I am honestly afraid.

Yes, I haven't blogged in a while, but I need to say something about this.

I just finished watching this documentary called "Jesus Camp". For any of you who don't know what this is about, here's the summary from imdb.com:

Jesus Camp follows several young children as they prepare to attend a summer camp where the kids will get their daily dose of evangelical Christianity. Becky Fischer works at the camp, which is named Kids on Fire. Through interviews with Fischer, the children, and others, Jesus Camp illustrates the unswerving belief of the faithful. A housewife and homeschooling mother tells her son that creationism has all the answers. Footage from inside the camp shows young children weeping and wailing as they promise to stop their sinning. Child after child is driven to tears. Juxtapose these scenes with clips from a more moderate Christian radio host (who is appalled by such tactics), and Jesus Camp seems to pose a clear question: are these children being brainwashed?

In my opinion, yes, they are. This film shows several scenes that literally made me shake. One in particular, in which a man came to lecture the children about abortion, and then proceeded to place red tape over their mouths with the word "LIFE" written on it in black marker, and took them to an abortion protest.

At one point, Becky Fischer was speaking with the camera about h ow liberals would react to the documentary, and one thing she had said we would think was "what are these kids going to be like when they grow up?"

She. Was. Right.

But I don't think she was using it in the same context I am right now. I'm not seeing these children growing up as passionate Evangelical Christians, preaching the word of God and converting hundreds of people. I'm seeing this from a very negative perspective. I'm seeing terrorists, people blowing up abortion clinics, burning down buildings, forming cults and leading people to mass suicide for a cause that isn't going to matter 100 years down the road.

Or, they could hit puberty and realize "... this is all bullshit." Which, in my opinion, is worse than the previous possibility. What's going to happen when these kids realize that their entire childhood was stripped away and replaced with intense brainwashing? It could be a number of things, none would be good, at least judging by the way people like this have reacted before. Drug addiction. Depression. Rage. Who the hell knows!

The point is, that this is absolutely sick. The people who are doing this are robbing children of their innocence and trying to turn them into Christian extremists. They're depriving these kids of their childhood and implanting all of these twisted ideals into their heads.

Here are the people who pray to cardboard cut-outs of George Bush.
Here are the people who scream prayers in tongues and convulse on the floors.
Here are the people who approach complete strangers and speak to them of "purging" sinners and accepting Christ into their hearts.

At nine years old.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a Christian, but I do not hold any hostility against Christians. Yes, I am a hardcore liberal, and I am very outspoken about my beliefs. Not only that, but I will gladly lie down in front of a tank to preserve the beliefs of everyone. Not just those that agree with me.

But what these people are doing is sick.












I'm done.

an update! finally!!

So, things are... fluctuating here. I've decided to challenge myself to writing 100 poems in 100 days... and I'm starting to learn a lot about myself. More than I can handle, sometimes. I dunno, it's cool, since I don't really notice it until someone makes me actually think about it. But it happens enough with Beth and Kairi that it's pretty much with 99% of my poetry. So it can be kind of hectic.

Anyway, I'm 69 days into it and I'm on poem 72. So obviously it's going really well, which I'm happy for. I think I really could get into the habit of writing a poem a day.

Onto more exciting news... on second thought, nevermind. It's still pretty boring. My mom's boyfriend is here for the weekend... so yeah, suckness. Oh! I saw Saw 5, lol, not really exciting but whatever, I guess.

School is going pretty well. It's my senior year, so I'm going absolutely crazy with it. I even went to all the homecoming stuff this year, lol. It's pretty stupid, but yeah. It's been really fun. I'm loving my College Lit. and Comp class, my teacher is such an old hippie, she's amazing. Just a big movie nerd, which I love... I've gotten her to geek out about movies quite a few times this year, and it's only November.

BOCES is probably better this year and last. Actually, it is. By far. I've gotten Spoor into a crapload of music, and P. seems like he's become an even bigger spaz, which is great. I'm really starting to come out of my shell in that class. Last year I just made sure I was invisible, but now I'm finally starting to act like myself there.

Mom is working nights now, and she's making a lot of money. I'm really proud of her... she's come so far in the last few years. It really makes me happy knowing that she's finally achieved what she's wanted to do for years. She gets pretty moody sometimes, and it can be kind of hard to live with her. But still... she's come a long way.

Anyway, I'm gonna cut this off now before everyone needs crackers to go with all the cheese.

See you later.

