Power awaits in a bottle of nail polish. There's no greater power than having power over your own body. Shallow? No. Liberation without. Revolution of circumstances. Think of the nail polish as attitude. Hot tempered red; soft, sooky pink; cold, life-sick black. How can I say that? I haven't worn nail polish since I was fifteen. Think. I'm kidding. It's some kind of grotesque, eloquent hyperbole. I got rid of the Wet 'n' Wild Bijou Blue just like I have to get rid of all the painful pieces of the past that lie around my room. Old diaries make dead sadness live forever - bad grade eight crushes; naïve desires to be popular, cool, pretty; and being too poor to dress like they do. Those are significant things to a thirteen-year-old; they mean nothing to me now. And if souls could die, old tapes of my broken sense of humor torment my soul to death. It's not a submission to all of the things that I once loved; it's a transition to ensure that everything starting today is better.

There was a time when I felt married to my own desperation. Going-somewhere hopes and ideals are born to Mother Time and Father maturity. Going-nowhere thoughts do die, will die, and have died with the mere natural development of sensitive child to sensitive adult. And I eat that up.

I can just taste the goodness of such a death
like spices on the bitter widow's breath.

Anarchy is not doing what they tell you to do, not being what they want you to be, not speaking out against what they want you to speak out against. Such strength and discipline are more like the headless horseman than the horse. You wouldn't expect the headless horseman to grow a head simply because the horse has one. Neither expect quiet types to transcend their own psychologies to fit into mainstream society. For neither will they sprout big mouths and speak up for themselves, what they do; neither will they sell their knowledge, their skills, their experiences, themselves. Therefore, don't expect them to somehow suddenly forget that they're quiet people. The not-so-quiet person asks why life has to be such a struggle to exist. But the quiet person asks why existence has to be such a struggle to live. Try living without becoming totally desensitized to all the bad stuff, pretending it's not there. If only all the good stuff could make the bad stuff go away. No matter how unfeelable the good stuff becomes, there's always someone else to feel the bad stuff.

Life laughs the face off laughter. Life faces the laughter of someone else. Sometimes there's not a greater happiness than to be unhappy. But that's life. That’s someone else's life. Business turns the laughter into tears. Temperment forces the tears into someone else. An honest day's work is a lie. But that's someone else's business. Opinion knocks something that we are not out of something that we are. Judgment knocks the "someone" out of "someone else". No one is someone; everyone is no one. But that's someone else's opinion.

How messed up life must be while all cleaned up by someone else's lives, someone else's business, someone else's opinions. Everyone has a unique understanding peculiar to their own lives and opinions. What one can understand about others' lives and opinions is what one can't understand. One did not live those lives to form opinions. There are explanations for what we can understand and no explanations for what we can't. There's no explanation why a mouth that lives like the Big bad wolf can't live without forming an opinion. Consider also how brains that question everything like Little Riding Hood hate them so much. But there's an explanation why she who lives in textbooks can't form an opinion without living. There's an explanation why she who lives in fairy tales can't tell you: it's my business. But here's a hint: that's how we learn. I can't tell you because I have to learn to forget things people said and did half an hour ago. I have to forget that I am a living soul that can be marked, damaged, broken and beaten up by things people said and did. That's like cutting down the trees around the graveyards to keep the vandels out.

Power awaits in self-control. There's no greater power than having power over yourself. Liberation within. Revolution of spirits. Deep? Yes. Think of the self-control as a tree - deep-rooted, thick-skinned. A tree is only as humble and deep-rooted as a tree is blind to it. Acknowledging my humility and deep-rootedness seems the most self-important and shallow thing anyone anything could do. So I won't. But boy am I alive. Buddy, let me tell ya. I breathe the air. I tread the grass. I feel the rain. I feel alive. But I have to get rid of all of the painful pieces of the past that lie around my brain - old judgements keeping tears of blood up all night, old ridicule shutting tears of fire in all day. It's not a submission to all of the dreams that those who live and die crying once thought impossible; it's a transition to ensure that every impossibility starting today is possible.

