Looking For The Lost Step

All the many, many times I have danced alone because no one could follow the song that danced through my body, leaving my mind in complete acceptance to the dictates of the music as I gyrate, whirl, and spin around the dance floor my feet picking the rhythm and beat of the song they will follow. Fast then slow changing from the lead to the bass then to the rhythm, from the voices, back to the guitar, then to the drums across the floor the music takes me like a comet throuth the universe.

Then, there was a time I found someone who melted into my steps as though they were a part of me, breaking away from me only to return to continue our search for the lost step that brought us together. Into the Zen of the dance, the whole world becomes nothing more then the dance with the music taking our souls to worship God. But she, like the rest, never to dance every dance with me, or I with her, and for she, as each before her in turn has walked off the dance floor without me, and left me to my own devices.

I dream now of this one, the one I wish to dance the rest of my life with, oh she said that she could not, but then she did and turned herself loose to the music, to the dance, and to me. Until she returns to me I will dance along, and when she returns maybe we will find that lost step together.



©Rexx

Looking

Ah, being in love with love

Makes for a hard road to walk

For love is ideal

And relations are real.

Infatuation!

Now that is a burning reality!

A hot burning fire

That consumes every thought.

But as the fire roars down

To its ember, infatuation ends.

And if love is not born

Then the relationship dies.

Cold and dreary are

The dead desires

Of a burnt out

Relationship

 Leaving the jilted lover

An empty husk

A form with no depths,

Filled only with memories.

Memories that light the fires

The burning fires of desires

Desires to find true love

Loving the ideal love.

Ah, the ideal love

Where does it exist?

In whose heart does it burn?

And can it live in reality?

I believe that it can and does

And not just in a dog’s heart.

Just not for all of us,

For some it is delegated to a dream.

Life Worth Living?

The following is a response evoked from me by a question posed: Who get to decide if a life is worth living. A friend of hers had just been told that she had a 50 percent chance of giving birth to a child with Downs Syndrome.

Left for itself to decide, in the overwhelming majority of the time the self will decide that life is more desirable then the most horrible life. I am reminded of an event that occurred some years back when I was taking my Mother and adopted brother for a ride in the Smoky Mountains near Chimney Rock.

The road between Asheville and Lake Lure are laid out just lovely, very, very curvy, but the curves are set such that you can traverse them at a high rate of speed by cutting across the oncoming traffic lane. This was of the time of year that the foliage had died off because of winter and you could see in time to make your decision to cut the corner or not in plenty of time to do it safely.

I was driving my mother’s car, a Chivy Capri, Mom was in the front seat, and Jim, my adopted brother,  was in the back. I was just rocking that car, just under the ability of the car and up near my ability to control it. I do not know about the rest of you folks, but for me, that is when driving becomes enjoyable, when you are at the edge of your abilities, the rest of the time it is just a chore that has to be done. When we got home that afternoon Jim told my Mother that though he had never flown before he felt that he had now. Sorry, I regress.

The point of this story is that as I did a power slid around one long slow curve a cat ran out from the side of the road. Ran right into my left front wheel! I beaked down and in my rearview mirror I could see the cat dragging it’s hindquarters off the road. I backed up to where I was near the cat, and got out of the car. It was in real bad shape, paralyzed from the waist down, an eye half out of its socket, and blood running from its eyes, nose, and mouth.

It was in my mind to put the cat out of the misery that I had put it in, and walked toward it very slowly, speaking in a low, soft tone telling it how sorry I was for the condition I had put it into as I put on the glove I had taken out of the car with me. The cat was having nothing to do with it, as I got close it started dragging its broken, pain racked (I am sure) body away from me. Before I could reach it, it took off way faster then I could run, for believe me I tried to catch up with it as it dragged its broken body away from the mercy I had in my heart. It, at first went of the road, then turned and drug itself along side the road, and found a culvert it could crawl up into, which it did.

No mater now reassuring I tried to sound, no mater now well I tried to make my intention seem, the cat was not going to deliver its life into my hands. What life it had left it was going to spend, as it deemed best, pain racked and taking each of its remaining breath through the bubbles of blood in its nose. It was not given into me the right to decide if its life was worth living or not.

