Is It Over Yet? (poem)

Where do busy minds go
When there's nothing to analyze
And nobody cares to know
That the war appears to be over,
Or maybe it's just  begun ...
Could somebody please tell me,
If we lost
Or if we won?

Zero, Zero Service
Over the net it goes
Volleying for each point
Bump, set, spike,
Who will win,
No one knows.
Is it over yet?

Codes of letters and numbers and symbols
Meaningless in any language
Perhaps
But not meaningless
To me.

I speak gibberish.
I notice things.
It's what I do.
How about you?

I've always been a little crazy,
But it helps me from going
Insane.
Who's to blame?
What's the point
To the game?
What's my name?
Does it even matter anymore?
How many times have I been here
Before
In this place
Where I'm nothing but a file
Nothing but a number,
Just a face

Making sense to nobody,
Not even to myself.
Blame the pills,
They say,
For all your ills.
Well, I take them ALL
Religiously.
Whatever shit they chuck at me.

I follow the rules
As best I understand
But that's the thing,
I don't.
Understand.
Never have.
Not sure I even want to.

Fate - Sonnet

Inexpressible - Poem

Don't Tell Me It Is Madness - Poem

What Shall I Say? - Poem

Writing is not the most difficult task
"What shall I say?" -- not the question I ask.
Rather, I wonder, which guts I should spill,
When should I speak, and when to keep still.

May You Stay 'Forever Young' (at heart)

CLICK HERE to listen to the song on YouTube.
(This is a recording of the slower version of the song.)

This song was originally written and performed by Bob Dylan. Some critics said he didn't have all that great of a singing voice. Maybe it wasn't as melodious-sounding as some other people's voices. However, the message in this song is incredibly powerful. I don't think he was literally advocating living forever, or even being irresponsible/childish in perpetuity. My best guess is that he meant that the way to 'true happiness' is trying to hold onto the good parts of what youth has to offer. For example, such things as, (but not limited to):

•  firm belief that we can make a difference for the better, however small, in whatever environment we may find ourselves in. 
• An unshakeable faith in the basic moral decency of most human beings. 
• An unquenchable thirst for the distribution of fairness/equality/justice to all human beings.
• A strong desire to see others 'succeed' in life without caring too awful much about whether or not we ever get a bunch of accolades or recognition for ourselves.

Here are the words/lyrics (as found using the most readily accessible search engine):

"Forever Young"

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the light surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

They Call Us - Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

This goes out to a very special lady whose CB handle was simply 'gypsy' ... thank you ... much love to you and all your motley crew ;)

Here's 'Cher' singing about those of us who have felt trapped into playing a role we maybe never wanted, but it seemed like fate? Lyrics are below the text link:

click here to listen to the music video

I was born in the wagon of  a  travelling show
Mama used to dance for money they'd throw

Papa would do whatever he could
Preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of doctor good

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down

Picked up a boy just south of Mobile
Gave him a ride, filled him with a hot meal
I was sixteen, he was twenty-one
Rode with us to Memphis
And papa woulda shot him if he knew what he'd done

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down

I never had schoolin' but he taught me well
With his smooth southern style
Three months later I'm a gal in trouble
And I haven't seen him for a while, uh-huh
I haven't seen him for a while, uh-huh

She was born in the wagon of a travellin' show
Her mama had to dance for the money they'd throw
Grandpa'd do whatever he could
Preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of doctor good

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down

Gypsies, tramps, and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down ,,, 

y ahora algunas cosas en español:

Nacío  (no sé donde fue o cuando, exactamente). 

 Putas, vagabundos y ladrones.

 Lo escucharíamos de la gente del pueblo.

 Nos llamaban gitanos, vagabundos y ladrones.

 Pero todas las noches venían todos los hombres.

 Y nos dieron su dinero.

 

 Recuerdo muchas personas

No sé como se llaman, o no puedo recordar.

 Le dion un paseo, lo llenón con una comida caliente.

 Cuando yo tenía ? Años viajó a muchas lugares diferentes.

Fue una adventura, creo que fue, entonces

mis padres hicieron lo que pudieron

 para enseñarnos y protegernos.

 Gitanos, vagabundos y ladrones.

 Lo escucharíamos de la gente del pueblo.

 Nos llamaban putas, vagabundos y ladrones.