Those who live and die crying have heard the terrible conflicts and misunderstandings between members of their own families - too much bitterness, too much self-doubt, too much low self-esteem, and no self-control. No self-control! No self-control means no control over yourself, no power over your own actions. No power over your own actions means no power over your own life, no power over everything. Everything including our lives is a product of ourselves. There is no control over our lives if there is no control over ourselves. The world becomes a circus - a very, very nasty circus. Thinking walks feeling tight ropes. To feel makes you jump through flaming hoops of thinking. But what's a sad clown like disillusionment to do? Shut herself in and never talk to anyone again? Okay, so that may be self-control; but it's bad self-control. Good self-control controls bad stuff: losses of temper, spreading of rumours. Bad self-control won't let the controlled self do anything. It's always wrong. That’s not life either. That’s not freedom. That’s not liberation within; that’s just building stone walls around the circus to keep the sad clowns out.

Anarchy is sealed in a jar of organic peanut butter where no educated nut, processed and packaged, can tell it what to think; and no working nut, bland and dry, can tell it what to do. Only pure nuts like me allowed. Anarchy is kind of an emotional thing rather than a political one. It's that emotional thing that cares so much for those who are controlled. Being too homeless for a homeless shelter controls how they live, and being too poor for welfare controls how they don't want to live, though there's absolutely nothing anarchy can do to help them. But it helps them anyway.

I want to let go of a time in my life when I was much controlled by what people think. It's a moving on/ letting go thing, not a running away/giving up one. Moving on lets go of the control that makes you believe everything. Hurt feelings let go of the moving on. Believing nothing sounds like an attitude to move on from. Believing everything sounds like a lack of attitude to let go of. I believe everything that I hear, or hurt feelings believe everything that they hear. But that's life. That's their personal lives. Self-esteem is a personal life. The whole world is a personal life. Running away encourages the hurt feelings to give up. Hate sounds like an archenemy for feelings to give up to. Love sounds like a bully that feelings run away from. They don't have to like me. That's their business. Self-esteem is a business: shampoo, tooth paste, an all-purpose shammy. The whole world is a business: houses to live in, boxes to die in; sliced ham and salt cod. Yet there's another crusty business: me. And I believe it even though what I know about me, knows the contrary. What I know about me briefs the bartender that serves them what they think of me. Rumours are fixating, aren't they? What I believe about me tips the cab driver that drops off what people think about me: I'm a selfish liar because I have feelings. Judgements travel fast, don't they? But that's their opinion. It makes goodness look bad. It makes badness look good. And it wraps both goodness and badness up in the kind of integrity that has no integrity, some kind of self-righteousness.

How dead life is while all wrapped up in their personal lives, all wrapped up in their businesses, all wrapped up in their opinions. Their business becomes my business as their business is "me". And I'm definitely my business. Sure what they think is significant, as what anyone thinks is significant. What they think may not be an invisible mirror of what they know, but of what they don't. Everyone has a unique knowledge peculiar to their own experiences. What one thinks about another's knowledge and experiences is not what one knows because one did not experience it. There are explanations for what we do know and explanations for what we don't. But there's no explanation for why the hell I care so much. It's just me. Sometimes what they think takes the place of what we know. In what they think, I can become more wrapped up than a mummy, and every bit as dead. And why? Because of things people said and did half my life ago.

The old life causes the new life's death
like poison on the new born's breath.

Psst, what the hell is a shammy?

Elaine
October 29, 2006

I don't write silly poetry.
It's all serious and sincere.
I know all the secrets of the universe,
and it's my duty to share them here.
I know what makes the day, day.
I know what makes night, night.
I even know what love is.
Top that, all you poets in white.
I know all the mysteries of truth,
the anxieties of day.
And when the ear of night listens,
I always know what to say.
If only I could tell the secret
of all the secrets that I know.
I know the meaning of life.
I know why we are here. So:

I don't write bad poetry -
flying reindeer, squeezing down chimneys and stuff.
This is the story of everything,
though that's not nearly enough.
This is the story of the beginning and the end
the tellers of special secrets speak of.
This is a secret about why we're alive -
the beginning of time, the end of time and stuff.
The beginning of all life, the end of all life;
I know it all, I swear.
I know why spacemen walk on the moon,
and why hippies have long hair.
I know St. Nick is not really a saint
but a follower of a counter cultural space cult.
He flies across the moon and the stars
with a flash of his body, his soul like a bolt.

I don't write about silly things,
about some magic place beyond heaven.
I merely answer the question of life:
Is there life beyond Apollo Eleven?
Though it was not the first manned mission
to tread the lunar surface once assumed;
some hippie with a beard and long hair
was the first to walk on the moon.
He delivered toys to the good space colonies,
to baby Martians of mars, baby dwarves of Pluto.
"There's more to life than earth," he declared.
Though its inhabitants may not think so.
Christmas is more than a light-up plastic Santa-face
in the window, says soul sources.
For the apathy of tongues tell the lies
that the vanity of eyes reinforces.

