Blast

Fearsome and loathsome hormonal intrusions,
these things we call fights are the sparkling of fireworks
the blasting of dynamite through a sharp mountain, the crushing of flesh under prize-fighter's fists and
the crying of mothers in bathrooms with vent fans.

As ancient as typical Biblical tales or
as common as ire between female and male,
I do not dare look to the crowds for my answers, I
do not dare ask if our anger is healthy, I
do not dare step in your pathway toward manhood, I
do not dare love you so much you don't grow.

Lovingly touching your graded school papers,
these things we call memories, proof that you live here
the blasting of heatwaves through ribs of our mothers, the crushing of time passing sharply,
stealth lapses
the crying of mothers in bathrooms with vent fans,
the blasting of freedom, he needs me no longer, the
blasting of time, child to man, small to strong so we weather these fearsome hormonal intrusions and
cling to delusions, the days come and go.


sea 09/25/2013

Infinity

"Mom, does space go on forever?"  says the 7-year-old.
"Well, research supports that theory, and most of our science points to the possibility that it does go on forever, is infinite, has no boundaries."  I leave out what I want to say next, which is that space has no boundaries, like Fantasia.  She will not understand this reference, even though she is smart enough to understand a conversation about infinite time and space.
My daughter crosses her arms, scowls, and says, "That is going to bother me."

A little while later, she reports, "That is still bothering me."  Later, after a snack, an update from the couch, "I am going to be thinking about this for awhile."

I call my mother and tell her the above conversation and she reports that she, as a child, was petrified by the thought of space going on forever.

My mother and my daughter, both concerned about infinite space, infinite time, when we have neither with each other, at least here on this plane.  Those who will call us their past, those future generations with Mom and me and Belle all mixed up in their DNA can have the same conversations with their mothers and children with the same result, same unknowns, same vague illusion of the edges of things.
That is going to bother me.

I am going to be thinking about this for awhile.




SEA 8/11/13

Bell Laboratories and the Mysteries of New Jersey

Bell Laboratories                                                                                                                            

By Sara Elizabeth McNeilly Ammon

You were invited to come help the men who were developing

C language and microchip technology, among other items,

you list them plainly as I put in another load of laundry.

Seven were chosen country-wide, you were one of them and you casually mentioned tonight

you have a VHS tape of some of your stay there, some of the talks, you in a lab coat and Bell Labs and you wondered

if you should just get rid of it, whether it would be worth trying to convert, whether we should watch it.

I was a little girl and you were in New Jersey.  You came home with a present for me, a new purple swimsuit, and I was sure the color was so bright and classy because it was from exotic New Jersey with its beaches and its scientific mysteries.

You turned down robotics but chose working with gallium arsenide wafers, disks that were layered and etched with acid, spun and thinned, and you helped with this as well as fixed the engineer’s overhead light so it would not shine in his face.  You gave him a racy nickname, and the guy who didn’t want to like you ended up inviting you to the beach with himself and his wife, you made friends and hung out with Nobel Laureates.

My son asked if a laureate was a runner up.

Tears in my eyes,

no, they were the real thing, talking to Dad,

he said he stopped counting how many were there for the workshops, how many he spoke to, said he regretted not taping the entire summer and

I made a note quickly on a shopping list next to me to find the tape, find my Dad, the guy in the lab coat who turned down the job and came back to Nebraska and took my sister and I to every single swim meet every single summer, never missed one, and spoke to us in the same language he would have used in New Jersey.

Acid corrodes, thins the plate, new language, C language, Find the robotics, technology, language, fix it, find it and fix it, fix the light and make the microchip,

Now, NOW.  Now, find the chemical, find the compound and engineer a solution for the current situation.  The 2013 situation, bracing for impact,

The acid corroded, find it, Find IT, cure it, fix it all.

Just Because Something is Sleeping Doesn't Mean It's Not Growing.

Hi sleepy/please don't eat me.

Part I
Upon awakening a long-asleep tiger,
ancient but ageless, old in years but
vibrant, healthy, and so very strong,
approach slowly, crouched.
As she stretches, yawns, gathers herself together and
rises, takes in her surroundings, including you,
extend your arms in a surrender pose,
smile, and say in a light, breezy tone,
"Well, hi there!"

