Happiness

I am a gurgling stream, slipping down an incline

I am young, because I’m born again each spring

I am a deer, shy, quick, and wild, slipping out of view

I am a transparent, crystalline blue, never murky

I am from the mountain, and never will stop moving

I am shiny rocks picked up by children for their collections

I am happiness, made to be assaulted by man’s inhumanity

War Song

War is the devil’s entertainment,

            explosions his demented giggles.

Our soldiers are his toys,

            tossed, dumped, tortured, maimed.

Coming home, will things get better?

            probably not, no not at all

The cancer has already chewed on your heart

            and your uniform attacks you when you open the closet.

Stay far far away,

            for the devil wishes to play today.

The Anatomy of Terror

Terrorist and extremist groups in the Middle East.  Child Soldiers and civil war in Africa.  Communism and nuclear warheads in Asia.  Drug cartels and gangs in South America.  Harsh memories and fear from the past in Europe.  Homelessness and corruption in the United States of America.  Ours is a world in turmoil.

            Chaos swarms throughout the Middle East.  Egypt has recently experienced violent revolts and rebellions asking for their president to step down.  Iran’s leaders claim that their nuclear capabilities are peaceful, yet many nations and organizations have expressed their discomfort over Iran having nuclear technology.  Iraq is attempting to rebuild after years of bombings and gunfire ripping their cities to shreds.  Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain is the current hiding place for extremist groups and their leaders, such as Osama bin Laden.  The United States of America’s “War on Terror” has been a controversial one, and current president, Barack Obama promises that he will start to pull troops out of the Middle East, and leave the innocent citizens of the area to fight for themselves.

            Africa’s current situation is probably the most ghastly and horrendous of all.  National flags with AK-47’s on them.  Rebel groups brandish these weapons of choice.  Bombings, civil war, riots, and the regime of oppressive governments cover Africa like a plague.  But what really murders one’s soul, is the story of Child Soldiers.  African rebel groups are no longer receiving support from a population tired of war.  In order for these groups to replenish their ranks, they abduct children from villages, orphanages, and schools across Africa.  (The preferred age for these Child Soldiers is 8-14 when they are small enough to sneak into orphanages and schools, yet they are big enough to carry their AK-47.)  These children are forced to kill.  Their peers are killed before them for crying or talking back.  The Child Soldiers are taught how to kill efficiently, and they do, for no one wants to kill a child.  Starvation, dehydration, and battles for resources silently pull the African people to death.

            North Korea has on numerous occasions threatened the United States of America with their nuclear warheads.  The communist government enslaves the population to work in factories and on farms.  They kill those who do not obey.  No one is allowed out of the country.  North Korea has also harassed South Korea with shellings and supposed sinking of battleships.  China’s government censors the Internet and any form of media in the country, also controlling their population under communism, and surrounding their country with an iron curtain.

            Drug cartels and gangs are the government of fifty percent of South American countries, unofficially.  Drugs control everything.  Poverty and mass corruption are the ruling forces in South America.

            The fear of the past is very real and pertinent to this day in Europe.  On most occasions, a look into the past is a very painful one, as World War II is still a fresh wound.  Nazis managed to gain control starting in impoverished Germany, and meticulously slither into other countries, while destroying and wounding countries that tried to stop them.  Jews were killed violently, soullessly, and systematically.  Although the past is grim in Europe it has perhaps the brightest future of all other areas of the world.

            Slowly yet steadily, and beyond the view of most, one of the greatest world powers is beginning to sink; the United States of America.  The Roman Empire comes to mind.  The United States of America has amassed such a huge and depressing deficit, most Americans today can’t tell you how much their great country is in debt, nor do they want to.  An end is not in sight at all, and many wonder if America will ever come out of debt.  Most frightening of all about the deficit though, is who we are in debt to.  Two of the three countries that we owe the most to are the USA’s allies, yet one of them is not.  The USA owes most of its debt to China, a communist country who most Americans view with slight distaste, distrust, and a little bit of fear.  Furthermore, America’s once great economy is falling quickly, and while it falls, the level of homelessness and hunger rises.  To add to the slight fears in Americans’ hearts, their elected officials usually never do anything with the country in mind, but their own agendas.

            The world is falling apart.  I do not mean to be a dooms-dayer, nor am I trying to say that the end of the world is near.  The point I am merely trying to get across is that the world needs new priorities.  The world’s population needs to be able to give to make things better.  The world needs new leaders that will be firm and courageous, and the world needs to slowly start turning in a new direction.

The Tradition of Prejudice

Tradition: noun, a custom or belief passed within families or other groups from one generation to another.[1]  Prejudice: noun, a strong feeling against something.[2]  Strong prejudice has always been a tarnish, or to some a beautification, of the south.  Prejudice is simply an idea.  An idea passed from generation to generation.  It’s an idea of hatred, isolation, discrimination, and disconcertment.  Some people would rather live with ignorance in their hearts then love and understanding.

                Prejudice is a tradition.  Children do not come into the world hating others of a different race, religion, ethnicity, lifestyle, or past.  Young children don’t hate; they love.  A dictionary is not needed to know the true definition of love; merely the presence of a young child can describe the virtue in its fullness.  The next generation, the next lawyers, politicians, doctors, and teachers of the world must be taught prejudice to have it.  That is why it is a tradition.  It is a custom or belief passed from one generation to the next.  Traditions can be ended.

