I BECAME JENNY HARRIS

Published September 12, 2021 by Nan Mykel

SMARTY PANTS

I was born in June, but I became me oh, about March. I didn’t know that this would be the best time of my life. More’s the pity if you can’t remember the gentle, reassuring warmth of the timeless sea rocking you. One with the world—no, the World itself.

We can all hear while still in the womb, but few are sufficiently fortunate to receive an early education through the pulsing walls of their mother, as she taught her first grade students. I suspect it was her sprightly voice delivering my first knowledge base that helped sharpen my hearing.

What was fortuitous for me posed small problems for my family, because I was reluctant to talk during my first three years. I wanted to think and absorb the daylight scene. I was busy absorbing and disinterested in verbally engaging. I already knew there were three people in my family: Annie Harris—Mom, quick-witted and energetic with soft flowing dark hair and twinkling eyes, although I wasn’t sure what color her eyes were; Harry Harris—Dad — balding, horn-rimmed glasses, smiled a lot when he looked at me; and Tristan Harris, big brother, who took some getting used to. Just kidding, he was at that awkward age, I think they call it. I soon learned to recognize my own name, Jenny Harris.

The information I took in visually, however, was brand new. I had to sort out colors first, having no idea what colors were when my mother pointed them out in her classroom. Although I was slow to learn my colors, I spent days absorbing my family’s features. Mom had lots of hair, and it was curly. Dad’s hair wasn’t much so I didn’t know if it was curly or not. Tristan’s hair was longer than my dad’s, and not curly.

For a long time I studied their eyes, but not knowing colors I couldn’t label them at first. They were all crinkly and reassuring, however. The family was glad to see me, although later I caused problems for them. I gained weight and crawled as they expected, even walked and ran. But as the months passed and they peered at me expectantly, I didn’t talk.

Mom took me to the doctor regularly and finally told him about my not talking. He looked at me and smiled. “She can. There’s nothing wrong with her vocal chords.” He tapped his eyeglasses on his hand and said, “Can she cry?”

Suddenly Mom recalled my word-free howls when displeased, and laughed. “Can she ever!”

The doctor gave me a conspiratorial wink and said, “She will when she wants to, I ‘spect.” I knew he was my buddy.

Soon after I came out, my family got a new member. A black and white kitten –Mom said it was a girl– came to visit, and stayed. Mom thought she had been abandoned, which made me feel sorry for her, so I kind of mothered the kitten, I guess. Her lips were colored—I later learned they were “pink,” and Tristan named her “Tulips.”

While other children might hug their blankies, I had my Tulips to snuggle with. Note that I considered myself a child from birth. There wasn’t a lot of baby still in me at birth, other than size.

Mom was intuitive, which means comprehending without being told. She could tell from looking in my eyes that I understood more than I let on, so from almost the beginning she began to read me stories. I sat in her lap and followed along, and that’s how I learned to read—painlessly, the way it should be.

We soon used up the story books left over from Tristan’s childhood and so one fine sunshiny day Mom popped me in the stroller and headed for the library. Oh, that magnificent building! Mom gave me a choice of books, by holding several out until I pointed at one. Or two. (I was secretly reading to myself when Mom wasn’t around.) Tulips would snuggle and purr, and I would silently read.

Mom took me to the library every week, and gradually I began pointing at books for juveniles, not infants. Intuitive Mom got the hint, and followed my lead in reading selections. So it was that one evening in my third year, as we were dining on spaghetti and meat balls, I said my very first word. It was not “spoon,” which I was reaching for, but “Meowr.”

I was half joking, but Mom became tense and said, “Don’t over react. We don’t want her to become mute again.”

They resisted handing me the spoon, however, until I said the magic word, thereafter continuing to live up to the new name they gave me: “Smarty Pants.”

Luckily my uniqueness was kept secret, even from the neighbors, who had no children. We just took me for granted, a blessing compared to what some special children are exposed to in the media. My dream was to become me.

I can remember back to when Tulips was “fixed.” I was horrified. I didn’t want to be fixed! What if my mother had been fixed? I knew Mom had enjoyed teaching school and I also knew I was a bump in her road. As the family’s ever questioning pest, I asked her about it. .

Her answer was reassuring, just a warm hug, a kiss and her dear smile. Then she added, “We chose to have you. When you grow up you can choose what you want to do with your life”. That sounded pretty good to me, so I went back to Tulips and Google.

