“You’re turning eighteen, you know. Have you thought of the things you’ve done with your life? Don’t you think it’s time we get you a life?” Recently, I had coffee with a friend. He looked at me from head to foot in mid-conversation, and made this comment. As always, he managed to drive me into deep thought. After much contemplation, I now realize how much I have truly gone through. I also realize the reason for this paper: I want to tell you about my life. I want to prove to you that people like me, who are afflicted with cerebral palsy should not be demeaned, but rather looked up to for how they face the challenges life brings forth.

    I remember that day. I was a baby and my eyes didn’t move. They refused to follow the finger my aunt moved back and forth. I just lay there, unmoving. My family didn’t really give much thought to it until a few months later when I began to be extremely dependent on others when it came to simple things like getting up from a fall. Right then, they knew something was wrong. I was taken to the hospital a few weeks after, and true enough I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a condition that caused me to walk on tip-toe and my legs to look like sticks due to weak muscles.

   The hospital became my second home. By the time I was three, I had grown immune to the stale smell of disease and death that greeted patients at hospital entrances. I sat in wheelchairs and was a patient to three different doctors and physical therapists. Physical therapy was, and still is to this day a gruesome routine that I didn’t look forward to. Those sessions lasted for three hours, starting off with cold ultrasound gel being smeared slowly on my thigh muscles, slowly progressing into the limb-twisting that drove me into screams of excruciating pain, and then finally ending with attempts at “walking normally” with steel bars for support. Soon after, the doctors discovered that physical therapy alone was not enough, and recommended orthopedic surgery.

   I underwent seven surgeries in three different countries: the Philippines, Thailand, and Greece. Although these surgeries gave me the opportunity to see the world, they were not at all full of pleasantries. To this day, I remember how each surgery went: being laid on the cold operating table, feeling as though my body was a pincushion as needles were forced into me. I shrieked at the sight of blood and nurses tried to calm me down, talking to me in languages I didn’t understand. Soon, my vision blurred, my eyes shut and I couldn’t open them. A tube made its way down my throat, and soon I was going, going, gone. Hours later, I woke up groggy, and the sleepless nights in the children’s ward started. Tears clouded my eyes as I stared at the ceiling or the walls covered with Disney characters grinning annoyingly at me as I was under the mercy of painkillers that didn’t even seem to work.

    As I got older, I began to question why things were the way they were for me. I began to raise questions why a certain child in my class could do things that I couldn’t. My early years of schooling were the most challenging ones to face. Like me, the other children didn’t realize how it was like to be in the situation I was in. Bullying and name-calling was common in the schools I attended. “Slowpoke” and “snail” are only some of the few names I was called by. Sometimes, children would even go as far as “crazy” and “*******”. They mimicked the way I walked and called my attention, asking me who it was they were pretending to be. Often times, I did what I was told to do at home and stood up for myself, firing back with a witty, sharp remark. Other times, I chose to ignore them instead.

    On the first days of all my Physical Education courses, I’d try to blend in with my classmates hoping that the teacher wouldn’t notice that I was incapable of doing the routines. I tried to get away with it, to no avail. As soon as I got found out, I was tasked to watch everyone else’s belongings, clear up scattered basketballs, or score a game I really had no knowledge of each meeting. I remember how it felt like to be a benchwarmer, while all the others were doing warm-ups or playing sports. I didn’t look at their faces much, instead I closed my eyes and listened as their laughs echoed their enjoyment into the air. That, or I looked down at their feet, watching them jump, listening to the thumps as their shoes hit the ground again. They made it look so easy.

   During dance rehearsals, I’d stare down at my own shoes, dirtied and scratched from constant dragging. I’d feel a sharp, imagined pain in my stick-thin legs, and imagine them moving to the music they’d be dancing to. Gently. Tap. Tap. Tap.

   While I admit that I felt a lot of resentment towards this disability in the past, I now find that there isn’t really much to resent about it. I have grown so much as a person through this disability. It has become part of who I am and how others define me. It is true that I have missed out on a lot of the things teenagers my age have gone through, but how this disability has enabled me to see life actually happen, to discover life’s true essence, and most of all, touch the lives of people I have encountered in the past and those I continue to encounter, makes me feel as though I have not missed out on anything at all.

   As I end this essay, I’d like to leave two challenges. If you happen to afflicted with cerebral palsy or any other disability, I challenge you to be proud and fight. Do not let others look down on you. People will demean you, if you choose to demean yourself. Do not wallow in self-pity. Instead, strive to turn your misfortune around. Touch lives of the people you meet. Inspire.

   On the other hand, if you do not have to struggle with any disability at all, I challenge you even more. Do not take your “normalcy” for granted. Do not look down on people with disabilities; instead aim to broaden your understanding of how it’s like to live life in their shoes. Everyday, realize how lucky you are to have what you have. I ask you the same question my friend asked me in the coffee shop that afternoon: Have you thought of the things you’ve done with your life?

Id love a big fat ****
Or a wrinkled up *******
An ugly looking hag
Who wants a ******* ****

If I had a big fat *****, with a big fat bucket
I'd lay between her fleshy thighs, and definitely **** it
My thrusting **** inside her ****, is where I'd like to tuck it
Spunking up would be sublime, when I lick and **** it

When your about to **** the fat, it takes a certain knack
Stuffed up fishy **** *****, or **** ******* round the back
A nice piece of chunky ****, with a big long sweaty crack
Fatty *** holes make you hard ,my **** would not be slack

I would ride a big large Gal, just like a waterbed
Bathroom ******* would be fun, as well as in the shed
Spunking up between her legs, cream cheese would then be spread
When both holes are full of ***, she can **** my **** instead

And after I have finished, with all of those fat *******
Something different I would want, maybe some old wrinkled witches
All wearing apple gatherers, and big large ******* britches
Older ***** long overdue, scratching long lost itches

A lot of fun I could have, in an old folks place
Disrobed willing grannies *****, stuffed right in my face
At least eight bits of gristle ******, a display of my disgrace
With each granny ****** in turn, if they can stand the pace

As I lift their skirts up their knickers I would sniff
I'm hoping that old fannies good, and they don't smell or whiff
The smell of old used granny ****, is probably just a myth
But I won't let it bother me, as long as I get stiff

I wouldn't even care, if they wore crap NHS glasses
As long as I could **** and ***, inside there wrinkled arses
I would **** them old ****** , all from different classes
Some of them in wheelchairs and some with heart bypasses.

It's irrelevant how fat you are, I really do not mind
As long as you are willing, and your *****'s wet and kind
And if you like it up the ****, then I'm that way inclined
******* ***** is quite fine, so is ******* from behind

So come on girls fat or old, all slags are a possibility
Your sexuality can flood out, there's no need for negativity
I'm willing to **** who comes along, to the best of my ability
Just make sure that I stay stiff, and maintain my agility

Bricks and mortar, steel and boards,
Phone poles lined with power cords, on
Pothole streets, where engines roar,
'Neath smoggy skies, where jet planes soar,

Where penny merchants peddle wares,
And news reports pretend they care,
Where vagrants sleep, and children stare,
And people work for lives not theirs,

That's life in the jungle, adrift in the herd,
Where terrestrial beasts envy free flying  birds
Where the pundits stand polished, and speak empty words,
And the artists paint portraits, while posted on curbs,

Where the men push carts, full of empty cans,
And the women spend paychecks, for spray-on tans,
Where the truckers drive loads, 'cross a thousand mile span,
To appease the great gods of supply and demand,

Asphalt and tarmac, girders and glass,  
Terrarium trees in cemented sod grass,
Ripe with the stench of exhaust fumes and gas,
As the choir lines up for the 10 o'clock mass,

While the brokers all scream, at a packed stock exchange,
As the veterans in wheelchairs sit begging for change,
That's life in the jungle, it's just a big game,
But remember you're playing, lest you go insane.

If you’ve only ever smelled fir trees covered with freshly fallen snow-
then you haven’t smelled it.
It’s an acquired smell, for sure.
It comes just in between the whiffs of
mashed potatoes
mashed carrots
mashed peas
mashed turkey
hell, mashed ginger-ale for all I know. . .
Somewhere amongst that microwaved menagerie, masked with the smell of eau de toilette,
it lives, and smells sweeter the longer brown sugar bubbles on top of caramelizing yams.  

If you can’t smell it, maybe you can find it.
Not many can, or do.
It hides in plain sight, though.
A lost and found box with accumulated cobwebs - everything still unclaimed.
A flyer for free puppies that no one ever took because they were “too much responsibility.”
Maybe there aren’t enough seekers in this game of empty rooms and blank guest books.
But keep looking, until bingo prize hand-me-downs after school plays look like Oscars.
You won’t see it until it makes you believe that plastic Mardis Gras beads are Tiffany-blue boxes.

It’s not so much in the nose, or the eyes as it is in the endurance.
Endure the voiceless Glenn Miller until his brass bellows become her voice -
whispering “I love you”  to the effortless rhythm of “Moonlight Serenade.”
And imagine her,
swapping her orthopedics for black heels,
elegantly taking Pop’s hand as he helps her up from her wheelchair,
to join him for just one more dance.
Watch as they become the sepia-colored couple in every anniversary photo.
That black dress.  Those fake pearls.  
The crescendo of the band.
It’s hard to miss when it’s screaming at you.

Liturgy in Time of War

I will go to the altar of God
To God who gives joy to my youth

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

The dawn (evening) is coming, another hot, filthy, wet dawn (evening).  Let us arise, soaked in sweat, exhausted, to speak with sour, saliva-caked mouths, to meet the deaths of this day (night).

GREETING

In the name of Peace in Our Time,
For the Hearts and Minds of The People,
For the Land of the Big PX
For round eye and white (black) (brown) thigh,
I greet you, brothers.

PENITENTIAL RITE

All:

I confess to almighty God
And to you my brothers
That I have sinned through my fault
In my thoughts and in my words
In what I have done
And in what I have failed to do,
And I ask Blessed Mary…

But how can I ask Her anything now?

