Bob Dylan Cassius Clay

What to say

A Lot

Remember me
to one
who lives there

Give me a reason to remember
Since memory is precious

Bob Dylan
Cassius Clay

Simple Simon
What to say

A Lot

Fruit of the loom
is fleeting

Sure to beat with
stupor infested serene

Good times killing me
one after another

rolling flowing overpowering
one right after another

oh no, up for air too short

rift, down, above: here it comes
another

Holidays, food, presents
treacherous, times

Here it comes another wave

I can only wait, not long enough.

Nothing Ever Hurt You

Do you remember when you looked at your baby
and said I will never let anything hurt you

Heroin comes in
and then they can't come near
the house they grew up in
cause it's a trigger

how i hate that word

I want to take it and fling it
into space's black hole

And maybe follow along

Space's black hole
not to think anymore about this
or that

Or YOU

There's a Blanket

I don't understand much of anything
I just feel more than I know

I wish they who don't have kids
would know what it means

when a kid sits on a street with
no home

What do you think?

Let's be tough

Let's not care

much, we did more than enuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-8iK6XifV4
(start the song on youtube and then read the poem)

Ya Shoulda Heard It

I am in a quandary.

I feel like boxing ears.

Hid in the sand ears

I want to resurface them

And say

Lookee

Where ya been

Ain’t you heard of it

Haven’t been touched by it?

Your comments are perplexing

They go something like

They had a choice

They didn’t have to take that first hit

They shoulda coulda done nothing like they did.

They coulda just lived in a perfect world like I did

I did it. They coulda to

They shoulda known better

I think they heard about it like I did 20, 40 years ago.

When I was 14

And ya weren’t born

You shouldn’ta had your head buried in not yet living or being

Cause, I think ya shoulda heard it.

I Must Have Flown the Coop

I guess I must have done something wrong
He says; she says so.

Cradling you in arms
singing praying laughing at your smiles

I must have flown the coop
I must have fried the sun on my head
of thot

I must have fridged my heart to be an ice block
so I couldn't see

I must have written that last blog while you were
drowning

Doesn't matter.

God will; does judge righteously.
He knows and will tell me

Not you who are blessed enough to
not have a child stumble into a railway train on a track

to point a gun to her head and pull the trigger because they can't take the pain

to flail at an eat 'n park and lose a career a whole other life

to drop one's pressure so as to be sure not to return to this life

It's a blessing to come back; to not be gone
But, you haven't had the experience

So, sorry for expecting you to understand,
It's like expecting the color red to see the color blue

If i could reach i could expect to lessen the death sentence

More of our kids would search for help
More of our benefactors would willingly respond and
mete out balm.

The Rebuttal

Facing the death of someone's kid from addiction
Is like grabbing two images embedded in concrete
butted up against one another

One of the dead child
the other of a veil of fog lined with daisies

an image turned around and behind
a monster hovering over the denial
in epic proportions

and I know it but i keep
revolving in denial

saying NO!  affirming NO!

i am just telling you

I just heard from a friend
A person who died
do yu care

I guess it's hard to relate
if yo don't

so I think i am telling you
to react so you don't need to
RELATE

Merry Christmas from Shaws

Free greeting card made with Smilebox

By the Bye

I wasn’t there

you were

lines into your veins

keeping you just alive

I was in the kitchen

stuffing percolating

stirring

You were in the er

perishing

my baby

by the bye

fly ing

home to God

fleeing heroin

starting a step up the ladder

to heaven

forming a coalition with angels gone before

looking down on

them that don’t care

Are You Getting In?!!!!

Getting ready

Buying clothes you might need

Buying shoes and detergent

Trolling aisles in Target

Walmart, Marshalls for shoes.

Are we getting ready for vacation?

Are we getting ready for college? (I wish)

Taking a big long trip

Following the GPS

Getting a tour of the campus (I wish)

Hoping you get in

Will you?

Harvard, Anthropologist, Writer

Are you getting in

Grad school, moot point, graveyard

Are you getting in?

Someone's Lover

Seems like

I think I remember since no one seems to

There are individuals that are dying

Right now.

It seems to fall into the background

Unusually quickly

They are someone’s child

Someone’s lover

Someone’s parent

WE have to wait to get the narcan

Out

We have to wait till they want it

Those who don’t need it

Those who don’t have a parent, child, lover

Who needs it

We Are Here

http://www.weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane-joaquin-bahamas-atlantic-east-coast-bermuda-2015

Well here we are
A hurricane on the East
Fed up Rally, Facing Addiction
on The Mall
and who shows up
Joaquin approaches and it
is justified and synchronized with
how addiction  meddles its string ever
so slight at first but thickening into a rope
of non-hope

But look we are here
not just this year
but every
year
every
life
but tears
tears bonds

I am sure we won't be
silenced by winds or waves
bobbling to shout above the roar

Our kids need HELP!