Pluto is now a planet of dwarves,
dwarf planet once a sister of the sun.
But the light of the sun could not outshine
the soul of a dwarf, even the really gloomy ones.
With the faith of saints and the reason of science,
they know how it feels to be loved and hated.
Is it a planet of dwarves or a dwarf planet?
The saint and scientist debated.
God and man, religion and science,
an old saint and young scientist.
Who would've thought they could get along so well
and conspire a compromise like this?
You could tell the old guy and the young guy
had been talking
when the scientist delivers the planet to the dwarves
in a hand knit Christmas stocking.

Bohemian in ruthlessness and free spirit,
beatnik in his style of dress;
those the rest treats the worst,
the old guy treats the best.
Like us, they're all like; they're all unlike.
Think a child at Christmas after all.
Some children of dwarves play with dinkies;
some play with dolls.
But they all play and sometimes together.
Don't stop them; that's not fair.
If we were all the same life would be as boring
as a press conference on press conferences. So there.
Big shining suns turn away small dwarves.
Big shining suns think they're somethin'.
Or they're just bitter they can't be
as free as dwarves. Jealousy is poison.

The sun thinks she's better than the dwarves
simply because they're different. That's not good.
Their home is different; their planet is different.
It just hasn't cleared its orbital neighbourhood.
But Santa has a few dwarves of his own.
Well, not really. Elves they're called.
And through dealings with figures of fantasy,
he knows they're not so bad at all.
They're like us and they're not like us.
They are who they are so don't try to change them. Okay?
Fate would've scorned her incompetence
if they were meant to be another way.
Don't go to a gay bar looking for straights
To change them, that's a real joke.
Would you pop a quarter in the Pepsi machine
looking for Coke?

Get a taste of one another's lives
to see how different they can be.
And though we're all people,
one taste's for you, one's for me.
The old guy has a taste for one life:
one life for the poor, one life for the rich.
Belgian chocolates grow in the Belgian chocolate patch.
Black mushrooms grow in the ditch.
But that's two lives - two lives with tastes of their own.
Can you get both under the tree?
Can you get a life for Christmas?
Can I choose the dream life the old guy gives me?
Get a taste of one another's dreams.
One humanity, two souls: free society.
Doesn't everyone want to be a part of this world?
Doesn't everyone want to be free?

The freedom to be who you are,
free from insincere movements, shallow trends;
the freedom to choose your own life;
the freedom to choose your own friends;
the freedom not to be called this and that
because you feel a certain way.
But a feeling becomes a movement
when others feel the same way.
The feeling of charity moves the old guy.
He has a dream of Christmas.
Feeling things of giving, moving things to give
though Christmas has a dream of business.
Dreams of wasting money  busies status exploitation.
Mother dream wears songbirds in her hair.
Father Christmas meets father business riding
gold baby elephants like reindeer through the air.

He's just another living soul like you -
the dwarf, the elf, the fairy.
- just different enough to call different,
enough to judge unfairly.
It sucks to not like anyone
who doesn't look like you.
Pop in a lot more than a quarter
to expect them to think and act like you, too.
How self gratifying it must be
to have that much control;
to tell other human beings
how to live their lives, save their souls.
It's hard to be humble
when you're master of the universe, virtue tells us.
But it's harder to be humble
when you're master of someone else's.

Thoughts to take to bed Christmas Eve.
Face the reality of the living.
Even the grown ups from this dwarf planet
cherish the wonder of getting and giving.
Give what they work and play for.
Work and play for what they get.
A Singing mp3 Santa Claus shaped lighter.
Every time you light a cigarette
it sings "It's raining men. Hallelujah!"
Which leads to my next present:
A gay pride rainbow snowman hugging the sun
even though they're very different.
The men don't rain when it shines.
Snowman don’t live when it thaws.
If it dons its gay apparel 
… must be Santa Claus!