My brothers,
Pray for me to…

But how?
Priest: (But there is no priest)

KYRIE

Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Lord, Lord, have mercy on us now

Have mercy, Lord, on a generation
That sits smugly in college lecture halls
And protests endlessly in coffee shops
The war they hear, see, on T.V., for free
Justice and peace by the semester hour
Like, y’know, peace, love, Amerika sux
Play the guitar, ****, apply to law school

Have mercy on us
Who crouch behind sand bags
And clean our weapons
And protest nothing
And **** in the heat
And die in the hear
And throw ham and lima beans away

GLORIA

Glory to God in the highest
how many bodies yesterday?
And peace to His people on earth
Vietnamese? Or us?
Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father
ham and lima beans?
We worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory
Doc, I can’t go home to my wife with this clap
Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father
cigarette, canteen cup of instant coffee
Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
******* magazine
Have mercy on us
relief behind the sand bags
You are seated at the right hand of the Father
i rot
Receive our prayer
i want to be clean and dry
For You alone are the Holy One
clean and dry.  just once.
You alone are the Lord
why do they chew that?
You alone are the most high
you mean the betel nut?
Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father
incoming!
Amen


PRAYER

A

Father, you make this day holy.
Let us be thankful for
The many little joys of
This day, for life, for
The chance to worship
You.  In the end, bring
Us to you, so that we
May be cleansed of mud
And sweat and filth and
Guilt, and live with you
In peace forever.

B

Father, just get me through
Another day of this mess.

LITURGY OF THE WORD –

FIRST READING

From the Intensive Care Unit, NSA DaNang

A twilight world
Of neither peace nor battle
And of both

A man world
Embracing life and the grim death
Both

Peering into infected wounds
Night building shiver
Down from the black sky flares float

Broken bodies from the war somewhere
Eyes of a shattered nineteen-year-old Marine
Staring at the door to Yokosuka

PSALM

A Song of Descents

I cast down my eyes
Into the mud
Into the blood
It seems cleaner than death and drugs and casual ***
Drink Coca-Cola

I turned my eyes away from you, O Lord
And made this
Build this
Came to this
Samantha and Darren on Bewitched

Have mercy on…but how can we ask?  How dare we ask?

SECOND READING

Old Man, Viet Nam

Old man, a dog is barking at your heels
Old man, with the tired, weathered face
Are you afraid to turn around and deal
This dog a kick, to put him in his place?

Or is it, old man, that you’re just too tired?
Just too tired to turn and show anger
Just too tired to have your temper fired
Beaten by years of contempt and danger

Where are you going, trudging so slowly?
What are you thinking, behind those tired eyes?

Probably not about ham and lima beans

GOSPEL

In the Cold White Mist

After an all-night run on the river
Our boats arrive in the village at dawn
Dawn is never cold along that rive
Along that steaming, green, hell-hot river
But the mist is cold, the grey-green dawn mist
And after the engines are cut – stillness
Foul brown water laps at the mudding bank
Sloshing softly with fertile, smelly death

In the cold white mist

The boats are secured, and watches posted
We step off the boats and onto wet land
And follow the track into the deep mist
It becomes the street of a little town
A dairy lane along which cows slopped home
And where dogs and chickens and children
      played
Bounded by carefully swept little yards
And little wooden houses with tin roofs

In the cold white mist

But some of the houses are burnt.  The smoke
Still hangs heavily in the whitening mist
The lane is littered with debris.  A lump
Resolves itself into a torn, dead child
Across a smaller lump, a smaller child
Their pup has been flung against the fence, its
Guts early morning breakfast for the morning
      flies
We smoke cigarettes against the death-smells

In the cold white mist

Beneath a farm tractor rots a dead man.
When they – they – had come at sunset
He had hidden there.  And they shot him there
A man with bare feet and work-calloused
      hands
His hair is black; his teeth need cleaning
They shot him beneath the village tractor
His blackening blood clots into the mud
And our lungs choke in the white mist of death

In the cold white mist

White mist.  The path disappears into it
Smoky skeletons of little houses
In which there will be no tea this morning
No breakfasts of hot tea and steaming rice
No old widows to smile in betel-nut
No children to mock-march alongside us
Pointing at our ******* boots, and laughing
At us, for wearing shoes in the summer

In the cold white mist

They are dead and rotting in the white mist
On the edge of the jungle on the edge
Of the world, here along the Vam Co Tay
And the people pour out of their houses
To greet us on the fine summer morning
A corpse across a doorway, another
******-doubled across a window sill
Still another strewn down the garden path

In the cold white mist

The other patrol doubles back to us
And they tell us that the Ruff-Puff outpost
Must have been overrun the night before
He had heard their radioed pleas, and had
Run the river at night to get to them
And the ARVNs had fled through the village
And the VC had stormed in behind them
And it was knife-and-gun-club night in town

In the cold white mist

A little girl is the lone survivor
She looks may six.  Cute, except for the
Bubbling, *******, bayoneted chest wound
We patch her, and tube her, and use suction
Sort of like fixing a bicycle tire
And in the wet, gasping heat take her back
With us downriver, where a charity
Hospital leaves her on the steps to die

In the cold white mist

It will be our turn again tomorrow
Not a one of us died today.  Today.
But a village is gone, burnt and rotting,
Soon to disappear into the jungle
Along the green Cambodian border
Up some obscure river.  Up there.  Somewhere.
A few hundred people.  Their ancestors’ graves
Will fade with them untended, forgotten

In the cold white mist

Radio Hanoi might blame it on us.
But maybe not.  We made our report and
Nobody really noticed; no one cared
The talk is of the VC battalion
And where it has gone, and where it might go –
Maybe into death under an air strike
“And you guys better get in some sack time,”
Says the C.O. as he turns to his maps.

In the cold white mist

HOMILY

I’m scared, and I want to go home.  I don’t care any more about justice or fighting Communism or winning the hearts and minds of the people.  I can’t think about all that right now, because I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I don’t care about truth or loyalty or bravery or honor.  If Miss March were here she wouldn’t get cold, but she sure would get sunburnt.  And in a few days her skin would start rotting.  Then nobody would want to see her in the **** anymore.  
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
Up the Vam Co Tay, everyone is scared, everyone is tired, everyone is sick, everyone could die: sailor, soldier, officer, priest, farmer, fisherman.  Everyone rots in the wet heat.  The skin bubbles and flakes and peels, and is pink again, to bubble and flake and peel again.  
I’m scared, and I want to go home.
I’m Doc.  I’m a scared, stupid kid with an aid bag and a few months’ training.  But I’m Doc.  I’ve got to fake it.  I’ve got to be cool and calm because this other kid with his guts hanging out will probably make it if I don’t ***** up and if the dust-off from Saigon can get out here now.
I have an old dog at home, and my folks write and tell me she sleeps outside my window at night, waiting for me to come home.  Someday we’re going to run and play in the woods and fields again.  She’ll bark and run wide circles, and dare me to catch her.  I will laugh under the autumn leaves.  But now my nights are glaring darkness, fits of sweat-soaked half-sleep, then sirens and falling glares and falling mortars, and then the Godawful racket of all our engines of destruction.  There isn’t any use in all this.
I’m scared, and I want to go home.

And I don’t want any ham and lima beans.

CREED

We believe in the Land of the Big PX
In presidents in suits, and generals,
In makers of economic strategies
We believe in flak jackets and .45s and peace

We believe in swing ships and dust-offs, yes
In the dark, green omnipresent Huey
Eternally begotten of technology
Blades to rotor, windscreen to machine guns
Made, not begotten, one in being with us
Through it all things are transported to us
For us men and our hunger and our hope
It comes down from the skies
By the high power of technology
It was born of the long assembly line

For whose sake are we crucified today?
Who suffers, and who dies and is baggied?
And on the third will arrive back home
To be neatly packaged in stainless steel

But not in ham and lima beans

LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST

Preparation of the Gifts

Celebrant:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation.
Through your goodness we have this cheap Algerian wine to offer,
Fruit of the vine and work of human hands.
It will become anaesthesia for our souls.

People:

Blessed be…we just don’t know

Celebrant:

Pray, brothers, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father, to somebody.  Maybe.

People:

May the Lord, or the baggies, accept the sacrifice we offer with
our own burnt hands
For the praise and glory of…of what?
For our good, and the good of all His Church.

PRAYER OVER THE GITS

Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Little green cans, and I don’t care
Air cover’s gone away.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

Preface for the Monsoon Season:

Father, all-powerful
And ever-living God,
We do well always and everywhere
To give You thanks
Through Jesus God our Lord
Even with diarrhea
thanks
When the mail doesn’t come
thanks
When we rot
thanks
When the heat ***** at our brains
thanks
When the mud ***** at our boots
thanks
When the horror ***** at our souls
thanks
We’re alive
thanks

SANCTUS

Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might
The bunkers are full of blood and death.
Hosanna in the mud.  Blessed is he who comes with the mail.  Hosanna in the mud.

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

The Kien Tuong Province Canon:

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
Along a steamy river
Mostly helmet and flak jacket
Above dark plastic gunwales

The sailor has lost his New Testament
But there’s a ******* around somewhere
Naked, willing women –
Miss March wants to be an actress

He also carries an old plastic Rosary
To touch occasionally
While whispering a hurried Hail Mary
He hopes She understands

Those who in bell-bottoms and head-bands
Fight Fascism
In Sociology 201
Will never forgive him

A sailor is silhouetted against the dawn
This day he is to be elevated
His body broken and his blood shed
For you and for all men

OUR FATHER

Our Father, who art in Heaven
this ain’t it
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come
this ain’t it
On earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day…
not ham and lima beans
And forgive us our trespasses
as we shoot them that trespass against us
And lead us not into ambush
But deliver us from evil

SIGN OF PEACE

Peace on you.

AGNUS DEI

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy….

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: grant us peace.

Priest:

(But there is no priest)

People:  

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,
But only say the word and I shall be killed.

COMMUNION ANTIPHON

They ate, and were not satisfied
They killed, and were not without fear.

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

Lord,
If we do not get out of this
Make some sense of it to those who remain
May we go home.  Home.  Or if not,
Take us unto you, in mercy.
Home.  Where you reign, for you are Lord
Forever and ever.  Amen

BLESSING

May you walk on grass that does not explode
May you sleep without rot
Without fear
May you never see or smell ham and lima beans again.
May you live
May you play with puppies
May you find forgetfulness
May you find peace
In the Name of Him who took your death for you

DISMISSAL

This is to certify that____is Honorably Discharged from the____on theday of____.  This certificate is awarded as a testimonial of Honest and Faithful Service.

CLOSING HYMN

Old men, smoking in the sunshine
Exiled outside the doors of life
Old uniforms, old pajamas
The chrome of wheelchairs, shiny, bright

Inside, polished wooden handrails
Line the hot, polished passages
Something to cling to on the way
To the lab, to x-ray, to death

And more old men, shuffling along
In a querulous route-step march
From Normandy, from The Cho-sen,
From the Vam Co Tay, from the deserts,
Past the A.I.D.S. ward and the union signs
On waxed floors to eternity

Portions previous published:

“Closing Hymn” is from “Outpatient Surgery – Veterans’ Hospital,” Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1993

“In the Cold White Mist” is a Juried Award, Houston Poetry Fest 1991

“Old Man, Viet-Nam,” was published in Pulse, Lamar University, 1982

(1)

This is the sea, then, this great abeyance.
How the sun's poultice draws on my inflammation.

Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped from the freeze
By pale girls, travel the air in scorched hands.

Why is it so quiet, what are they hiding?
I have two legs, and I move smilingly..

A sandy damper kills the vibrations;
It stretches for miles, the shrunk voices

Waving and crutchless, half their old size.
The lines of the eye, scalded by these bald surfaces,

Boomerang like anchored elastics, hurting the owner.
Is it any wonder he puts on dark glasses?

Is it any wonder he affects a black cassock?
Here he comes now, among the mackerel gatherers

Who wall up their backs against him.
They are handling the black and green lozenges like the parts of a body.

The sea, that crystallized these,
Creeps away, many-snaked, with a long hiss of distress.

                (2)

This black boot has no mercy for anybody.
Why should it, it is the hearse of a dad foot,

The high, dead, toeless foot of this priest
Who plumbs the well of his book,

The bent print bulging before him like scenery.
Obscene bikinis hid in the dunes,

******* and hips a confectioner's sugar
Of little crystals, titillating the light,

While a green pool opens its eye,
Sick with what it has swallowed----

Limbs, images, shrieks.  Behind the concrete bunkers
Two lovers unstick themselves.

O white sea-crockery,
What cupped sighs, what salt in the throat....

And the onlooker, trembling,
Drawn like a long material

Through a still virulence,
And a ****, hairy as privates.

                (3)

On the balconies of the hotel, things are glittering.
Things, things----

Tubular steel wheelchairs, aluminum crutches.
Such salt-sweetness.  Why should I walk

Beyond the breakwater, spotty with barnacles?
I am not a nurse, white and attendant,

I am not a smile.
These children are after something, with hooks and cries,

And my heart too small to bandage their terrible faults.
This is the side of a man:  his red ribs,

The nerves bursting like trees, and this is the surgeon:
One mirrory eye----

A facet of knowledge.
On a striped mattress in one room

An old man is vanishing.
There is no help in his weeping wife.

Where are the eye-stones, yellow and valuable,
And the tongue, sapphire of ash.

                (4)

A wedding-cake face in a paper frill.
How superior he is now.

It is like possessing a saint.
The nurses in their wing-caps are no longer so beautiful;

They are browning, like touched gardenias.
The bed is rolled from the wall.

This is what it is to be complete.  It is horrible.
Is he wearing pajamas or an evening suit

Under the glued sheet from which his powdery beak
Rises so whitely unbuffeted?

They propped his jaw with a book until it stiffened
And folded his hands, that were shaking:  goodbye, goodbye.

Now the washed sheets fly in the sun,
The pillow cases are sweetening.

It is a blessing, it is a blessing:
The long coffin of soap-colored oak,

The curious bearers and the raw date
Engraving itself in silver with marvelous calm.

                (5)

The gray sky lowers, the hills like a green sea
Run fold upon fold far off, concealing their hollows,

The hollows in which rock the thoughts of the wife----
Blunt, practical boats

Full of dresses and hats and china and married daughters.
In the parlor of the stone house

One curtain is flickering from the open window,
Flickering and pouring, a pitiful candle.

This is the tongue of the dead man:  remember, remember.
How far he is now, his actions

Around him like living room furniture, like a décor.
As the pallors gather----

The pallors of hands and neighborly faces,
The elate pallors of flying iris.

They are flying off into nothing:  remember us.
The empty benches of memory look over stones,

Marble facades with blue veins, and jelly-glassfuls of daffodils.
It is so beautiful up here:  it is a stopping place.

                (6)

The natural fatness of these lime leaves!----
Pollarded green *****, the trees march to church.

The voice of the priest, in thin air,
Meets the corpse at the gate,

Addressing it, while the hills roll the notes of the dead bell;
A glittler of wheat and crude earth.

What is the name of that color?----
Old blood of caked walls the sun heals,

Old blood of limb stumps, burnt hearts.
The widow with her black pocketbook and three daughters,

Necessary among the flowers,
Enfolds her lace like fine linen,

Not to be spread again.
While a sky, wormy with put-by smiles,

Passes cloud after cloud.
And the bride flowers expend a freshness,

And the soul is a bride
In a still place, and the groom is red and forgetful, he is featureless.

                (7)

Behind the glass of this car
The world purrs, shut-off and gentle.

And I am dark-suited and still, a member of the party,
Gliding up in low gear behind the cart.

And the priest is a vessel,
A tarred fabric, sorry and dull,

Following the coffin on its flowery cart like a beautiful woman,
A crest of *******, eyelids and lips

Storming the hilltop.
Then, from the barred yard, the children

Smell the melt of shoe-blacking,
Their faces turning, wordless and slow,

Their eyes opening
On a wonderful thing----

Six round black hats in the grass and a lozenge of wood,
And a naked mouth, red and awkward.

For a minute the sky pours into the hole like plasma.
There is no hope, it is given up.

His hat says
I Remember Pearl Harbor
He asks me to put the wine in the basket
Hanging behind his motorized wheelchair

He smells a little like ***
His sweatpants have dark stains all over
Like a leapord who has gone old and grey

"They can put a motor on one
of these things
but they can't make them comfortable"

"When you're an old man like me
maybe yours will fly
but I bet your *** will still fall asleep all the time"

I tell him
that when I am old
I hope they make wheelchairs
that feel like a father's shoulders

He shakes his head after I say that and laughs
"That sounds like it might be nice
But i couldn't say I know what that feels like"

Me neither
I tell him

one of my friends is adored by everyone he knows
the kind of kid who smiles all the time
who can always make anyone laugh
always has something motivational and upbeat to say or sing

once we were sitting in English class
talking about change
and it was quiet between us for a minute
so I said
watching people die is hard
and he said
yeah, it is

and I didn't tell him about my grandfather
who had cancer and died in my house a week later
or my grandmother
who lost her mind eight years ago and slowly deteriorates each day
or my aunt
who had her first open-heart surgery when she was fifteen
and is now a bloated skeleton who lingers in wheelchairs
and doesn't sleep and hallucinates
or my second cousin
who only knows all the "wrong" sorts of people
or my friend
who is breaking slowly, who I cannot fix

I didn't tell him because I'd never heard three simple words like that
overflowing with so much empathy

Use canned spaghetti as thread to stitch together the frayed edge of your t-shirt. Use your t-shirt to show how you’re the coolest most-hippest, most up with the kids kid there is. Where’d you get that shirt? Online.

Bop your head to the music so they know you know this song. Harder or they won’t see you. That’s not hard enough. Neck snap! Yeah, right there. Hold still while I take a photo. Do you mind if I make this my cover photo?

Take a selfie of you crying in the bathroom and hashtag it. Snapchat it to your local MP so they know how you feel - be sure to use an emoji. #studentdebt Tears streaming down your face. (If it’s a hashtag it’s easier to emotionally process.) #policebrutality #throwbackthursday #massincaceration It’s a good thing there’s emojis for black people now. Look at how far we’ve come!

#nomakeup #vegan #crueltyfree #childslavelabour #iwokeuplikethis #campusrape #notallmen #yesallwomen #freethenipple #2k16 #mentalhealthcuts #stopkillingtranswomen #waterislife #standwithstandingrock

Have you followed Human Rights on Facebook? It’s the only way to get them. Have you seen the Ted Talk about it? In just 20 minutes you’ll know everything there is know about it.

Sorry. You don’t seem like you’re focused. You’re thirsty? Let me make you a smoothie.
I’ll put the chocolate bar in the blender whole, leave the wrapper on. Taste the tinfoil and the plastic. Eat the barcode, become the product. That’s modern life.

Don’t take out the hair or the fingernail or the Band-Aid. Don’t hide from the human components of the production line that made this Kit-Kat possible for you, kid. That’s modern life.

Go to the voting booth, refuse to choose between the diversity of 50 versions of the same smiling white man. Scrawl: **** these ******! (have no faith in none of them) That’s modern life.

With jittering teeth and goosebumps, put your toaster in the sink. Overflow it with water. You will only need a fork to get warm. Electrocution is the most economical form of heating. Be Energywise. That’s modern life.

Puff marijuana smoke through the bars into the brown faces of those who were incarcerated for doing what you freely do now. That’s modern life.

Burn your eyes on the screen. But before you do, memorise the 0800 number for the optometrist.

Post your suicide note on YikYak to save paper. No-one likes reading hard copies these days anyways. #papercuts #selfharm

Search for motivation on EBay. If you’re lucky it’ll have free shipping and arrive in 1-5 business days.

Snapchat your friend’s words of encouragement, God knows they’ve seen enough dickpics.

Take a chicken to KFC and tell them you’re sorry.

Get in the cars of the men who yell “Hey baby!”. They’ll be so surprised they wont know what to do next.

Swap your woman-chest with a man-chest and see if your ******* are still illegal.

Drive through town throwing dirt with one hand and seeds in the other. Maybe, if you do it long enough this claustrophobic concrete will be gone.

Bleed on every seat until the government pays for menstrual products.

Train seagulls to throw YOU chips.

**** a woman and a man simultaneously, so that you can be sure everyone knows you’re bisexual.

Blockade inaccessible buildings with piles of wheelchairs.

Grab time by the fabric and rip it, cuz we all know rips look really punk, and all you really are is just some young punk.

