even more. Gail said, “Only twenty-six, same as you, and now Gordon has no mother or father! How tragic to lose your parents at such a young age! It breaks my heart to think of him without his parents, even though he is a grown up man now!”

“What?!” Ivy shouted in disbelief. “When did Gordon’s dad die?!”

Gail sipped on her coffee mug. “Oh, a few years ago, I believe. Time sure flies, so maybe it was longer than I think”. Gail had a far away look on her face like she was earnestly calculating the time in her mind.

“He died? You never told me that! How come you never told me?”

Under normal circumstances, the thought of Gordon Zachary Durand, the Third, would almost want to make Ivy cringe. But now Ivy was feeling very sad for him.  

“I did!” Gail defended herself. “You just don’t remember, or you weren’t listening. I am sure I told you!”

Gail was a round faced woman, with light, crystal blue eyes that always seemed warm in spite of their icy color. Ivy was quite close to her mother, her parents’ only child. She was grateful that her dad, Max, was still around, too, unlike the thought of Gordon’s dad dying. She felt that she could not have asked for better parents. They loved her and built her up to be who she was, and she felt that they could be proud of how she turned out, not the stereotypically spoiled, only child, not entitled to have everything, but one who was willing to do her share in life.  

“I would have remembered, Mom!” Ivy insisted. “I would remember a thing like that! What happened to him? Did you go to the funeral home?”

“I think he had a heart attack”, Gail replied, tapping her finger on her temple to indicate that she remembered. “I did go…oh, wait a minute. You were in Europe with your friends. It was the year after you graduated from high school, I believe. You couldn’t possibly have gone to the funeral home at that time”.

Since Gail did not want to go to Daytona Beach, in Florida, for her senior trip, her parents saved up the money for her to go to Germany and Italy. Ivy wasn’t into being a bikini clad sun goddess, nor was she thrilled by the rowdy behavior of crowds of *** craved teens—a choice that her parents were quite grateful that she chose, level headed as she was.

Since she was a little girl, Ivy dreamed of going to Europe. Her parents, both grandchildren of Lithuanian immigrants, would have loved for her to go to Lithuania, but Ivy and two of her friends had found a safe, escorted trip to go elsewhere,  on to where Ivy always dreamed of going—to see the Sistine Chapel and to visit her pen pal of eleven years, Ursula Friedrich, in Munich.  

Now, Ivy was available to visit the funeral home for Gordon’s mother, and she had decided to go with her mother. Not seeing Gordon in years, Ivy had her misgivings, not knowing what to expect when encountering him. Perhaps, he would be different now, but maybe he would prove to be quite the ****.

As she came, she noticed Gordon’s sister, Deirdre, and she gave her a hug. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom. She was so nice”, Ivy told Deirdre. She felt uncomfortable talking to Deirdre, for she did not know what to say other than the usual, I am sorry for your loss. It was “sympathy card” talk, and Ivy felt like she was quoting something contrived from a Hallmark store.    

Deirdre was two years older than Gordon. She slightly smiled at Ivy and sighed. She must have said just about the same thing all day long, “It is good of you to come. Thank you for your kind support. Mom would appreciate it”.

Ivy looked around the room. There were many flowers, in vases and baskets, and people surrounding the casket. Ivy could not see Mrs. Durand in the coffin, for people were in the way, her mother included. She was glad she couldn’t see the body from her view.

Funeral homes gave her the creeps, ever since she was thirteen years old and her grandmother died, her father’s mother, and she had to stay at the funeral home all day long. Even a whiff of some, certain flowers was not pleasant to smell. They reminded her of being at a place like this, certainly not evoking thoughts of joy.          

Ivy looked around the room. “Where is Gordon?” she asked Deirdre.

Deirdre sighed again. “Gordon cannot handle death very well”, she admitted. “Go outside and look. He has been hanging around the building outside, getting some fresh air and insisting he needs a big break from all this.”

Ivy shook her head and smirked. “That sounds like Gordon, I must say”  

“Yeah”, Deirdre agreed, as she looked like Gordon’s help to her was a lost cause. “And he’s leaving me to do all the important work—talking to people who come in while he goes away and escapes from reality”.

Ivy went outside to search for Gordon. Sure enough, she found him by the side of the building, under a broad, shady tree. He was having a cigarette, standing all by himself, when he saw her approach.

Gordon looked the same—wavy brown hair and freckles, but much more grown up and sophisticated, his suit jacked off and his tie loosened up. Ivy knew that he always hated wearing ties. She knew that when both her mom and his mom convinced them to go out with each other—a huge twist of their arms—to the Fall Fest Dance in ninth grade and in junior high school. Gordon’s mom bribed him to go with her by promising to double his allowance for the month, and Ivy actually had a silly crush on Gordon’s cousin, Ben, hoping that she might get to talk to him if she went with Gordon to the dance.

Ivy glanced at Gordon’s cigarette, and he noticed. “Been trying to quit”, Gordon told her as she approached. He dropped it on the sidewalk and stepped on it to put it out. His face was somber as he added without any emotion, as if parroting his own voice, “Ivy Jankauskas—how the hell have you been?” It sounded like he had just seen her in a matter of months instead of years.

Well, at least he had no problem identifying her or remembering her name. She must not have changed that drastically—and hopefully for the better.

Ivy stood there before him, as he looked her down from head to toe. Same old Gordon! She thought he was probably giving her “the inspection”. She thought he almost looked handsome in his brown suit vest and pants—almost—with a sharp look of sophistication that Gordon probably wasn’t accustomed to. Surely, Ivy had no real respect for him.

“I’m well”, she responded. “But the question is more like…how are you doing?” Ivy studied Gordon’s blank expression. “No—really. I’d like to know how you are coping”.

Gordon stood there looking at the ground, his hands in his pants pockets, like he never heard her. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk”

“Here? Now?”

“Just a short work, around the block”, he told her. He already started walking, and Ivy contemplated what to do before she decided to follow up with him to join him.

They walked together in silence for a while. From anyone passing by, they surely would have looked like a couple, a well-paired couple that truly enjoyed each other’s company. Ivy could not believe she was actually walking with him. Gordon Zachary Durand, the Third? Of all people!

“You haven’t answered my question”, Ivy said. “How are you coping? You know I really liked your mom a lot. She always was pleasant to me”.

She wanted to add, “Unlike you”, but it certainly was not the right time or the right place. She felt a twinge of guilt for thinking such a thing. Under more pleasant circumstances, she would have jabbed him a little. That was just how they always communicated, not necessarily in a mean-spirited way, but in a brotherly and sisterly way that involved plenty of teasing.

Gordon thought a moment before he answered. “Yeah, it’s hard. But what can I do? I lost my dad. I lost my mom. Period. End of discussion. I’m too old to be an orphan…but I kind of feel like one anyhow. That’s my answer, in a nutshell”.

“And I wish I knew about your dad”, Ivy said, with a great tone of remorse. “I was in Europe at the time, and I couldn’t have possibly gone to the funeral”.

“Europe? Wow! Aren’t you the jet setter? Who else gets to do that kind of stuff but you, Ivy?”

Now that was the Gordon she always knew! It did not take long for the true Gordon to come forth and show himself.

“No! I don’t have all kinds of money!” she quickly defended herself. “I actually helped pay for some of that trip by working all summer after we graduated from high school. Plus, it was the trip of a lifetime. I may never get the chance to go again on a trip like that again”.  

Ivy was a bit perturbed that Gordon seemed to imply that she was pampered by her parents. He accused her of that before, just because she was an only child.

Autumn was approaching, but summer was still in the air. It was Ivy’s favorite time of year, with the late summer and early autumn, all at the same time.  The trees were just starting to turn colors, but the sun felt nice and warm upon her as Ivy walked along. It was surely an Indian summer day, one that wouldn’t last forever. She wore a light sweater over her sleeveless, cotton dress, and took it off to experience more of the sun.

“It has been ages since I’ve seen you”, Gordon admitted. “Since high school. So what became of you? Did you ever go to college?”

“I did and I work as a social worker…I work in various prisons”

Gordon laughed out loud, and Ivy gave him a stern look. “What’s so funny?” she demanded.

“I just can’t picture you going in the slammer, even if you aren’t wearing an orange suit”, he said in between laughing. He looked at Ivy, and she had quite a frown on her face. He changed his tune. “I was only joking, Ivy. I think you’d probably do good work at your job”.  

“And where do you work?” she asked, a devilish expression on her face. “At the circus?”

Ivy caught herself becoming snarky to Gordon. It did not take long. She opened her mouth to apologize, but Gordon, sensing her need to be sorry, stopped her.

Laughing even more, he said, “Good one! You are sharp and fast on your feet! You always have been! I work for an insurance agency. I work for Triple A”.

“Oh, really? Do you like your job?” Ivy asked. Her interest was genuine.

“It pays the bills. But, hey! I am going back to college in January. I just have an Associate’s degree right now. I am not sure what I want to take up, but I want to go back and at least get a Bachelor’s”.

