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Blessed Alzheimer's

He sits on his bed, knuckles twisted like concord trunks fumble with shirt buttons, “Where are we going?” he asks, for the fourth or fifth time. “To the cemetery,” slips past the swell in my throat. “Oh? Who died?” I have to tell him again, “It was Jessie, Grandpa.” His mouth opens silent grief his eyes dip  “Is the funeral today?” This conversation replays all the way there. Full moon shows through the blue and white painted sky. Lavender and yellow daisies cover the casket  of the second wife he has outlived.  Faces of family and friends are all new to him. Each condolence becomes a fresh fracture to blessed Alzheimer’s. He sits, eyes in the past as Beloved Wife is eulogized. Present slips in when her name is said and a new mourning period begins. How many more times today  will his heart be broken?  When he asks tomorrow can I just say Jessie is still in the hospital and let him live in the bliss of dementia?   He’s borne many palls walked with grief squared off with death more than
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Gaza

  A missile strike turns day into night and there's no longer power to turn on the lights in Gaza.   Missiles scream like a woman in the pangs of labor. Sirens scream warnings mothers scream in fear for their children and children scream for their mothers to make this rain of hatred STOP! There's no food to be found. It sits in hundreds of trucks that line entrances leading to Gaza while children starve to death in their mother's arms. Mothers can't halt missiles or manifest food so they look in their children's hungry eyes and lie; "Shhhh go back to sleep. Tomorrow, tomorrow you will eat. Everything will be okay. I am here with you."   At night, children dream of sprouting wings to fly their families to safety. But in daylight they are one winged butterflies still endeavoring to fly.   Israel has destroyed beautiful, sacred temples and historic sites flattened every university. they have removed the Palestinian's past, stolen their present, and destro
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  Shots were fired in Dallas three years before I was born one of the Baby Busters middle child misfit too young for Studio 54 too old for a mosh pit. Raised on a steady diet of television and Tang. Vietnam was a series of black & white images while drawing with crayons. Watergate was background noise while eating TV dinners. Lying on our bellies chins resting in our hands we waited every Sunday for Tinkerbell to let us in to Disney’s wonderful world. We carried The Force in our back pockets and lived the Wonder Years on a white Huffy with the banana seat- nobody had a helmet everybody had a latchkey. After school we watched the Brady Bunch dreamed of Walton's Mountain and grieved for the perfect family. We never wore saddle shoes or poodle skirts nose rings or bellybutton things. Individuality was our conformity.  We were there when Disco drew its last breath and gave birth to  the MTV Generation. We saw the Berlin Wall crumble like Jericho and watched the Gulf War from a comf
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Tomorrow

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  I said, "I'll see you tomorrow."  You nodded weakly and replied, "Tomorrow."    But tomorrow never came.  "Tomorrow" is the last word  I ever heard you say. "Tomorrow," haunts me.    For weeks you said you were ready to go  because you were in so much pain but I was afraid to lose you, Mom,  to lose your wisdom  all your love your strength.    The world is colder without you my poem shivers on the page.  I try to embrace the echoes of your voice that still linger.   Your dog stopped eating no matter what I tried  he just laid  with his head on your purse still full of prescription bottles and butterscotch candies.   Graham buried him this morning under your favorite pine tree.  When your heart stopped for a moment  I thought all the clocks everywhere, would too.   How can the world   continue to spin without you?   I pretend you aren't gone I'm just too busy to call, but yellow roses make me  think of you.    You created stories,  d
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Ideal

Men envy the cigarette pressed between her muted lips. Her body speaks every language breasts high two peaches in the tree most men want to climb.  Skin smooth as the glossy pages of a magazine. She is the yardstick real women stand against the ideal measure of beauty. She infects other women with insecurity. She is the cure for Ethiopia spreading anorexia to devour starvation. Ageless as a vampire, sucking wallets dry in the latest scheme to stay young. She is paper and plastic music and electricity she is air-brushed perfection. (She does not exist.) _________________________________________________ I know that there are women as beautiful as the ones we see in the media, but what we see in magazines and on television, in movies, is a fantasy. Models and actors don't look that way when they roll our of bed.  Personally, I have pretty much accepted myself for what I am and don't strive for perfection the way some women (and men) do.  It was a thrill to meet you at The Mint. Th
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Billionaire

The billionaire walked into the white house and the women marched on Washington. You can't save Eden by electing the serpent. The Devil doesn't have horns and carry a pitchfork. He plays golf and wears Brioni suits. He bathes in narcissism parades naked through superlatives. His words are tipped with a contagion called Hate snd his tongue is a corkscrew that twists out lie after lie. He surrounds himself with fools too weak to speak up or out they carry his ego like a bridal train. The GOP goosestep down Pennsylvania Avenue.     He installed a revolving door in the White House. His nose grows longer every time he opens his mouth. He denies global warming dismantled the EPA A one man hurricane left Puerto Rico out in the rain. He consciously fans the flames of racial tension while likening himself to Abraham Lincoln. He plays the victim quotes Hitler saying the "lying press" is out to get him. On the border children have watched fireworks of freedom from his crowded ke
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