Lucy: autopsy

cold fluorescent tubing
bleaches
already frail skin
and marks flimsy proof of existence
on a cold metal slab

there is no emotion here
only the story
hidden behind cold veins
& singed nerve endings

skipping like a scratched CD

spread eagle on the gurney
unforgiving instruments
peel back years of swollen gums,
worn out secrets
and half-assed lies

here is the place we drown in the truth

belly up
with a ghost of a smile
on indigo lips
ignorant to the fingers
teasing the flaws
and 'tsk, tsk little one
you've gone too far this time'

but crawling along
some sort of impulse
[just short of the synapse]
lies the problem-

she was too young
to suffer an adult's pain

.
.
.


and dreamt that she was drowning

First Two Installments in the "Lucy" series

This is a poetry series that I'm starting. Don't ask me why I called her Lucy, it just seemed to be a fitting name. These two were written when I was half asleep... so that explains a lot. Also, they're meant to be read as though looking through the lens of a camera; impersonal, but somehow attached, because that's how I see her in my mind.

Without further ado...

I give you Lucy.


"Lucy: reconnected"

1.


she bends her knees -
broken at the joints
and hunches
over at the waist,
calloused and
held together
with rusted safety pins

picking thorns from
the rose garden,
snipping away
wilted buds like the
uneven parts
of her paper dolls



2.


-- cross stitched
her way through her
course spiderweb coffin
and inhaled deeply,
pulling nicotine stained bruises
into her lungs;
biting down on the nymph's
fingernails
and dove into the River Styx.



3.


we pulled the sheet back,
unveiling the final exhibit
and smirked through
the round of applause;
our grand finale
finally complete.









"Lucy: you have nothing to lose but everything"


recycled veins
purge forth centuries of
unwanted thoughts
and meandering memories

long ago --
[maybe 10,000 years or so]
-- shed of everything but
bone;

handed over to
rusted apathy
and the wingless butterflies
in utero

Lucy's lungs hold sores
the way the bruises
on her thighs
hold the varying hues
of purple
and yellow...

-- and she
sucks back air
through the ever-growing
gaps
in her ribcage;;;

darling,
your feet
barely touch the ground
and it's time
to take
your medicine

Pretty Bummed To Say the Least

Leukemia. Last night, at the show, one of my good friends Halie told me that she finally got the doctor's results back. She's got leukemia, and she's decided to just let it run its course. She doesn't want chemo or anything else. From what I've heard, she hasn't been diagnosed as terminal yet, but her body is still wearing down. She told us last night that she can't do anything without getting tired, and she's got to go through a bunch of other tests to see how far the cancer has progressed and how fast its moving.


I know that she's probably not going to die this year, but christ almighty... last year, it was Sarah, and now her, and she's only fifteen!!!!! I honestly don't know how to handle this... do I just... attract disaster or something?!

I don't know.

I can't think right now.

Eternal Youth In A Heart Shaped Box

Okay, let me start off by saying that this has probably been one of the most difficult things to write about. This is a true story, it happened last year the Sunday before school ended. So even if you don't like it, please keep in mind that this is a very sensitive subject for me, and please, be nice.

My room was pitch black. At least it should have been. Completely devoid of all light because of the boards covering the window from a fall I’d taken out of it a few years before. But still, the light shining from the sun pierced through my door, outlining my mother’s frame as she shook my gently awake.

“Kami, wake up, it’s important.”

Those words, which had been aimed in my directions multiple times in the last year or two, caused my eyelids to shoot completely open and my upper body to haul itself from the worn in mattress. Kicking my plaid sheet off of my legs, I lifted myself from the bed and stood up, following my mother out of the room, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and blinking back the tears that had welled up there after the sun had shot straight into my retinas and temporarily fried them.

Concerns zoomed through my brain so rapidly that I couldn’t keep up with all of them. Had grandpa started drinking again? Did my cousin OD? Was my uncle in another motorcycle accident?

“Sit down.” My mom told me, pointing at the couch, and, without a single pause, I sat down on the couch. She sat next to me, one leg crossed underneath her other and she reached onto the table, grabbing a pack of cigarettes, half of a small, white pill, and a bottle of soda. “Light a cigarette, and take this.”

“What is it?” I asked, removing a cigarette from the pack and screwing the filter between my lips.

A small, tentative smile creased her lips and she said, “Just trust your mother.”

Exhaling a cloud of blue-gray smoke, I took the half of the pill and placed it on my tongue, chasing it down with a swig of Pepsi. There was a long silence between us, my mother sat quietly, letting my smoke my cigarette. Slowly, curiously, the anxiety that had been previously amping up my body was ebbing away. The house was too quiet, and I knew that something was terribly wrong. The house was never quiet. Ever.

“Sarah’s dead.”

I had been preparing myself for a lot of things since she’d told me that there was something important. I had been preparing myself for a sickness, or a beating, or a hospitalization. I hadn’t prepared myself for my mother telling me that my best friend since the age of five, one who had a one-year-old daughter and a family that was there for her, had died.

