“Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”- Alice in Wonderland

“Everyone knows it’s a race, but no one’s sure of the finish line.”
        -Dean Young, “Whale Watch”

1a
Children rarely listen to any armchair advice from their immediate family, relatives they commonly have contact with or anyone they haven’t known for more than a couple years because in kindergarten or day care they often got gold stars just for showing up… Little glittering prizes plastered on poster boards in elementary school classrooms regardless of grades or mistakes…


1b
On the windy day when you lower the green jet-ski instead of the good one, race it to the north end, out of the safety of the bay, into the choppy waters, you’ll get bullied by the wave’s splash like the cattails of a whip. The lake will overwhelm you; you’ll inhale some of the water,  a sharp pain will course through your body as you try to breathe those short shallow breaths, which you will force yourself to do as seldom as possible. You will cough and keel over on the craft; It’s not uncommon to spit up blood; you will have to return to the dock and raise the jet-ski back onto the boatlift.  You will stub your toe on the cracks in the planking, stumble and get a splinter in the ball of your foot heading towards the deck but won’t notice. All feeling numbs against water trapped inside your lungs.


1c
Jackie Paper’s mother made him a hotdog with potato chips and served it to him on a plastic plate outside so he could enjoy it on the newly refinished deck while he watched the schooners and speedboats, stingray’s and ski-nautique’s jet in and out of the bay. He didn’t wait five minutes after he finished to fly from the deck onto the dock into the water where he free styled too far and got a cramp. His mother almost lost a son that day.



2a
If wet some recommend running around the shore of the lake until the air has thoroughly dried you off. Listening to the gulls dive and racing through the varying levels of grass on the neighbors’ unkempt lawns, in between the oaks and elms, keeping ever mindful the sticks and stones and acorns that litter the ground in lieu of stubbed toes or splinters. You will most likely fail, but you will get dry.


2b
When you **** your big toe on the zebra mussels while wading in the shallows, near the seawall beside the dock, trying to catch crayfish and minnows darting between the stones underneath the water, and the blood doesn’t stop flowing for 10 minutes and the H2O2 bubbles burgundy on the decks maple woodwork, instead of that off white color it usually bubbles, and stings something awful, don’t be a little ***** about it.  It’s your own fault for leaving your aqua-socks on the green marbled tiles in the foyer closet next to the bathroom; where you changed into your bathing suit and got the bottle of peroxide.


2c
Last winter Christopher Robbins drove his red pickup on the ice (near the island, towards the North end, where even when it’s been freezing for weeks the frozen water seldom exceeds six inches in thickness) at night and fell through.  He felt the cold water enter his lungs.  Although it was snowing and no one had noticed he survived; it took him the whole of an hour to reach the nearest house and call home; he lost his truck and suffered from severe hypothermia and acute pneumonia. At the hospital it was determined that while there was ample evidence of the early onset of frostbite in his extremities, amputation would not be necessary.


3a
While sitting Indian style on the dock next to your friends, settled on the plastic furniture, sipping whiskey and beer, comparing scars assume, no matter whose company you’re in, that yours are the smallest. Those cigarette burns running down the length of your right forearm are self-inflicted and old- reminders that you haven’t had to force yourself to breathe in quite some time.

3b
When you jump off the end of the dock you’ll forget to keep your knees loose because you were running on the wooden planks trying to avoid the white weather worn and dirtied dock chairs and worrying about getting a splinter. The water is inviting but during the summer the depth is only three feet four inches. You will roll your ankle at the very least and probably sprain it because, Like an *******, you locked your knees and jumped without looking.


3c
Two summers ago Alice was tubing behind a blue Crown Royal when she hit the wake at an awkward angle and flew head first into the water in the bay a few hundred feet off the dock at dusk. The spotter and driver simply weren’t watching and the wave-runner didn’t see her due to the advancing darkness.  She cracked her head open on the bottom of its hull; swallowed water.  She needed 70 stitches and several staples but Alice made a full recovery.


4
Mothers often tell their children to should chew their food 40 times before swallowing to aid digestion and to wait a full half hour after eating before engaging in physical activity. Especially swimming.


5
When you’re at the lake house this summer skipping stones swimming and running on the dock remember not to listen to any advice.  

If this were a race to get dry you’d be much closer to first than last.

The internal bleeding eventually stops.  The splinters all get pulled out, staples and stitches are removed, lacerations heal and the feeling returns to the fingers and toes.

The water eventually drains from the lungs and only the scars remain:

Gold stars on poster boards;

because everybody has won, and all must have prizes.

Here's the thing hate and prejudice,
are both learned behaviors.

I don't believe we were ever birthed,
that way -not from our inception,
from whatever God you pray,
or what you believe in,
because that is-
you doing you
an well I really gotta wonder who
just who am I to say,
what the hell is just so right anyway?