ALSO IN CASE YOU MISSED DIANE’S OTHER BLOG

Published September 12, 2021 by Nan Mykel

The Washington Post published a remorseful article about the negative effects of 20 years of was in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hindsight is sometimes useful. Many books will be written about “lessons learned” from these past 20 years of warfare.

There’s a scene in the 2014 film “American Sniper” that sums up the country’s post-9/11 war lust. Chris Kyle, the late U.S. Navy SEAL played by Bradley Cooper, watches a newscast of the twin towers crumbling before his eyes. The camera fixes on Kyle’s steely yet stunned face as he holds his shaken wife, before cutting to an image of him in full military gear, glaring through the scope of his sniper rifle in the middle of an Iraqi town. (He goes on to gun down a woman aiding Iraqi insurgents.)

The film, which some critics panned as proto-fascist agitprop, spends no time interrogating this implied connection between the events of 9/11 and the American decision to “preemptively” invade Iraq less than two years later to topple the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Neither did much of the American public or political establishment that got swept up in the George W. Bush administration’s rush to punish “evil-doers.” A Washington Post poll in September 2003 found that close to 7 in 10 Americans believed that it was at least “likely” that Hussein was directly involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

That, of course, proved to be preposterous, as was much of the case Bush and his allies made about the imminent threat posed by the Iraqi regime’s phantom weapons of mass destruction. Animated by a neoconservative zeal to oust enemy regimes and wield American might to make right — and unhindered by the bulk of the Washington press corps — the Bush administration plunged the United States and its coalition partners into a war and eventual occupation that would reshape the political map of the Middle East, distract from America’s parallel intervention in Afghanistan and provoke new cycles of chaos and violence.

The first couple of years after 9/11 marked “an era where the United States made major strategic errors,” Vali Nasr, a professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, told Today’s WorldView. “Its vision was clouded by anger and revenge.”

But what if the United States had opted against invading Iraq? The decision to oust Hussein, even more so than the invasion of Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, was an unprovoked war of choice that, on one hand, sealed off a range of other policy options available to Washington’s strategists and, on the other, set in motion events that fundamentally altered the region. It’s impossible to unwind what the Bush administration unleashed, but indulge us at Today’s WorldView as we puzzle through just a few elements of this counterfactual proposition.

First and foremost, there’s the Iraqi death toll. The Watson Institute at Brown University calculates that 184,382 to 207,156 Iraqi civilians were directly killed in war-related violence between the start of the American invasion in March 2003 through October 2019. But the researchers suggest the real figure may well be several times higher.

Even considering Hussein’s own long record of brutality, it is difficult to envision a future of greater suffering for the Iraqi people had the United States not swept him from power, argued Sinan Antoon, a New York-based Iraqi poet and author.

“No matter what — and I say this as someone who was opposed to Saddam’s regime since childhood and wrote his first novel about life under dictatorship — had the regime remained in power, tens of thousands of Iraqis would still be alive today, and children in Fallujah would not be born with congenital defects every day,” Antoon told Today’s WorldView, alluding to the impact of U.S. forces allegedly using rounds of depleted uranium in their battles across Iraq.

Antoon added that we also would not have seen the rise of the Islamic State had the United States not invaded — a conviction shared by former president Barack Obama and echoed by myriad experts. “In the near term, the Iraqi political order probably would not have collapsed and created a void that nonstate or quasi-state actors could fill,” wrote international relations scholars Hal Brands and Peter Feaver in a 2017 study.

“The Sunni-Shia cleavage that has made Iraq so difficult to govern still would have been present,” they continued, “but without the violence, political chaos and Sunni marginalization of the post-invasion period, that cleavage would have remained in a less combustible state, and terrorist groups such as [al-Qaeda in Iraq] and [the Islamic State] would not have found such fertile ground for recruiting.”

Other paths were possible. In 2002, Shibley Telhami, a veteran pollster affiliated with the Brookings Institution and a professor at the University of Maryland, was part of a group of Middle East scholars based in the United States who opposed the Bush administration’s drumbeat to war in Iraq.