The interplanetary traveler finds the magic place -
the planet of Christmas all the time
where the bells of money ring
and the bells of business chime.
It's a land of long, amber-haired angels
In flowers draped, white cloths layered.
They carry Christmas trees on their backs
to the land of no Christmas, no Wal-Mart, no prayers
Like many lands Christmas land is divided
by the can'ts and the cans, the rich and the poor.
I can't have things this Christmas;
I can have things, therefore.
If Christmas world teaches anything
it's that everyone has a self
from the glittering white snowflake
to the busy little workshop elf.

But this isn't a fairy tale of gardens and trees,
as homes to fairies, elves and pixies;
this is a story about a lost movement
of white teenagers in the mid 1960's.
This isn't a fantasy of rivers and rainbows,
but of clean water and dirty jeans,
and tea and biscuits as recompense.
They called to him through sensual means.
Whiskey and scones beneath a tree
baptized his spirit like a religious rite.
They inspired an old guy with a drinking problem
to save the souls of gingerbread men at night.
He whizzed from one slum of earth to the other
in his makeshift rocket ship
that some say jingled like a sleigh
and that memory remains undisputed.

I don't write Christmas poetry.
I can't ride the rocket ship of imagination.
Everything I do and say is monitored
by National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The NASA of the mind
imagines the painted ponies that take me where I wanna go -
right to the top of the candied pine tree
back down to the ground making angels in the snow,
to the candy shop on Christmas street.
It represents, quite literally, its name
with its candy cane hand railings
and red licorice window frames.
Turn the world into a fibre optic Christmas tree
with lolly pop garden lights.
My mind can take me many places
like a snowed in tractor in the blind of night.

I don't write serious poetry.
It has to read like this:
Hark! roly-poly, red-faced, hard plastic Santa.
Rejoice! Blow this miserable-beautiful life a kiss.
Christmas Land is an imaginary snowglobe of earth.
It traps you, shakes you up, and still looks nice.
But you're not real until you've been rejected.
So the old guy broke out to the planet of rock and ice.
The beauty of nature does not end at bowering Park.
He sat on a cold boulder smokin' weed.
It's a far cry from the old guy on television
fulfilling the season's greed.
See the rabbit and the fawn in the snow.
See the myth behind those black boots.
One small step for man…One giant leap
for a crazy hippie in a red space suit.

I don't write silly poetry.
It's all deep and profound -
stuff no genius thought of before,
philosophical all way 'round.
I know why the grass is green
and why the sky is blue.
I know the answers to all the world's questions:
religion, politics; society and family, too.
I have the solutions to all the world's problems:
the rich, the poor; sickness and death.
I know the number of every day.
I know the number of every breath.
I disclose the philosophy of the world
with utmost seriousness on my face.
I know the secret to the universe:
Santa is a hippie from outer space.

Elaine
October 2, 2006

The ocean is an ageless child
with no one to care
but the snow on the ground
and the frost in the air.
Though it needs no air to prove.
no ground to understand.
There's no womb to take its heart,
no heart to take its hand.

The ocean attends the prom of life
with no chaperone;
so it faces the end of all once good
all alone.
The ocean is mournful
for the people that once were there,
like mothers and fathers
who no longer care.

The ocean is a childless child
with no one to play
but the dark-wombed trees of night,
the bright-hearted stars of day.
People seem to abandon the ocean.
Who's to understand why?
… But the trees of the land
and the stars in the sky.

You'd think someone would seize the infinite;
hold the ocean, thus.
There is only one of it
and billions of us.
The ocean is a person
only ocean people understand
with no dam to hold up its person,
no person to give a damn

The ocean is this timeless person
with no time to try,
though it timed the land's beating heart.
It tried the wombs of the sky.
Salt water seems to come from nowhere -
a mysterious start.
Then it leaves the earth's womb
and breaks the clouds' hearts.

Someone out there loves the ocean.
It waits for that someone.
Though everyone else just buries it alive
and makes it feel like no one.
The ocean is the desert's distant son,
the fisherman's lost daughter
with its soul of dead fish
and its eyes of salt water.

Understand the someone that is the ocean
with no one to understand
but the heart of the sky
and the womb of the land.
The ocean is a motherless child
unlike the others;
the ocean is an orphan
with two mothers.

Friday the thirteenth of October
Elaine
2006

Flowers don’t snuggle in the snow.
Children don't romp in smoke and flame.
Tragedy lies to prove just what we see.
And liars bomb what really is with blame.

The house fire on the city's north side
crackled death's desire;
as the fate that brought out the worst in life,
brought out the worst in fire.
The energy that keeps us warm,
the mercy that gives us light,
sparks and snaps its fiercest mood
around the shadow of midnight.