The silence in the house had transmuted from something thick and foreboding to an abrupt punch to the chest. I couldn’t do or say anything but bring the filter to my lips again and suck in a deep lungful of the corrosive smoke and carcinogens that inhabited the small, white cylinder.

To be honest, I half expected it to be a prank. It was never beyond Sarah to do something like this, and she had recently moved to Kansas to be with her boyfriend, who had moved down there to get work in order to support Sarah and their child. For a moment, I figured that it was some scheme she and my mom had cooked up to make me that much happier when she walked through the door moments later.

But moments later, the door didn’t open.

That’s when the tears came. They were small at first, and made me suck a little harder on the cigarette that was close to ripping between my fingers.

“There was a car accident yesterday…” my mom went on, her voice soft, treading carefully, knowing that I was a little too close to snapping. “It flipped twice and went into a tree. From what I’ve heard, she hit her head and died instantly.”

It felt like she was just adding salt onto the already wide, festering wound that had just ripped across my flesh. One of our cats hopped up onto my lap, rubbing against my arm, which sat, pillowed on my pajama pants clad thigh. I could feel all of my blood pooling around somewhere between my feet and knees. She kept talking, but I couldn’t hear it. It had turned into a faint buzzing noise inside my head; the cherry on my cigarette had burned down to the filter and singed the skin of my fingers. The sensation of my mom removing the butt from my hand and stubbing it out in the ashtray is what really snapped me out of it.

“Elaine called me this morning and told me… Amanda called also; she said she’s going to come over at some point today to be here for you. They’re all really worried about you… especially with finals starting tomorrow. They don’t want your education to be effected by Sarah’s death.” Her voice was strangely even for having to tell me all of this. Right then, I knew that she had been building herself up to tell me all morning.

“Was the baby in the car?” I managed to choke out tremulously.

My mom nodded, and the tight ball of nerves in my stomach grew larger. “Yes, Ellie was in the car. She broke her foot and has a cut on her forehead, but otherwise she’s okay.” The nerve ball seemed to shrink just a little bit. The baby was okay… this was good.

“Chris?”

Her teeth clamped down on her lower lip, “His spleen ruptured and he was burned quite badly… the car… it caught on fire. He was the one who got Sarah and the baby out of the car and broke his leg getting out. From what I’ve heard, he managed to get them out but realized that it was too late for Sarah…” A small choking noise cut her off on Sarah’s name and she went silent. I could see tears welling up in her deep brown eyes and she set her jaw tightly.

We were both determined not to cry.

And we were both failing miserably.

Reaching over to the cigarette pack still lying on the couch, I yanked another cancer stick from the box, shoved it into my mouth and ignited it, inhaling as deeply as I could, feeling a cough tickling at the back of my throat.

“That pill I gave you was half a Xanax. I figured you would need it… this is some pretty heavy news.”

I wanted to give some sort of witty retort. I wanted to express the anger at the words that had just juggernauted out of my mother’s mouth, but I just couldn’t. No words that could have possibly left me able to do that were running through my head. The only thing I could think of and imagine was that car flipping and nailing the tree. I could only picture Sarah’s head smacking off of the steering wheel so hard that the life was knocked straight out of her; no pain, no fear, no suffering. Just black. I could only picture her daughter’s foot being shattered, a piece of glass or other object in the car slicing open her forehead and Chris’s leg snapping in his attempt to get out of the car and save the child and girl that he loved so much.

Something from deep inside my chest forced its way up my throat and a loud sob erupted from my mouth, the tears finally coming full throttle, rolling from my cheeks, dripping off of my chin and into my clothes, wetting the cigarette clutched between my shaking fingers, strangled yelps of pain piercing the air. My body shook and curled into itself, hands fisting themselves into my hair and tugging at the roots. I could feel my heart tearing, an axe slicing clean through it and puncturing my vena cava, left and right ventricles, every valve of the muscle that was necessary to live obliterated with every other second.

Amanda showed up shortly after and immediately, I was on my feet, rushing over and wrapping my arms tightly around her tall frame, burying my face into her shoulder and sobbing roughly. She rubbed my back, softly telling me that it was all right, even though the both of us knew damn well that it wasn’t. We were both hurting. She was just better at keeping herself under control. I could feel her pulse hammering inside her ribcage, and, if it had been any other time, I would have broken the contact immediately, flinched away and scratched the back of my neck, averting my eyes. But right then, that contact felt good. I couldn’t pull myself away even if I wanted to.