“That’s great!” Ivy exclaimed. “I think you should keep on learning and keep on moving forward. That is a great goa
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Mike Hauser Jun 2018
Goodbye Brotherly Love
Life is a must
But who can you trust
Before we turn back
Dust into dust

These days being more
Than wish upon a star
In this nightmarish scene
We've become who we are

I used to laugh at the circumstance
Now wonder what's up with that
Packed its bags then up and left
Making brotherly love a thing of the past

When arguments
Are no more than screaming fits
Which makes it hard
To try and convince

This is not just a slice
Of American pie
This tasteless desert
Is served up world wide

I used to laugh at the circumstance
Now wonder what's up with that
Packed its bags then up and left
Making brotherly love a thing of the past

Seems there are only two sides
One on the left, one on the right
Where the ground in the middle
Is used for the fight

We're quickly to choose
Without a moment to think
Where all that we do
Is stand there and scream

I used to laugh at the circumstance
Now wonder what's up with that
Packed its bags then up and left
Making brotherly love a thing of the past
Continue reading...
jar Oct 2013
three types of love
a few months ago,
you asked me: "What is love?"
As you can see,
it had taken me a long time to understand the question myself,
but I think I've finally come up with an answer.
Unfortunately,
the English language
has only one word to describe something that has limitless interpretations.
In Greek,
there are three words for the three basic types of love.
Eros;
lust.
This type of love
is when you find yourself doodling their name
on the inside of your history textbook,
dotting the I's with hearts
as if you are 13 again and you were just asked on your first date.
You chose that textbook
because it will be the only place no one would ever think to look.
You think about everything you would be far too shy to say or act in person,
making out in the back of a movie theatre
not caring who would walk past,
sneaking off away from your friends just to have two measly moments of what you both call "peace."
Most often,
this type of love is encased in "I love you"
only to obtain a certain goal.
Virginty,
a picture,
or even just one more night
of having them in your arms.
Eros is not authentic,
it is emphemeral.
Phileo;
Brotherly Love.
The friend you would drop anything for in a heartbeat to make sure of their wellbeing,
but also the neighbor you see from time to time watering their garden.
They ask you
to tend to their garden while they are away,
and you do it
even though you've never spoken more than a paragraph to the man
because it is what you believe is right.
This type of love is the devotion of time and energy without any promise of compensation in return,
purely out of the good of heart.
Phileo lasts as long as the people do.
The final type of love
is Agape;
unconditional love.
In religion,
we are guided
or pushed
towards showing this type of love towards the diety.
Yet, very rarely
it is shown towards a human being.
Unconditional love
is the ability to say so much with only uttering a single word.
I have experienced this love,
it is great pain
and great sadness
but the feelings of pain will never leave my lips
in case they are transferred to the person i wish to have the least pain.
This kind of love
is when it is not only enough that you think about them every waking moment but every slumber-filled one as well. You have hung up your needs at the front door along with the key to your heart and devoted yourself entirely to them,
even if they don't reciprocate.
They have been adopted by your body and taken the form of a vital *****.
If you do not
pay absolute attention
to them at all times
you will run into many problems.
You need to keep them running smoothly in order to stay alive and healthy,
because without them you are nothing.
You are a sorry sack of bones with a beating heart with no purpose.
Unconditional love is taking all the lessons you have ever learned
all the rights and wrongs you have finally learned the difference between and throwing them out the window.
It is the thin line between sanity and insanity,
heaven and hell,
and safety and danger.
You walk the rope
from building to building
without the promise of a net.
Unconditional love
is authentic,
but not emphemeral.
((Love *****, don't do it.))
Continue reading...
Alexander K Opicho Feb 2014
CRYING LAUGHTER OF OKOT P’ BITEK
Alexander K OPICHO
(ELDORET, KENYA;aopicho@yahoo.com)

Okot the son of Acholi, hailers of Ladwong
The Husband of Auma the daughter of Acholi
The son of Gulu, fountain of African songs of freedom
I know your laughter is true toast of poetry
You only laugh because your teeth is white
Neither mirth nor joy is the pedestal of your laughter,

Okot I know how your mother, taller than her husband
was ever cooking by use of her legs, where the legs took her
Is where she ate, leaving you with anger of hunger
as you herded animals; Animals of the Acholi tribe
That has long horns which cannot give any gain
Okot you only laughed to show the whiteness of your teeth
Okot, you herded the animals in faith that you will pay dowry
That one time your kinsman will have you pay dowry with  the animals
The animals that scrofulously herded with a lugubrious look
that you may use in paying flesh eating dowry
For the Acholi girls which was a whooping one thousand shilling
and its kind worth is one hundred cows, or two hundred Lang’o cows
Okot how Nampy Pampy were you that
The long necks of acholi girls
The slender hips of the acholi girls
The sharp pointed *******
On their narrow busts
Made you accept
And goof foolishly
To pay such dear dowry?

They all made you desert your home when callow
Mostly unseasoned in your brains
Moving away from the beautiful
Land of Gulu going far to the land of money
In such of dowry for the Acholi girl
As you emotionally failed to disconnect
Yourself from the beautiful terrains of Gulu
To which you sang a poem of birth-place attachment
That; Hills of our home land, when shall I see you again?
Gulu, my home town, when shall I return to you?
Friends when shall we dance together again?
Mother, when shall I see you again?
Sister, my future wealth
When shall I again give you
a brotherly piece of advice?
Cecilia my beloved one when shall i
See  you and the beautiful kere gap in your
Upper teeth row again?
Or is only a dream
That I am leaving Gulu land behind myself?
Okot son of Bitek you remorsefully sang this song
As you moved away on foot in regular hitchhike
To Kampala the land of wonders
Beyond your bush civilization
You misfortunate son of Zinjathropus
The civilization you were bound to drop before the Nile
To leave behind the Nile before you could sing
The beautiful songs of the Nile; that wonderful ode
The ode that you sang in praise of Nile;  
Gently, gently, flow gently, River Nile
Move on, travel gently Victoria waters
Go and give life to the people of Egypt
As the birds at atura flew high beautifully
Diving into waters
To emerge with fish dangling on their peaks
And the birds sweetly sing that;
For us we have no worries
It is you travellers who are worried
We are in full contentment here
There are plenty of fish here
We have no use for money
Nile waters at atura are boundaries
For glory and suffering
For you the ones crossing it to Bugandaland
Be aware there is a lot of suffering
It is only the harsh world waiting for you there
Poor Okot son of Bitek peace to you among our ancestors;
For when you crossed the Nile into the land of banana
In the kingdom of Toro, Buganda and Bunyore
In their mighty city of Kampala at Namirembe
The poetic fountain in Makerere University
The germ of African burgeosie lumpenization.
When the young feudal land of Buganda
To crash a son of singh in the stampede of epilepsy
To Sent you  into a  poetic feat and berserk to bananasly sing,
Sing the nostalgic ballads of an estranged pumpkin
The true Acholi village pumpkin of Gulu,
Sing; sing your peasant ballads you Okot son of Bitek;
Bugandaland is the land of happiness
The land of great extremes
Sorrow; land of much wealth and dire poverty
Land of laughter and tears;
Land of good health and diseases
A land full of piety and stark evil;
A land of full loyalists and beautiful rebels
Full of witty ones and appalling nitwitted;
The land of the rich and the sgualorly beggars.