                “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.”[3]  In its most hateful, horrendous, and clear form, prejudice can be horrifying.  In 1955, a fourteen-year-old Negro boy visiting family in Money, Mississippi was tortured and killed, to be found later in the Tallahatchie River.  Two men, Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam would eventually be arrested and tried for murder.  An all-white jury acquitted them.  In an interview published in Look magazine three months after their acquittal, Bryant and Milam described how they kidnapped, tortured, and finally murdered Emmett Till.  The third white man and woman involved in the kidnapping and subsequent events were never identified or apprehended.[4]

                If you would, with me imagine this: you are a teenage boy in an unfamiliar and humiliating environment in which you must practically bow to any white person.  Two burley men with guns and flashlights drag you from your uncle’s shack in the middle of the night for whistling at a white woman.  After you are literally dragged across the rocky ground to their truck, you are thrown (again, literally) into the bed.  The men get into the truck where two other silhouettes are waiting- one male and one female.  Gravel and dust spit from below the tires of the truck as it accelerates away from your screaming and crying uncle, aunt, and cousins.  These four people drive far out into the Mississippi countryside where your screams won’t be heard.  (And even if they were heard, no one would help you anyway simply because you were born with brown skin rather then white.)  The men slice you with knives.  They castrate you.  They whip your bare back.  The women watches with an evil smile tickling her lips.  Finally, the men attack your face with a baseball bat and then tie a noose around your neck with barbed wire.  You’re excited as they shoot a bullet through the back of your skull.  One end of the barbed wire is attached to a cinderblock, and the other is wrapped around your neck.  Your lifeless body is thrown into the Tallahatchie River.

                All because of prejudice.  All because of hate and racism.  Why?  It’s a one-word-question, yet it’s hard to answer.  You did this to an adolescent because he’s brown and you’re white?  It’s disgusting.  Life destroyed for a reason that sounds ridiculous even if you were the killer.  “Bigotry or prejudice in any form is more than a problem; it is a deep-seated evil within our society.”[5]  Emmett Till’s story is my definition of prejudice.

                There are ways to destroy the nasty monster lurking in our homes, schools, and government, though.  One way: destroy ignorance.  “Prejudice is the child of ignorance.”[6]  Teach people the wonders of their enemy.  Instruct them on their enemy’s successes, downfalls, heartbreaks, troubles, and culture.  Another way: end the tradition.  Even if you are prejudiced against one group of people or another, don’t teach your children of your hate.  Why show them the horrifying ideologies and feelings of the world they have barely entered when you could be teaching them of love, hope, and charity?  My goal for you: kill the demon the killed Emmett Till.

---

[1] Definition found on page 332 of A Student’s Dictionary (ã2004, The Dictionary Project, Inc.  Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482)

[2] Definition found on page 249 of A Student’s Dictionary (ã2004, The Dictionary Project, Inc.  Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482)

[3] Maya Angelou

[4] Historical Note (with slight alterations) found in Mississippi Trial, 1955- Chris Crowe

[5] Judith Light

[6] William Hazlitt

The Song of Crying

Remember my child,

Don’t cry until the time,

When crying is the wild.

The wolves shall sing,

And the owls hoot,

Until the night, they bring.

The night shall hide the tears,

Of your day’s guilt and sorrow,

And tells you of your fans’ cheers.

For that’s what the night was made for,

Be it made for the all of the crying,

Because crying can make you cherish more.

Of its daughters and sons,

There be the quiet creatures,

That a singing creature shuns.

The insects, the moon,

And all of the others,

Is what the dark can cocoon.

Then the night after such,

Remember, it doesn’t, your tears,

Even if they might have been much.

And when the morning dawn,

Better you shall feel,

As you no longer are the (k)night’s pawn.

But remember my child,

Don’t cry until the time,

When crying is the wild.

Such A Small Casket

Such a small casket, we lay in the dirt,

For worms and moles and beetles to hurt.

Such a small casket can make grown men cry,

And such a small casket makes her mother want to die.

From the prognosis, we knew that in the end she would go,

But when we talked eye-to-eye, I could never tell her so.

The doctors, they tried, I know that they did,

But why couldn’t they save such a pure, innocent kid?

Now my sister is gone, she was only five,

And, oh, how I wish that she were still alive.

I remember when she nearly counted the stars,

She got all the way to eighty-ten, and in the darkness, she had no more scars.

Though the battle was short, it was extremely intense,

But now, at her funeral, I pay recompense,

For all the times that I was not a loving brother,

A child so forgiving, there will never be another.

Cancer’s the devil, this I have concluded,

For what else could kill a five-year-old girl, whose thoughts weren’t polluted?

In fact, she even still knew, stupid’s the s-word.

Such a sweet voice, thousands will never have heard.

“I love you, I love you,” I wish I could go back and say,

On the day when her eyes closed, and in death did she lay.

But now it’s too late, so I must really try,

To get to heaven to see her, and tell her what I meant at the hospital when all I did was cry.

Dedicated to anyone who has lost a loved one to cancer.

Someday

I painted a picture with my tears.

It was a picture of dark clouds, rain, and thunder.

It was a picture of an ocean that had been created by the tears, sorrows, and pains of humanity.

It was a picture of my own river of life’s little torments.

My river contributed to the mighty sea, as its beaches were continually being swallowed by new troubles added to the ocean of tears.

But soon my river, which has flooded over, will turn into an insignificant stream. 

But for now, I wallow in my torturous condition hoping that someday my river can turn into a stream.

Someday, someday, someday…