It is four in the morning and I'm alone
It's dark out
The city lays quiet and sullen with sleep
I'm awake
Awake

Still awake
The sun has yet to rise and won't for another two hours
I move with such grace and ease that the grass doesn't have to strain against my weight
I hear a vehicle fast approaching
A shed to my right
Silently duck behind it
Security van passes by
My heart is pounding in my ears
My breath has never sounded so loud
So utterly loud
So ******* loud
Can't stand it
Security must have heard
But I really know they didn't

I fall to my hands and knees and crawl out from my temporary shelter
The morning dew stains my hands and pants
Don't notice
Don't think

There are bundles of old plywood tied with twine that border the asylum drive
Crawl behind them
Streetlights illuminate my way
They deliver a soft, humming sound that enters through every pore on my body
It's loud
So ******* loud
Hands to ears
Doesn't stop
Won't stop
Keeps ******* humming
Ignore it
I learn to ignore it
Don't hear
Don't think

I position myself in front of the plywood bundles
Asylum drive
Fifteen foot mesh link fence
It's 4 am
I know
I'm awake

Fifteen feet of fence
Steel mesh
Steel mesh so tight, I can barely stick my pinky finger through a hole
There are three horizontal metal bars placed at five foot intervals on the opposite side of the fence
No way up
No way down
The gate is locked and closed
No way in
No way out

I know better
There are a few sturdy looking metal hinges on the massive gate
My hands are laced with sweat
Start to shake
My limbs vibrate in rhythm with my heart
It's compulsive
Compulsive
I stand in front of the gate and look up
It reaches to the heavens
Too tall
Can't climb
The steel is cool and wet to the touch
Can't climb
The bottom of my shoes are slippery
Slippery on the metal
Can't climb
My left foot misses and finds air
I reach, straining myself
Expand
My mind is breaking, seeping strength
Sweat burns my eyes
It hurts
It ******* hurts
Twitch
Can't climb
Mind slips
Slips away
Blood
On
Me
Don't feel a thing
Can't

I'm straddling the top bar of the fence
Until now, I've never been afraid of heights
I stare at the ground, fifteen feet below me
My head is spinning
Look up
Spinning
Panic is settling inside of me
Paralyzed with fear
Paralyzed
Can't move
Breathe
Think
Feel
It's so slippery
Don't want to fall
Don't want to die
Scared
Can't go down
Can't

I let go
I slipped and fell
Falling
Fell
Hit
Ground
Face
First
I'm cold and numb
It hurts
It ******* hurts

My left eye is cold
My eyelashes have been ripped out
My eyelid is a ******, fleshy mess
Bleeding profusely
It's sticky
Wet
Gross
My mind is racing
I'm soaked
Soaked in sweat
Dew
Thoughts
Pain
Time
I'm gross
Awake

The facade of the building is straight ahead
I move numbly towards the entrance
The doorknob is lifeless and still in my grasp
It doesn't move or budge
Door is locked
Back away
Have to get in
Calling for me
Waiting for me
Beckoning
Persuading
Wanting me
Needing me
I must
No
I need to get in.

My mind snaps back to reality
There's an open basement window to my left
I climb in without any hesitation
Dark
Dank
Damp
I lean heavily against a firm wall
I cannot see my own hand in front of my face
Eyes don't adjust
Eyes close
Collapse
Asleep
Unconscious

Awake
Time passed
It's daylight
I've lost sense and track of time
I smell like my surroundings
I'm moldy
It's moldy
I'm damp
It's damp
Stand
Fall down
Stand again
Light pours through several basement windows
The room is empty
The light turns grey walls shades of the sun
It's bright
Awake

I begin to wander
I touch my face
Still here
My eye is still cold, but the bleeding has stopped
My eyelid is chunky with dried blood
It still ******* hurts
Scab picker
Pain oozes through my face
A couple flakes of skin float to the ground
Sickening
I can feel the dried blood on my fingers
Chapped
Pick more
Pick more
More pieces of blood-dried skin detach from the remainder of my eyelid and float to the ground
I step on them
Bury them into the dust
My hand is stained red
Blood red
My eye begins bleeding again
I tear a piece of my shirt and press it to my wound
Leave it there
Leave it to soak

I wander in a daze until I find a staircase
Ascend
Many flights of stairs
So it seems
Until I reach the second floor
My legs are weak and numb
Weak and numb
Mouth is dry
Tastes like sand
I move my tongue around and can't feel a thing
Mind is clear
I don't like it much
Search for thoughts
Any thoughts
Nothing comes
Don't think
Press on

What am I searching for
Can't answer
Don't know
Others have answered
I don't change
I'll know when it's found

Awake
I enter into a long hallway
On either side there are empty, window-lit rooms
Rooms that are filled with chairs
Rooms that are filled with desks
Rooms that are filled with papers
Files
Curtains
Shoes
Bed frames
Electric chairs
Operation tables
Iron lungs
Toilets
Sinks
Wheelchairs
Dust
Dust
Dust
Rooms that were once filled with love
Rooms that were once filled with hate
Rooms that were once filled with laughter
Tears
Pain
Prayer
Loss
Hope
Fear
Terror
Longing
Wonder
W­orry

I remember
Each room, a name
Each name, letters
An object of identity
Object of terror
Destruction
Hate

Awake
At the end of the hall, I face a door
An illegible name continues rusting
I don't care
A light is on
It's bright
Blinding
Coming for me
Coming to get me
Wraps itself around me
Can't breathe
Chokes me
Gag
*****
Stomach contents and blood escalate up my throat and onto the cracking tile
It hurts
It ******* hurts
My throat burns acid
Spit
Stays
I cry
It stings
Tears burn my face
My eyes
Sniffle
I wipe my mouth
Taste nothing
Feel nothing

Sick
The light brings me back
I let it
Eyes remain half closed
My sight skips around and lands on a waiting chair in the middle of the room
It looks so inviting
So ******* inviting
I don't trust it
Hates me
Wants me
Wants to feed off of me
Wants to be fulfilled
I don't trust it
My legs and body ache
Wobble

Sit
The room is bright and bare
Bare walls
Bare floors
Bare ceilings
Bare emptiness
This is my room
This is my name
Mine
Sit
Don't think
Don't move
I clutch my hands together
My palms are sweaty
My feet brush the floor
They swing
I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling
Damp
Sick
Don't see
Don't hear
Don't feel
Taste
Smell
I smile
Smile a true, deep, loving smile
A smile that generates warmth
A smile that knows where it belongs
I'm home now
Home
I'm alone
Awake
Alive

I'm alive.

Part 1
"How about some long beautiful hair" the Santa says
The little girl rubs her head bald and veiny
She looks like a baseball

"No. It doesn't get in my eyes anymore when I play basketball" she says

The bunch of us
Sunken eyed and balding
In wheelchairs and on crutches
Some of us holding our I.V. stands for support

I can only imagine how the Santa feels
The tiniest zombies
All waiting for a turn

Me
I have silver caps on my top front teeth
And dentures
Look like an old Cadillac
Insides all rust and rumble

We all want to know if we were good this year

Part 2
Cut to the bunch of us
Watching the Blue Angels air show

All getting pictures with a man dressed as Shamu
He is supposed to write something on the backs of all the pictures

I try to imagine
What you could possibly write
To a group of kids that looked like us

Each photo
In shaky black ink
Because whales aren’t prehensile

He writes
I love you

Part3
When the circus came to the hospital
We all gathered on a balcony
The news was there

Clowns painted our faces

I asked if they had room for me
Told them I could be like that guy
From the 007 movies
With the silver teeth that could bite really big stuff

They said I might miss my folks
I told them I wouldn’t
Then took off my gown
To show them my scars

They weren’t impressed

Ever since I’ve wanted to join the circus

Part 4
Despite our qualifications
We could not join the circus

But that is okay
All we wanted really
Was to know if we were good
And that somebody loved us

We were
And somebody did

Seeing Differently


Take a plain window have an artist with sensitivity add rain and with the vision disfigured you
See though it is only raw rain it takes on the appearance of looking through frozen icicles
Everything your vision catches is broken as just solid forms of many colors electrifying
Stimulating a quiet delight changes everything the ordinary like snow takes the everyday and
Makes it a true winter wonderland the sidewalk tree foliage and shop roofs are perfect because
They are different tones and blends of color with someone in the foreground in bright pink this
Is all for one time instead of clear vision this difficulty creates pleasure for the eye I started
In my schooling at three years old my class room was at my great grandmothers when I got
There my crippled grandmother was in her wheelchair right next to her ninety year old blind
Mother they both set in their wheelchairs great grandmother ask me to come and stand in
Front Of her while with old feeble hands she felt my face knowledge passed through her fingers
To her and love passed through me as I stood as nothing in this revered setting whatever small
Doubts I might have had about life and my place in it this one thing I knew I was somebody I felt
Loved Excepted I felt human worth because it resonated from their presence there is an ancient
One that we stand before in this case the blindness rest on and with us he sees perfectly where
We truly are in much darkness it deals with trueness at the deepest level we all know that a lot
Of our speech is real but there is the time we are tenderly raw and open without trying to guard
Ourselves we speak from deep within what special times those are He touches unlike
Grandmother but He by His spirit touches the whole fiber of our being body soul and spirit but
How much we miss because our lives have not only blindness but darkness of our actions that
Respells His presence because he is holy in fact we have the rebel nature that defies one so
Loving we are his gifted dreams that he gives to others to name just a few gifts Steve Jobs for
Technology marvelous toys and more Walt Disney movies and the most fun place to go as
As a family a family Jim Henson’s widow co-creator of the Muppets just died what an empty
World it would be for children but He provides these treasures that cover the globe we don’t
Move in those circles but we enrich our world and bless our friends with our lives with the
Limitations we draw between ourselves in him He makes sure we still can give a lot but could
You see what more and how fantastic life could really be if we took the restraints out of the
Way and let him freely move in our lives I don’t know of one person who would not appreciate
A Deeper life my schooling continues when I meet someone they don’t understand the
Intensity and depth that I place on them this will bring you at times great pain because life has
That to go Along with such joy truly “no one is an island unto himself” being a true friend on
Deep levels is Costly but it is our best way of showing His wonderful greatness to others it is
Truly taking a Slice of heaven and inserting it in this natural walk it can be endured or blessed
With lips of clay Heaven will bow as the willow and touch common ground and make it golden
The nightingale will sing and cause the sweetest affection that will be spellbinding and other
Worldly it just Takes seeing differently and the walking that path to greater perfection

Wheelchair rush
Walking legs of others, please hush
Journey into continued movement
No hold back
Wheelchair staying on track
Highway On Ramp
Wheelchair jam
Wheelchairs with their own speed limit
They permit
Wheels on schedule
Moving module
Wheelchairs not a stop
Pedestrians in don’t like or not
Wheelchairs always on the go
A rush and sometimes slow
People in wheelchairs are the ones that know
Wheelchairs are people movers
Transport and deliver

I would like to tell you a story about a soul. A soul that was as clean, pure and gentle as soul can be. Rarely in live do we meet someone or some animal who never wanted anything but to give love. This story can’t be told without talking about her caretaker and my wife.

About 12 years ago an injured kitten was released to Everett Animal Shelter. The kitten had no use of it’s hind legs and was incontinent. In those day it was almost 100% chance that this kitten was going to be put down. Don’t feel sad/mad about this, nature’s way can be very cruel. The her fate sealed, this was much more humane ending.

My wife took it home to see if the kitten could be rehabilitated. We had been fostering kittens for a while and had a safe room for her. After getting her settled in we look at each other saying without words “Now what”?