Do not mistake her puzzled expression for passivity.
Do not mistake her lack of pouncing-motion for apathy.
Do not think for one moment that she was built for anything other than your
complete and utter dismissal via destruction and digestion.  Do not
think that she is interested in your purpose here, that she will run her actions past her God first, or
will meditate and make sure destroying you is the best next right thing.

Cautions understood, you are aware of the risks associated with
facing a carnivore with the foggy mind of one long dreaming, the achy empty
stomach of one long hibernating.

You can look her in the eye, and there is no need to run.  It would excite her anyway, running
would make her want to exercise her long muscles and the game-like quality of your form prancing away, reeking of adrenaline and the sweat of fear would only please her oldest instincts.
You do not need to run. 
There is a conversation the two of you need to have, a silent but serious
communication, occurring between one who was once a cute, cuddly ball of fur, and one who was once an innocent girl who didn't think such a small thing could do such large scale damage.  (she remembers when the drooling kitten gnawed on her small hands, napped next to her, shared her blankie, binky.  both so small, the small that can tumble and snarl but then laugh and come running when mom calls.)

So sit down, slowly, and look her in the eye.  She is not angry, she just needs you to show her that you are not afraid and are willing to face her. 
She is NOT ANGRY!
(just hungry.)


sara elizabeth mcneilly ammon, 05/21/2013

Submit!

As I prepare to
send you some of the things that were
born in my brain and came out of my
hands onto this page or
onto that paper, I pause for a moment
and think of how odd it is, the fear
the gut aches and the
fuzziness of mind accompanying
the simple act of
submitting ones innermost self
for another's approval.

Assuming that you are not
repulsed or annoyed
embarrassed for me, indifferent or
simply off work the day my
envelope graces your desk
or file appears in your inbox
or portfolio rests upon your lap,
I implore you to be kind, and yet
welcome the dismantling of my
ego, as it should not be presenting papers
under my name.

I give you tiny chunks of my past in paragraphs
or throw a story at you hoping you catch it and
want to throw it into some else's
arms, like it enough to think on it later, I give you
small portions of my experiences or my
imagination or the synaptic firings of mere
boredom, I give these to you freely, and welcome
the absence of the feelings I get when I realize how long I have
waited to be who I am.

SEA 5/13/2013

small poem for small thoughts

tending to ramble,
the struggle is to keep things little
and the small fact and small thought is
as important as the big and glorious.

even a small scratch can infect, and
I will not wait for the Big moment and the Big idea anymore.

my days are numbered as are all who breathe and waiting for the Huge Big moments is a Big waste of time, I want
small things like my daughter's eyes glinting as she draws, my son's laugh and peaceful humming to himself

the scar on my hand, small as the tip of a cigarette, shows me the tiny calm moment when
I knew I was
alive despite my best intentions, and was, for a small moment, relieved.

a little smile and a small breathe, my lungs work and I am here, now, and you are no longer here.  You can't write anymore, sing anymore, and I can.  If I don't, that's more than a small insult.
so jot down the
short story ideas and
sketch a 5-minute moment fuzzy from a short dream
I put away my Big fear and stop being a Big baby so in a small way
i pay a small bit of homage to you, I say goodbye to you a little at a time, and do the things you
told me to do when you were here.

sara ammon 5/2/2013

Zumba for Beginners

(Note:  I do enjoy the days where nothing else creative comes to mind but the simple, every-day weird stuff we do to occupy our time.  Humans are the only creatures who pay others to help them get in shape.  I do not think there are any animals who need to be coaxed into staying healthy enough to live.)

Zumba for Beginners
Combat class, I understood.
I can logically accept the burning of calories, the practicing of uppercuts.
Running makes sense.
Dancing as well and
the shaking of body fat is the only way to convince it to fall off.
Apparently
you have to move fat cells around, almost like grabbing them by the shoulders and shaking them
yelling at them
telling them they are no longer wanted, and humiliating them and then they dissolve in embarrassment the pain of being unwanted too much to bear.

I get the concept of aerobic exercise. 
Logic brain says yes, but this amazon-sized mama needs some convincing before she
buys a beaded skirt on amazon (ironic) and
shakes her plus sized body parts in the face of a total stranger on a Monday morning.

I apologized to the instructor for the confused looks and the times during class that I stopped in place and stared at the wall, laughing.  My body needs some convincing to partake in the salsa rumba
cha chas and the madness that was
walking into and advanced Zumba class late with a Scooters cup and
wearing the wrong clothes.
My brain needs some convincing that there is a time and place for that kind of loudness outside of a dance club.