And what about all those religions,
that all say we turn into angels?

We already are then no?
On the inside?

An maybe we don't have the wings to fly,
or maybe we got too much pride,

Whatever the case is,
but when you're walking down the street and another soul is kind and good
they will smile at your spirit,
and you will smile back-
knowing that
you are the same.

There is always that forced smile with the cashier who has a grimace and you know it's just because she's having a bad day,
I smile at her and,
I do it anyway.

And I also believe that I can recognize a bad soul one who is a part of the lost people.

So very..... sad to me.

Sentient souls sing in churches,
but they sing outside of them too.
If we open our hearts we can see.

We learned hatred as a need because of survival in dark times.

So what makes someone wise in old age?
Awareness and in the ability to harness it.

Because anyone has been super aware can feel that it's overwhelming.
I was never aware,
-enough -
and then it all came and -
struck like a hammer.

And I should know a lot about building
and hammers -
as my father was a carpenter.

An wasn't Jesus so?

Even if you don't buy into religion,
there is many valuable things
in his teaching to know.

Many compassionate words
to encourage,
however,
in my point of view,
to open to subjective opinions.

Anything with that confusing,
of translation-
  to me anyway is open
for too much interpretation.

I know personally,
when I have read passages in the Bible,
  it's like poetry-
everyone takes something
different away, no?

I am my own church
and I share it with my family,
an we all are our own Gods in our hearts.

My father was Native American mostly.

Grew up in Vermont all his life-
he was raised dirt poor and came up
from nothing.

His father was sort of worthless-
you might say not a bad person
he just didn't like to work and was pretty abusive. I saw him soften as a grandfather but never really turn into the beautiful soul he could have been. He stayed locked in that hatred in a death dance. I hope his spirit is free now that he has found forgiveness for his life.

My father grew us up different he did not ever abuse his children he worked all his life as a carpenter. Refinished three houses in all his years for us they were all very beautiful. Sometimes working for others and sometimes himself- sometimes the foreman sometimes the boss. He worked 14 hours if he had to including a 2 hour drive. They were very rarely sick days because he didn't get paid for them and even a few occasions he worked out of state and came back and forth on the weekends, anything to keep his family's table full of love.

We shared what we had with so many people- a woman who had M.S. -my uncle who had heart surgery- my brother's girlfriend who became my foster sister -
an Italian exchange student- my friends, neighbors, relatives and strangers
my father well, he knew the dangers
the list goes on too,
there was always always food for everyone.

He endured much prejudice in his own life mostly as a youth, yet again in the Army
but poor hearts are strong though.
Father was a homebody an kind of,
a loner in a way like me I know sometimes I can feel completely alone in a room full of people nothing worse than feeling completely misunderstood as I imagine he did too. I miss him more every single day now that I realize this.

He was a wonderful soul with a fierce spirit there was nothing that he wouldn't try to fix for you whether it was your truck, or your... heart. ❤

I believe I was always a good, decent, intelligent kind person. However I was still kind of lost in my own selfish instinct. Almost everything we do is born out of selfishness the acceptance of that reality is what makes it easier to be happy and contented even in the worst of circumstances . When I cook for others I to cook for myself and I take a great deal of pride in it. I also give it all my heart and hand it to every bit of my brain.

So to me maybe it's not for every boy there's a girl- maybe...just for some.
Maybe when we choose to come here,
when we get into a certain body it just doesn't feel right, maybe we're just not attracted to the people they say we should be. Maybe there's a lot more gay and bisexual people in what we realize- seeing how again, being strictly heterosexual in my opinion is another learned behavior. One that eventually has caused some people to end their life because of the torture they endure I wonder how it feels,
to think you need a "cure"?

Two species were created - however that happened -as a male and female,
are we so sure -certain,
that we're attracted
to the only opposite *** ?
My father taught me anyone who is so certain is dangerous.
Maybe souls just recognize their counterpart in another

Yes perhaps we see with our hearts,
the beautiful soul and kindred spirit behind their mysterious and familiar eyes
we see the beauty deep inside,
finally relieved- we can recognize
that life...is OURS to live.

Ma Cherie © 2017

nothing scares me more than me.
it isn't fair,
it aches to be
so full of rancid misery;
twisted psychologically
by tempered hate
- a level stare -
emotion shreds that crackling coat
of grinning, laughing make-believe,
retouched,
refinished,
polished fine
by damaged days in infancy.
I want to love;
I long to breathe
and bare it all,
******* the need to look so in control.
please,
how long until I break, you think?
how long until they see?
those sorrows buried underneath.
nothing scares me more than me.