Well the first thing that needed to be done was give her a name. We talked for a bit and I explained to my wife “She needs a strong name. She needs a strong black female name. She going need it to help her through life”. The strongest black female name I knew was Rosa Parks. That became her name.

Rosa being incontinent was, well to be honest, was a stinky kitten. Stinky kitten became one of her many nicknames, HA. Rosa needed to learn how to take a bath. If you ever tried to give a kitten/cat a bath you know it’s not really a good idea. So my wife dives right in, picks her up and takes her to bathroom for her first bath. Rosa being the soul she was just sat in the sink and took her bath. She didn’t fight it, she never hissed or got angry. She just took her bath. This attitude towards water lead us to try water therapy.

Water therapy was a home job for us. We would fill a storage tote with warm water and put this rear palatalized kitten in it up to her neck. Now for first time in a few weeks this kitten Rosa could stand up with the water supporting her weight. This went on for the first year of her life. This was the start of many treatments such as acupuncture, a sling in her room and massage. She did all of it never complained about anything.

It didn’t take to long and soon Rosa was strong enough to stand and wobble out a step or two. After a few months of no more improvement it became clear that a decision needed to be made about what to do with her. Is her quality of life such that gets returned for euthanasia or is she happy and do we commit to her care. We knew that she could never live the life of a normal cat. She would never be able to go outside unsupervised, she could never be inside unsupervised except in her safe room. She was healthy and always happy so the commitment was made.

Rosa had her safe room but what to do with her when we can supervise her. Rosa needed a wheelchair. After doing some research we found a local company that makes wheelchairs for pets. After getting her sized up the day came she had her chair. We put Rosa in her chair and in no time she was zooming around the room. Rosa is mobile!!!

My wife and I would take Rosa and Cocoa (look for the story ‘Cocoa’s Ghost’) for walks around the block. Animal Rescue Foundation who had paid for Cocoa issues and Rosa’s early expenses told the Everett Herald newspaper about this and Rosa went mainstream. Look up the news article ‘Pets get a second chance’ if your interested reading it. Needless to say walking a cat in a tiny wheelchair got attention.

One of the things that was very special about Rosa was she loved being a foster mom. My wife would often bring home sick kittens, tiny kittens and just overflow from the Everett Shelter and put them in Rosa’s safe room. Rosa always excepted those kittens as her own within a day or two. I often thought it would have been funny to learn about the birds and the bees from her perspective.

Me “Rosa, where do kittens come from”.

Rosa “Well first you eat some food, then you ****, then you go to sleep and BAM kittens”.

There were many, many times a sick kitten would just curl up in her belly and sleep with it’s now mother Rosa. She was so good with the kittens. She would cuddle, discipline, clean and try to feed when needed. The kittens in her care got a family with a loving mother and bothers and sisters, often unrelated. She truly seemed to enjoy motherhood.

This was Rosa’s and my wife’s life for 12 years. Feed Rosa, squeeze Rosa, clean Rosa and love Rosa. Last night that most of that ended. A few weeks ago Rosa stopped eating and drinking. After $1000 of tests, weeks of fluids, syringe feedings and with no answers we made the choice and gave the gift. Rosa died the same way she came into our lives, in my wife’s arms.

I wrote this not to make you sad. I wrote this to share a clean, pure and gentle soul with you. Some of you reading this may have one of her kittens living with you now: a small piece of her soul living with you now.  Enjoy her gift to you.

1.This wheelchair never was a River,
even when powered, it did splutter
yes, it's equivalent in movements,
listening silently it always sits out,
away from the flow to the ecstatic sea.
A wheel chair is a caricature of loneliness.

2.Ever tried to see it for what it really is?
"We don't remember, doesn't catches the eye"
Not like a chair of any other kind easily does,
A chair regal looks up, straight at the face
in the manner it demands what it wants,
"Let me tell you this, listen or leave"

3.A wheel chair keeps on looking at it's
arrested feet apologetically and sighs,
if you have an inner ear sensitive, hear this,
I am not even a chair, an apology
for movement,spoken in a voice stiffed.
It speaks incessantly, in a voice within itself,
wordless to a world, that has closed it's doors.

4.A wheelchair easily forgets things as
it can't keep bitterness alive always.
who cares to speak a few words to a wheelchair?
all it is to be done is push it in silence through aisles .
from a destination of pain to any other, slightly higher.
Stairs of every kind, for a wheelchair is a foreign land.

5.Yet in impeded wheelchairs moves many a dream,
broken before their time or crusted with force.
Or remains of a day, too long and  busily spent.
On every wheelchair a heart adamantly beats,
"I would, I would" it beats with a rare grit.

Santa Claus is 100% pure love
his heart does not divide
the starved and homeless man with his tin cup
from the wealthy politician in his black limousine

nor does Santa ever blame
the frightened small town girl
who paints her lips and struts unsure
down hard dark streets

Santa Claus remembers his own mother
and weeps for the lonely karma of octogenarians
diapered in wheelchairs along fluorescent hallways
abandoned by the ones they birthed

our great elf winces every time
he feels the crocodile's fearsome jaws
drag the wildebeest down
while the zebras flee

he prays relentless sailors
stop harpooning the great breaching whales
and hears the grasses scream
when bloated oilmen pound holes
in the prairie dog's kingdom

he regrets that schoolteachers lie
about what a great man Columbus was
and why the Sioux, the Apache and the Arapahoe
were incapable of evolution

he knows you don't need a bicycle helmet
to ride downtown for ice cream
knows our legal system is for sale
knows surfing is Neptune's brave ballet

Santa delights in the spiritual joy emerging
when patients see angels hovering everywhere
before doctors scream psychosis
and numb what they do not understand
with sad needles and leather restraints

his reindeer are the dreams of the spastic child
who knows he will never run
his sleigh a zero carbon emission vehicle
and his great heavy bag carries
the sweet prayers of the Jew, the Christian
the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Hindu
the Gnostic, the Wiccan and the existential humanist

on the night before Christmas
Santa dreams that all the cars and trucks disappear
and every freeway grows trees and flowers and grass
where everyone chats and meanders and strolls
and vendors sell SnoCones, apple juice and pears

because Santa Claus is just doing
the one thing he knows how to do best
on a long winter's night
to bring some light to a world
that races toward extinction
while the butterfly sleeps with the lizard
and the children still believe

Take a plain window have an artist with sensitivity add rain and with the vision disfigured you
See though it is only raw rain it takes on the appearance of looking through frozen icicles
Everything your vision catches is broken as just solid forms of many colors electrifying
Stimulating a quiet delight changes everything the ordinary like snow takes the everyday and
Makes it a true winter wonderland the sidewalk tree foliage and shop roofs are perfect because
They are different tones and blends of color with someone in the foreground in bright pink this
Is all for one time instead of clear vision this difficulty creates pleasure for the eye I started
In my schooling at three years old my class room was at my great grandmothers when I got
There my crippled grandmother was in her wheelchair right next to her ninety year old blind
Mother they both set in their wheelchairs great grandmother ask me to come and stand in
Front Of her while with old feeble hands she felt my face knowledge passed through her fingers
To her and love passed through me as I stood as nothing in this revered setting whatever small
Doubts I might have had about life and my place in it this one thing I knew I was somebody I felt
Loved Excepted I felt human worth because it resonated from their presence there is an ancient
One that we stand before in this case the blindness rest on and with us he sees perfectly where
We truly are in much darkness it deals with trueness at the deepest level we all know that a lot
Of our speech is real but there is the time we are tenderly raw and open without trying to guard
Ourselves we speak from deep within what special times those are He touches unlike
Grandmother but He by His spirit touches the whole fiber of our being body soul and spirit but
How much we miss because our lives have not only blindness but darkness of our actions that
Respells His presence because he is holy in fact we have the rebel nature that defies one so
Loving we are his gifted dreams that he gives to others to name just a few gifts Steve Jobs for
Technology marvelous toys and more Walt Disney movies and the most fun place to go as
As a family a family Jim Henson’s widow co-creator of the Muppets just died what an empty
World it would be for children but He provides these treasures that cover the globe we don’t
Move in those circles but we enrich our world and bless our friends with our lives with the
Limitations we draw between ourselves in him He makes sure we still can give a lot but could
You see what more and how fantastic life could really be if we took the restraints out of the
Way and let him freely move in our lives I don’t know of one person who would not appreciate
A Deeper life my schooling continues when I meet someone they don’t understand the
Intensity and depth that I place on them this will bring you at times great pain because life has
That to go Along with such joy truly “no one is an island unto himself” being a true friend on
Deep levels is Costly but it is our best way of showing His wonderful greatness to others it is
Truly taking a Slice of heaven and inserting it in this natural walk it can be endured or blessed
With lips of clay Heaven will bow as the willow and touch common ground and make it golden
The nightingale will sing and cause the sweetest affection that will be spellbinding and other
Worldly it just Takes seeing differently and the walking that path to greater perfection

I waited in the lobby
As the television blared
While my mother was in surgery
Me wondering how she fared
Where the old ones in their wheelchairs
Pushed by strangers came and went
Wearing dressing gowns of cotton
With their dignity a-vent
And the doctors came to treat them
In their valuable time
Looking down upon these people
Without SEEING them, like mine
With their faces hid by masks
So you won’t know that they don’t care
Wearing paper shoes and paper hats
Such that you’d never dare
To waste their time by asking questions
And risk seeming like a fool
Just by virtue of the fact that they’ve
Had twenty years of school
But the sickly in their wheelchairs
Keep on coming back for more
Hoping they will beat Grim Reaper
As he bangs on deaths dark door
And the doctors with their scissors
And their scalpels cutting neat
Say “To hell with bedside manner
You are just a piece of meat”

Written by Sara Fielder © Jan 2012

when i = ? i count that, to be the lowest ebb,
and only the word allah can prompt man to genuine song...
truly, i = ? is the lowest ebb,

capitalism has this behavioural
pattern, in which things
fish, cars, aeroplanes are
given the gravity of language,
so they they can express feeling
an via cinema excavate a man's
heart and speak to the heart of man
of a symbiosis...

capitalism is currently concerned with
symbiosis,
like parasites and its hosts...
   it seems we have to pass the concept of
word to dogs or sausages
    in order to keep a dialogue...

i spent this afternoon looking at pictures
of beren saat [beˈɾen saˈat] -
or how we could just insert a macron
and hide the aa... or ah... of fake needing
a dental appointment, or extract a breath
of that H in ah?
ergo? beren sāt... oh, look... it looks
ugly... doesn't it? two strokes to write an A
look more appealing than a hyphen above
the letter with a prompt: prolong it...