A bit much for a Monday morning.

Dancing and laughing and loudness and madness, sweat and forty different women of forty different sizes, jumping around as kids walk past and stare into the windows of the studio, staring in amazement as these women of various ages go aerobic-mental in a dancing hyper mass.

Synopsis?  Sweat through three shirts, survived.  Still not buying a beaded skirt.  Yet.

SEA 4.29.2013

Ah, Ego. Thou art a giant stomping through a fairy tale world of beauty, trampling pretty stuff with your stupid huge feet.

Once upon a time there was a girl.
She was locked in a cell with cinder block walls and one door.
She stared at the walls.
Clawed at the walls, cried into the walls, laughed at them.
She counted the blocks and prayed for a sign.
She did sit-ups to work on her abs, as to distract herself.
Stories, art and music danced through her head, distract me... distract me from seeing these walls that contain me.
Oh Lord, why would you do this to me?  What have I done to deserve this?
I do deserve this.... oh, I do, I do, she chants and paces and cries out in horror,
her sins and sacrifices drag across her mind like a rake across a barren field.
I am horrid.
I am your princess.
I am a child of yours, a child of yours!
I am nothing, I deserve this cage.
I deserve to be free.
Please do not give me what I deserve....
She gently caresses the walls, traces the patterns, makes them a home.

         Um, hey.  stop for a minute and breathe.
she shakes her head no, shakes off the small voice, covers her ears, her eyes.
         Hey.

(pause, breathe.)

she utters a defeated "what?!?"

pause, silly, and turn around.  you remember V for Vendetta, right?  oh my honey, my darling, such a human... you never tried the door.

So the door was unlocked, always was, always would have been, but here's the tricky part.
I still can't get myself to walk out.
It's scary and wild out there, scary and wild if I am free, if I am not contained, where would I go?
And she (would) live happily ever after (if she could get her legs to move)... the end.

It's not a new story, not a new tale, but each creation, each creature, each character is stunned when
the door is unlocked and 
the walls are not real and
the captor is me and
you are not the problem.
So, as the illustrated persons prancing through Grimm's anthology, I stumble through my story blind, unaware of the next page turn but alas, unlike the Brothers' tales, I have the luxury of questioning the writer, yelling at the writer, being perplexed and wading around in my own self-delusions, as He allowed me free will to do as I please, but he will not let me write it myself.   So the pen and ink drawing of me throws her tantrum, sits down, and pouts in her porridge, not knowing that she will get up on the next page and start a new adventure.

Sara Ammon 4/24/2013

ten minute timer

Set a timer for ten minutes, set it down.
Listen to the inside of your head, write it down.
Calm your heart down, settle your ass down - sit on the ground.

Refusing to do what lights you from the inside becomes
more painful the longer you do it, the more you push it down,
the more it digs it claws in like a kitten climbing your pant leg -

the kitten
doesn't know it is a small cat, doesn't know it's a pet, just wants to get to you, wants to climb, wants to
see from where you are, is who he is right now, all ego and claws like tiny needles.

I would like to lie and say that I do not know the whys...
I would like to say that I can't write because I don't have time.  I would like to tell you I can't write because I can't focus my brain can't get things in line can't afford the time can't put pen to paper...
I can't because I am held in by words, wrapped up tightly like pa pier mache' laid down and glued down
word wrapper tight like a mummy, kept to myself

Keep it to yourself.  No one wants to know, no one wants to hear.
There is no money in writing.
There is no point - we all have a story, every story can't mean something...

She asks the God of the Universe what she should do for a living.  She asks
what side of herself she shall show her children, what example to set.  She asks, knowing the answer, and knowing that that there will be no time clock, no guaranteed pay, no time clock

nothing to hold her together but her own skin, words begin to peal off like old wallpaper and

I don't know if I should be telling you this, but for someone who talks a lot, talks so much it annoys people and they make fun of her for talking talking talking, for someone who never shuts her mouth...

enough talk.  talk makes liars, so I will keep writing until I can use my words, toddler language, I will
set a timer for ten minutes and sit on the ground.  (sea 4/5/2013)

Future Lawn Plans

Ornamental

I see the lawn jockeys

The pink plastic birds and

The statues of lions with marbled manes.

We once had a yellow weathered

Plastic sunflower - petals

Twirled as the wind blew, it’s metal stem bending in time.