“Bush had a chance to build global coalitions, strengthen international norms and institutions, focus on the threat from al-Qaeda, reshape relations in the Gulf region and use domestic and international support to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which, before 9/11, was the central grievance against the United States in the Middle East,” Telhami told Today’s WorldView.

Instead, he added, “Bush chose a policy of unilateralism,” pursuing a war that ravaged the Middle Eastern country, stoked sectarian violence and extremist militancy and “ended the balance of power between Iran and Iraq.” Iran’s gain from seeing its longtime foe fall in Baghdad, in turn, would reset the geopolitical calculations of Gulf Arab states, which became “so insecure that they embarked on destabilizing policies of their own, including the Yemen war,” said Telhami.

In 2003, the Iraqi regime still faced asphyxiating international sanctions. Had those eventually weakened — various countries apart from the United States were eager to bring Iraq out from the cold — the country’s youths would have been better linked to the world and an entrenched regime could have faced its own Arab Spring uprising.

Rasha al-Aqeedi of the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a Washington think tank, suggests an “Iraqi spring” would still have been brutally put down by the country’s Baathist government. “Saddam would have passed away and [his son] Qusay would have become president — an Iraqi version of [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad, basically,” she told Today’s WorldView, imagining a milder end for the Iraqi dictator who was hanged in 2006. The status quo in Baghdad would have been “as stable as an authoritarian Baathist state can be.”

Alternatively, there could have been a steady internal unraveling, with the United States in a stronger position to support democratic and economic development, Amy Hawthorne, research director at the Project on Middle East Democracy, told Today’s WorldView. “Iraq, under punishing international sanctions and totalitarian rule for another decade, would have become a failed state, with parts of the south and Iraqi Kurdistan falling outside Saddam’s control.”

Instead, by 2007, the United States was compelled to deploy a “surge” of its troops to combat an Iraqi insurgency it would never quite quell. For multiple reasons, from feckless leadership to sectarian enmities, the government that the United States helped prop up in Baghdad would make a catalogue of its own mistakes. The occupation swiftly became a parable for American blundering and hubris.
“The U.S. was barely keeping its head above water during the surge,” Nasr said. “The aura of its power was gone.”

Ishaan Tharoor is a columnist on the foreign desk of The Washington Post, where he authors the Today’s WorldView newsletter and column. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.

Pins in My Cushion

Published September 12, 2021 by Nan Mykel

OUCH!

This report from the Casper Star Tribune showing that the even smaller state of Wyoming has seen 7,358 students and 60 staff test positive in the first week of school. (Daily Kos)

Enough bloodshed for active combatants and veterans the world over! Why must our playing cards always risk death to enlisted men and women (aka Trump’s “suckers?”) Why not schedule a game at an agreed-upon date and let the winner of the freedom-from-death GAME be declared the winner? If we’re all brothers and sisters under the skin, it seems the rational thing to do. I’m bothered by the idea of living humans being moved across combat zones like chess pieces when there’s a rational alternative. Sure, we’d be gambling, but aren’t we anyway?.

Ships that pass in the night 3

Published September 11, 2021 by Nan Mykel

It feels like I’m there! Thanks, Lois!

Lois Elsden

My mum and her sisters kept a diary during the war; a few years ago I shared the entries they made. In the early years of the war, my grandmother and her daughters, my mum and her sisters, were very kind and hospitable to the young soldiers stationed near their village of Harston. Alan, the oldest in the family was int RAF, and although grandpa had enlisted despite being fifty, he was at home and he too was glad to welcome these lads. My mum and aunties kept a diary which they called ‘Ships that pass in the night’, recording the visits of these young men who were soon to be posted away.

9th – 26th June 1940
Noel Francis Bone L/C Aged 22 years
2nd London Div. Royal Corps of Signals
Home: – London
Stationed: – Pinehurst, Harston

On the evening of 9th June 1940, a few hours after Tony met with his accident…

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Reblog: In Case You Missed This…

Published September 8, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Dana Milbank is a regular opinion writer for The Washington Post. As a native Texan, who still has strong emotional ties to the state, I found his analysis to be deeply upsetting. Since the Supreme Court’s decision not to overturn the Texas abortion ban, I can no longer buy anything from Texas, including Tito’s, my favorite vodka. When the anti-vaxxers show up at school board meetings proclaiming “My body, my choice,” I wonder why they don’t feel the same about women’s reproductive rights.