When our embrace had finally broken, I pulled on a pair of jeans and my shoes and we went for a walk. Just around the block of my town, where I chain-smoked and we tried to keep each other laughing. Joking was strangely easy, but the laughter was way too false. Even if it helped, it still hurt to have to make that noise knowing that Sarah was dead. It hurt to be happy, even though that’s what she would have wanted.

We returned to my yard, which was really just my grandmother’s yard with a trailer in the back, also known as home sweet home. My grandparents were on the back porch, and, having heard the news, immediately rose, rushing over to give us each a hug. The Xanax had taken hold of my mind and I’d become strangely mellow, only half participating in what they were talking about, too tired and too stoned to really care.

So I just smoked.

I’m not sure how long it was before Sarah’s mother, sister, and grandmother arrived at the house to check on me. I can’t remember anymore and I wasn’t exactly keeping track at the time. Without a moment’s pause, I jumped to my feet and rushed over, capturing her mother into a hug.

She leaned her weight against me, chest and back heaving under the force of her tears. I rubbed her back softly; forcing myself to remain strong and to just let her cry. My tears could come later. Her pain was much more severe than mine and I knew that.

“I’m so sorry…” I whispered into her curly, straw colored hair, my voice trembling under the effort of holding back my tears.

She had no reply. I just held her there, in the middle of the yard, cars whizzing by, lucky enough not to know what was happening there, and probably not interested enough to wonder why such an event was occurring. Her weight seemed overwhelming, my nerves and the Xanax mixing together to give my body the consistency of melting wax. But I stuck my knees together to prevent them from buckling, letting my own tears fall when her mother gave me a soft, affectionate kiss on the forehead before resting her own against it.

“You’re still my oompa loompa.” She told me, and we both shared a brief, forced laugh before breaking the embrace, giving me the chance to move over to her grandmother, whom my own grandma had just been hugging.

She grabbed me and pulled me into a hug so tight that I feared for my ribs. She didn’t cry, instead, she just let me. Her hand patted my back, arms squeezing me comfortingly every once in a while to let me know that everything would be okay…

I want to say a week later, after finals had ended and her memorial service had come, I drove to Sarah’s grandma’s house, immediately rushing in to see her aunt, who had been taking Sarah’s death quite harshly, as had the rest of us. I gripped her into a hug, and we both began to shake.

“We were worried about you,” She choked out, voice thick with tears.

I forced a small, sad smile and shook my head, pressing my face into her hair, seeking comfort. “Nah…” I said softly. “I’m okay… I’m tough.”

“I know you are,” She told me.

-------

Sarah’s body was cremated; the damage to her head and the burning had done significant damage to her exterior. Her ashes were put in an urn, which her mother now takes everywhere with her. Chris healed up and is now taking care of Elizabeth, who now, from what I’ve heard, carries a picture of Sarah around and talks to it. She misses her mommy, but she also has a lot of people who have plenty of good stories about her, and the great, strong person that she was.

As for me, I did well on my finals and passed the tenth grade. I did as everyone told me and fought back the nervous breakdown until after the school year had ended, so as not to damage my academics. In those two weeks, I felt myself begin to age. It seems as though in that brief time, crows feet had engraved themselves into my eyes, every once in a while I would see wrinkles, and then look back to see nothing. I could feel my mind maturing as well, growing stronger through the pain. It was hard… probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But I’m still here.

I still miss her and think about her every day. Certain smells or songs will bring me back to those summer days where we would sit on my grandmother’s porch and talk and smoke until the sun rose into the sky, painting it with all different hues of orange and purple and pink, finally fading into a light blue. Memories of sitting in the bathroom all night, sneaking cigarettes and having some of the best conversations I’ll ever have. Memories of boyfriends and tears and inside jokes, watching House of 1000 Corpses over and over again to the point of knowing every line in the film by heart, getting drunk and collapsing in front of the television to watch random TV shows and swimming in the creeks in just our bras and underwear.

They’re some of the best memories of my life, and I while my friend is gone, I hope that what pieces of her that I’ve clung to so tightly for going on thirteen years remain deep inside my head and heart until my heart, too, has stopped beating and the activity in my brain stops.

Sermon of Serenity

With no back---bones,
we s.c.a.t.t.e.r.e.d
using teeth and nails to splinter the ground
and kicking up as much dust as possible.

[ the word for that is 'c-c-coward' ]

& you can spread your fiction ((all you want))
just know that
[truth casts no shadows.]
you'll get lost in the white noise.

[['cause you can't be a .h.e.r.o.
when you were running with us]]

No matter what happens
-- you still won't have a backbone.


S-s-so preach your s-e-r-m-o-n
[['cause we all know the truth]]
&& when push comes to shove
you'll be at the bottom of the pile.

.

.

.

...[[ & we won't pray for you.]]








I'm upset.
& I hate the stupid bitches at my school.