Scrubbing the hardwoods, softly
on hands and knees

Not as gently as you would a child's face
closer to how you would scrub your own
to free it of grit: efficient, mechanical

The pine floors were laid one hundred and seventeen years ago
refinished until they are barely thicker than paper
the gaps are wide enough in spots to accept the length of my pinky
where the filling has loosened and been swept away
during our tenure

So I know to scrub softly
because I have been stabbed by the shards
that will break off and bite
getting lodged so deep in a hand or the meat of a foot
that a second person is needed to pull it out

These are not on the scale of shards, but stakes, I guess
that you could drive through the heart of tiny vampires
if those were the things in the world that
we needed to fear

This is what I think as I crawl down the hall
between my office and my daughter's bedroom, careful
to scrub away all of the dirt but not so hard
that I lift any of the watery drips of paint from when she trudges
to the bathroom to change out her brush water

They look like fallen tears
if tears had colour and didn't disappear when they dried

I leave those be and don't clean them away

The cup crashes to the floor, it shatters spitting it's contents out. The man smiles, he squats. He carefully scoops the broken porcelain into his left hand. He squeezes tight. Blood drips from his clenched fist and hits the cool tile mixing with the spilt tea. The florescent lighting swings overhead. His smile is now just clenched teeth. The only thing in his life that he has any kind of a grip on are the sharp peices cutting into his hand. The ground lurches up at him quickly. His head bounces off the floor and his hand unclenches releasing ****** peices of porcelain. Hes having a hard time remembering, what's his name? what's his name? Did he drink out of the broken cup? what was in it? Where is he? His head jerks up off the floor face wet with tea and blood.

The floor is hardwood, it needs to be refinished badly. The light flickers and switches off. He struggles to his knees and hears a shuffling in the shadows. He freezes and a dim blue light fills the room. He flexes his hand and the remaining peices of porcelain fall off and hit the ground, they make such a satisfying sound. He turns scanning the room unable to decipher the shadows.

You call when I’m reading
(Every article, like I’m in prison,
Something about rifles and cartridges)
Even in second language jokes
You’re the best part of their day
You talk of Abaco and water
Anne and the Mud
I can only say
It washed over.
I wake in the night
And my mother’s up
With a light cane thumping and florescent lighting.
In the early morning I *** outside
Relieved by open space
I pull the arrows
I list groceries
It’s the best part of the day.

The feedback of his hearing aids
The forgotten novel
Solitaire
The lightly fondled newspaper
What’s your mother doing?
Did your Dad go back to bed?
What day is it?
They mostly miss each other
When death idles under the carport
When the starving aren’t hungry
I miss them too
While she was forgetting
And he was dying

I remember when my grandmother died
My father, aunts and uncles around her
A minute in the bedroom
A hug, sudden
Death crisp as a *******
But this, it’s not you
The table you made was there, and here
Refinished
I’m not sure how to clean the pellet stove
I hug your wife
The ballot issues alongside her coffee
“Oh, ****!”.  Just vote yes.
Toasted banana bread
As I stand at the bedroom door
Checking for signs of life

She asks me who your wife is
Who your brother is married too
Who am I
Marriage is a fading order,
My kids don’t know.
After 66 years of her own,
Now my mother doesn’t either.


I stop for fossil fuel
For the long-handled sponge and squeegee
Radio whites talking Jesus between scans
My sister caring, weary, crying
Competency smiling
I lean there
Eat raisined grapes, frog eye salad, boiled egg
You sit bedside in my brace
With alabaster thighs and raspy breath
You want to write checks
You guess to stay in bed
I don’t know what death is
But I want it for you

My hunger is a coated almond
Next to your pill box
Only Monday is empty
You thank me, not knowing about tomorrow
Creases in the carpet, shrinking
You’re the smallest of the nesting dolls
You want an Oregon pill
Not what Tuesday offers
Your disappointment breathes
I wonder about your loving God

I have a birthday card
Still blank
Don’t know if you’ll make it to Friday
Doubt you’ll breathe enough to wake
wake enough to read
What to wish for you
I wish for the end
I scribble deep breaths

We came, somehow all of us converging
They came, and wrapped your body
Wheeled it out the front way
The bed changed, a meal shared
Lives diverge again
For six decades
We had you
To gather around
To go first
I’d like to miss you
But you’re still here…
What day is it?

Cookie crumbs and flower petals
Sympathy cards when death is over
Moments when you miss him so much
His ashes noticed by parcel post
I clean the pellet stove
I rummage in his drawer
For a T-shirt
In your overheated house
Stain of glue
So like mine
Home where you were

I took some nails, washers, some trowels
Rags, wing nuts, his stuff
You think I’m as obvious as lasagna
But I’m more than layers
Today I found the post office
Took the box marked
Cremated remains
She put the canister
Behind the chrysanthemum
Blooming in November
I stretched on the floor
She on the couch
We napped
Had ravioli for dinner