The hard hearted beggars
And that they only laugh the crying Laughter
The oxymoronic one of Okot the son Bitek
That they not only laughed because of mirthful laughter
But he did laugh to prove the whiteness of his teeth.
Continue reading...
Jake Espinoza Sep 2012
Conscious Decision
Write something about nothing, call it poetry.
Quiet jet-engine speed turmoil indecision on the topic.
Silent bodies, screaming minds, communication desired and avoided
Chance glances, glimpses. Hoofing it.
Write poetry about nothing, call it something, but only in whispers to yourself, pretend to hope to be heard, have interest feigned or genuine directed your way.
        Confusion. Mingled strings of internal conversation.
        Misdirected. I can’t think crooked, focalisation se présente sideways. Self-expression in non-poetic terms seems likely. Saw girls, one on Detroit street, summer clothes and quiet face, scampered inside from the yard littered. Saw her again in the street next to a minor catastrophe, passed her by and looked.
        Let’s take a second to breathe, introduce a silence to the mind so that everything that comes can be better heard. So much background noise, minor thoughts mingle into static, almost impossible to interpret the bemused psychobabble. Empty it out, slow down, relax, and maybe you’ll begin to recognize coherent thoughts; organize the jumble of words fighting to be understood all out of order and as yet meaningless. Thoughts keep revolving, recycling; the girl, she reminded you of Melissa. Same style, a girl whose mood is always a grateful summer to your wintry perspective. Refreshing reminder, easy on the eyes. This girl’s likeness and your friend the poet, separated; his utensils. The paintbrushes he flourished about to create were not wooden and sable but liquid and smoke. That small ******* secret voice suggesting unwholesome things, acts unbefitting of brotherly conduct. He is my true brother, my family; an extension of my own soul. I went to treatment, they broke me down, whittled away at my rough hewn surface to make sculpture, a replica of others, manufactured to meet requirements and specifications deemed necessary for target successes. This talk of will, sacrificing my own, force-fed trust and mantras begetting themselves in circular fashion, turning in sync with the earth’s rotation upon its axis in its course of necessary revolution.
        Expended effort and time saved or served, goals impossible until forgotten, let go empty space ellipsis let god. Self-supplanted in unpredictable incomprehensible present, trying to avoid thoughts of crumpled papers in paper bags serving as receptacles for things undesired or abandoned or too truthful, I’m forgetting what it is to hide from myself which makes it possible to disappear. Tune in to the present, your train of thought – a queue – crowding, crowds rushed and frantic me first says everyone impatiently awaiting their turn for attention. Starved but forgotten proper nutrition. Self-criticism equating to self-analysis – spontaneity – uncontrollable, unforeseeable in the present aromatic mixture of mason jars swarmed with colored lights beautiful dim in darkness in which beer was swilled, time spent in unkempt kitchens nervous, standing walking evading settlement peace or rest, this is excitable discomfort, anything to slow down or feel a surrogate thereof. Forgotten words remembered, past rooms beautiful dim in darkness, proper illumination – see everything just right, not too brightly though not too dark. Living in this room for now, seeing as though immersed, submerged in memory of smiling faces easy laughter, cold-eyes Vera and well-at-ease. There is a wealth of self-acceptance. These people, their faces shine contentment, comfort, and mine is manufactured. I’ve become a factory where everything is sought after and nothing is attained because my goals are intangible, comprehensible but beyond aid, sorry, it’s just the way you are, maybe you’ll know one day, but we can’t help. We don’t waste our time with questions of absurdity, we live in this present moment, and that’s how we do it – no plans until plans come. No thoughts until thoughts come. Easy transitions in conversations, we don’t think of how to be ourselves, we just do it because we slow down, we know we are breathing, and it is not in our nature to forget it. It is not in our nature to live in our heads, to flail in a swell of questions less dense than water, we attend. We simply are.
        This is contentment. This is their seamless skin where mine corresponds to scars and rabid suspicious scratches dug deep. They were content with their surfaces; I was convinced of malice subcutaneous hence the scars and blood breathing open air. It is this suspicion that draws a line, places me on one side, them on another; it is this curiosity intrinsic and ironically unquestioned that digs the trenches in shape of graves. This fatal imaginary need for understanding where there is nothing to be understood. Questions are my poison, self-manufacturing, self-sufficient destruction, coming hot off the assembly line in my skull. Questions incubating further questions error: implement infinite loop, killall. Find the bug, recompile, run. Sit still, learn from the wind and atmosphere you’ve learned to sense which makes you an outsider only because you wanted this somehow. Uncertainty, confused reflection, arbitrary comments; coincidences, conspiracy, breakpoint. Programs running in smooth operation.
        Radiohead blaring, self-conscious self-care, these people enjoy themselves with unconscious grace, they let themselves be and immediately I tear my mind in two to understand what they understand without understanding. It is the nature of love and music that displays the closest correlation. These people are my idealized notion of grace, rendered more so by speed of processing, depth of analysis so that they appear not only graceful creatures, but with grace amplified as if observing them in slow-motion. So much contingent on understanding, contingency notwithstanding if I was comfortable with ignorance, if questions did not occur. These people are appropriate; balanced, no need for brutal introspection, no need to stir up sand composing the sea bed. These people, they understand certain things I cannot as of yet. They understand, they know without knowing that things are the way they are because things are the way they are and that’s ok, we’re ok, and everything is and will always be ok as long as we know well enough to leave well enough alone. We are each other, serving compliments to sainthood.
        ...let go, and be one with us, for love is in our hearts.
It took a few lines to get into it. Also, this is meant to be read aloud, somewhat intensely.
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Brian Fahey Jul 2015
The Otter and the Clam - By Brian Fahey 3/20/14
There once was a pond off the Astrillian shore,
Where a billion clams lay underwater, they snored,
Day after day, tides change to tides,
Yet the life of a clam is still quite a bore.

Until one day an otter, all spryly and nimble,
A prince from the infamous pool down the thimble,
Crossed the old straight with his men through mud and through wimble.

Valiantly striding his conquest was simple,
Representing his people in search of a love life to kindle.
He was quirky, and boisterous, and hard to ignore,

Splashing and thrashing about the good peoples shore,
A good lookin' pup, he swam round in circles,
Converting the Astrillian Algaeans to Murkles.

The clams weren't slow to catch on to the show,
For clams are very attentive you know,
And soon by council & seminar they mouth-fulled their garbles,

"Who yonder this monkey that endlessly wharbles?"
"Are you daft kind sirs?" asks one clam as she snarbles,
"It seems you old men have lost all your marbles,

That is the otter, his highness all the way from Port Schwarble!
He only plays cowbell, throws barbells, and a million such marvels,
It's an Astrillian holiday as far as I yarble, hmm"

She stops,
It's indeed very clear she's been pinned as kalopsious,

"My dear" one clammy clam-clam firmly speaks,
"I see your 'kidz-bop' as they say has given you gleecks,
Your highness, is an otter, we'll be extinct within weeks"

The elders agree and farble on lke sheep,
"The end is near!" the little ones squeak,

But none brave as Mandy,
This little clam candy,
Would even think that moving was handy,

Why, confronting a prince sounds totally dandy,
So she pipped and she chupped,
Getting the elders all sandy.

As she made her way up to her prince, who was also quite randy.
Approaching her man of a million wonders,
She squeaked a fine hello over his rambunctious thunder.

He stopped and observed,
"What is this, hors' doeurves?"
He plucked her and licked her, obviously deterred,

When she snarbled and blushed ignoring the blunder,
"My name is Mandy the First, from the land of down under,

She smiled as he turned to his squire,
"A fine maiden to invite to the royal dinner," laughing they snired.
"I caught wind of your plans to marry" she twinkled,
"I just thought that I'd say that I'm young and I'm single,"

And with a wink she gave off her lady like signal.
The squire scoffed at the lady so simple,
"May I remind you ma'am, this is the prince from the pool down the thimble.
He's come all this way through mud and through wimble,
In search of a maiden to love and ne'er let dwindle,
Yet this peasant clam reminds me of a fire in my belly, so long ago kindled,"

He snirped, Mandy quirped as the prince caressed her dimple,
"You'll not lay your paws on her or her people,
This girl is totally braver than you and our sheeple!
It is decided that I'll be bringing her all the way to the steeple."

The squire grumbled a pox on both sides,
"You princox, we haven't eaten since Ides,
If you really cared so much for your lady,
Then let us first feast on her friends and their babies,
For what is a wedding if we're all riddled with hunger and rabies?"

"Nay squire, for you are a bigger one,
Your princoxious gluttony far exceeds the range of the Astrillian Sun"
"Ooooooooohh!!" his guards hollered and bothered, oh but he wasn't done,

"If you really care for your stomach all the sudden,
Then come at me brother, make me your wet monkey mutton.
See if I care for your metabolic process, you square,
For nothing could separate me from my princess so fair."

And so they charged and they barged and splashed all about her,
As his guards cheered them on into brotherly slaughter,
Witnessing the madness, Mandy would rather be chowder.

As she quietly wept for her hunk of an otter,
She noticed the elders behind her surface the water.
"What do you want?!" snobbing she totally snared,

The elders snooted and bitterly declared,

"We warned you," they flarbed,
"Their kind is brutish and dull," they spat from afar,
"The feud between peoples is older than tar"

Mandy flushed beet red and crying she clacked,
"Your ignorance prevails clams, for that is your only knack,
This man loves me and I love him right back,
In fact he's saving us all from becoming a snack.
And if he succeeds I'll never see you again,

I'll never work your sand-bars, or attend colleges of mermen.
I'll never sing songs or clean up your dens,
And you'll all just be grumpy old clams forever, and then,
When I am queen I will not be so mean.