By my new place, a tattoo shop spawned a huge

Cement gorilla bolted to the sidewalk.

Jake oohs and aahs at it, C** wants to steal it.  But me…

If I had a house with a lawn I’d show off my

Ceramic lawn badger or a jackal holding up a canvas, dogs playing poker on a memorial stone.

Mosaic made out of broken liquor bottles, labels affixed in pieces, or a gnome dressed as my

Lawn pimp for protection, diamond pinky ring carved out of granite, a hat with a feather and

A gun made of rock… large enough that robbers and rapers would stand

In my lawn

See the silhouette of my pimp gnome with a start and

Perhaps reconsider –take their business elsewhere.

Sem 2/6/2001

I wrote this one in 2001 and I needed to lighten up today, thus I throw you this selection.  I know I am in trouble when I use the word 'thus' in a sentence.  I will not inflict anything else upon this blog today.  I know better than to write poetry when I am feeling this philosophical - it comes out sounding forced and preachy and creepy.  Perhaps I will take myself less seriously tomorrow, and will then be a better writer than I am today.

Cheetah vs. Jeep and a Poem About Running

Have you ever been chased
by something that didn't want
to be caught but rather, as a goal,
only desired to keep you running?

1.25.2013 SEA



Today, just a small poem dedicated to the thing that keeps me running, keeps me looking over my shoulder, and the Powerful Override Program that reminds me that I can stop anytime, and it may just pass right through me, not destroy me.

Thank you, Divine Operating System, for knowing me well enough to know that even though I trust in You, I will probably never stop looking back, and may only slow to a jog.

Another way I see it in my head sometimes is more National Geographic than philosophical.  I am the cheetah.  I can run;  I am built for speed.  You, FEAR, are the Jeep that chases me to take pictures, to see how fast I can run, to admire my stride and match my speed.  My instincts don't realize that I can stop anytime, and I run until my heart explodes.  My body doesn't know how to not run on instinct, doesn't know how to stop racing a Jeep that is unfairly put at an advantage.  If I only use what I have to outrun something else, I will die, brokenhearted.

Apathy

(A friend of mine told someone about this and they want to publish it.  She will not even let me edit it, she want it "as is," which is terrifying.  But I guess I said what I needed to say at that moment, and maybe it will make sense to someone else as it did her.  Also, it started out poetry and then stumbled into prose and then ended up an article... um, it's a Particle.)



we will always conflict

we love technology

we love autonomy

we love to judge from on high

(hooray for our side) - all the signs say the same thing

this is right and this is wrong

we will always fight.

the only thing that could save us would be if every single one of us here right now, every soul who walks on this earth at this moment

were to realize that there is something bigger and more important than each of us individually.  he or she or s/he would 

wake up inside and realize that there is something bigger and more important

(I realized there was a God and I was not it, and that there are much bigger things going on in this universe than my hopes and dreams - albeit they are still 

important in the grand scheme, but they are so very small and so am I.)

I don't care if they call it God.  I don't care what it is called but each person's ego wants to believe that there isn't something bigger, and there is.

if every single person realized this at the same time, we would maybe stand a chance, at that moment, of having enough common sense to pause.

and in that pause there would be something small inside us, starting small and growing, that would help us find our way.  once each of us found our way and 

figured out where we fit, we would no longer struggle to try and fit somewhere else and we would settle into neat little grooves.  it would not feel like a forced move

as it would be the individual realization of each soul's place and purpose at this moment among the many.  and those who attempted to disrupt another's movement to 

their natural state would be dealt with in a manner other than arguing online or tweeting political viewpoints and hitting a like button.

but this will not happen.  there will always be that one person - I am guessing quite a few more than one - who will want to be the God of their own universe, to see themselves

as the center of the universe, and will impose their will upon those around them, be it a population of people or maybe just those they meet in the street or online.

that one person will refuse to yield to what their soul already knows.  that person will refuse to recognize that they even have a soul at all, that they are energy and thoughts and

emotions that go beyond just a flesh pile that will someday erode away.

we will always fight because we are outwardly displaying the madness of the battle between our minds, feelings, souls, and experiences.... the outward will always match the inward.  the more unhappy one single person can be.... the more disturbed the world shall be.