A third-floor, three bedroom
apartment without cold light or heat
Only keeps a houseful of kids
and their mother off the street.
But they were still homeless
as the dead poets sing and swear,
for a house is not a home unless
love and respect live there.

Love and respect smile within
Mother Accident's frowning eyes.
She fretted like a sad-eyed bulldog
whose strength wanes as she cries.
So strong yet able to do nothing
for her babies inside.
Like a wolf cub howling -
powerful and powerless, she cried.

Love and respect - mere legend
for her eight baby soul free-ers.
For the rest poverty shackled up
and gave it to their tears.
The poor aren't rich. That's neither
stereotype nor statistic;
that's a bit of life. That, my friend,
is called being realistic.

Thus, conventional realism claims
to be poor means to be…
poor means to be a statistic;
that's not what it means to me.
It means rich in soul. That,
one-size-fits-all respect can't handle.
Doubt, denial leaves meaningful lives
at the mercy of candles.

Prove your point. Burn little candles;
spit, sparkle, flicker and flame.
You can't take away their little faces,
and their little names.
Baby souls are as strong as beetles,
as pretty as flowers.
You can cut their electricity;
you can't take their power.

They can do anything, anything
hearts and souls are made of.
They can teach deep gloom to play.
They can teach prejudice to love.
They watch like a black and white rabbit
crouching in the grass -
watch out for doubt, watch out for pride.
When mood strikes, think fast!

The bribery of tragedy
just tries to change who they are.
But they trust the worth of their lives
and death's just a duller star.
Tragedy tries to give them
a changed perspective on their souls.
It bribes them with heaven
in order to gain control.

But they're living souls
and not even fire can take that away,
not with gates of pearl or harps of gold.
Ghetto angels they will stay.
They de-crown royal kings that assume
the Royal Bank invents love.
The make believe kind of respect
can be so, so expensive.

That kind buys money, buys slums
and chateaus in the big city.
Take time to talk to the butterflies
for the sake of good pity.
Take time to kiss the pink-nosed cat
sleeping in the odds and ends drawer.
Take time to buy a smoke detector
for a family that's poor.

Pennies never see the moon
peeking out behind the apple tree;
one-size-fits-all haloes never fit
tired and hungry bumble bees.
The daisy puts the kettle on
for her black and yellow friends;
butterfly fairy takes time to hug
and climb buttercup stem.

Untie the pure joy entangled
in everyday stress situations -
getting soaked in gushing rain
before you reach the bus station.
Just cover your head with a newspaper
and then you will see
how terrible and wonderful
gushing rains of life can be.

Unscramble the language of bigotry
that rapes the front page.
Stories of a working family
tickles cynical hearts with rage.
Nine kids, one mother; three-bedroom
apartment, no electricity,
The fatal flicker of a wax fate:
That, my friend, is poverty.

Regard a forty-year-old mother
and a three-month-old girl
as their days stand right at
the edge of the entire world.
There, blueberries meet dogberries.
Dogs' tails wag at gods loitering about.
The fist of fate's an iron cage,
but somehow they made it out.

Without bad news on TV
or leather bound bible in hand,
tame the owl and the dove
for not even wisdom and love understand…
understand hope when there is none.
They prayed good news would find them.
Sure, life found them all right,
but it left six children behind them.

Sympathy's Police Department,
investigate this Godless Crime;
put TV gods and devils in jail,
they pulled a prophetic one this time.
My god your god, where were they
when all of this was going on?
And TV devil, go to hell,
rot in bad news. Be good. Be gone.

But sensitive ears of children
sense voices of all spirits,
both the good ones and bad ones
in the fiercest fires, they hear it.
One gulps with conscious, "Humankind
has done this terrible thing
not raining leaves of autumn,
nor showers of flowers of spring."

Humans always have a point to prove -
prove souls small, prove numbers strong.
And it takes a lot more than a strong soul
to prove that they're wrong.
'Y'aint nuffin 'less yer sumfin."
Those selfish point-provers and their money
punish poor kids for being poor kids.
That's no accident, honey."

"But what am I? I'm not human?"
asked the spirit of one man
who ran to the third floor, crawled through smoke
on frightened knees, brave hands.
He grabbed a screaming child's arm
and dragged him - dead run - outside.
Though he saved those precious arms,
more precious screams were inside.