I will unite all the clamsfolk with our predators keen,
We shall not be afraid and they shall not come to prey,
And who knows maybe we'll all get along someday,"

And with that, the squire cried "Uncle!"
And the prince let go of his sleeper-hold struggle,

"Now will you praise your lady you poor jester thuggle?"
"I do, I do your highness, til death I shall juggle."
And so the otters and clams conjoined the whole island,

With only some leftover haters to beguile,
And within seven days time
People gave up on fear,

Threw out their hunger,
And then it became clear,
With only time left to ponder,

As the big day came near,
At the cathedral they concluded that love lasts much longer,
That really,

Whether one be a clam or an otter,
It is only together that we shall become stronger.
senior year creative writing poem.
#story #childrens #clam #dr #seuss #otter
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Ezra Pound
Canto 13
Kung walked
        by the dynastic temple
and into the cedar grove,
        and then out by the lower river,
And with him Khieu Tchi
        and Tian the low speaking
And “we are unknown,” said Kung,
“You will take up charioteering?
        “Then you will become known,
“Or perhaps I should take up charioterring, or archery?
“Or the practice of public speaking?”
And Tseu-lou said, “I would put the defences in order,”
And Khieu said, “If I were lord of a province
“I would put it in better order than this is.”
And Tchi said, “I would prefer a small mountain temple,
“With order in the observances,
        with a suitable performance of the ritual,”
And Tian said, with his hand on the strings of his lute
The low sounds continuing
        after his hand left the strings,
And the sound went up like smoke, under the leaves,
And he looked after the sound:
        “The old swimming hole,
“And the boys flopping off the planks,
“Or sitting in the underbrush playing mandolins.”
        And Kung smiled upon all of them equally.
And Thseng-sie desired to know:
        “Which had answered correctly?”
And Kung said, “They have all answered correctly,
“That is to say, each in his nature.”
And Kung raised his cane against Yuan Jang,
        Yuan Jang being his elder,
For Yuan Jang sat by the roadside pretending to
        be receiving wisdom.
And Kung said
        “You old fool, come out of it,
“Get up and do something useful.”
        And Kung said
“Respect a child’s faculties
“From the moment it inhales the clear air,
“But a man of fifty who knows nothng
        Is worthy of no respect.”
And “When the prince has gathered about him
“All the savants and artists, his riches will be fully employed.”
And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves:
        If a man have not order within him
He can not spread order about him;
And if a man have not order within him
His family will not act with due order;
        And if the prince have not order within him
He can not put order in his dominions.
And Kung gave the words “order”
and “brotherly deference”
And said nothing of the “life after death.”
And he said
        “Anyone can run to excesses,
“It is easy to shoot past the mark,
“It is hard to stand firm in the middle.”

And they said: If a man commit ******
        Should his father protect him, and hide him?
And Kung said:
        He should hide him.

And Kung gave his daughter to Kong-Tchang
        Although Kong-Tchang was in prison.
And he gave his niece to Nan-Young
        although Nan-Young was out of office.
And Kung said “Wan ruled with moderation,
        “In his day the State was well kept,
“And even I can remember
“A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
“I mean, for things they didn’t know,
“But that time seems to be passing.
A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
But that time seems to be passing.”
And Kung said, “Without character you will
        “be unable to play on that instrument
“Or to execute the music fit for the Odes.
“The blossoms of the apricot
        “blow from the east to the west,
“And I have tried to keep them from falling.”
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William Ernest Henley
The Full Sea Rolls And Thunders
The full sea rolls and thunders
In glory and in glee.
O, bury me not in the senseless earth
But in the living sea!

Ay, bury me where it surges
A thousand miles from shore,
And in its brotherly unrest
I'll range for evermore.
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John-Paul Richard Aug 2016
Responsibility (Brotherly)
I prefer to shirk mine as the days go on,
But always make sure to mow the lawn,
And do the dishes and rake the leaves,
And always, Always eat my peas,
But I swear... I swear on this dumb ol' planet,
In my thirteen years on this earth **** it---

---Hey! Stop! say you're sorry!
No cursing! No cursing! I'm gunna tell mommy!

If you tattle on me, I'll curse you in the head!
And in a couple weeks, I swear you'll be dead!

Fine I won't tell, but call off your voodoo,
I dont wanna die! Boohoo! Boohoo!

Hey, buddy. Im sorry, see?
No, I would never curse you, why we're on the same team!
It's you and me versus the world!
And hey we can go sailing later, with a pirate flag unfurled!

Sniff. well yea alright I see,
Do you mean it, the team? Just you and me?

Thats right my man, just us two!
We'll do whatever we want, just me and you.
Look at that, you're smiling already!
Now stand up steady, smell that? Dinner is almost ready!
#love #feelings #poetry #anger #poems #family #argument #brothers #goodfeelings
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Robert Frost
The Tuft Of Flowers
I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim over night
Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly-**** when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him,
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’
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The amateur poet Nov 2012
Wake up
I am writing this now, in some early morning hour, because sleep evades me.  I’ve been awake so many hours that time itself has little meaning anymore. I quit. There's no other way to put it. I just give up on trusting the human nature, on words, on promises, everything. Promises, once perceived as a sign of trust now erode away into hallow, empty lies that stab at my heart. I believed them. I was actually stupid enough to believe all those sugar coated words about caring, and guiding, and family. It’s all lies now. The soul of my being, everything I know can now be called into question. I can trust no one, everything’s a lie. I'm not sitting here writing some pretty little suicide note. I’m past that. I’ve grown up to see you can’t always take the easy road out and I’d sure feel sorry for the living soul that my black spirit would haunt.
For all you novice readers this can easily be taken as a story of heart-break; in an all-so cliché girl loves boy situation. But for those of you who can read into my words that I am spelling out so bluntly, I apologize; for I am once again telling my little sob story to anyone who willing to listen.
To begin this lovely tale you must know I've always been more comfortable when in the company of guys rather females such as myself. Whether it be the drama soaked lives or the shallow personalities all dressed up in makeup, I'm not sure. But I've always found guy’s emotions to be more reliable than girl’s. But hey, after recent events I'm beginning to question my own judgment; maybe I can really trust no one other than myself. Anyways back on track.
As in most situations of such heart-break and defeat, this tale begins with the typical boy likes girl story. Skipping over all the heart-warming details this relationship ends, like every other. The only difference this tale offers up is that their friendship remains in-tact. Not the awkward I’m-just-saying-this-to-make-breaking-up-easier friendship either. A real one. Time passes, they become best friends, and ah, another problem arises. The boy is unhappy being alone. With this knowledge in mind the girl searches for a mate for her best friend in an attempt to make him feel complete in ways she is unable to. Love. Through searching for a relationship for him, the relationship grows even more and the girl learned to feel safe and secure. Something she hasn’t felt in a long time. This brotherly love shown to her only drives her more to make him happy. Finally a girl is found. With a bit of help this boy and girl fall for each other and the friend, me, watches happily from a distance. The boy is happy. The girl is happy. I am pleased with my actions; I have successfully helped another friend. But hey, remember this is reality. Of course it cannot remain this way.
The boy starts acting different towards me, all obsessed with his love, but I ignore this knowing that all relationships have their puppy-love stages. He promised he wouldn’t abandon me, he promised he wouldn’t hurt me again on purpose. I believed him, but he lied.  Time passes and patterns don’t change. This boy, who I once thought was different in every way, is acting like the rest of society. Losing him. I'm losing another friend. Again, this time is different. I've put so much faith into him, my trust, secrets, dreams, fears…everything. I thought he genuinely cared. I start acting strange around him, he only grows more distant, so I put on a mask and hide my true emotions. He’s happy why ruin that. I don’t want to lose him, I don’t let him see. Time passes. He asks her out. They are happy. He tells me this gleefully and I feel my heart-sink, putting on a mask once more. I can’t do this anymore, he is gone.
I wrap my mind around this and once again taste the bitterness of karma working in reverse. What have I done wrong now? My thoughts expand. What have I ever done? Memories come flashing back, all the similar circumstances, the sting, the pain. I try to breathe but I feel the cold truths stabbing at my heart.
‘Everything is just peachy’.   I hate that phrase, but use in my messages to see if anyone can see I'm not acting myself, see past the mask. They cannot. I vent to two close friends. The first ignores my cries and tells me about her trivial problems and the second proceeds to show his immaturity, for he does not understand my strife. I cut myself off from the world and cry hot burning tears into my pillow, muffling my sounds in the plush.
People only care when they need you. They are kind in their time of need but when their own lives are running smoothly and they no longer need you they leave you. Does anyone ever check to see if you’re okay? Of course not, this is reality.  These revelations are not anyone’s fault. It’s not the boy’s, it’s not the friends’, it’s not the media, it’s not society, or even one definite cause. The only reason this story was told was to set the scene so you understand the premise of the initial spark for these thoughts. These events, that cause such pain, arise from a part of the human nature that I try my hardest to avoid, self-centeredness. Now I don’t mean the self-centered actions you’re thinking of. No. it’s far more complex than the shallow-thirst for popularity. It’s the tendency to worry about one’s own problems and not another’s. When you have all you want why worry about other people? This natural course of human emotions ceases to sicken me, as I now realize I am the victim of such actions. No, I am not some self-praising idiot; I admit that I have hurt others this way in the past. But from my point-of-view I have a pretty compelling case. Everyone just wants to be my friend right? Others call to me in times of need and then abandon me, calling it friendship. In the past I haven’t realized it more or less because there was little bond between myself of these people. After years of repeatedly getting my kind acts thrown back in my face, I choose to give in.
This last series of events has forever changed me, and now my eyes are open. Today I am done trying, and I am giving in to my human nature, becoming a self-centered person, free of everyone else’s burdens. I quit. Open up your eyes and see who you can call your true-friends. See past the illusion. Please, wake up, your dreaming again. But see, I don’t have the ability to dream, for I was always awake.
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Jose Luis Carreño Troncoso Aug 2020
Bethany Brotherly Halo
Vernarth describes in the voice of Saint John: “They continue with the scented camelids from looking at their backs… they were about to reach the walls. When they approached Jerusalem, it happens like the biblical passage, as in that of Bethphage and Bethany, in front of the Mount of Olives, they crossed the entrance as it was made by the Messiah when he faced this cosmopolitan city”. Saint John remembered his teacher…: “Go to the village that is in front of you, and as soon as you enter it, you will find a tied colt, on which no man has ridden; untie it and bring it, if someone says to you: Why do you do that? Say the Lord needs it, and then He will give it back. They went and found the colt tied outside the door at the bend in the road, and they untied it. And some of those who were there said to them: What are you doing untying the colt? They then told them how Jesus had commanded; and they left them. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. Many also spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, saying: Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!!! Hosanna in the high! And Jesus entered Jerusalem, and into the temple; and having looked around at all things, as it was getting dark, he went to Bethany with the twelve. "