On a Friday in December, I sat in the Sarpy County DMV waiting room waiting for my number to be called.  I was there to update the address on my driver's license and to register my car.  I waited among about 30 other people.  A TV played CNN, hung from the ceiling and droning as background noise.  I stopped filling out my form and watched in horror, food from lunch rising to my throat, as they announced that a gunman or possibly two had entered an elementary school and that almost 30 were thought dead.  They were turning away ambulances, a bad sign, as they were finding that there were not as many injuries as fatalities.  Many were children, the newscaster repeated after she had been told, and there was not much being released.  I watched the couple in front of me who were playing Yahtzee on their iPad look up, and then heard the man say, "Oh, another school shooting, huh?"  His wife or whatever she was shrugged, and they went right back to playing their game, arguing over how to spell a certain word.

It wasn't until later that I learned that most of the dead were the same age as my daughter.  That teachers and others had died trying to shield children.  That the gunman had killed his parents. That his mother had tried to get him committed.  There were a lot of other things to learn, but all I can take away from any of it is that we were all pregnant at the same time, those parents and I, and I am sure that they didn't think their children would be part of one of the worse mass shootings in history.  Or that someone would casually look up at the screen while Wolf Blitzer referenced Columbine and started the comparison and analysis of the tragedy before names were even released... that someone would look up and remark that it was just another... just another.  Back to the casual online board game, within weeks it was just another "unthinkable" tragedy.  

Why even begin to feel the rage?  It won't matter, right?  It won't matter because we don't know who to blame, right?  Nah.  I am going to go right ahead and be broken-hearted.  I am going to be furious and attempt to vent that fury to my God and hope you vent yours to yours.  If you have no tears, if you have no rage, if you have no unanswered questions about how we move on as a country, then do the rest of us a favor and just go back to your game.  Maybe do it quietly.  Maybe don't casually talk about the death of children as if it were an update about the Kardashians.  While you are at it, forget about Katrina. Forget the oil spill... forget Superstorm Sandy or the Tsunamis in Japan.  They don't matter, do they?  They don't matter unless it happens to us, right?  Isn't that the party line nowadays - "we never expected this to happen here..."  I think maybe it's time we all expect ANYTHING to happen anywhere.  Then we would change, because we would realize we needed to change.  We would stop putting it off.  

But I am sure this all just sounds like melodramatic sentimentalism from an uninformed Midwestern.  What the hell do I know, right?

I wonder which demon it was, I wonder which one it was, whispering in his ear when he unhinged his sanity.  I wonder how we heal as a country when we have too many wounds to cover, to protect, too many to stitch closed.  Too many pounds of flesh taken.  I wonder what I tell my kids.  One of them is autistic, high functioning, but was scared to go to school the next day, fearing his Asperger's diagnosis would be discovered and that someone would compare him to the shooter.  The other child doesn't know about any of it, as I have made sure no news was playing around her, no papers for her to see, no conversations about the event... someday she will be old enough to know about it or will hear about it, and she will ask me if it is safe to go to school.  And I will lie and say that I will always keep her safe, and I will pray like hell that I can do everything I can to make it as true as possible, but there is no answer to that question that is true.

We will always conflict because I can't even share this with anyone.  They might disagree.  They might start talking about gun control or something else, and my mind will clamp shut.  Because I too am just as guilty as you, I too am pretty sure I know some things and I am right and you are wrong... at least I don't think I am God.  I know how small I am. I hate to know it, but I know how small I really, really am.  But a lot of small things can really create something big, if they work together, isn't that a law of physics?  Or is that just my hope, my ridiculous optimism, the part of me that will never, ever be able to even look at internet Yahtzee again?

These did NOT want to come out in one piece.

Some days poetry falls out of my head and onto the page easily.  It pops right out with a boink and bounces around, easy, bright, compact.  Other days it's like picking at a splinter deep under my skin.  I can see it, I know what it is made of, but I just can't seem to get a grip on the end.  I can't get under it as it moves away from me, dodges me to the left and right, breaks up into pieces.  Eventually after tearing up the area with a needle or another handy sharp object, it is free and I can really marvel at it.  I am amazed something so small can come from such a torn up mess.  

Here is today's installment, a few smallish poetry splinters from the shredded skin of my brain.


(snake oil)
your whispered words are an eel or snake,
coiled around my arm for show,
sliding up slow and smooth
up my neck, satin ribbon
pouring into my ear
and there they disappear.

2/2/2013 sea

Piñata

Another doctor, another form.  Same health history.

