I Died Today

I died today. It was unexpected, yet not. I had asked God to take me before, but never thought of sinning myself. Two decades of pain and gnarled joints, broken back, enough medicines to fill three lifetimes, and all their glorious side-effects that have done what they are wont to do: deaden, decay, destroy. My minds eye sees the carnage hidden to those outside my skin. I’ve not seen my silver anniversary. Nor will I. I no longer feel the pulsing burn in my hips, the relentless ball of deep hot heat in my back. The backs of my hands don’t hover with the burn of the path seared through my veins. My deadweight shoulders hang loose and free. I can close my fingers into a fist for the first time in a long time. I try it again, in wonder. My ankles, only attached by the barest of strings in a hollow ball encasing have given up the ghost. Knees that played a bone symphony of clicking, burning, buckling from the inside out now rest in peace. No more nausea and throwing up to plague my stomach. There are no more doctor waiting rooms, needles, transfusions, blood work and ruder nurses that filled my sick time off work. Born with no ears, today I hear things never heard before. What a wonderful world. In a holding pattern, I wait. My mother cries, my father sniffles, his white handkerchief bunched, quickly hidden in the pocket, lest someone see. My twin breathes deep, and accepts life as life deals. The others weep at the tears of others, not of their own hurt. The oldest and the youngest of their kids are bewildered – some from the vagrancies of life, some from the mysteries inherent in a young life. The line curls around Chambers’ Funeral Home. Spring requires only a sports coat, or less, for those too full of their own coolness. Police direct traffic and everyone comments, “such a shame, such a young man, the prime of his life.” Bah! My life was a four letter word, and it is not obscene. At least the word is not; pain. Thanks to those drugs I have very few memories. I do not recall not feeling pain. I do not recall. In line they come in honor, for the son, or the father, is not for me to know. The view is cold from here. I see the coffin door close over me again, darkness descends. It repeats. All have gone home, to their lives, their prayers, their stories amidst the march of time. The lid reopens. Sunlight, prayers, tears, and the lid closes over me for the last time. A dark roll, a dark ride. Little Chambers funeral flags snap on parade through the city. Cars wait, unaware of more than the procession before them. Then, nephews pull me out; hoist me on their shoulders, and up the steps. Up the steps, and into the house of God. There are many here, tho most of my father’s age, or generation. Warmth comes again, as I take the hand of God. I see auld friends, and I smile. Names that go back two score years have come to say the final goodbye. They will drink of me again, when memories trigger. But this is goodbye, I know this. How quickly my ripple dies has always scarred me. Soon it will be of no bother at all. Yet. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” the priest intones. He married me, consoled me when I divorced, smiled, hugged me and shook my hand whenever we met. He cries. The utter waste that was my life. There is no crying in heaven, and only tears in Hell. Don’t let go God. There is no God in hell, don’t let go. I will go before you always. Holy water splashes across the lid. My niece talks between grasping breaths. Nephews raise me up, on their shoulders again, and walk me out, push me in, pull me out, walk me to my grave. The good Father intones once more. Each takes a red red rose from my coffin, before they drift, some to a meal, some to resume their lives once more. I think I’m alone now. Then, I am cranked down into my resting place. Shovel by shovel, the cold earth thumps atop me, becoming more muffled, till once again I return to a silent world. Finality. The weight of the world settles around me.

I am no more.

My Humble City

My Humble City
by Alan States

My humble city, so many times you have bent
under the weight of corruption and power plays, burning rivers, empty steel mills
massive layoffs, shuttered factories, renewal projects with jobs only on paper, Baltimore.
Kicked by the steel toe that built you, your teeth have a hopeless feel to their bite.

My immigrant city, is an emigrant neighborhood now;
sprawl, flight, drain, greener grass, fear.
Hunkered down, waiting for the sun to rise, where the sun has set
on such dreams.

My once proud city, your bare bones are creaking,
lost in the shadow of your medical giants, for want of medicine
Pride and prejudice, craving for respect,
from the smoking barrel of a gun.

My poor city, panhandling on the street, in tent city, in the halls of Congress
for a cup of coffee with lots of sugar the only sweet thing
these bitter mouths have tasted,
so lost is the moment, in isolation.

My waterfront city, where seagulls shriek
as they gorge on the discarded refuse
of a town that progress and vision forgot to visit
this time around.