So everyone is ecstatic to gird them to this entrance ceremony as if they were putting their first feet as the Messiah did. They all went to Bethany on the twelve camels to settle down and have a moment of rest. All in deep silence tried to relive what the Apostle had described to them, seeing how they synchronized the unequivocal exactitude of what had to happen and will happen now with them. They come to Bethany for just one day of relaxation and experienced rebirth. In this place, it would perhaps be the house of a nearby town such as Betábara or Bethany, or in the mountains in a simple bower or temporary tent made of wattles, that is, with interwoven branches, and perhaps covered with striped rags. Perhaps his abode was in a cave next to a campfire in view of what we have in the most probable ontological point which is Jesus, who had no home ..., he was staying in a rather poor or humble place, always stating that he had reliable its category-space where to arrive. Every place where He went…, the places went to Him, agglutinated in their mischievous sandals of stout retracing…!
Raeder and Petrobus flew for hours and hours this plains and promontories, however, in the midst of physical humility, there is no doubt that this was one of the retouched moments that San Juan and those who rewarded him by reincorporating him to the credible access in the dimension of her work in front of herself captured from a Eureka. Perhaps Lázarus, Mary from Bethany, and Martha in a brotherhood that continues to live walking in invisibility, but tangible by the blind of the night. This I could see from above,  witnessing seeing these three brothers without the others being able to see them. The perspective Aerial managed to attract magnets to them by virtue of the halos that each one carried on their sacred kaleidoscopic heads ..., when they came flying very close to them, only the halos that moved on the road of San Juan were manifested before them when he went to visit them, in such a way as to link this mental deficit, innocuous being added to the good of being received by the interwoven ambit of history, that it does not fight stammering to hear passages that history itself could not relate belatedly nor in the stories of the fearful ones who were eyewitnesses of a moment that was and will come, for beings with more than two eyes!

Etréstles and Vernarth, sit on a few outlines with metamorphic rings, which resembled being housed in the belly of an unborn newborn donkey, there they sit solidifying archaeological ruins that did not exist as a result of these intense changes in pressure, temperature, and chemical environment; dispersing the changes that are associated with bending forces, layer faults, magma injection and elevations that depress the rock masses flattening them only for their visits ..., then they would return to their original proto-chemical state. Right here they manage to repeal the silence by snatching a rusty sulfo green sandal like a shred of refined friction from the sword of the wind  Hamsin, leading them to get closer to each other, so that he covered them with his moderate generosity with a linnaceous white cloth each one, judging each one of being an Apostle in his memorable and sacred visit to Bethany.

Eurydice sings some songs of Kalymnos in a lullaby, by the iridescence of the roar of the fabrics knotting on their faces in affinity with the out-of-tune Hamsin, creating in them the nascent amber that sprouted from the brown ringed rocks in front of them supporting them angularly. His song fell in love with the global amber and each instance of remaining united that did not ****** or besiege them, generating in them that sacred night not having dinner ..., rather they would fast until the later sacred day that they would leave back to Jerusalem sheltered in their punishment of half severing, in the Lithostroto with his arms broken from the humerus to the ulna by Pilate and disheartened henchmen, in excessive cadaverous instances i.

As soon as the morning dawned, the camelids passed their tongues over the colossal face of Vernarth, telling them that the interval between the cross to reroute to Jerusalem was coming. They all leave, the twelve camels and Alikanto very close to them, feeling very important, for being so kind to his master Vernarth. Alikanto isolated himself between them, observing the actions of his master because here there is no palatial verve of swords Xifos or Dorus, but this allowed him to protect the others if it is so at some point, so these camels could or could turn themselves into fierce imaginary enemies of Trojan Lothophages piercing their mythologies!   Emotional and strategic curiosity, which will always have them on its tragic payroll ...,  in the fates that could run leading them towards the tempting Macedonian void.

They entered the same citadel, which from afar looked as dazzling as full sewers, where the naive condemned still circulated through it. But as it approached they vanished through some of the seven impressive doors, although in reality, they sounded like eight since the Gate of Mercy or Golden Gate closed later, being the oldest and the one that allows access to the Esplanade of the Mosques. "It was closed by the Muslims since it is said that through this door the Messiah will return to save the living and the dead on the Day of Judgment." Here they all pose to pray upset by the fluxion of the camels that did not dare to pass; they refused, having to select another entry.

Later they broke through the Jaffa Gate that leads directly to the Jewish and Christian quarter. Beyond the Tower of David, in an old citadel of the Armenian neighborhood that is another of the essential places that they saw when they arrived. They walked with their camels with their eyes covered, at a slow pace seeing all these testimonies in giddy incense, as if they were walking on their own sore feet. In other city gates, they invade with their twelve shadows, the Dung Gate or Gate of Manure which is the one that leads to the Wailing Wall and the Esplanade of the Mosques, that of the Lions, through which one goes to the Olives Mount, that of Zion, near the Tomb of King David, that of Herod, the New Gate and that of Damascus, in the north of the wall, one of the most impressive in the city and the one that leads directly to the Muslim quarter.
Bethany Brotherly Halo
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Feggyr Citack Jan 2017
Fraternity
-on a leader's departure

He who has no heart, may fill the hole
with quick success and loud dreams;
but greatness and eternal joy
may be reserved for brotherhood.

     Step down, step back now.

When you emerged,
a triumph over longtime racial neglect,
you confirmed:
we all are, we all can be brothers.

     It's simply our choice.

Each one of us deserves respect,
each one deserves care,
just for the plain fact of being alive.
No plight, no suffering, no fear apply,
no merit whatsoever needs to be added.

As darkness closes in on us,
your fraternal reign stands out even more.
No, it cannot end this way;
move on, travel this world, but don't forget us;
encourage us, anyhow, anytime, with your brotherly advice.

     Say "Hope", say "Hope again!"
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/
#politics #respect #obama #nevergiveup #onlythingwehavetofearisfearitself
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Terry Jordan Oct 2018
I used to have 4 brothers
I used to have 4 brothers
And loved them all the same
The eldest used us siblings
For where to lay the blame

Hoping reincarnation
Proves true after a while
Dan said his fondest wish was
Return an only child

Soon I arrived, his sister
Right after Dan turned 2
He fed me peanut butter
Until my face turned blue

Dan denied that he loved me
As kids did, once or twice
But he jumped in to save me
When I fell through the ice

Surviving eighteen months then
My baby crib moved on
I moved to the bottom bunk
My next brother was born

Named for our dad’s Commander
World War II not fearing
Ted was sent to Vietnam
Where he would lose his hearing

Neighbors once thought we were twins
Blond hair and Dad’s blue eyes
Family strife split us apart
Though close in age and size

He can’t hear but does read lips
That bomb, it took its toll
Seems no single moment’s joy
PTSD took hold

Next came Bill when I was 6
AKA “Sweet William”
Boundless joy and endless love
His broad smiles worth millions

When I loved chocolate ice-cream
That was his favorite, too
He is my son’s Godfather
His wise words helped me through

I have no clue what ended
Brotherly affection
Before 2 brothers died he
Cut off real connection

Sam was born prematurely
When I was twelve years old
Spent 5 months incubating
Before we took him home

Our father’s disappointment
Sam never went to college
Didn’t want to play football
Was seeking other knowledge

Sam learned how engines functioned
By disassembling cars
Made candles in the basement
An Eagle Scout-golf star

A heart of gold he suffered
Much doggerel and strife
Alcohol’s what dogged him till
Tragically took his life

Divided family members
I’m actor and spectator
Seeking to forge connections
Reunion instigator

Some gather for funerals
A wedding now and then
I mourn, alone, Dan and Sam
Lament what might have been

Hadn’t been able to finish this piece until I took a long vacation. I still have 2 living brothers, but neither responds to my overtures. One can't hear me, and the other is not speaking.  New Englanders are known for denial and take-it- to-the-grave-grudges.  I guess I really don't want to know why.
Continue reading...
Miss Hannah Oct 2011
Brotherly Love
Brothers wrestling on the ground like puppies
Nipping at each other in the grass
They yelp and tussle,
but never seem to hurt each other.
I, on the other hand, prefer to cat nap in the sun.
Continue reading...
Joseph J Breunig 3rd Apr 2013
Poem: Colored People
Do you realize that races are overrated,
since God is no respecter of persons?
Colored perceptions of hatred and bigotry
may ultimately destroy our existence.