Milbank wrote:

Texas this week showed us what a post-democracy America would look like. Thanks to a series of actions by the Texas legislature and governor, we now see exactly what the Trumpified Republican Party wants: to take us to an America where women cannot get abortions, even in cases of rape and incest; an America where almost everybody can openly carry a gun in public, without license, without permit, without safety training and without fingerprinting; and an America where law-abiding Black and Latino citizens are disproportionately denied the right to vote. This is where Texas and other red states are going, or have already gone. It is where the rest of America will go, unless those targeted by these new laws — women, people of color and all small “d” democrats — rise up. 

On Wednesday, a Texas law went into effect that bans abortions later than six weeks, after the Supreme Court let pass a request to block the statute. Because 85 to 90 percent of women get abortions after six weeks, it amounts to a near-total ban. Already on the books in Texas is a “trigger” law that automatically bans all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. At least 10 other states have done likewise.

 Also Wednesday, a new law went into effect in Texas, over the objections of law enforcement, allowing all Texans otherwise allowed to own guns to carry them in public, without a license and without training. Now, 20 states have blessed such “permitless carry.” 

And on Tuesday, the Texas legislature passed the final version of the Republican voting bill that bans drive-through and 24-hour voting, both used disproportionately by voters of color; imposes new limits on voting by mail, blocks election officials from distributing mail-ballot applications unless specifically requested; gives partisan poll watchers more leeway to influence vote counting; and places new rules and paperwork requirements that deter people from helping others to vote or to register. At least 17 states have adopted similar restrictions.   

All three of these actions are deeply antidemocratic. Texans overwhelmingly object to permitless carry. Fully 57 percent of Texas voters oppose such a law and only 36 percent support it, according to a June poll by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune. The partnership’s April poll found that, by 46 percent to 20 percent, Texans want stricter gun laws — and support for tougher laws is 54 percent among women, 55 percent among Latinos and 65 percent among Black voters. 

Texans also oppose banning all abortions if Roe is overturned, with 53 percent against a ban and 37 percent for one. Women oppose the ban, 58 percent to 33 percent. A narrow plurality (46 percent to 44 percent) oppose the six-week ban, too.

 Furthermore, pluralities of Texans opposed the ban on drive-through voting and restrictions on early voting hours. The drive-through ban was particularly objectionable to Black voters (52 percent opposed to 30 percent in the April poll) and Latino voters (44 percent to 36 percent), as were the limits on early voting hours, opposed 52 percent to 28 percent among Black voters and 46 percent to 31 percent among Latino voters.

 And that’s the whole point of such voter-suppression laws. Texas became a “majority minority” state more than 15 years ago — and the country as a whole will follow in about two decades. But White voters still dominate the electorate. Latinos are about 40 percent of the Texas population, but only 20 to 25 percent of the electorate. Texas legislators aren’t answering to the people but rather to the White, male voters that put the Republicans in power. The new voting law, by suppressing non-White votes, aims to keep White voters dominant. As demographics turn more and more against Republicans in Texas, their antidemocratic actions will only get worse. 

Bad things happen when leaders don’t reflect the will of the people. This is happening already in Texas and some other red states. It will be happening more nationally if Republicans get their way.   

INTRODUCTION – 4th Wednesday post

Published September 8, 2021 by Nan Mykel

I’ve lived a long life…

The fourth consecutive Wednesday posting of Fallout: A Survivor Talks to Incest Offenders:

Introduction

First, I must tell you that I was not severely traumatized by my sexual abuse. I did not significantly dissociate nor develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I provisionally met the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder at one time. I’m telling you this so you can place the effects incest had on me in perspective.

Numerous others described herein experienced much more damage. Even with my non-violent assault, however, the damage should be obvious in the following pages.

FOR MEN WHO MOLEST

It is probable that you are much more than a man who molests. You may engage in good deeds, be a hard worker and good provider.

Like an animal that has developed rabies, however, you become a danger to society and will be/are being treated as such when your behavior is discovered. Your contributions to society become invisible and you are a marked man. The condition may not be terminal, however. In fact, you are far from alone in the population.

Most men who molest children have not yet been reported and convicted, nor have they been exposed to some of the information provided in treatment programs. You can learn to understand your urges and explore strategies for controlling them.

