Saturday, September 24, 2016

To Jerika Bolen

Your star was there before your birth

and glimmered all the time you graced this world

with exactly who you were.

As I read about your decision to depart unimaginable pain, saw the photos of you scratching your little dog behind his ears, while your Mom struggled to hold in her tears, I saw more stars gathering, realizing slowly they were angels in bright disguise appearing, finally, for the rest of us to know, for sure, you are accompanied.

You always were. We all are. Yet in your brave insistence to scout ahead, you'll give courage to others who are in anguish, incurable levels of pain that few can comprehend, the kind of pain that racks nerve endings from flesh through bones and breath itself,

Your only wish? To be free of of the body that kept you hostage. Until the meeting day again.

And your Mom's tears? The ones she pushed back so your decision would be unimpaired, yeah, those tears. The most sorrowful kind, the same ones filling the ocean where people outlive their children go to cry. I saw her scared tears: one letter transposed and they become sacred ones.

Now. For the Know Better/No Better brigade of hate bringers who wrap themselves in flags like scoundrel patriots...

To those who would condemn Jerika for a decision she made the opposite of lightly, who are you? Even if - no, especially if - you suffer the same disease...

How can you tell a girl who's endured dozens of painful surgeries, each more invasive than the last, that she needs to stick around? When all she stands to acquire is more pain and less of the ability to communicate it.

If anyone deserves access to the exit button, it was Jerica.

To you who sought to surround her with judgment and condemnation -

Wtf? I'd like to be more eloquent, but why? Nothing in your condemnation implies mercy or understanding. There is no nuance to your judgment.

Face this, if such grim assurances of perdition are your calling cards -

One thing is evident: You would be impotent without your vitriolic diatribes.

Too complicated an accusation? How about you'd be absolutely empty without your hateful certainty? And it doesn't have to be this way.

What do you bring of life's joy that makes any of us better in your wake?

Your vile, microscopically small gods of damnation? News for you: Those devil bringers only abide in your imagination. That's not to say they aren't real. What we think become powerful, indeed, and as you furnish these hells of your own limited invention, sending engraved invitations to the awful party you're so sure will happen, know...

The most crippled a human can be is evident in the poster of you.

I don't know where you find these little plastic bobble headed itty bitty mean damning Jesus dolls. And I saw them my whole life.

Exchange it, perhaps, for a bigger one with mercy unending.

Where would you go then? Without throwing the first stone?

And if you're breathing through a surgically made hole in your neck and still had the energy and time to damn Jerika... who's your next target? Will you race to their hospice bed to clamor that they stay in your treehouse of constant pain? For nobility's sake? Because being wrong is more painful than whatever incurable disease takes its toll on you?

If you can stay and prove that your light is worth staying, for the love of God, please do.

But if you only gasp because misery needs companionship....

Unplug your Skype. Live on. But keep your bullshit hell to yourself.

Friday, September 23, 2016

For BP and RB

A crooked web spun quickly to be taken down when perspective is regained.

(For BP and RB who have been thrown under and walked under busses respectively)

Ramping up the gossip,

Cramming it in faces,

Momentarily forgetting the war between the races.

Whose divorce, which affair and all the slimy whispers:

Taking sides of vixens or

their errant misters.

Some refugees are whining

far across the pond,

Yet cameras are chasing

another broken blonde.

The wreck nearby is

infinitely more compelling

than a orphan tummy

so predictably swelling.

The yeezy swiftness in their

crazy fucking squabbles

grab our hearts and minds

like stolen priceless baubles.

Tomorrow I'll be deeper and heed only that which matters

But tonight I'll watch ET

with the rest of the mad hatters.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Today.

Is someone pretty special's birthday.

He's a friend - 33rd degree, to borrow the Mason's black belt degree scale - and more than that. Maybe I could be here on FB, etc without him, but it sure wouldn't be the same kind of fun.

Wesley, here's to a fantastic year. I'm so proud to know you and thrilled for all you've accomplished this year and, holy polka dotted everything, Batman, can't wait to see what THIS year brings.

Happy happy birthday, amigo.

Sure love you.

Gwen Hartley

The very wonderful Gwen Hartley put this cosmically beautiful quote on her Instagram page. It's listed as anonymous, but I'd sure like to hug and credit whoever said this. Wow.

"We are stars wrapped in skin: The light you are seeking has always been within."

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Hypothetically Speaking

This is dedicated to a few people who've been kind yet persistent about showing me What Matters. In life. In these skin schools. Still, nothing in this post reflects that collective wisdom because, well, I am not claiming to be absorbent, merely that I notice. I have not actually met a couple of these inspiring people. In that way, they're heroes without trying. One or two might be surprised that they're seek as such.

A couple of them are real life friends who also happen to be both heroic and humble. They didn't set out to be any such thing. They definitely carve out their own paths. I'm unaware of anyone who's gone before them in their particular arenas of existence, but they seem to be guided nonetheless: Mysteries accompany heroism, if not outright confusion.

But that's another bad poem altogether.

Hypothetically Speaking

If you've had love and gasp

at the space where it used to be,

You are still inhabited by it.

Or was it the thrown-away kind,

lost on some highway

in a reckless, lightning fast purge?

Did your love steal away

into someone else's night,

only to taunt from whispering corridors?

The graveyards of the one-sided kind

scatter the world; lost mounds

of betrayal keeping sorrows alive.

Perhaps you had the close to the top,

of the mountain kind: identifiable only

by numbers like some star system.

There is binary love: stacked, shiny

face cards, all hands on decks:

shuffled, cut, dealt predictably.

Warm realms of kept vows

coalesce into myth then oxygen masks drop

down, one less of them than of us...

What then? Who turns blue as the pilot

yields to either a miracle or the stone grip

of broken steel: yanked musical chairs?

Do you keep it close like a pillow,

between you and the hard places

in life; through the constant moving, the

Switching rooms, wheels, keys and

torn paper keeping your place in books

you don't remember beginning,

Ones you can't imagine not finishing?

You could cheat. And ask. How it

all turns out after all... except you know.

There is no new thing under the sun.

That's why prayers of forgetting

thrum in the night air, breaking only

When the hope of a new love is born:

still, sirens sound warnings. We've got a jumper.

And it's such a very long way to fall.

Monday, September 19, 2016

Have a beautiful Monday night everyone.

Hard to fret about anything looking at this. And yet...I am a dubious master of fretting amid great beauty and gratitude. It's just a gift.

Mine eyes, in case you didn't see my correction about The Bug at the door, are fixed a bit.

The previous post was a praying mantis that I called a grasshopper. And to think I'm not a real blonde.

Anyway, I also turned the photo from upside down to right side up. Before I knew. Now that I realize what he WAS... Gosh, the little guy was in praying position.

I could take bigger hints but the stick used to hit me would be so huge that it would take quite a few folks to carry it.

Have a beautiful Monday night everyone.


This big little guy

This big little guy was right at the front door during the full moon a few nights ago. The pups and I were headed for a walk and he was right next to the doorbell.

Wonder if we'd waited a few more minutes if he might've... Naaah.

But in the totemic way of beesties, this particular critter is a harbinger of fine things.

After seeing more crickets than we can count - ones too fast to photograph - the green machine was a nice surprise.

What/who is about to ring your doorbell in the cool nights of autumn?


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