When a parent makes the kind of decision that you have put before us there are more then just the life of the baby involved. If you can afford to pay for all the additional expense that you know will come along with the birth, you have every right to spend your money and time as you see fit. I do not believe that you have the right to expect someone else to pay that expense. Insurance companies have the right to set the criteria of what they will pay for, and what they will not. If you would have the government pay for it you are forcing me, the average Joe taxpayer, to pay for your decision.

Another consideration that the parent must come to terms with is the fact that a child with Downs Syndrome will most likely out live them. I have know sever people who, in their old age, had a Downs Syndrome child, though in their forties, still a child. I used to live next door to some folks in this situation, my children, five and six, played with their boy, and he, near thirties, played at their level. When his parents died, he have to go into a nursing home, his life, as he knew it, was going to change dramatically. He will never know, once they are gone, the love and comfort that they chose to give him as long as they could.

The answer to the question is that life worth living is going to depend upon who answers it.  The cat said “Hell Yes!” I said that he would be better off dead.  The mother who just conceived a child with a big chance of being born with Downs Syndrome will have to decide.  I know what the child would say if it were asked, but the mother she has to decide if she want the rest of her life to be anchored to a six year old.  I will not judge the decision for I see both sides.

A new, forged of the old

I have came to this day,
As a new day,
A parting of the way.

Leaving the old
For the new.
A new, forged of the old.

For this day
Is born of yesterday.
Which was in its turn

Was begat by all the days
That passed before.
This coming after that.

And that leading to this.
Born a child,
Grown to a man.

A man with dreams
Whose plans always
Fell short of the dreams.

Time did show
That this is not
Always bad.

For if you shoot for the stars
And only reach the moon, You are
much higher then the ground.

Now I am to this place,
A place where it seems
I can find all I ever sought.

A man can only take
Himself so far, He need
A woman to make it complete.

An unshared life is no life at all.
But both must desire to share,
Or there is no sharing at all.

Now to this new day of which I spoke,
She looks to share as much
As I wish to share.

So like the Phoenix from its ashes
I take flight into her arms when I find her
Seeking the solace only she give so freely.

But not only in her comfort
But to the adventure we can have
Waiting for our taking.


To My Darling Hoped For One.

© Rexx

Fall To Your Knees

When you fall to your knees
And pray for sympathy,
You have lost my empathy
And gained my enmity.
For I don't give a shit,
And I don’t care a whit
For a whiner.

But if you fall to your knees
And pray for strength
You have gained my respect
And I may fight your fight
As though it were my own.
For sometimes things aren’t as they seem,
And sometimes they are just as they seem.

Someone once sang,
“We came into this world
Like a dog with out a bone’
Riders on the storm”
And we go on a looking
For that bone,
A place of our own.

Looking to fit.
Hoping for a home
We ride the storm
Until we find a haven,
A place of acceptance.
And someone who will
Share that bone.

Don’t come to me
Looking for sympathy
For things are tough all over.
Rather come to me looking
For someone to share a bone.
No pity here, just someone
Who will watch your back.

The only sure thing
You will ever know
You will find in the grave.
Until then only uncertainty,
And confusion
Between periods of certainty.
Knowledge precludes faith.

So drop to your knees and pray,
For wisdom, not knowledge.
For strength, not pity.
For counsel and guidance,
For love to guide your way,
Along the way you must
Live the life you are living.

Never come here thinking
That I will understand,
For I hardly understand my
Own way, let along yours.
Your way is your way to chose
And remember, not to choose
Is to choose!

So fall to your knees and pray.

Yes, I do Choose

Yes I choose, but sometimes the only choice is to endure.

Sometimes thoughts unbidden cloud my mind, and leave no choice rather than to let them fly their course. And feelings, un-invoked, wash over me sometimes like a sea. I am not an island, so self contained, that some choices cannot be forced upon me, some choices are no more than a Hobson choice. Yes I choose, and I think, and I feel, but I am not always the genesis of thoughts that runs through my mind.

Satisfaction , like comfort, is always fleeting. No more then obtained before it is gone to be sought again. I eat until I am satisfied, then hunger leads me to once again seek satisfaction. I find my comfort in my bed, but toss and turn all night leaving the spot that has become uncomfortable to seek it elsewhere. What suited us at one time is no longer the attraction it was, and we look to change things more to our suiting. The only thing certain in life is change.