it's what i see that i write about,
what i hear can never really penetrate me...
i watch a youtube video of the amazing
atheist and think: kinda like me, by the look
of things?
       nah, not really,
    why am i deluding myself,
i can grow long hair and don a beard,
but i'm bothered about
   the following "arithmetic" that's i = ?,
like i hear a turkish girl talk in a shop
and i'm weak in the knees...
   oh look... they call that why we avoided
diacritical indicators in the first place,
a silent k,             a knife...
a gnome.... and gnosis... then all shouting
and pain in diagnostics...
          
i spent that time watching my grandmother,
and how in poland all the old ladies
are fans of a turkish t.v. melodrama
grzech fatmagül (sin of fatmagül)
the way she said the umlaut over the u...
she said it as an eel, or ill, or i...
that really bothered me...
    (you really can sing forever with only one
word... it's the syllable la...
    only a god that deserves praise,
and receives it in song, can be praised...
the jewish god only deserves the pain
of thought, contemplation,
the trigonometry of (i'm about to become lawless
and make spelling mitakes for fear
that this u.z.i. of a tongue isn't ******* out
bullets as it should be, ******* out bullets / words);
i look at language, and i want a mandible jaw,
i don't want a free-from-pain spine,
to live a life: stiff readied for a coffin...
  it's just rules, and they exist...
i call it the nadir of i = ?, and subsequently call it
a fake nadir of i = !,
    ¿too spanish? oh right, wheelchairs...
what was i thinking?
                        
of the curiosity entombed in silence and with
only the wind to give an answer...

we say just as much... the stress on the iota in
english can easily be transformed into
a polarity, one that can fill books
with ? went there, and ? spoke about something...
competing with ! there, ! something!
   i...
                only when a language doesn't have
this abstract self-identification posit to
express language, this firm unit,
     only then does a language become so, base,
o.k., alkaline...
               they never thought about dissolving
a body once a ****** took place in
an alkaline bath...
      so many acronyms, shortenings,
let's just call it: the french prime unit /
smallest comprehension is reduced to je,
the poles have ja, the germans have ich,
sly *******... east germans say it as isch,
but keep the s hidden, so it looks better on script...

the problem with just saying i, and theorising
the extinct roman pronoun ego,
is that you get ditto... a sort of automaton
reflection of what we once were, and now, aren't...
europe sent thousands of plumbers and carpenters
to china... are europeans expecting for those
traits that could govern man properly to boomerang
back for women no finicky about those call-centre
employees? you ******* kidding me,
you must be...

because some men would really love mandible labour,
and talk less... no, really, the jaw can have a rest,
people want to fiddle with things,
dance the tango, touch, mingle...
     hard to not see ***-tango where the man is
only: huh? yeah, that, whatever...
             women could, once upon a time,
make men believe that they wanted to believe,
to purr something innocent into their ears...
what has made women into men so stating abadon?

i'll cite too much psychology,
    which to me is a pseudo-science,
too little Alexander Dumas, and what Athos said:
the best advice... is to not give advice....
                speak... talk... don't advice people...
psychology is the science where almost everything needs
to be faked, or to use the proper term: falsified...

and they call them the chemists, the biologists
and the physicists.... and surgeons

and they call them psychologists, linguists,
philosophers... and gods...

   that's the strata... i dare say: poets? what can they
usurp, but at the same time heal?
        what is their visible spectrum, outside of:
poets act shamelessly toward their experiences,
they exploit them... was lies beyond this self-love?

you get to write english, drunk,
and... undesirably have to get to look and abhor
the aesthetic, meaning you sometimes write
without conjunctions in the first draft...
then you reread and actually see missing conjunctions...

i talk about grammar like someone might talk
religion... because i was never taught it...
grammar to me is a version of catholicism i might
have engaged in, had i been confirmed in that
"coming of age" rite...

    i've been giving this substance and i'm told to
do something with it: language is like water,
you either drink it, or boil it to brew a tea-bag...
really? a relaxation technique? well... i could take more
fascination with a brick-wall, pretending to play
imaginary chess with each distinct brick being
introduced to strobe light... blinking: now it's white...
blinking... now it's black... etc.
   it's not even funny that i know inserting etc.
sort of killed the romance to your breathing pattern,
and my punctuation techniques, which i borrowed
from the fact that english doesn't intend to punctuate
for clear syllables...

it's only a case to teach better punctuation...
every time i'm in poland i never hear a word about
dyslexia... i'm starting to think that dyslexia
is only an english "disease"...
            it's certainly something you might hear
at school, in a catholic school, about jews...
but back to english bankers: not so good with words:
good with money though...
    i had a dyslexic friend ones,
and just spotting why, of all the nations that inherited
the roman alphabet, the english didn't adopt
a punctuation system from above...
evidently that leads to more diversity...
some would even say: for added complexity...
     but the english can't say: someone will come along
and decipher the current cipher imperative...
oh look... here i go... doodling further,
creating what writing ought to be: a finicky here
and there...

say: a butterfly effect...

   as with the concept of spring, exhausted by two months
of winter, awoken earlier than usual,
moving out of the fake Alaskan imitation laboratory
of seeing so little sun...
                increased productivity: no quality bias.

that's what philosophy books are:
    when the french existentialists complicated it
via "ego" and no moral dedication, effect, responsibility,
i had to write something post-existentialist...
don't get me wrong, sartre is a great novelist,
  but i'd rather stomach being & time than
being & nothingness...
                there had to be an answer to dittoing out
the ego, to stress: no agent of morality...
   sure... me and prostitutes... but ask them
about having an ****** "on the job"...
    
        still... can it be as complicated to say 1?
or to say: the litmus tests proved that i "said" ego and,
ergo, i proved i was a man...
              i might ditto out a meow, or a woof
to imitate a cat and a dog respectively... but dittoing
the word ego out... even if it is just an extinct latin
word... it has too much content to be "abstract",
this thing has memories, it has an imagination,
but sure, if i don't have a conscience i'd have to ditto it out
so i could start looking at my buttocks to find
something worth saying...
              
so first we create this prime human expression,
we eat the -ota                  and say aye aye...
                 and then we go back on that word...
beginning with: just when ms. clinton started barking...
i think that unravelled her campaign, when she started
barking... it must have been the time it happened
at one of her rallies...

   and i could write you any philosophy book,
replacing the "sound" expression with mute sounds,
like the mute letters in knife, gnome, gnosis, knee...
    ? think, therefore ! am.... and just so we're agreed:
that's not a stable maxim... it's volatile...
    since what piece of language was ever stable?
and not like phosphorus, that needed to be stored in oil
should it ever react with water? what part of language
was ever stable?

     2MgO
    (s) + Si
    (s) + 2CaO
    (s) → 2Mg
    (g) + Ca
    2SiO
    4(s)                  the years when i studied such crap...
i might be wrong about one thing though:
   it's an alkaline metal, stored in oil, and highly reactive
with water... magnesium or phosphorus?
         it can't be Na... that **** stinks and i'd love to
see the Dover clifss looking like it... yella...
         no so much blinding Ca...

why have the alkaline metals become so ****** right now?
  oh yeah... the part where i don't feel like
watching ****... that could translate into a wife,
three kids (as if)... a house and social respect...
that part... hmm...

          what is it with these alkaline metals...
so is iron (Fe) and Lead (Lb) acidic metals? could they
be classified as acidic? last time i licked a knife
i did get a tingling sensation as if it might be sour...

so acid is sour... i actually can fathom the taste of alkaline...
it's definitely not sweet...
              what a ******* mystery.

They say sometimes in life you’re born with nothing
Since the beginning I’ve been determined to get something
There’s a lot of goals that I do want to accomplish
There’s so many things in the world that I missed
I may drive you crazy with the things that I want to do
I’m a man with a dream, I’m just hoping to get that soon
It’s time to forge my own path in life
I just want to make things right
Change my personality, change my ways
This is the path that I truly want to take
Don’t have a car so it’s hard to go find myself
If someone knew how much pain that I felt
Knowing that I’m not part of the world and stuff
I hate staying inside all day, I really had enough


I didn’t put this on my blog for sympathy
Even though I never got the amount that I need
I may be envious and yeah I mave greed
Respect is all I ever do want to recieve
I won’t settle for anything less, want to make it big
Enough being isolated because it’s making me tick
Mother’s intimidations is keeping me locked up
Laying on the living room couch like I’m knocked up
Waiting for the moment where I could finally lace up my boots
Where I can open the front door and tell my mom “see you soon”
Yeah I like girls and I’m hoping to get one
Don’t want to go through life with none
With the life I’m living I feel like I’m dead
Being outgoing is all that’s stuck in my head


Most kids my age are doing a lot of stuff
With my lifestyle I really just can’t adjust
Don’t feel like I’m alive, says so on my myspace
I don’t know how much pressure I can really take
Got a dude in college living the kid life
Having fun with people during the night
Another dude with a job earning money
While I’m stuck with nothing, kinda funny
I wasn’t born to do nithing with my life
Yeah I’m desperate I’m not gonna lie
I don’t want to be in my 50’s living this way
I’m sick of my dreams being put on delay
I’m sick of dreaming, I wanna live life
I’m told to be patient but time is tight
I ain’t gonna stay young forever that’s thing
So amped up about the future that I don’t think
Waiting for the rescue ladder to come to my window
I want live life normal you know, it’s just really simple


But I probably won’t get that because I’m autistic
So I’m limited to my choices that’s so sadistic
Being stuck with people on wheelchairs kinda clueless
Don’t hate those kids so don’t think of me as a big ******
And I know they can’t help it but that’s not my kind of crowd
Don’t want to be limited to those kind of people that’s how I feel now
Don’t want people to think those are the only friends I can make
I just want to be a normal people is all I ask for goodness sake
Don’t think of me as a kid who can’t control his emotions
I maybe a kid who has a hard time keeping things in focus
Because of this, mother doesn’t think I can drive
Not even letting me go ahead and give it a try
No way I’m relying on the bus to get around
Because I’m tired of always being let down
Hurts to have a lot of people have a lot of doubt
And to think that you shouldn’t even be out


What’s wrong with living simple that’s all I want
It’s all I’ve been working for all I want to saught
Willing to go through anything just to get it
My goal I have still not yet really met it
What’s wrong with being normal that’s what I desire

Benedict wheeled Anne
out the back gate
of the nursing home.

The sea was calm,
the tide was out.
He pushed her wheelchair
along the path by the beach.

