‎"..a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage." 1984 by George Orwell

Getting ready for Nanowrimo by writing daily again.  Seems everywhere I turn these days there are reminders of that past life, where I wrote and sold and performed for my bread and butter instead of my current occupation as nurse. Requests to read what I wrote keep confronting me and my desire to still maintain that wall of protection between what was and what is remains still too strong to accommodate. Luckily most of my published work was the throw away kind and published before computer technology made everything written or spoken immutable in form and at the whim of any editing punk for function. Yet it is ironically comforting that I do still exist as a writer on the internet. 

I entered the "New Era" writing contest while living with my foster parents the Urbanawiz’s (people who will ever be my example of what is good about Mormons) and my winning gave them the rights forever to my poems. They re-appeared again a decade later and hence their being readable on the internet. Two of my book reviews reveal more of my prosaic style under JM DeBiasi in archived Alibi issues. It used to be that this far right spiritual publication and this intellectual voice were properly triangulated by a third archived Gay travel article written in my perky, Girrl on the Go voice, but it has fallen off the cyber map now due to increasing age.

A poem written two years ago about a time when I was much clearer about my truth. And now Hilary Hahn, "my timer" is done so I will make breakfast and leave you with this tribute to one of many times I learned the size of the ocean of human misery.

Passive Resistance
We strummed acoustic guitars and sang in groups
Of missing flowers, blowing winds
As they approached with billy clubs and shields
Hurling insults and orders.
We met each others eyes and held ourselves in check with our chain of stares

The biting smoke they unleashed made even my airy soprano
a bit more Janis Joplin.
Our eyes streamed tears and nose dangled mucous tributes to
American justice
And voices quavery with chemical fear
Rose again in growing tides and waves
Unison, "Give Peace a Chance."

Until the boys in blue
roused the angry soldier in one of us
and he became at last what he had yet refused to be
And he rose up into contact with the billy club and shouted something back
and
that’s when the screaming started
and the bruises and the blood and the blame poured out
in American portions, service for one
but plenty for all to share.

I sat unmoving still keeping our three sets of eyes locked
Quietly caging our animal need to run, respond, fight back.
I had three stitches in my chin and two butterflies and my first bald patch on my head
You an armcast, and she with nothing broken
was witch green with healing bruises and a Jimmy Durante nose.
We were the lucky ones
Who knew peace could hurt so much.

Five days later we buried the one who fought, the one who fled
Ourselves quite alive, only our belief in justice was dead.

Read more: http://www.myspace.com/cassandracrow/blog#ixzz12XiORFhT