Who needs people that:
• Lack brotherly love and respect for others
• Lust for power, wealth and *******
• Lack vision and purpose
• Lack maturity and wisdom
• Have attitudes of superiority
• Are poor in spirit
• Lack discipline and self-control

Colored attitudes, regarding skin tones and hues,
pale in contrast to uncontrolled emotions.
Without responsibility and accountability,
people get themselves in trouble rather quickly.

Who really wants or needs:
• Red’s lustful, passion for someone other than your spouse?
• or Green’s destructional envy of others’ wealth or possessions?
• or Yellow’s fear, smelling of ***** from peeing ourselves?
• or White’s collection of powdered deaths?
• or Blue’s inner sadness or coldness towards others?
• or Brown’s poverty, shame and overall uncleanness?
• or Orange steadfastness for a Godless life?
• or Purple’s smugness from a self-conceived ideal of royalty?
• or Black’s foreboding sicknesses and death?

Our human collective needs to find real commonality,
within this brotherhood of man, as planetary stewards.
Under girded with a genuineness of concern and love,
true understanding can lead to harmonious relationships.
We all have the ability to commune with God’s Spirit;
however, we each must have a desire to do so.
Utopia may be unattainable, unlike… unity of community.
And yes, I forgive you, for thinking I might be racist.




Author Notes:

Loosely based on:
Acts 10: 34; Gal 2: 6; Deut 10: 17; 1 Pet 1: 17

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http: //www.squidoo.com/book-isbn-1419650513

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2012, All rights reserved.
Continue reading...
River Raras Jun 2013
Inseparable
Brotherly love, never fades
Never lose sight of the moments you create
Monuments in memory
Dedicated to all things blanket-made
Childhood games became our names,
We were molded by the pretend we liked to play
But we were never pretending
No
Imagination wasn't too far away
We've been knights and cowboys
Superheroes defending,
keeping our home safe
Like in our heart of hearts
There was nothing there to hate
Nothing to hurt us except the villains we would slay

Then the day crept up on us
Finally forcing the icy touch of separation
Sixth grade, everything changed us
Seventh grade we were distant,
Eighth grade we almost gave up.
Thought we grew up but we grew apart
Looking back on how it happened almost breaks my heart.

My brother was just coming in
Just another middle school kid
On the bottom of the pile
And I was on the top
Looking down at him and his friends
This is when innocence ends.
He just wanted to hang with me and Wes
Wanted it to be like it had been
Wanted to be closer than close,
Wanted to define brotherhood again
And I should have let him.
But instead I left him.
A sociopathic ******* is what I am.
Like an idiot
Like a nothing I know how to explain
I just pushed him away
Like an opponent in the ring,
I kept him at arm's length
In his moment of ascendence
I kept him stationary

We had always made each other friends
Sharing buddies like they were ours to share
And nobody but us had the right to care
So when he got to school, a strange foreign place
And introduced his new friends with a smile on his face
He expected a reception better than what I gave him
No pride or excitement for him in the words:
"Go away."

God.
What did I say?
I watched as the smile widened.
He thought I was joking and he shoved it aside
He has always been the kind of person to keep trying
But when we got home that night I saw he was crying
Mom tried to explain:
"Honey, your brother is a different age.
He's going through things
And you'll do the same
You probably both need to find other friends anyway."
And he saw me standing in the door
He raised his hands to wipe his tears away
Then he got up off the floor
And he asked
"Why don't you want to hang out with me?"
I will never forgive myself for saying
"You and your friends are annoying."

And for every time he said "Please?"
I said no.
Until he didn't talk anymore.
I felt nothing.
Not until he left, saying
"I hate you."
I heard those words echoing into everything,
And I swore
I wouldn't be a bad big brother anymore

Somehow,
We got through.
Somehow.
Now we're still brothers
But I can still feel the distance I put between us
From all those years ago
And now I wish night and day that I had never said no.
I don't know if he remembers
But to me every image is so vivid
Every word we spoke is like a curse invoked
Every time I turn off the lights
I'm haunted by the same ghosts
Of two brothers on a trampoline,
Smiling,
Dreaming up castles and moats.
They turn to me and we lock eyes
And somehow I know
The enemy they were fighting all along
Was the thought of letting each other go.





Dedicated to Trevor,
T-Man
Always at my back
And always in my heart.

I love you.

You're the best brother I could have asked for.
Continue reading...
Vetelo Ngila May 2013
Whistling and Sniffing Simultaneously
WHISTLING AND SNIFFING SIMULTANEOUSLY

Whistling and sniffing at the same time
Can’t hold hands or rather get married
United and collaborative in any case
This duo may perhaps land into the life of some person
The kind of man whose who acts,
Performs duties of the shepherd on the flock.
Like his initial master,
He condemns wickedness,
Goes against what is religiously evil,
And exults the righteous.
But he soon he craves for another pair of his robe
For he does accumulate an avalanche of resources,
His eyes are soon blinded.
Would his robe evade being soiled?

Co-operative sniffing and whistling,
Can hatch into temptations to anybody,
Even the half-human, half God
Did he not get tested in the wilderness?
Our big man opens his eyes one day,
Finds himself campaigning and competing for,
Trying to woo for citizens’ keys,
Essentials for serving the people in a wider circle.
Perhaps his whistling guides his path.
Brings him in the companionship of
Other servants of the people.
Any devoted service present in that house really?

Brotherly whistling and sniffing,
May make one’s conscience slither backwards,
Two or more steps into mud.
He is now influential,
A famous societal figure.
His fat salary seconded with some allowances.
Or even thirded with public developmental resources,
Guarantees him total luxury.
Is this not an opportunistic opportunist?

Our Sniffer and whistler is contended,
Complacent with his success.
Jubilant with him servant is his ‘first Master ’
For keeping to the ‘sacred’ scriptures.
The vehicle which carried him straight,
One way to heaven gets crippled,
It can’t manage to hit the road
Like its American, British and Chinese counterparts,
His sincere promise goes unfulfilled
Unmet due to his pretentious pretence.
His ‘second’ Master gets extremely mad.
For loyalty and faithfulness denied.
And furiously plucks him from glory.

Simultaneous whistling and sniffing,
The ‘initial’ heaven can’t simply put up with them.
A wise servant of the masses
A true leader should only whistle at a time,
Sniff at a time.
But not sniffing and whistling simultaneously.
Continue reading...
st64 Dec 2013
Wisdom of Twain (again, I think :)
such a cool dude



1. on believing
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow. Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."



2. on genius
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered-- either by themselves or by others.



3. on bereavement
A man's house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential-- there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost.... It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.



4. on mischief
I see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat--and I see it warn't no perfumery either, not by a long sight.
I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know the signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixty-four of them went in. I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for me, I couldn't stand it.



4. on conscience
I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on -- s'pose you'd a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I'd feel bad-- I'd feel just the same way I do now.
Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?



5. on superstition
I've always reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got drunk and fell off of the shot tower and spread himself out so that he was just a kind of layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway, it all come of looking at the moon that way, like a fool.



6. on escape
I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before.



7. on hypocrisy and religion
We all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall.
The Shepherdson's done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching -- all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith, and good works, and free grace, and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.



8. on simplicity
Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me.



9. on humanity
Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.



10. on army
That's what an army is -- a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.




                                                            ­                                       *by Mark Twain







S T - 16 dec 13
love the boldness of Twain.

not everybody's cuppa.. but hey, see me crying? nah :)






sub-entry: unicorn

a knock at the door
grey figure opens.. very, very tall

1.
slits of tall-eyes concierge perusing hooded-newcomer bearing gift
furtive-eyes in a head over-drilled with equations
the visitor waits and watches
intently catching the distant-tinkling of a child's laughter
peeps round the bend..
twinkling-eyed gramps giving gifts to grand-kids round the tall-tree

2.
silver-hair leads the way slowly up plush carpet-steps, all deep-red
not aware how regal-opulence glares at the hungry-livraison
of ornate wood-patterns etched into the sides of the box
a single hair-strand is the currency to secret-entry
the most unlikely-key stands in the doorway
upon the head of the child, it needs but one length
with tweezers, silver-head places in painstaking-tremors
there's a light-whirring deep inside and click, click, click..
the sides flay open like tiny-wings
and then, it's right there.. it's opening up its secrets
the old man, who waited all his life to see this.. almost has a glimpse
when something happens..

oh my, what is it ? ? ?     (gaping in disbelief)
it's........ the unicorn
oh! you may leave now, thank you
but a swift-stab leaves silver-head spluttering
holding onto his neck as his life-force spurts away, uncontrollable
                                        in violent-spasms
tall-eyes quick-senses an iota amiss within its radar-view
from the running-steps down the muted red-stairs, cy-dog barks
out the front-door, in pursuit of dodger-stealer who drops the flick-knife
into wide road, sudden-bus whacks him down
tall-eyes look down into the eyes of a dying man
(what have I done?  I needed only two minutes more to.....)
now, quick....get away, get away... !