He could smell the salt
in the air, the mild breeze
through his well kempt hair.

She sat with her hands in her lap;
she wore a blue skirt, her one
leg showed from knee down.  

You’re not a very exciting pusher
of wheelchairs are you, she said.
My old gran could push me quicker.

I don’t want you falling out, Benedict said.
Don’t be a ******* ****, Kid,
push me; I want the air in my face,
the wind up my nose, she said,
grabbing the arms of the chair
and shaking them. So he pushed
her quicker, his puny arms giving
it all they could, his legs like frail
pistons moving quickly onward.

That’s it, she bellowed, faster,
faster, Kid, get those lazy legs
of yours ****** moving.  

He pushed harder and gathered
speed, his hands holding on
to the handlebars for dear life.

They had covered a good distance
in a short time and he had to take
a break for breath. What’s a matter
got a puncture? she said. No, he said,
out of breath. Well ****** rest then, Kid.

He turned the wheelchair round
to face the sea. Then stood beside
her looking out at the horizon.
The blue sky, grey clouds, gulls
in the air. This is the life, Kid, she
bellowed This is ******* living.

He said nothing; her language
stung his ears. His mother would
have washed his mouth out
with soap for saying such.

There were people on the sands;
some in deckchairs, some standing
gazing out to sea; kids with buckets
and spades making sand castles,
some swimming, some throwing
a ball to each other. Look at that fat ****
over there with her swimsuit on,
Anne said, pointing to a woman
standing with a man on the sea’s edge,
bet they had to pour her into that,
she added. Benedict said nothing.

He looked down at Anne’s one leg
sticking out of her blue skirt.
She looked up at him. Help me up
and out, she said. He took her hands
and pulled her upwards and she
swayed slightly, but then managed
to stand ***** on her one leg,
the wheelchair behind her.

Should have brought my ******
crutches, she said. Sorry, he said,
didn’t know you wanted to get out.
You’ll just have to hold me up then
won’t you, she said. She put her right
arm around his shoulder and he let go
of her hands. There we go; you can be
my crutch, she said. He could feel her
arm about his shoulder, her weight on him.

You’re a good mate, Kid, she said.
She kissed his cheek. None of those
nursing sister would have wheeled me
out along here not for all the ******
rosaries in Rome, she said. He smiled.

He could feel the damp patch of skin
where her lips had been. They stood
gazing out at the sea together, she swayed
slightly on her one leg, he sensed her
nearness; wanting to be stronger,
he stood firmer, his feet planted deeper
in the sand. Then he sensed her stump
beneath her skirt, rub gently against his hand.

it's so middle-class it almost deceives the idea
of a functioning economic model,
if this woman gets to write this for
rent and grocery money, i'd rather stick
it out on bread-and-butter puddings in india
mid the squalor, as honest as there is
or there isn't a god -
she's basically trapped with a hamster ontology
of the treadmill -
she's discussing "emoji" (ditto regarding
correct pronunciation), i.e.
emo- -gee                              or
                        the emotional Jinn -
or the emotive genie - Aladdin somewhere -
i mean emoji and jive? **** don't pair up!
the journalist is clever in dismembering feminism,
girls get *****, X to patriarchy,
but we need to sort out...
this emo jive **** is worse than caveman material...
i'll take an oath on it: i can't run 100 metres in
under 10 seconds...
my bone density is lighter than what the general
practitioner prescribed the africans
at the paraolympic games -
**** swam like the partially limbless -
the medal ceremony was taking place
but still the ivory and sclera at midnight visible
swam, and swam...
throw a ******* rhino or a horse in there
and it'll beat the cheetah... moor boor! moor boor!
b'oh! if this is the prime concern of
feminism i'd be abhorred by the excuse of
expression per se... come on! emotional jive
instead emotional gee? what's this, an Oliver Twist
sub-plot revision?
i'm surprised women are buying into
feminism at this stage,
she's a womb and she's a house,
he's a vector and he's the return -
take her from nesting and he does not care
for being nested, he's out in the open,
when all these girls turn to what Darwinism taught them,
after all Darwinism is feminism's only compatriot,
take the spider nursery on the back of the mother,
the polar bear single mother abandoned by
the male raising her dues,
the politicised Islamic harem of monkeys
serving as argument for both origin and no origins
(you can't be as noble as the swans
overnight caring for the practice of
widowing, unless it be as quick
as black widow's or mantis' -
after all Darwinism taught us to not thieve
but to borrow, and look where borrowing left us) -
feminism only emerged because of Darwinism
being popularised, it was perfect because of its
overt use of images and a lack of salon literature of
aristocratic ladies listening eagerly while
Balzac farted into a page and the supper was made
and served by the house-staff -
never mind the sheikhs and their Lamborghini collections;
i'm careful of the spine and the half-horse-power
of my legs than the shiny wheelchairs.

Mail order groom.
I want to know you.
The sound of your voice.
The smell of your perfume.
Your handwriting.
Your habits.
Favorite food.
Your favorite place.
Hobbies.
Your flaws.
Your goals.
The things you like
Things you hate.
Who you love.
What makes you happy.
What makes you mad.
What you spend money and time on.
Who you love.
Who you hate.
Your favorite color.
Your biggest fear.
Your worst nightmare.
Your dreams.
Your beliefs.
Your qualities.
Your favorite games, books, movies or TV shows.
What size ring you wear.
What size shoe you wear.
Your favorite toothpaste, shampoo, & soap.
What's your most prized possession?
What are your skills?
Your allergies?
Do you have patience?
Respect?
Admiration?
Confidence?
Knowledge?
Intelligenc­e?
Greed?
Are you generous?
Charming?
Or do you make trouble?
Are you careful?
Or careless?
Are you sentimental?
Are you spoiled?
Do you brag?
Do you gossip?
Can you keep secrets?
Do you have shame?
Are you shy?
Are you a private person?
Does anything you do offend anyone?
Do you insult or compliment?
Do you glance or stare?
Do you tip?
Are you kind of mean?
Do you have manners?
What do you eat?
Are you a neat freak?
Or sloppy or neat?
Clean or *****?
Do you swear?
What do you have wear?
Do you sleep naked?
Do you lie, cheat or steal?
Are you honest and dependable? Trustworthy, helpful, and considerate?
Obnoxious?
Sober?
Drunk?
Do you cook?
Are you hard working?
Or lazy?
Do you eat meat?
Brush and wash daily?
Wash your own clothes?
Shop yourself?
Drive?
Mow your own lawn?
Vacuum?
Wash dishes?
Are you a licensed driver?
Do you have a car and health insurance?
Do you own property?
What are your assets?
Do you work full time?
Are you educated?
Do you respect women?
Do you like children & pets?
Are you mature?
Do you own a car?
Do you rent or own?
Do you exercise?
Are you fat?
Do you smoke?
Are you a handyman?
Can you fix cars?
Plumbing?
Paint?
Are you creative or an artist?
Are you nosy?
Do you read a lot?
What are you know that you
Do you mind your business?
Do you have a temper or anger management problems?
Are you violent & controlling?
Are you obsessed with *** or *******?
Are you a pervert?
Are you sane?
Are you busy?
Do you have a lot of free time?
Are you religious?
Do you vote?
Are you a loner?
A mama's boy?
An alcoholic?
Obsessive compulsive?
Do you speed?
Do you use sarcasm?
Are you a good driver?
Are you a lawbreaker?
Do you kiss and tell?
Are you a tattle tell?
Are you selfish?
Are you a rebel?
Are you conceited or ******?
Are you desperate or needy?
Are you nice and fun?
Are you bitter, creepy, scary, nervous, impatient, cruel, hateful, abusive, or sick?
Do you collect anything?
Are you well-dressed?
Well-spoken?
Do you make wise investments?
Are you an overachiever?
Are you responsible?
Convincing?
Do you like to argue?
Are you positive?
Or pessimistic?
Are you adventurous?
Or reserved?
Do you like to be the center of attention?
Or a Wallflower?
Do you blame others for your problems? Do you admit to fault ?
Do you need help financially, medically,  physically, mentally or sexually?
Do you like to have *** with the lights on and off?
Do you bathe or shower alone?
Do you shave, trim your nails, wear clean socks  & underwear?
Do you open other peoples mail?
Do you dig through the trash?
Do you always flush the toilet?
Do you snore?
Do you use deodorant, toothpaste,
Do have tattoos?
How do you wear your hair?
Do your clothes have holes, stains, or tears?
Do you need glasses, hearing aids, crutches, wheelchairs, walkers, braces or insulin?
Are you at are you obese, scizo, diabetic?
Do you have bad credit?
Do you have any injuries or surgeries?
Do you color your hair or tan?
Do you moisturize?
Floss?
Do you check the oil?
Do you barbecue?
Do you ****, burp, or pick your nose?
Do you cut in line?
Have you ever been arrested?
Are you a Penny Pincher?
Coupon Clipper?
Are you cheap?
Do you complain a lot?
Do you call people names?
Have you ever done anything to trick or con someone?
Are you understanding & forgiving?
Are you a cheater?
Have you ever been arrested?
Have you ever treated anyone cruly?
Are you rude or brutal?
Do you have any abnormal fetishes?
Are you flirty, friendly, persistent, or immoral?
Are you ambitious, determined, motivated, & successful?
Are you confused, depressed, anxious, poor, angry, or unemployed?
What are your values, concerns, goals and plans?

I stare into the facade of the hospital,
and I stub out my cigarette with my rubber soles.
I enter and the air is sterile and the scent of death slowly emerges from the poor souls.
I look around and I see limp bodies in wheelchairs and skinny frames sat on chairs and I suddenly feel out of context, as if I'm an ant who walked into a termite colony.
I find myself in a situation where children are weaving through doctors and nurses trying to make the most of their time.
The window is cracked, and the fish is dead.
The paint worn away and a splatter of blood on the floor underneath my seat.
"Where did my brother go?" A young child asks me.
I suddenly feel clueless with an empty feeling inside yearning to be nurtured. My eyes water and I simply reply,
"I do not know"

DURING THIS VISIT

I am a layman laid up
with a very dodgy ankle

that winced about Paris
for almost a week with

every footaghhhhhhhfall.

Now it's the A&E;
for me.

The electronic noticeboard
flashes up its what nots

faster than I
can scan.

I barely catch CQC
Good( shadow )Rating.

Two wheelchairs
(peopleless)
chat about the this of that

typical wheelchair chit-chat.

A portable X-ray machine
pretends to be a giraffe.

"oooooOOOOK...we are going to get
Geoff the Giraffe to have a look at that!"