Different nurse, same baffled look as she reads the quickly written answers to such questions as

List all accidents

List all surgeries

List any history of the following: (a,b,c,d on down the alphabet of tangible poisons and questionable decisions, helpful aids in the alleviation of unwanted Tuesdays or entire years or the memory of CENSORED)

list - previous addresses?  marital status?  number of pregnancies?  religion?

family history of heart disease?

Logic indicates, usually, most solid objects hit often and/or hard enough with

 enough force will break.

A Piñata, for tedious further illustration, is brightly colored and attracts attention.

Rounded shapes and exaggerated features, comical, too fake to take seriously, to easy to hang 

up in front of all of your friends and hit with a stick.

If you hit a (girl) enough times from enough angles, do you then collect the colorful candy and prizes inside?

I laugh as I fill out the form, knowing that look, that weird look when I tell them that one is only really dead if they stay dead, that look when I check too many boxes for a live person who can still hold a pen.

9/27/12 sea

You were Three and so was I

Poem = Written 9/15/2000 - I don't think it's possible to describe the complexities of the parental relationship in words.  But I am so glad that we all still try.  I used to think that I had no clue what I was doing because I got sober when I found out he was on the way, and so we age together in a strange sense of the word, but the more I talk to anyone who has been a parent or parental figure, or a child, I think I agree with a friend of mine who said that the ones she worries about are the people who claim they know what they are doing. (SEA 2/1/2013)


(Jakey)

My mom doesn't always know how to love me
but she tries her best.
She tickles my ears.
She makes monster faces.
She lets me splash the tubwater.
She says she is sorry when she yells.
She's trying to find my dad.
And in the morning, when she drives me to school,
my Mom is Powerful -
She can block the sun out with her hand
so I don't have to squint.

sem9/15/2000

Tiptoe and Grab the Benadryl

Hives.  I get them without trying.  It is one of my many talents.  I am, at this point in my adulthood, allergic to a lot of things.  Sometimes, seemingly, air.  I found this while rummaging through files this morning and thought it appropriate.  I suppose it is not unrealistic to compare the attempt to examine ones' character as an act which can cause an allergic reaction... ah, character illumination via the spirit, which can make one itchy.

(she doesn't want to talk about it) 

I break out into hives trying to access you.

I itch and welt up as a victim of blood-sport, a

Whipping victim or recipient of masochistic self-flogging, depending on what you

See as pain or purpose.

Hives rise with each attempt to stop the habit, stop the fierce loathing striking bites.

The marks show up when I try to touch you, when

I want to get close but have to sneak up,

Impossible to sneak up on part of oneself.

I get (hives in my tummy.)

I feel hives in my mind, welts, as if beaten from

The inside, whipped from the inside, the deepest

youngest me does not want to be discussed.  She is not happy

With this intrusion.  She will react as such for how long? 

For always?  For now?  I can only keep trying, keep

Gently pleading, trying to take the whip out of her

Small hands.

Sem 6.15.2012

SaraElizabethMcNeillyAmmon 1.30.2013

Drums and Storage Totes

I have been going through fifteen years of boxes.  We moved a lot in my twenties and I am amazed at how much paper can accumulate and multiply in Rubbermaid bins if you do not pay diligent attention to it on a regular basis.  Not unlike the run-on sentences I am prone to producing, it just goes on and on and on.  I have, over the course of the last year, gotten rid of about half to three-fourths of my "stuff," not including paper, and about 70% of paper items have gone to the great mulch pile in the sky.  It's funny the things we hang on to, the things we don't.  The below poem was written on a scrap of paper.  So far, I have four file drawers in a large industrial file cabinet full of scraps of paper with scribbling.  If even one of them nets a poem or even a sentence that means something to someone, that will make me sigh with relief, as it will mean that I am some sort of writer.  And that would be very cool.

Note:  If you are wondering whether or not you are supposed to do something, look around.  Look around your home.  If you are surrounded by piles of paper with your own handwriting scrawled all over them, perhaps writing is the hobby or sanity saver for you.  If, while clearing up the wreckage of my young adulthood, I had found box after box of sewing patterns, I would be making a dress right now.  If you look around your house and you don't see yourself, look around inside your head, and note the things you love and tape down.  Please remember, as a friend so awesomely reminded me the other day, the only person who can see through your eyes exactly is you.

Okay, this ends our Lifetime Afternoon Special moment.