3.
mythical twist as plot thickens
the box lies there, distant-sirens wail
eyes slit, instantly calculating
hot on heels of this reliable lean-machine
cops push the limit and close the corners
a volley of shots and he.. falls
box tumbling to the ground, rolling a bit.. then stops
red-lights flash remotely, like a dream caught in cold-syrup

with one shoulder now missing and half his head on the sidewalk
he hobbles with the gift to the bridge, his sensors pick up the bleat of the ferry
and he manages to...
...........................and throw it in the frozen-lake
its weight breaks the cracked-surface
                and sinks.. slowly.. down
                                  down
                     down
          down
down
                                               d o w n..

there, it rests in peace
till..


one year later, a young boy tests the safety of that frozen-water
stomping feet to keep warm and face clad in half-balaclava
a sight unlike any other meets his eyes.. and..
(when) he stoops to reach for it..
Continue reading...
Julie Grenness Jan 2017
BETWEEN THE BROTHERS!
Between the brothers, sad tale,
Sibling rivalry did not fail,
Their fractured world of damaged hearts,
Only death could tear them apart,
Quite symbiotic and sick,
Both obsessed with their own blip,
Yes, it was a sad brotherly tale,
Their sibling rivalry never failed......
Feedback welcome.
#the #brothers #between
Continue reading...
Olga Valerevna Jun 2016
The City of Brotherly Love
I want to be the words      that stir you up a certain way
and leave you with the passion that was always yours to stay
I knew you for a moment but my body


wandered off
and with it came the notion I was never yours at all
I wanted to embrace you in a way that no one could
but every time I tried you turned away from where I stood
Today I was a coffin but tomorrow I will be
we haven't     died together, separation holds the key
residing in a city not too far away from you
I've learned to be the keeper of the person I once knew
Philadelphia, Pa
Continue reading...
Dian Micheal Marcovecchio Jun 2016
Unholy act of Taboo
Thee lust of commandments
The same blood
You have my eyes and I have your nose
Hidden love wrapped in poetry and midnight pecks of love
I am your safety blanket
I am your lover
Once our lips caress the other
Our blood completes us and binds our dna in an entanglement of lust and secrets.
We are infinite in this moment
The moment of being alive
Alive in this universe
Together we shall not be parted again
Hand in hand
Same blood
By God we shall be punished with the wrath of society
A taboo of unholy nature
Brotherly love
#love #poems #****** #brother
Continue reading...
Tate Morgan May 2014
Brotherly Love
Two friends upon a battlefield
one left on the ground as he dies
In a foxhole, the other sits
listening to his mate's poor, cries

The first man wanted to save his mate
but the Sergeant said, not to go
"You'll only **** yourself instead"
"I can't leave him that's all I know"

The Sergeant went to turn away
as the first man dove from the hole
"I have to save my friend," he said
"if it costs my immortal, soul"

Minutes later he slid back in
clutching his dead friend, in his arms
Mortally wounded, he was now
blood was pouring, from both forearms

Laid to rest within his friends arms
"a waste" said the Sergeant, to some
"When I found him, he was alive
his last breath said" "I knew you'd come"

Those who live forever bonded
round a fire and hearth, tell the tales
Are stories told, worth the cost
of a poor mother's, cries and wails

Ask a man to die for country
he will die for his friend instead
But no matter why it happens
the poor man is still surely dead

Could we strive to be something more
than a tombstone, upon the ground
Is death the true test of friendship
when Taps plays, the ultimate sound

If we don't learn to love, brothers
extinction will be how Man ends
It's hard to live a life of pride
at the cost of so many friends



Tate
Christ said " No greater love has any man than to lay down his life for a friend"
While war seems the ultimate test of this tenant. It is the ultimate shame of humanity. While I see the need of it in WW1 and WW2. These skirmishes since have been needless waste. Humanity will destroy itself if it doesn't stop this. If we don't find the way to forgo war we will all surly die from the shame of it. The countless women and children killed by it are enough reason.
#war
Continue reading...
Snizzlefish Sep 2017
Brotherly Love 8.31.17
There are few people in this world you can call at 2 am.
And not call for help,
But for solace.

There are few you can trust with your silent pleas.
The gut wrenching, heartbreaking silence where words just aren't enough.

Thank you for being mine, you truly have a heart of gold.
I want you to know I'm okay now.
And I think you are too.
I think we both made it through.

But I still pray you are appreciated, I pray she realizes what she has.
Because good men are hard to find, especially one so kind.
I'm proud of you
To my best friend & one of the toughest marines I know. I'll always look up to you, even if I can still kick your **** from time to time.
#bestfriend #longdistance #growingpains
Continue reading...
Christina Rossetti
Portraits
An easy lazy length of limb,
  Dark eyes and features from the south,
A short-legged meditative pipe
  Set in a supercilious mouth:
Ink and a pen and papers laid
  Down on a table for the night,
Beside a semi-dozing man
  Who wakes to go to bed by light.

A pair of brothers brotherly,
  Unlike and yet how much the same
In heart and high-toned intellect,
  In face and bearing, hope and aim:
Friends of the selfsame treasured friends
  And of one home the dear delight,
Beloved of many a loving heart
  And cherished both in mine, good night.
Continue reading...
Finley in Despair Mar 2016
Longing For Something
One hundred and something beats per minute,
A happy tune to keep me
with it
As I stare out of the bus window
In-ear phones cancelling out,
The ambient sounds
Of busy Cambridge City
Always enjoying the diversity
Finally seeing the love

On Victoria avenue,
I saw two little girls
Sat on a tree branch together
Dangling as it flexed,
Over Jesus green
Probably siblings
Maybe even friends
I felt their feelings
Even on this crowded journey

I long for forms of childhood
Carelessness and joy
I long for companionship
Brotherly and sisterly love
I long for happiness
Smiles and sunshine forever
Maybe I've found it
When you finally see what you were looking at all along.
(A new style for me)
#love #feelings #poetry #music #journey #bus #travel #sibling #commute #cambridge
Continue reading...
Martin Narrod Oct 2019
You Might Be Snorting Dope & Eating Bars, He’s Blacking Out & Having Seizures
Justin I forgive you, won’t you call me, your birthday must be coming soon we haven’t spoken since we moved our family into the desert. I just pray you’re not seeking cotton fever yet again, chasing the dragon, or at the very least eating school buses while falling into ‘H’ before you find yourself in bed drunk again, and on Ambien too. Dead too soon. You’ve always wondered why I didn’t introduce you to Ryan, my other incredibly dear and brotherly friend. Well wonder none more, he’s in a padded room at Mt. Sinai in Lakeview or perhaps Northwestern’s adult care unit, there was talk or at least I imagined he could make it to Lakeside Manor right there East of Foster. So it’s clemency, peace of mind, and something to loosen the edge off your back, something to let you fall, something to set your pain at weightless your mind at I-Don’t-Have-To-Give-A-****-Anymore, my friend where have you been? Where have you taken yourself? Please drag yourself back at least a half-step, reverse your position and engineer an out please. I can’t begin to accept losing both of my brothers to two versions of the same disease.
#addiction #disease #lucid #death #xanax #opioid #opiates #****** #****** #ambien
Continue reading...
Tate Morgan May 2014
Brotherly love
Two friends upon a battlefield
one left on the ground as he dies
In a foxhole, the other sits
listening to his mate's poor, cries

The first man wanted to save his mate
but the Sergeant said, not to go
"You'll only **** yourself instead"
"I can't leave him that's all I know"

The Sergeant went to turn away
as the first man dove from the hole
"I have to save my friend," he said
"if it costs my immortal, soul"

Minutes later he slid back in
clutching his dead friend, in his arms
Mortally wounded, he was now
blood was pouring, from both forearms

Laid to rest within his friends arms
"a waste" said the Sergeant, to some
"When I found him, he was alive
his last breath said" "I knew you'd come"

Those who live forever bonded
round a fire and hearth, tell the tales
Are stories told, worth the cost
of a poor mother's, cries and wails

Ask a man to die for country
he will die for his friend instead
But no matter why it happens
the poor man is still surely dead

Could we strive to be something more
than a tombstone, upon the ground
Is death the true test of friendship
when Taps plays, the ultimate sound

If we don't learn to love, brothers
extinction will be how Man ends
It's hard to live a life of pride
at the cost of so many friends

Tate
Christ said " No greater love has any man than to lay down his life for a friend"
While war seems the ultimate test of this tenant. It is the ultimate shame of humanity. While I see the need of it in WW1 and WW2. These skirmishes since have been needless waste. Humanity will destroy itself if it doesn't stop this. If we don't find the way to forgo war we will all surly die from the shame of it. The countless women and children killed by it are enough reason.
#war #sacrifice #poempoetrylovedeath
Continue reading...
Stormy Bailey May 2015
Hush Little Sammy
Hush little Sammy, don't say a word,
Momma's still watching even after she burned.

And I know Daddy seems real mad,
but since mommas been gone he's been real real sad.

And I know you wanted to marry that girl,
but she's with mommy and that must hurt.

And big brother Dean keeps selling his soul,
then daddy dies and you lose control.