My unbroken city, I love thee more. For all your struggles,
the city you are is not the city you can become. And tho
your black eyes shame, your promise thrills.
The door to rekindling yesteryear’s glory has not closed

tortured children

Humans are the only species that systematically tortures and murders its own for pleasure and personal gain. All our poems and symphonies and oils on canvas will never change that.
- George Carlin

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you believers don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this?
- Camus

Come my friends, it is not too late to seek a better world.
– Tennyson

Low Down Dirty Dating Shame

My date was cute and personable, accomplished and intelligent. I’ll call her Jezebel. We met online, and our chats were refreshingly honest. They got deep, and deeper.
Eventually, this past weekend, we met for the first time in person. A nice little corner bistro was her comfort zone, with good food, good atmosphere and outlandish prices. I had never been there, but anyplace where she would feel comfortable is always a good choice on a first date.
She looked at me so directly, it was disarming, but paired with such unusually direct expression of thoughts and desires, it was a turn-on. We enjoyed the dinner, with good conversation, many similar experiences professionally and general agreement on many issues/news of the day.
She told me she had been divorced a month and a ½. I though that was quick to start dating, but different folks are ready at different times and some divorces come after long separations, I would wait on forming an opinion.
Dinner wrapped up. It was a cool night, but not too cold, so we walked around the neighborhood. She took my hand as we walked. I was hoping to find an open art gallery or such, but the only thing around and open were bars and restaurants. After making a circuit, it was still only 9:30, so I asked:
“Want to stop and have a drink?”
”Sure,”
A few steps later, “I’m an alcoholic.”
I don’t think my expression changed as I held the door open for her. I understood what she said, but it is a deep thing, an important thing. The casualness, the suddenness caught me by surprise. A few steps earlier and I would have said ok, lets find something else. By then we were already inside.
I wasn’t sure whether to be pissed she hadn’t told me something so major, or glad she felt confident enough to share that with me. The really deep conversations we had had made me think she had had plenty of opportunity in the past. Being an alcoholic would not have influenced my decision to date her, or anyone I am attracted to. Not disclosing it until you are walking into a bar? It is not a little thing. When so much of the dating world and what I do professionally revolves around bars/restaurants and live music, it is something that needs to be disclosed early. I would find out later, it wasn’t the most important thing she had left out.
We found a table in the back. I got Jezzy a lemon water and a beer for myself. We continued to talk, fairly fluently. I was looking at her lips. I think she thought I was looking at her breasts, as she kept looking at me, then down at them herself. Small but nicely shaped they were, but I was looking at her lips as we talked for an hour. I asked if she was ready to go, and she said no, not yet. Good enough for me. We talked for another hour, then as the midnight hour crept up on us, headed out.
I walked her to her car. We kissed, tentatively, but that only lasted for seconds before our kisses became deep and exploring. It was getting colder, and that eventually seeped through our embrace. She asked did I want to get in the car and continue. I nodded, and we did. After ½ an hour, I asked if she wanted to follow me home, and she did.
I am in the dating “game” with no interest in playing games. I am looking for a partner to spend the rest of my life with. I have found that sexual intercourse is too important to engage in too soon. It ALWAYS changes the relationship.
How it changes it seems to be in direct correlation to how strong the relationship is. After many forging experiences, the sex can be glorious, and a 3D, all senses rich meld of mind and body. On the other hand, the less time you have been together; the less time you have forged a foundation of experiences from which to build on, the more likely that the act will change the relationship for the worse. Based on that, obviously, we did not have sex.
We finally drifted off to broken sleep around four, awake at 8. She slipped out of the bed and took a shower, tho I didn’t realize it until I went into the bathroom and saw the wet shower doors. We got up later, and she said since no one had offered her anything to drink, she was leaving.
I thought she had been anxious to leave, as she said she had an appointment. “My bad,” I said, “Do you want …?” and gave a list of alternatives.
Coffee it was, then she said it was too sweet. She headed off and I did things around the house. Later, I got an email. She said how she enjoyed the night, wanted more, and asked me more questions about my likes and dislikes on everyday things.
Then Jezzy told me she had just recently broken off with a married man because he wasn’t going to leave his wife for her. They had been in a long term affair, while both were married, and continued after her divorce. Then she had just decided to break it off and start dating. Now he wanted her back, saying he was going to leave his wife for her.
I read it, then reread it, thinking there is no way I read this right. The affair, the extremely condensed time frame and THE AFFAIR all took a moment for me to wrap my mind around. I ignored her questions in my response, saying only that what she had told me was a deal breaker; I had never contemplated an affair, either when married and going thru a divorce, nor when single and meeting a married woman. I had had offers, I also had morals. You can say it is not that simple, but it is.
I could not fathom what she was doing. If someone wants to end their own marriage, then do so – before you enter another relationship, short or long-term, with someone else. But destroying, or having any part in destroying, another’s marriage is reprehensible. I was sickened.
I wished her good luck, and told her I did not wish to have any more contact with her. I am mind-boggled.