(scrap of paper #49823 or something)

All my life, emotions pulled taught

threaded, strained, toughened.

Emotions beaten by you, beaten

Out of me like a drum, pounded

And glared at.  Resented.  I will not

Allow you to play –

Your score is overplayed;

Your job to keep time, keep the beat, finished.

I walk away now with just what God gave me –

Those very sections you hate, the

unique beats, the

Skins I wear, stretched and bound.

About my soul…

Bound around my soul.

Your rhythm, not mine.

Your timing is off, off, my spirit won’t dance to it, not anymore.

Sm 5/18/2002

Until next time....SEA 1.28.2013

Read and Be Merry!

I will, from time to time, publish (with their permission, of course, silly) other peoples' work on this blog, because I will not always have the guts to jump into my head and pull something worthy out to show you.  Today is one of those days.  And why does this, below, make me feel merry?  Anytime someone tells on themselves, tells the truth, sees things up close or is not scared to be brutally sensitive, it makes me feel like celebrating.  Anytime any of us goofy humans actually happen upon what we, individually, were built for, that thing specific to each little one of us... it's happy madness, a jolly good time.

This day's installment is brought to you by our friendly neighborhood Brok "Tryst" Kerbrat, who is not only an awesome poet and writer, but posts his items on his facebook page, so that I have something awesome to read among the scary media fallacies, political rants, and diet updates.  Not that I don't enjoy all of the latter, but it is nice to have a poem or two sprinkled into the mix.  It is in my humble opinion that we need to read at least one thing a day that doesn't furrow our brow, but rather reminds us that we were born alive and are not dead yet.  Enjoy!

via FB,  Brok "Tryst" Kerbrat, 1/24/2013

‎: Someone asked why I didn't join the Marines.

I was not built for war.

I was built to watch. To see the everyday in things we overlook, everyday. Watching Lion King while your cat is heat. A stripper wearing a cross around her neck. A man entering Planned Parenthood, alone. To know that somethings are more normal than they appear.

I was built for sound. The bass drop as the music hits the dance floor. The vocalizations of those who do not grace the stage, but take it as an act disobedience. The little words we mess up but never enough to miss the point. Faith. Trust. Happiness. Unless we miss the point. God. Truth. Happiness.

I was built to conquer. To rise above the challenges of trying not to give up. To put my shirt on the same way I finally could, by myself, when I was ten. To drive faster than you, because I have lost the fear of speed through the survival of impacts one, two, and three. To stop faster than you, because I do not want to be your first impact. And when I am on that stage, I carry the body of a boy who has faded into the memory of shame and delusion and hold it to the flame of who I am today.

I was built to bleed. To lose and give away. To make mistakes. To pick the wrong times to say the wrong words to the wrong people. Please. Stay. Love.

I was built to heal. To grow and hold tight to the scars upon my bones as lines I will not cross again. To live for the right moments and right words, with the right one. Please. Stay. Love.

I was asked why I did not join the Marines.

Correction: I am not built for someone else's war.

receipt for bones and one soul, bought with credit

Daily installations of poetry from my personal stockpiles.  Comments are very, very welcome.


receipt for bones and one soul, bought with credit

while busily busting up my body
during decisions of the past
frying my skull or worse, rehearsing stunts, unqualified
ignoring
ignoring the tugs and pulls of important issues,
I checked the box marked
BILL ME LATER
and didn't care.
I loved and lived for BILL ME LATER.
later is nothing if
today means nothing, I meant nothing, needed no LATER to lean upon, hope upon,
feast upon, had no future endeavers to plan.
i ran.
fast forward to later, the later of now, to a life meaning something, everything, I have so much, and
bills pile high, body sighs and chimes in,
opinionated, of the thought that I do not get to complain.
broken as I am.
BILL ME LATER flashes across my mind as I laugh and creak and
bend my broken back.  I do not even remember all I bought.
Yes, yes, I know.  I learned so much.  I learned, I know.  The strength bestowed when tests are wickedly well-written, repeated, scale-graded
proctored by honor system yielding strength immense and unshakable.
Grateful, graced, thankful, blessed.         but in the sharp moments when joints lock and brain fogs,
I wish she had paid at the time of purchase, just for a moment I wish she
hadn't shopped at all.
How strange to wish she hadn't bought it all even as I thrive off the score.  I hate and love that store.
broken but not.  delighted and bankrupt.

1.23.2013 ©SaraElizabethMcNeilly