A Quiet Moment . . .

Our Lady of Perpetual Loss

- Deborah A. Miranda

Maybe all losses before this one are practice:

maybe all grief that comes after her death seems tame.

I wish I knew how to make dying simple,

wish our mother’s last week were not constructed

of clear plastic tubing, IVs, oxygen hiss,

cough medicine, morphine patches, radiation tattoos,

the useless burn on her chest.

I’m still the incurable optimist, she whispers,

you’re still the eternal pessimist.

My sister sleeps on a sofa; our brother, exhausted,

rolls up in a blanket on the hard floor.

Curled in a rented white bed, our mother’s body

races to catch up with her driven, nomadic soul.

Those nights alone, foster care, empty beer bottles

taught us she was always already vanishing.

Source: The Zen of La Llorona, Copyright 2005.

Happy Birthday M . . . Wherever you are . . .

{photo source}

Quote of the Day

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

- Albert Camus

Quote(s) of the Day

I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a hell-raiser.

No matter what the fight, don’t be ladylike! God almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

If they want to hang me, let them. And on the scaffold I will shout Freedom for the working class! 

- Mary Harris "Mother" Jones

She offers a vivid reminder of what remains among the most underacknowledged issues of our day: that America is a class-driven society, where the wealthy have grown obscenely rich as working people have fallen further behind. (This was written in 2001; so little has changed)

This Corner of the Western World

 - Jennifer Chang

 

Dark thing,

make a myth of yourself:

all women turn into lilacs,

all men grow sick of their errant scent.

You could learn

to build a window, to change flesh

into isinglass, nothing

but a brittle river, a love of bone.

You could snap like a branch—No,

this way, he says, and the fence

releases the forest,

and every blue insect finds an inch of skin.

He loves low voices, diffidence

on the invented trail,

the stones you fuck him on. Yes

to sweat’s souvenir, yes to his fist

in your hair, you bite

because you can. Silence

rides the back of your throat,

his tongue, your name.

from: The History of Anonymity, Copyright 2008.

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,

Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

I Can't Think of a Better Mission. Can You?

The mission of Marine Toys for Tots Foundation is to assist the U. S. Marine Corps in providing a tangible sign of hope to economically disadvantaged children at Christmas. ...

The primary goal of the Foundation is ... to deliver, through a new toy at Christmas, a message of hope to less fortunate youngsters that will assist them into becoming responsible, productive, patriotic citizens. ...

Please help a child in need this Christmas. We all need hope. . . .

Hope is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

- Emily Dickinson