The Old Laughing Lady

The Old Laughing Lady, probably my only Neil Young song.

This year, addiction came home to roost.

It wasn’t pretty cute anymore.

It was sad

hopeless…it was college years down the drain

college years that never came

or never present for.

Three of you listened to the whore

I wish peter pan were true

we’d jump out the window and

fly away to neverland

a ship at sea with crimson skies

I’d tell the captain to reach

and he would.

Spirits Drifting into Ether

Slowly
Maybe
It might change

you might begin to
notice the young'uns
disappearing

Shows written
Disappearing youth
can't compare the Reality

They go on
disappearing
w/o much ado

vials of hanging liquid
emptied along with
spirits drifting into ether

rivulets spiral down
and out
passing thru

blue runnel
flues into space

U might begin to notice

Frozen Diatribe

Who will we pray for tonight
my ailing country

The sequestered mind
nodding in the corner?

the frozen diatribe unspoken?

Riding their horses
over the land
looking for food
finding dope?

The trees are gone
almost

My country

The quartered sums
of thoughts

The schools shut down

Loans need to be paid

Epi demic
doesn't register
unless it hits home

Immobile Fantasies that seem OK but Aren't

There he is

Sitting there

Immobile

I introverted

Wondering how to swoop in

On what I must do to survive

It will only take

Extreme intervention

For us to make it

The universal life force will have

To intervene.

Who will tell them to.

Pings across centuries

That organize this chaos

And say this can’t

Continue

Without certitude

I Am Pretty Sure

 That Will Kill

Look at you

Now that you are OK

Look at me

Am I OK

I don’t think so

I am pretty sure

I am gonna have

A stroke soon

That will kill

Debilitate

I know I can call

On you, Lord

And it doesn't matter

In the infinite line

That goes on

But, But, But

I wanted to climb Everest

I wanted to photograph and

Draw trees that I love

And You have created.

I wanted to dance on

Waves in coastlines

That registered crinoline

Ribbons across behemoth portal

But,

That’s not just it

I wanted to do

What I wanted to

I didn't want to fight cancer

Didn’t want to fight indifference

Malicious indignation

Pernicious flights into

Subterfuge

Felonious fronts against peaceful

Nights at home by a fire

I wanted to sit on a hill

And float

Above the clouds as i

Assume my throne

Ruffling over waves of French

Threads of silken cloth

I wanted perfect lives

In all my threads

But I got this

I got that

I got sideways glances

Into death

I received maturation

Into truth

It's Not Unusual

Happens All the Time

People imagine from stereotypical visions what my kids who did heroin are like.

It happens all the time….the times we showed up in the emergency rooms and I as a mom was hoping for RESCUE, I was hoping for, no, expecting my child to finally be rescued and sent to salvation. I was expecting understanding from personnel and received disgust.

 I was hoping that the thin thread of hope I had thrown out to the ER expecting that my child would not be shuffled but attended to as a human being who needed rescued,

 It didn’t happen.

I know the dedication of nurses and ER work force. I personally think that education is needed.

Study Finds Addicted Patients More Likely to Recover if Treatment Begins in the ER

My kids are just like yours.  They went to college, they played soccer, and they wrote poems, knitted scarves, invented civilizations with bears and dolls. They hoped to be engineers, veterinarians, anthropologists and then heroin took over.  They were shuffled alright into despair.

All I ask is that the stigma end.

                             

My daughter, who is in a half-way house was in her first Art Show today:

This is why I volunteer for Not One More Pittsburgh. I want to help educate people about the hazards of heroin and how it could happen to your child.  I want to make our community aware of the epidemic.  I want to try to warn YOU so that you can avert the nightmare we went through.

Please join our organization and help.

Not One More Pittsburgh  and consider giving to our organization GoFundMe

Blue Hues

There is a seashore I saw in a dream

It said step here

And go down to the fluid

Grains grow up in my

Thought of you

I waited

You did come

Did you see the color?

It preceded your arrival

Blue hued flues of pillars

Went down to the sand

To the right I looked and

Saw a cliff

Not blue but mud

Perfect frame

How many times do I have to

Travel?

I want to stay in place and have

Your waves come to me.

Cracks and Trains

“There is a crack running down right the front of me”

I can walk out into the waves that blew past the mountain

The port drops off

I get to step into the sky

There I find a cold wait

For the next train

That’s the jist of life

You do and do

You try hard

No one even is looking