David Finkelhor was sensitive to the potential usefulness of shared information when he wrote of prevention programs: “Even without specifically addressing the possibility that audience members might become abusers … it is likely that these programs do have an important deterrent influence on anyone who is exposed to them, if for no other reason than that they clearly reinforce the norm that such behavior is exploitative of a child” (Finkelhor 1986b, 234). I hope the information in this book will both encourage men who are still free to resist molesting and strengthen the resolve of those currently in treatment.

The majority of incestuous fathers are symbiotic, in that they feel an emotional bond with their victim (Courtois 1988; Justice and Justice 1979). Maddock and Larson (1995, 84) refer to “affectional based incest,” reporting that “a significant amount of incest behavior appears to serve as a means of expressing affection.” (There is a difference between affection and empathy, however; see Chapter 5.)

A glaring example of this misinformed motivation is reported by de Young (1982, 36), who quotes a molester as saying: “I wanted to be her lover, not the victimizer. I wanted her to remember our affair as one of affection and warmth, not fear and pain.”

Much of the thrust of this book is, therefore, to make a case for the fact that incest is damaging, especially for a child you care about or who is under your protection. I use myself as the example, since to outward appearances I have “succeeded” in life. Read my story and you will find otherwise.

FOR SURVIVORS:

I hope that survivors will find the information within these pages helpful, not only in the section for survivors but also the perpetrator section. I myself was surprised to learn that being able to make sense of my sexual abuse is healing, as discussed later in the book.

A group of female survivors and their therapist once visited our
program during a group session. Each man introduced himself and explained why he was in prison. They answered any questions the visitors had. After the group was over, the survivors confessed they had been anxious, scared, and even angry with the men they were
yet to meet. Upon leaving they reported feeling better about the
men, whom they saw as working on themselves.

From time to time I wondered how my father or grandfather would have fit into our prison group. Would they have denied their culpability? My grandfather would deny his molesting behavior and perhaps convince himself that he was blameless. I can imagine him complaining—as I have heard more than one offender do—that “it’s gotten so you can’t even give your grandkid a hug any more.”

I do not believe treatment would have deterred my grandfather. My father would have been more honest, but both would have denied that any damage had been done.

So do child molesters—especially incest offenders—harm their
victims?

At first I resisted the idea that much of my life had been negatively shaped by the incest. Then as I learned more about the kinds of effects it exerts, I was able to gain a clearer perspective of myself. Coming to realize that I have dissociated was an eye-opener as well. Keeping a journal, along with a record of my dreams, has been beneficial not only at the time of writing but later, when tracing my journey.

FOR THE COMMUNITY AND FAMILY

It is no surprise that the community at large knows so little about incest. It’s such an ugly topic and so difficult to discuss with children! That ignorance leaves both us and our loved ones vulnerable, however. We dress our little girls as sexy vamps, don’t know the difference between “playing doctor” and juvenile sex offending, and don’t know how to respond when our young child says she wants to marry us, insists she/he doesn’t want to return to camp again this year, or begs for a different babysitter.

What if a family member who molested a child is chastened and “wants to make it up to her,” or to work on building a better relationship with her? How should you respond if a family member
who has been in sex offender treatment gets depressed and starts blaming his victim? Or decides to start coaching Little League?

People can be wonderful in many different ways and still sexually abuse children. I hope you will find answers to these and other questions throughout this book.

FOR OTHER PROFESSIONALS

I once asked Jan Hindman why there were so many survivors treating sex offenders, and she said, “Because they know how important it is.”

Randomness, Then a Fantasy

Published September 8, 2021 by Nan Mykel

The Navy now permits sailors to wear earrings, according to the Military News.

The Pentagon announced that no military working dogs were left in Afghanistan when American troops withdrew from Afghanistan on Aug. 31.

Donald Trump is said to have told 30,573 lies while in office, (as reported in The Truth About Lies by Aja Raden, St Martin’s Press.)

Aliens, ladies, bitch and dog.

What have these poor words in common?

They have become tainted, that’s what.

Star Wars tarnished aliens. I

recall my horror when I heard

the word used for migrants.

Ladies — manners cost them strength and

Bitch is not only female, but

also a dog, the most unfair

of them all. My best friend is not

a dog! Gracie is a sweetheart,

not a dog!

and….