I would rather do this than that, but circumstances conspire such that I must do that and let this go the way of an unfulfilled desire. I love her, but she does not love me, she loves me but I do not love her. Frustration not of my choosing, but of my choices. But really, do I choose who to love? Is that a freedom given unto men? Or is it the arrow in Cupid’s bow that decides?

I don’t like my job, it is a job I chose, and I can choose to leave it. But can I choose not to pay the rent, make the car payments, buy the groceries for my child? Must I not, at more times then not, do that which, if left to my rathers, I would choose not to do? The road before me chooses the way much more than I do, for I can only choose between the choices put before me. And each decision casts a long shadow into the future.

A decision to go to college or not, to marry or not, to be a Doctor, Lawyer, or an Indian Chef all lays out a different path. To choose is to determine what choices will be placed before you. So what freedom do you have been what you would want to be? A child born to a coal miner his path will be different then the path of a child born to a movie actor. Yes, some coal miner’s children become movie actors, but how many movie actors’ children become coal miners?

You are shaped and formed by every experience in the path you walk. Hard times, for some, shatter them into thefts, or welfare dependents. Easy time is the ruination of others. Those same hard or easy times yet for other build a foundation for success. Maybe not in a way they would have chosen if the choice had been theirs to make, but one that they, and those who know them, are proud they have found. This is where the adage, “The man does not pick the job, the job picks the man” comes from.

What is the difference between the doctor/lawyer and the theft/welfare cheat? This is not to say that all those who are on welfare are undeserving of the charity they receive. Well let me rephrase that, for no one is deserving of charity. To deserve one must fulfill a bargain, the worker is deserving of his pay, the employer deserving of the labor he pays for, but the man watching the work is not deserving neither the worker’s pay, nor the employer’s money.

Both, however, should be free to give to the non-worker if it is their free decision to do so, that is their choice. But when the government takes if from both the employer and the worker and give it to the non-worker, that is theft. For the only choice given to the employer and the worker is to give to the non-worker or go to jail or die in resisting the government.

But back to the question, what is the difference between the different outcomes, between the one who becomes a carpenter respected for his labor, and the decision he had made when the choices were put before him, and the bad check writer who decided that his need and wants are greater than the bank’s whose money he defrauded? They both start out on a path not of their choosing, they were born to whom they were born, and where and when they were born. Choices that they did not and could not chose were presented to them.

Nature or nurture? Your genes or your environment? What of the brothers that both were loved, went to the same school, and killed their parents? When next door all the children lived model lives. And consider President Clinton and his brother Roger, what explains the difference? Genes are demonstrable not the answer. Just as sure, as the Coal Miner’s Daughter shows, the environment is not the answer.

The answer must lie within the mind, the soul if you will, of the individual. According to their personality they chose between the choices presented to them, and react to them in the manner that their heart leads them. One to stay in school, another to sell drugs on the street. One to quite selling and using drugs, another to kill to keep his business. One to do their homework, another to think that school is a waste of time.

As we go through live on the path that God has put us upon we are shaped by our experiences, and it is our experiences that lead to or away form God.

Jeremiah 18-19:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words." So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Then the word of the LORD came to me: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? says the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good which I had intended to do to it.

Romans 9:19-21

Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

There Was a Child Lost Today

There was a child lost today, Sixteen and dead,
Overdosed on pain pills she whored herself for.
She would do anything to get high, to get by.
Her mother was in jail for drugs
Her father sold crack to get his hits.
She had been out on the street
Since she was twelve,
Buying and selling herself and drugs.
She didn’t have a chance, and now she is dead.

A mom and dad hooked on getting high
Her mother sold her for ten rocks
When she was thirteen, told her to grit her teeth,
That it would not hurt much, and not last long.
She did, and it didn’t, and she learned
Better to be high then not, mother knew best.

Oh she could have been this
And she could have been that,
But she is dead, and none of that.
There was a child lost today.

Her mother is consoled,
But should have been dammed.
Who will speak for the child dead today?
Her father had to go home early to make a score.
Aunts and uncles knew, but no one cared.
If the school teachers didn’t know
Then they didn’t care either.

The friends she got high with
Left the funeral to get high,
The boys she slept with to get pills
Left to find another girl who will
Be bedded for pills.
There was a child lost today, Sixteen and dead.