The child smiles
through the pain.

The screen peppers me
with possibilities.

Extremely likely?
Neither Likely nor Unlikely?
Etc., etc., etc.

My mind opts for
a simple I Don't Know.

"Breast." says the screen."

"Max Fax & Orthodontics."

"Re-hab shouldn't be boring!"

A questionnaire asks me
to think.

Big mistake.

I start to think.

Pain & Boredom
turns these hospitalised facts

( what ever they mean? )

into a something only
my brain can understand.

"And now, straight in at No.!
with a fantastic new single it's...

...Max Fax & The Orthodontics
with the glorious bouncy

BREAST!"

"MORTALITY by
The Upper Quartile

falls down one place to
No. 2!"

My shadow is feeling
very poorly at this

instant
in time.

Hasn't even bothered
to turn up.

There goes my good
(shadow)rating.

I think I'll switch
to silhouette instead.

I practice my Ogham.

SAT 4 APRIL
says the clock.

It's hands joined
together in prayer.

I switch
off my mind &

float
down
stream.

As a child you have no agenda set
you wake up every morning and don't know yet
what you're going to do
what or with who.
You let things come your way
some leave and some stay
but you always adjust how you live
you take or you give
without a second thought
you don't think whether or not
it's the best decision for you
you just do what you do
and you smile
and after a while
you start to age
your book of life writes a new page
day by day
soon your first hair will turn gray
when school is no longer fun
but just a task to be done
because responsibility is now yours
just like at home you have chores
that you now plan around
no longer at the playground
but now you're at home
sitting alone
instead of playing with friends
by yourself your day ends
unless you count the things on your bed
papers to write, books still to be read.
Your friendships fade away
but more begin day by day.
Schools pass by ever so fast
next thing you know you're in college at last.
But college isn't like on TV
it's not just a giant party.
It's hours of studying and work
and lots of stress likes to lurk
until it comes out of the blue
trying to destroy you.
You learn to fight this attack
by making friends who always have your back
at least that's what you think
until they find a weak link
which they then break apart
partially breaking your heart
because you honestly care
and would always be there
for them but they don't believe
it's an idea they cannot conceive.
For humans are born in sin
so we simply cannot begin
to believe things others say
without proof to lead us that way.
and it's sad that one little mistake
a solid friendship it can take
and break it like its fragile as glass
when you met in third grade class
and now after seven years
you no longer lend ears
and its slightly pathetic
only difference is education versus athletic
he chose one path and I chose another
so I lost a friend who was my first fake brother.
It's fine though because I've gotten close to more
men and women I would honestly die for.
But would they do the same?
This is why life is such a game,
we're all pieces in the real game of life
I'm aiming for a career, car, and wife.
At the same time though I want to make friends
ones that have no ends.
People I consider sisters and brothers
that I'll know when they become fathers and mothers.
I want my kids to be friends with theirs
and for us to have convos as we sit old in wheelchairs
because we're getting to that age where the games almost done
where we know we've all won
because of the friendships we've had
through the good and the bad.
I don't know if that's how things will turn out
but that's what I want my life to be about.
As I sit here at 20 I dream and wish
that this is a goal I can accomplish.
At the moment I let stress build, and decay
the goal that I live for each and every day.
School and work are tearing me down
but it seems like nobody notices how my eyes frown.
It's due to my positive outlook I know
because I find silver linings so my eyes can still glow.
I have some friends that help ease the burden a bit
enough to know that I would never quit.
But it'd be nice if more people I sacrifice for
would see that I'm not just holding open a door.
I'm lending my hand to them when they need
I'm not just trying to do a good deed.
I'm trying to show them I want them as friends
all the way until my game of life ends.
Due to these struggles with stress I have strife
as does every one else; so goes life.

June 6th 1944 was D-Day.

an ordinary Tuesday,
delightful divided into an ordinary gamut,
a potpourri of Earth-Ordinaries,
with me doing my very best job ever,
bus stop eavesdropping.

Buses are for everyone,
but ever since they taught the
city buses to kneel to the elderly
and gave them an additional limb,
an elevator for wheelchairs,
they seem more majoritized by those
who have earned
the discounted fare of senior citizenry.

two prim and rose blushed ladies await the M31,
to head uptown on York Avenue,
where the many hospitals
have elected to build edifices
side by side, to more easily share illness,
and rise far as the Babel elevators can climb.

prime material for a bus stop poet,
and sure enough, these two, mid-eighties,
I reckon, provide me rich veins of
words, matériel, to cross under the arches.

What is the proper way to put in toilet paper so it dispenses
properly, which somehow is super fascinating.

who has had their hips replaced and who passed,
because they did not.

the deterioration of bus service under the new mayor who seems always to be out of town, or late.

a few blocks before bus approached Sloan Kettering,
where one was to be scanned precautionary,
while the other was due an intravenous cocktail of poison,
the more aged of the two changed the subject extraordinarily.

do you know what day this is?

the other replied,
oh yes,
the day your older brother died upon a French beach,
the brother but eight years older than us,
the brother your adored and that I loved, even at age ten,
was to be my shy one, betrothed unto me

for seventy years my darling, we have together remembered,
even in the years that my abusive husband wrested me away
to California, and forbade my seeing your countenance,
and the second, a good man of proud Missouri stock,
poorer than an interdenominational  lmouse,
who wished but could not afford our joining,
have we not always chattered on this day,
of this and that,
so you could ask as if by chance,

do you know what day this is?

this is the day
they chose to name with scarlet ****** letter,
not an A but a black and bold
D,
and redirected our lives,
its tremors and
remembrances,
its directed chances and luck of the draw, and diminishing memories,
knowing that we shall never again be separated till we have word
choice
stripped from our vocabulary.

now our stop has come so let us alight and delight
that we defeat yet again, that deathful enemy,
and even when he must win the day,
we three will be reunited in a victory,
in a victory so patiently awaited.  

missed my stop by ten blocks,
and was thinking maybe
being an eavesdropping bus poet stop
was a more dangerous profession than I could handle.

Chained by fatigue to the stairs
Of the shrug shouldered parliament
Encapsulated by the coat of the
Hunters that sleep in snow
That sulfur in the ash
Holds many of them in its
Malicious muzzle with the
Indifference of politicians
That both bite and swallow only to
Bloat their collective belly
And will lash at each other
With suicidal ferocity and the
Only reward they foam for is
Reverence of ******* couched
In heavy leather wheelchairs
Venting smoke like the volcanic
Seismic violence and flick the
Cinders into the valley with which
They open only to feel distain towards
While we in sleep close out eyes further still
and further and further still

I am from cat clocks with batteries long since run out but never fixed like so much else
that we don’t have time for,
from piles of miscellaneous things we didn’t know if we were allowed to throw away because
Mother had a tendency to keep everything on hand
(even if those objects were buried far beneath more objects).
I am from movie stacks taller than me with box sets of things like “The West Wing” and “Psych” and “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones.”
I am from the big blue house on the corner with the red double doors that were recently replaced,
the house with a creepy, old feel during the late hours when the shadows fall in ominous shapes
and twists and turns that always confuse new guests.
I am from the two trees that grew along with my brother and sister but not with me as
we never planted mine because I have always been the different one,
and the grand old trees in the backyard that blocked an aerial view of our property
as well as we shield ourselves.

I’m from Tim Allen at Christmas
(but brother always skips the last two)
and faces that could have been carved from the same model.
From Ken and Hilarie and Judy and Howard and adopted sisters.
I’m from volleyball with a rope tied between the sibling trees during blackouts
where Mommy dominated because after all, she had her athletic days too.
(I think this may have been my favorite family memory)
I’m from spontaneous slurpee or desert runs with the siblings
(I remember being so proud once I could finally be the one to drive us),
and from binge watching shows as a family
(one summer, nights were spent watching “The West Wing” and balancing our dinner plates).
I’m from “Chronicles of Narnia” played on loop during long car rides.
I am from strolls in empty halls past wheelchairs smashed up against the walls.
I am from the transition from “parents” to “father and sister.”
I am from welcoming nieces and nephews into our “family” whom I have vowed to protect
because precious things often get broken.

I’m from “is your homework done?” and “don’t forget to feed the cats”
and memorized bible verses recited on Fridays
while wearing dresses because that’s how things were at private schools.
I’m from unspoken words and seething anger buried beneath the surface.
I’m from little Medford, Oregon hidden away in a valley
and faraway Norway and England whose roads I long to travel.
I am from scrambled eggs and hashbrowns when I got home late from practice
(I think that’s where my sleeping patterns first went wrong),
and begging Daddy to make pancakes or French toast because that is my comfort food.
From the lucky family members that have had the chance to travel and instilled a wanderlust deep in my soul
because they got to see France and Haiti and Air Force bases sprinkled in countries I wish I saw stamped on my passport
(if I had one).

I am from secrets and lies because I was never taught an alternative,
after all my grandfather doesn’t even know how to spell his daughter’s name.
I am from disbelief when no one from that side of the family showed to the funeral.
I am from broken relationships I am too scared to repair
because I never learned that taking chances was necessary to life.
From pictures mostly packed away somewhere unknown to me
like so much else.
I am from the unknown
(that is why plans have always been my comfort and I have never liked to hear “just go with it”).
I am from the fear of being alone because I learned far too early that no one is permanent or promised.
I am from a conditioned fear that taught me to be afraid of the nights because everything gets worse then.
I am from nights of contemplating “is it really worth it?”
I am from stress and anger turned into blood.
I am from hearts turned bitter.
I am from selflessness because don’t you know that everyone else is so much more important?
They have so much more to give and so many more smiles to smile.

I am from “it’s going to be okay”
(I hate that phrase now)
and “she didn’t abandon you.”
I am from strategically placed clothing
and tear-stained pillows
and perfected lies when they are needed.
I am from quiet sobs at night
and pencils thrown across the room.
I am from night drives where I am tempted to maybe find myself a place for a nice accident
(but then again, this family already has bad experiences with car accidents).
I am from looks of pity and the worried glances of friends.
I am from “no, I’m just tired” because I don’t know how to explain
an exhaustion that numbs your soul and wears out your body and restricts your heart.
I am from pill bottles hidden in my room because if I can’t fix myself,
maybe they can.
I am from a walk on the beach with a blade in my hands while my friends slept in the truck.
I am from a moonlight hike to a cliff that I should have jumped off of
(and if it was just a little higher, I think I would have)
because everyone would have had it easier without me.
I am from “I am so sorry”
to “I’ll try to be better”
and “you deserve more” when I fail to do so.

I am from all of this and more.