The dead living spirits stretching
their necks to the sun
like a bulging-eyed green frog
reaching beyond his knotted tree stump.
Death is so much more than what we see.
Life is so much less than what we hide.
Life died within one man.
Defeated, his own soul died.

"We're burning," cried the others.
Neighbours listened, watched helplessly.
More souls died that night than bodies,
though six little breaths were freed -
freed from the worry of what people do
and what people say;
the cold basements, sleeping on couches
that we live everyday.

And heaven bless the chosen
little ones who damned hell that night.
A fire fighter rescued one child
with a ladder and a fight.
Young life appeared at a window
begging a similar fate.
Neighbours held out a blanket, "Jump!"
The child's spirit would not wait.

He faded away to play with
the beauty that called him home.
It's a home of angels
like no living soul had ever known.
Real souls, real angels;
Soul angels, animal angels here, there;
Buttercup souls, dragonfly souls,
kitten souls everywhere.

Buttercup angels, dragonfly
angels, kitten angels sing.
It's a world of laughter where
angels and souls are the same thing.
This home teaches "never doubt"…
myself, my enemies, my friends
when six children die in a house fire
in Chicago's working-poor end.

Cook County's medical
Examiner identified the dead:
"A fourteen-year-old, a twelve-year-old,
a child of six." he said;
two three-year-olds pretty as partridgeberries
picked September three,
like autumn's little angels
falling like leaves from life's cold tree.

Some assume those dead children
will never breathe the life of the sun.
Neither will they. They take it for granted.
So they're the dead ones.
Uninspired, their snow provides no bed;
their dead sparrow sings no song.
Those who have everything, truly have nothing.
That's where they're wrong.

I know how it feels to be poor,
to have as little as they do,
to be a child of a big family,
societal neglect, too.
I know, too, how rich I was,
to feel the riches of the sun.
The well-off are rare so well-off;
Hark! the underprivileged ones.

They lack the riches of patience, vision.
All that money keeps them poor.
Just those who have just nothing
know what just nothing is good for.
Big round pumpkins, small round pebbles -
many things seem like nothing.
But nothing is just nothing.
Everything is much something.

It's a universe that tells its dusts
to fend for themselves
when some of its children have nothing
and can't fend for themselves.
Status threw them away
and it's absolutely terrible.
Life really is just a lie.
Life really is unbearable.

Tragedy proved its lies well.
Liars prove their philosophies bad:
No breath of dust can be happy
in a big world that's so sad.
Respect tiny, empty hands.
Don't reject tiny, empty hands.
Like that spoiled guy on TV,
he gets everything he ever can.

What does it take to be
an important part of the world?
Do you have to be a boy?
Can you never be a girl?
Do you have to be rich?
Or can you be poor?
Do you have to work at the bank?
Or can you work at the corner store?

Must you have princess skin
of soft Peach Asiatic Lily?
And a mouth as full, round and warm
as an African baby?
Or can you be as weird looking
as The Proboscis Monkey?
Can you be black? Can you be white?
Can I be who I am? Me.

Terrible things are self-doubts.
Is it okay to be on welfare?
Terrible things are feelings.
Is it okay to be in a wheelchair?
Is it okay to be a single mother
when the mother of integrity sings?
Or is everyone who's different
every one of those terrible things?

Can you be an artist,
a musician or a plumber?
Someone told me you can't be you.
Hey man, that's a real bummer.
So you have to be someone else,
someone else thinks you should be.
But what's wrong with you being you?
What's wrong with me being me?

Must you be a filer of evil taxes?
Can you be a writer of cheesy poems?
Do you have to work out of a public office?
Or can you work out of your own home?
Can you be a flipper of burgers?
Or must you sell insurance instead?
Is money more important than character?
Or is it all in our heads?

Do you have to go to church?
Do you have to go to clubs?
Or do you have to go to their church?
Do you have to go to their clubs?
You have to do what they do.
Getting a life, they call it.
Is body more important than soul?
Or is it all in our wallets?

Do you have to go to school?
Do you have to go to work?
Do you have to go to their school?
Do you have to go to their work?
Touch the things that touch the spirit
- red fox sniffing in the grass.
Is mind more important than soul?
Or is that all in the past?

All I know is:

Those kids didn't ask for any of this --
bombed by poverty's truth, but all is not lost.
For as long as children play in the fire,
flowers grow in the frost.

Elaine Davis
September  25, 2006