We climb into the cloud forest–
Sleepy trees draped in moss blankets
Slumbering to bird song lullabies
Dreaming of snow covered melodies
Melting into symphonies of spring
Thank you for taking the time to read this post! It first appeared on Twitter here.
Content warning: may be triggering to those that are experiencing emotional or traumatic struggles. Reader discretion is advised.
She started smoking again
Feeling bones by finger curls
And the nauseating hunger
For someone to understand
The hard lumps under skin
And the satisfaction of a visible scapula
Under the crushing, suffocating, smothering
Weight of ten pounds
Against the pull of Earth’s gravitational force
When the greatest ally against one condition
Becomes the pain of another
Hoping that at the end of this cigarette
She will find the cremated remains
Of her claim to have it all under control
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This poem first appeared on Curensea after being written in 2007. I have made a few minor edits.
I chose this poem based on many thoughts coming up for me over my lifetime while living in the United States. I grew up in Virginia and found it strange that I could live next to a Holocaust survivor and then move to a town with an active KKK chapter other kids at the elementary school nonchalantly talked to me about their parents being members of. My parents explained what that meant when I asked. Same with the Neo-nazi rallies in Yorktown, Virginia – you know, that place where we apparently “won the Revolutionary War”. What’s so revolutionary about it anymore now that you allow those kinds of rallies there? But Virginia did. My parents felt powerless against it because the courts ruled in their favor on the grounds of Freedom Of Speech and Freedom Of Assembly and that was used to argue for social tolerance of intolerance. Now, here we are, being asked to tolerate violence against each other as that too becomes normalized.
It came up through the floorboards,
Zyklon B reaching forward through time
Ripping at our throats,
Forming itself around our nostrils
condensing into blue ice, after being trapped in the cold
of existence.
This depressive state of humanity
Seeming only to slumber in its death
Released the gas upon itself,
Using the world as its chamber
Many can claim their innocence
-besides-
Innocence through ignorance is the best kind
While dictators commence genocidal rampages
Using ill-earned power to rape a people
destroy their very creation of a God,
And yet, for those who are suffering:
The strongest woman I (n)ever met
sat crying at the grand opening of the Holocaust Museum
She surveyed the surrounding young people
Generations too young to remember or know what
She Survived
Walking through in awe of their own misunderstandings
She looked back without a single failed memory
Her arm exposed so everyone could see:
the vining rose tattoo that grew
out of the numbers that changed her life forever
Thank you for reading this poem today. The comments section is reserved for your thoughts. Moderating is only for preventing spam/trolls – I approve as quickly as possible and approval is only needed once to post without moderation on this website.
Hey Everyone!
I now have a channel on Twitch so you have an opportunity to hang out with me while I’m reading antique books, editing photographs, researching photographs, writing, and doing historic document research. As a general warning: my research on primary documents from the 19th and early 20th century can be disturbing. I find out information on what society believed during this time period that may be distressing to some individuals, so viewer discretion is advised.
On occasion I would like to also get our uploading capabilities set such that I can play Steam games with friends, or even Among Us.
Each stream will be titled based on what I am doing. I will get side tracked. In my first stream today I got side tracked with a hand-and-cheek tug-o-war vaudevillian style impromptu comedy performance and it was *fun*. Other interruptions you can expect will include Nyxie playing the piano and Jacob popping into chat.
It’s 2020. I need an excuse to start putting on make up and doing my hair. I need an excuse to start speaking aloud to get used to the sound of my own voice again. I need to interact with human beings outside the house in a way that isn’t potentially life threatening.
I haven’t come up with a streaming schedule yet. Most likely it will be for only a couple hours at a time Monday through Friday. Any weekend hours will be a shocking surprise.
As I work to get this set up, I appreciate patience. At this time, I am limited by frustrations with Spectrum internet being our only option and also *the worst*. Don’t know what I mean?
This is my maximum capability right now.
That’s not really great if I want to interact with people or do much on Twitch. So, we’re working on it. I’m looking forward to being able to interact in real time.
My first stream went live and I hope I didn’t scare too many people away as we were discussing John Cowan, M.D.’s 1915 version of his book “The Science Of A New Life” where we examined an example of the intersection early feminism, the Temperance Movement, the American Eugenics Movement, American Spiritism, Mesmerism, and the many other social movements that were going on prior to the U.S.’s involvement in World War I.