A PURE, WISHFUL FANTASY

Churches all over the United States this week read their Bibles again, especially the part about adultery and false witness, and are embarrassed and apologetic about their gullibility, although they have not yet owned the fact that their error was not gullibility but a political power play. At any rate they are being welcomed back from a close call to blasphemy.

AT THE END OF HIS ROPE AND THE END OF FOUR LIVES

Published September 7, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Marine veteran Bryan Riley is accused of killing four in Florida. (Courtesy Polk County Sheriff’s Office).

Bryan Riley, 33, the U.S. Marine veteran who dressed himself in camouflage and reportedly later added full body armor and a bullet proof vest, left his domicile to kill civilians in Lakeland, Polk County Florida Sunday morning. The victims were being considered as random by authorities, based on limited information as of Sunday.

After a fierce gun battle with Riley he surrendered, and officers heard cries for help inside the home, but were unsure whether there were additional shooters and feared the home was booby-trapped. A brave sergeant rushed in and grabbed an 11-year-old girl who had been shot at least seven times. She told deputies that there were three dead people inside.

Deputies sent robots into the home to check for explosives and other traps. When it was clear, they found the bodies of a man identified as Gleason; a 33-year-old mother; a 3-month old baby cradled in its mother’s arms, and the baby’s 62-year-old grandmother in or from a separate home nearby, and the family dog who had also been killed. Authorities released only Gleason’s name, and did not say if or how he was related to the other victims.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said the girl was rushed to surgery and was expected to survive.

Judd said Riley was honorably discharged after serving four years, according to the Tampa Bay Times, which quoted Judd as saying Riley served another three years in reserve. He was deployed to Iraq in 2008 and Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010

Riley’s girlfriend of four years told deputies that he had PTSD and depression but had never been violent, the newspaper reported. She said Riley had been slowly unraveling for weeks and repeatedly told her that he could communicate directly with God. He worked in Tarpon Springs as a security guard.

Judd said that afterwards, during an interrogation, Riley observed, “They begged for their lives and I killed them anyway.” It is unclear from the article whether Riley was remorseful or bragging.

I became interested in U.S. troop suicides recently, both active duty and veterans. There have been four times as many suicides by soldiers and veterans than combat deaths while or after serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts of the War on Terror since 2001, as reported in The Week, referencing USA Today. I initially wondered if Riley was headed for a death-by-cop suicide. Apparently he lived through his slaughtering act, however, which then caused me to reflect that white Riley was not killed, despite being so reportedly aggressive that he tried to grab an officer’s gun while on a guerney in the hospital. I was glad to see that the Military Times seems to be a legitimate news outlet, based on their reporting of this case which was penned by Kelli Kennedy. I refer those interested to check it out for more information.

I’m not quite through looking into troop suicide variables.

;

Sticky Fingers Reblog

Published September 6, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Precious!

lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Sticky Fingers

Gram’s a kleptomaniac. It’s known all over town.
She’ll glom onto anything the neighbors don’t tie down.
It’s obvious what she’s up to, for she takes no pains to hide it.
She’ll peer into the coffee spout to see what is inside it
and if it isn’t boiling hot, she’ll make off with the whole of it.
She’ll steal anything in sight, for “need” is not the goal of it.

She collects things in the daylight and sneaks out after dark.
She has no fear of guard dogs. She’s not warned off by their bark.
Unabashed, she faces up to every cluck and frown
as she steals coins from collection plates of every church in town.
My dad makes restitution and gives them more besides
while my mom checks out the stashes of everything she hides

and returns things to their owners. It’s become her daily chore
and…

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They Cost You Nothing; They Have No Value

Published September 5, 2021 by Nan Mykel

While re-organizing, I came across the following poem by a member of our Poetry group, and have graciously been permitted to share it with you. It is by Patricia L.H. Black, written in 2/2018. An earlier poem of hers can be found on my Flash Fiction and Poe/try Page, titled “What’s Wrong With This Picture?”

I don’t want your thoughts and prayers.

They are as hollow as they are hackneyed.

What good are they in my time of grief?

I want my daughter back!

I don’t want your thoughts and prayers.

I want to know how you calculate

Just how blood money covers a living child.

I want my grandson back!!

I don’t want your thoughts and prayers.

Just tell me: Do you ever try to wash

The bloodstains from your heart and soul?

I want my fiance back!