And you meet an Angel of the Lord named Cas,
and he keeps bringing your brother Dean back.

And now Dean's hurting everyone,
and The Mark of Cain rests on the righteous son.

But though brotherly love transcends any curse,
The darkness has come to destroy our earth.

But its ok Sammy cause mommas still here,
and I know you two can fight this so dont you fear*.
Supernatural themed lullaby I wrote after the season 10 finale.
#10 #season #lullaby #mary #supernatural #dean #winchester #sam #cure #finale
Continue reading...
Sonya Ki Tomlinson Feb 2013
Crystal Salt
clay-baked women beat their clothes
clean on river rocks at dawn
cook rice and dal on an open
communal hearth
beneath a natural lantern
of Indian stars

for 20 rupees a day, roughly
half a buck
I have seen men and women tie
rags to cushion their heads
towing heavy mortar
for new construction

yet there is always a
brotherly smile gleaming
and sisterly hands eager to share
what meager provisions earned

these are no feeble folk
no fashion slaves or mere mortals
melodious bhajans mingle with
the sweat from their brows
and mantras, leelas of God
echo through the
Taj Mahal temples of their hearts

I raise my bhakti glass to the
backbone of India
Her kundalini rising
innocent, humble
village peasantry
true priests
gopikas and gopalas
who actually live
the Vedic life
Continue reading...
Brother Jimmy Jan 2016
Brotherly Advice
Listen,

When I start speaking to you
In that authoritative way,
When I'm raving and ranting,
Don't heed what I say
If I give you advice,
As if I know "truth",
My mouth spewing *******,
So very uncouth,
And I bluster and babble,
Like I know this place,
I want you to slap me smack dab in the face.
Continue reading...
Inkyu Kim Jan 2012
Give Me Paradise
Take my life,
Take my everything.
Strip me of my rights.
But give me one thing.

Give me a paradise!

A paradise of brotherhood,
and sisterhood.

A paradise where violence does not exist,
a paradise where nobody commits a crime,
a paradise where people are not afraid to openly confess their sins.

Give me a hope.
A hope that at the end of all these troubles,
there will be peace, love, and humbleness.
Where Greed is no more.
Where men do not need guns.

Give me a city.

Give me a city,
where doors and locks are no more.
Open seats at dinner tables for brothers to join.

A quiet city,
where children run in happiness,
where a new generation lives happily,
where the old generation smiles.

A beautiful city,
where evil is no more,

Give Me Paradise.
Land of abundance.
Land of peace.
Land of brotherly and sisterly love.

Give me a land,
a land where people different by culture,
different by background,
different by skin,
different by family,
can unite as one.

Give me a land where there is no sin.
Give Me Paradise!
Continue reading...
Mitchell May 2012
What to Believe
Addicted to the transformation of the self
In hearing we see that touch is the only hearth
To warm one's hands in winter near to the fire
A separation of love shows the underlining
Of dotted red when the word one sees to be false

Mother - when the night was young and you were old
Were you able to see the stars without your glasses?
We are the products of products of products of war
The shells of the bullet casings and bomb fragments
How much transparent blood have we bled so far?
Where is the fork in the road that will take us to Shangri la?

Notice that when the woman in the mirror disappears
The cleaning men drop their tattered, ***** & cut wears
Disaster holds the hands of man's growth & evolution
At times I notice the way the wind passes through my sheets
The skirts of the women and the thin hair of the old men
And they are much like the lavish trees that line my street
That hold true form in the pose of nocturnal naivety

And there we are by the carpenter and the pine tree
An "A" for effort attitude that barely got you the diploma
Hard work for the Hare and easiness for the turtle
The last night I worked was like racing through hurtles
So in sight all ye' fathers who break the mold of religion
Hold true and steady when the wind will start to whip
And knowing was never the correct answer & never helped at all
"The whips are where the heart is," the fortune teller is told

Where all is sold for the cheapest and weakest dollar
I pray to you there has to be more then all this squalor
The nightingale awake in the horned' tree cast in moonlight
Waits for its dreams so in the morning it can have a song to sing
Nod off and nod in where this life began I can't even begin
The guitar plays as she types awaiting for Her lapse of sin
Here the night is wired and wild with burn marks around the edges
Here the boss's hair rings like a hornets nest and everyone clings to their rubble

And pushing forward through the snowflake rings of time
Makes me to think that the seasons are only there for our design
"Not in the least bit asexual," the lawyer reads to his wife
In the morning both their breaths will wreak of red wine
Near do well and saying it all as the bathroom stall
Leaks out a liquid familiar to the ancient, early neanderthals
I have written and I have seen and I have breathed the air of every sea
The only thing I now wish to be
Is on the lakefront with new eyes and a frame to seize
When the speed allows the memorization of misfit tyrants
To push the rant to the edge of the hill that lays in dust and ants
Then there is the horizon that God creates for all those Western window sills

Tearing the skin from your fingernails and seeing not a drip of blood
Sloth like reactions reaching for the best spot in the house
The covers torn away as the nightmare in the mind becomes real
All that can be heard is the vibrating walls and the wailing squeals
Through pebble caked walls and finger padded dawn lit rooms
Lay to rest thy' faith for the moon opens your casket & the entrance to your tomb
Whorish knave that makes even the gutter grimace in its disdain
There the nun contemplates a life she could have lived without restraint

And to connection through the way we need to see each other
The push for brotherly love in the face of the dawn of technological revolution
And the hastiness of the way that it was and in the day of running mad men
What are we to do when the push is far more advantageous then the pull?
Where the cliff is in sight and death is more likely to be the safety net?
Awareness that all of men's problems exist for man to work at it
To prepare themselves for the war of wars where later to see
The deaths of their fathers, their mothers, their brothers, their sisters
Was not in vain if the reward of the stars is presented to the young
Where the rivers ripple with Roman like eloquence of progression

To live for another to fight for another to die for a place that would leave you in the gutter
Is the madness that leaves the one's shooting with their heads spinning
Tour the way the rules are made and the books are spun with the hands of spiders
Their webs are infinite and indestructible for they learn from one's before them
Their ways were as intricate and profane in their time
For the envelope was sealed and burned and sworn to forget its own name
The lightness of the this place throws me off in the way the clouds are grey
Letter heads are masted like the wooden ships that produce silver flecks of clay
Our nothingness only pushes us in two directions
Suicide or production
There is a choice that few make with knowing and many without
Which one are you?
Do you cry for reasons for which you cannot see?
Do you believe what you will, or what all the others decree?

Crack of the bed she turns herself over to a man that isn't there
I got a place that I know I belong but to where that is is already long gone
In type the strawberries shine red always appearing to be ruby ripe
And these ghosts of electricity provide neither discomfort or much needed positivity
There were things that I needed to know but never took the time to figure out
So what I'm left with is a world wide open with whatever I want to find is what it is about
The deserts and the canyons, the hills and the oceans all a few of what I wish to see
Where I'll be and where I'll live I don't rightly know now
So I might just get myself a mule and a satchel and get to selling tea
Continue reading...
Stephen E Yocum Jun 2018
Reflections of a Voyage Taken
Two aging message senders
and receivers, circumspect
men of reflective thoughts
and words spoken, written.
Wayfarers from divergent
oceans converging.

Both Harpooners of the
unexamined life, seekers
of truths and wisdom.
Kindred spirits different
and yet the same,
A spiritual awakening,
a brotherly bond in the making.

Both touched and renewed
by a voyage taken
upon a common sea
of curious self discovery.
For Nat and his effort to cross a
continent to extend the hand
of friendship and discover "Oregun."
Continue reading...
Guadalupe Salgado Partida Dec 2021
Reminders when you sneakily try to take my rights away
Wearing comfortable clothing is what I desire

And if that is a purple g-string with a pair of high rise low cut shorts
You best say "good morning"

And if that is a pair of bell bottom jeans that do not press tight
against my hips with a long sleeve pink sweater
You ought to say “good afternoon”

If I please sugar in my coffee or no
coffee but instead a warm swif of chamomile
tea you best hand me the cup and show
brotherly love to your sister

If in my womb a child grows or I decide
It does not grow
You ought to stand by me but you best
leave that choice to me
Roe vs. Wade making its way back into the court matters. It would mean a lessening of womxn’s rights in the U.S.

You may hold different opinion on this matter and on abortion. However, everyone’s life is different there is no one way life unfolds just look around you. The world and someone’s life does not follow a linear or predictable narrative. I believe with all my being that if we seek to control and choose what a woman can and cannot do with her body (something we do not do federally for men) we take away her choice, we lean away from neutrality, but in a deeper sense we in act violence upon those whose lives and thinking are unlike our own. So then the question becomes do we want to continue to treat one another this way? Do we really want peace and compassion? Even when it hits home and is uncomfortable and may push you to think beyond your own experience make room for it. Look at this world for what it is and open your heart with compassion for every human being who lives a life unlike yours.

I stand behind women having a choice to choose.. I stand behind Roe v. Wade.
#womensrights #sisterhood #women #roevwade
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