How COOL is this?

Brain Scans Can Read Memories

livescience.com – Fri Mar 13, 1:15 pm ET
A split-view image showing PET scans of a normal brain (L) and a brain with Reuters – A split-view image showing PET scans of a normal brain (L) and a brain with Alzheimer's disease. (National …

Humans create memories of locations in physical or virtual space as they move around - and it all shows up on brain scans.

Researchers tracked brain activity related to "spatial memory" as volunteers moved about inside a virtual reality setup. Their new study challenges previous scientific thinking by showing that memories are recorded in regular patterns.

"Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality environment," said Eleanor Maguire, a neuroscientist at the University College London in the U.K. "In other words, we could 'read' their spatial memories."

Maguire and her colleagues focused on the hippocampus, or a small part of the brain that deals with navigation, memory recall and imagining future events. Neurons known as "place cells" activate in the hippocampus and inform people of where they are as they move around.

The researchers used an fMRI scanner to detect blood flow changes in the brain, and study the activity of the place cells as a volunteer controlled movement inside the virtual environment. They then ran the results through a computer algorithm developed by Demis Hassabis, another neuroscientist at University College London.

Earlier studies with rats had also focused on the hippocampus and measured activity at the level of dozens of neurons at most. But that research had suggested that the brain did not record memory in any sort of regular pattern - a trend that this latest study may overturn. Maguire and Hassabis examined thousands of neurons as opposed to just dozens, which allowed them to pick out broader patterns.

"By looking at activity over tens of thousands of neurons, we can see that there must be a functional structure - a pattern - to how these memories are encoded," Maguire said. "Otherwise, our experiment simply would not have been possible to do."

Mind-reading research has grown increasingly sophisticated over the years. Another recent study predicted people's preference for one of two drinks with 80 percent accuracy. And earlier findings showed that people's brains reflect abnormal activity up to half a minute before making errors.

The latest findings on memory could lead to many more studies that examine how actual memories end up encoded across our brain cells, Maguire said. She and Hassabis want to look beyond spatial memories to see if brain scans can pick up patterns in our memories of the past, as well as visions of the future. Such work could also have clinical implications for understanding diseases that attack memory.

"Understanding how we as humans record our memories is critical to helping us learn how information is processed in the hippocampus and how our memories are eroded by diseases such as Alzheimer's," added Demis Hassabis.



LiveScience.com

Notable Quotables I - What do YOU think?

Men & Women &...

Men use toilets to pee, for women, they're social clubs. - B.O.

I see Keith Richards has called on young people to stop taking drugs. They have to Keith, you've taken the lot, you fucker. - Dennis Leary

If you want your girlfriend to scream during sex, ring her up and tell her - Martin T

Trying to end prostitution by criminalizing the prostitutes is like trying to end poverty by making it criminal to be poor. - Mary H.

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck. Iris Murdoch

Gray's Armory Ghosts

Gray’s Armory
By Alan States

Alone in a room,
buzzing with people I can’t quite see
My mind has gone into the past that is present in the room now
Flittering shadows, shades of white, blurred so distinctly
Ghosts, Spirits, Echoes of what was, who was.

I turn off my ears, and listen to the long unheard neverending chatter all around me.
I sneeze.
Earthbound, my soles points of contact
for a time elapsed, whose time has come
– only peering through a filmy window

An open mind is a fresh breeze airing out long dormant
green hills, epic loves, Civil Wars and American Wakes.
Stories.
I walked into the past with my senses seeking
And reeled, lost for hours in the book of what was.