The Good Portion

For years I seldom read poetry unless it was required it of me. But e. e. cummings was different. I was introduced to one of his poems in high school and raced home to devour the rest of the collection. I no longer have the book and had all but forgotten it until recently, when a friend posted a reading of this poem - the very one that got me to buy the first book of poetry I ever owned: i carry your heart with me i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) a...

Bullying is as old as humanity, or nearly so. That ancient book of Genesis tells us the first recorded human ever born bullied and murdered the second recorded human ever born. I came along many millenia later and was bullied for much of my childhood and teen years, and for a very brief time (my mind travels back to eighth grade,when I had my one shot at popularity and became a monster) I played the bully myself. Back then adults, like Charlie Brown's teachers, were muffled voices, and, outside of the classroom, wholly uninvolved in the politics of the playground. We kids were on our own - at least that was my experience. I never told a soul or complained to anyone. There was a code, only spoken when broken. I don't know who invented it, or in what century, but to tattle was a worse crime than bullying itself , removing whatever respect might have remained. I challenged a girl to a fight once. It was to take place after school. I'd been picked on one too many times. Bu...

Tango One heart yearns, tired tentatively stepping building, growing, keening, wailing grieving, hoping again to love. It rises up, old brokenhearted to dance circling, soaring aching, climbing, mounting stairs, again, to heaven.