1
" For JennAt 12 years old I started bleeding with the moonand beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts.I fought with my knuckles white as stars,and left bruises the shape of Salem.There are things we know by heart,and things we don't. At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke.I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos,but I could never make dying beautiful.The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myselfveins are kite strings you can only cut free.I suppose I love this life,in spite of my clenched fist.I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree,and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers,and I wonder if Beethoven held his breaththe first time his fingers touched the keysthe same way a soldier holds his breaththe first time his finger clicks the trigger.We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.But my lungs rememberthe day my mother took my hand and placed it on her bellyand told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat.And I knew life would tremblelike the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek,like a prayer on a dying man's lips,like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone…just take me just take meSometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much,the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood.We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways,but you still have to call it a birthday.You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recessand hope she knows you can hit a baseballfurther than any boy in the whole third gradeand I've been running for homethrough the windpipe of a man who singswhile his hands playing washboard with a spoonon a street corner in New Orleanswhere every boarded up window is still painted with the wordsWe're Coming Backlike a promise to the oceanthat we will always keep moving towards the music,the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain.Beauty, catch me on your tongue. Thunder, clap us open.The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks.Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert,then wake us washing the feet of pregnant womenwho climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun.I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun.I know the heartbeat of his mother.Don't cover your ears, Love.Don't cover your ears, Life.There is a boy writing poems in Central Parkand as he writes he movesand his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart,and there are men playing chess in the December coldwho can't tell if the breath rising from the boardis their opponents or their own,and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subwayswearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn,and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrunwith strip malls and traffic and vendorsand one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it. Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect.I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.But every ocean has a shorelineand every shoreline has a tidethat is constantly returningto wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones,to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave riverthat has to run through the center of our heartsto find its way home. "
5
" I’M LOSING FAITH IN MY FAVORITE COUNTRYThroughout my life, the United States has been my favorite country, save and except for Canada, where I was born, raised, educated, and still live for six months each year. As a child growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, I aggressively bought and saved baseball cards of American and National League players, spent hours watching snowy images of American baseball and football games on black and white television and longed for the day when I could travel to that great country. Every Saturday afternoon, me and the boys would pay twelve cents to go the show and watch U.S. made movies, and particularly, the Superman serial. Then I got my chance. My father, who worked for B.F. Goodrich, took my brother and me to watch the Cleveland Indians play baseball in the Mistake on the Lake in Cleveland. At last I had made it to the big time. I thought it was an amazing stadium and it was certainly not a mistake. Amazingly, the Americans thought we were Americans.I loved the United States, and everything about the country: its people, its movies, its comic books, its sports, and a great deal more. The country was alive and growing. No, exploding. It was the golden age of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American dream was alive and well, but demanded hard work, honesty, and frugality. Everyone understood that. Even the politicians.Then everything changed.Partly because of its proximity to the United States and a shared heritage, Canadians also aspired to what was commonly referred to as the American dream. I fall neatly into that category. For as long as I can remember I wanted a better life, but because I was born with a cardboard spoon in my mouth, and wasn’t a member of the golden gene club, I knew I would have to make it the old fashioned way: work hard and save. After university graduation I spent the first half of my career working for the two largest oil companies in the world: Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. The second half was spent with one of the smallest oil companies in the world: my own.Then I sold my company and retired into obscurity. In my case obscurity was spending summers in our cottage on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka, Ontario, and winters in our home in Port St. Lucie, Florida. My wife, Ann, and I, (and our three sons when they can find the time), have been enjoying that “obscurity” for a long time. During that long time we have been fortunate to meet and befriend a large number of Americans, many from Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation.” One was a military policeman in Tokyo in 1945. After a very successful business carer in the U.S. he’s retired and living the dream. Another American friend, also a member of the “Greatest Generation”, survived The Battle of the Bulge and lived to drink Hitler’s booze at Berchtesgaden in 1945. He too is happily retired and living the dream. Both of these individuals got to where they are by working hard, saving, and living within their means. Both also remember when their Federal Government did the same thing.One of my younger American friends recently sent me a You Tube video, featuring an impassioned speech by Marco Rubio, Republican senator from Florida. In the speech, Rubio blasts the spending habits of his Federal Government and deeply laments his country’s future. He is outraged that the U.S. Government spends three hundred billion dollars, each and every month. He is even more outraged that one hundred and twenty billion of that three hundred billion dollars is borrowed. In other words, Rubio states that for every dollar the U.S. Government spends, forty cents is borrowed. I don’t blame him for being upset. If I had run my business using that arithmetic, I would be in the soup kitchens. If individual American families had applied that arithmetic to their finances, none of them would be in a position to pay a thin dime of taxes.In this connection I witnessed what I consider to be t "
10
" I couldn't get to sleep. The book lay nearby. A thin object on the divan. So strange. Between two cardboard covers were noises, doors, howls, horses, people. All side by side, pressed tightly against one another. Boiled down to little black marks. Hair, eyes, voices, nails, legs, knocks on doors, walls, blood, beards, the sound of horseshoes, shouts. All docile, blindly obedient to the little black marks. The letters run in mad haste, now here, now there. The a's, f's, y's, k's all run. They gather together to create a horse or a hailstorm. They run again. Now they create a dagger, a night, a murder. Then streets, slamming doors, silence. Running and running. Never stopping. "
― Ismail Kadare , Chronicle in Stone
12
" WILL WORK FOR FOOD © 2013 Lyrics & Music by Michele Jennae
There he was with a cardboard sign,
Will Work For Food
Saw him on the roadside,
As I took my kids to school
I really didn’t have time to stop,
Already running late
Found myself pulling over,
Into the hands of fate
The look in his eyes was empty,
But he held out his hand
I knew my kids were watching,
As I gave him all I had
My heart in my throat I had to ask,
“What brought you here?”
He looked up and straight into my eyes,
I wanted to disappear.
CHORUS
He said… Do you think I really saw myself,
Standing in this light
Forgotten by society,
After fighting for your rights
WILL WORK FOR FOOD,
WILL DIE FOR YOU
I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER,
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO
v. 2 He put the money in his pocket,
Then he took me by the hand
Thank you dear for stopping by,
I am sure that you have plans
He nodded toward my children,
Watching from afar
It’s time they were off to school,
You should get in the car
My eyes welled up and tears fell down,
I couldn’t say a word
Here this man with nothing to his name,
Showing me his concern
I knew then that the lesson,
That today must be taught
Wouldn’t come from textbooks,
And it could not be bought
CHORUS
He said… Do you think I really saw myself,
Standing in this light Forgotten by society,
After fighting for your rights
WILL WORK FOR FOOD,
WILL DIE FOR YOU
I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER,
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO
v. 3 I told him then that I had a job,
That I could give him work
And in return he’d have a meal,
And something to quench his thirst
He looked at me and shrugged a bit,
And followed me to the car
We went right over to a little café,
Just up the road not too far
After I ordered our food he looked at me,
And asked about the kids
“Shouldn’t these tykes be in school,
And about that job you said.”
“Your job,” I said, “is to school my girls,
In the ways of the world
Explain to them your service,
And how your life unfurled.”
He said… Do you think I really saw myself,
Standing in this light
Forgotten by society,
After fighting for your rights
WILL WORK FOR FOOD,
WILL DIE FOR YOU
I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER,
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO
v. 4He wasn’t sure quite what to do,
As he ate his food
And began to tell us all about his life…
the bad… the good.
He wiped his own tears from his eyes,
His story all but done
My girls and I all choked up,
Hugged him one by one
Understanding his sacrifice,
But not his current plight
We resolved then and there that day,
That for him, we would fight.
We offered him our friendship,
And anything else we had
He wasn’t sure how to accept it,
But we made him understand
LAST CHORUS
That we had not really seen before,
Him standing in the light
No longer forgotten by us,
We are now fighting for his rights
He had… WORKED FOR FOOD
HE HAD ALL BUT DIED FOR ME AND YOU
NOT FORGOTTEN ANYMORE
BUT STILL A SOLDIER IN TRUST "
― Michele Jennae
19
" Momo would have been delighted, except that most of the newcomers had no idea how to play. All they did was sit around looking bored and sullen and watching Momo and her friends. Sometimes they deliberately broke up the other children's games and spoiled everything. Squabbles and scuffles were frequent, though these never lasted long because Momo's presence had its usual effect on the newcomers, too, so they soon started having bright ideas themselves and joining in with a will. The trouble was, new children turned up nearly every day, some of them from distant parts of the city, and one spoilsport was enough to ruin the game for everyone else. But there was another thing that Momo couldn't quite understand - a thing that hadn't happened until very recently. More and more often these days, children turned up with all kind of toys you couldn't really play with: remote-controlled tanks that trundled to and fro but did little else, or space rockets that whizzed around on strings but got nowhere, or model robots that waddled along with eyes flashing and heads swiveling but that was all. They were highly expensive toys such as Momo's friends had never owned, still less than Momo herself. Most noticeable of all, they were so complete, down to the tiniest detail, that they left nothing at all to the imagination. Their owners would spend hours watching them, mesmerized but bored, as they trundled, whizzed, and waddled along. Finally, when that palled, they would go back to the familiar old games in which a couple of cardboard boxes, a torn tablecloth, a molehill or a handful of pebbles were quite sufficient to conjure up a whole world of make believe. "
20
" In Woolrich's crime fiction there is a gradual development from pulp to noir. The earlier a story, the more likely it stresses pulp elements: one-dimensional macho protagonists, preposterous methods of murder, hordes of cardboard gangsters, dialogue full of whiny insults, blistering fast action. But even in some of his earliest crime stories one finds aspects of noir, and over time the stream works itself pure.In mature Woolrich the world is an incomprehensible place where beams happen to fall, and are predestined to fall, and are toppled over by malevolent powers; a world ruled by chance, fate and God the malign thug. But the everyday life he portrays is just as terrifying and treacherous. The dominant economic reality is the Depression, which for Woolrich usually means a frightened little guy in a rundown apartment with a hungry wife and children, no money, no job, and desperation eating him like a cancer. The dominant political reality is a police force made up of a few decent cops and a horde of sociopaths licensed to torture and kill, whose outrages are casually accepted by all concerned, not least by the victims. The prevailing emotional states are loneliness and fear. Events take place in darkness, menace breathes out of every corner of the night, the bleak cityscape comes alive on the page and in our hearts.(" Introduction" ) "