 Pero todas las noches venían todos las personas

 Y nos dieron su dinero.

Voy a alguna escuela y aprendo bien. 

Mis padres me enseñe bien.

Y otros tambien.

Cuando tenia tal vez diecicuatro años? 

Conocí a alguien y, para resumir, 

él me tomó el corazón y lo rompió eventualmente. 

Prometí casarme con él, pero diez días antes d

nuestra boda dijo que no podía casarse conmigo 

porque no fue suficientemente buena. 

 Lo esperé algunos años antes de eso

 y le fui fiel totalmente.

Cuando pisoteó mis emociones, yo era joven y me dolió.

Estaba enojado con Dios y enojado 

con la vida en general. Pero asi es la vida, ?verdad?

Alguno tiempo después soy una chica en problemas.

Fue embarazada y entonces

me casé con el papá de nuestro hijo,

 porque me pareció lo correcto en ese momento.

Hay mas, mas mucho a la historia de mi viaje,

pero nadie le importa, tal vez?

 Gitanos, vagabundos y ladrones.

 Lo escucharíamos de la gente del pueblo.

 Nos llamaban putas, vagabundos y ladrones.

 Pero todas las noches venían todos los hombres.

 Y nos dieron su dinero.

 Gitanos, vagabundos y ladrones.

 Lo escucharíamos de la gente del pueblo.

 Nos llamaban putas, vagabundos y ladrones.

 Pero todas las noches venían todos los hombres.

 Y nos dieron su dinero ,,,

------------------------------
ridiculoso rant that makes no sense and has nothing to do with anything, but it kept me busy:

so many people have helped me out and i still feel so lost and alone sometimes. I get mixed up of stuffs that's happening to me before in the past and stuffs that peoples has confided in me. and it seems like just when i maybe try to make better choices for myself and my kids i mess up AGAIN and i get hoodwinked AGAIN, or so it seems. i thought i was doing so much better and maybe could provide a somewhat 'normal' life for my kids if icould remarry (first husband's dead). he was abusive, but i wasn't perfect either. i didn't want him dead, just wanted him to stop hurting us. he OD-ed (or so i was told). never seen the body so dunno. at first, i was maybe relieved. he said and done so many hurtful things. but the more time passes, i realize how maybe he was.caught up in a situation he felt out of control of and he was hurting too and maybe the only way he could deal with the way peoples had hurt him was to keep hurting other people? i don't know. i did love him a lot. part of me still probably does because he was my babies' daddy and even though he hurt us, i could sometimes tell he didn't want to do those things. other times, it seemed like he did like being mean to us? I'm not mind-reader, so I dunno. I never really got to say goodbye to him because iwas too hurt and angry to go to his memorial service. i feel like I got no closure. i don't totally blame him for being the way he was. somebody had hurt him and he never dealt with it, but just kept pushing the hurt on to others instead of facing it. maybe that's sometimes what I do and don't realize it? I dunno. I don't intend to ,,, but sometimes when I remember bad stuffs of mine or of other people's that they've told me, it makes me so sad and angry. I've tried so hard sometimes to stop caring, cuz I keep thinking if I could just shut off my feelings like I used to then maybe it wouldn't hurt so much when I sense other people's pain. especially in my children and family if they worry about me and then I worry about them worrying about me 🤣 dunno what I was even talking about. did it matter? Prolly not.

SSDD - Poem

Pushed from our 'nest'
Before we were fully aware,
We weren't sure of much,
And sure as hell weren't prepared.

Pummeled to the ground,
We din't know how to fly,
So we crawled into the woods,
And started to 'cry.'

Found some other misfits
As confused as we were ...
But what to do next,
Nobody was sure.

We all watched each other,
Hoping for some sort of clue,
Some direction to go,
But no one knew what to do.

Somewhere deep inside,
We sensed a deeper longing,
That couldn't be denied --
We all wanted 'belonging' . . .

A feeling of being wanted,
A sensation of purpose,
A notion of being needed,
For our bodies AND souls to be nourished.

Too young to know what happened before,
Too inexperienced to understand the now,
Unable to predict what would happen next,
So we coped, the best we knew how.

We worked together,
Through both calm and stormy weather,
To prove that we were heaven-sent.
But somehow we questioned --
"Were we sent from above?
Or are we just viewed as 'things'
To be used and abused,
Instead of cherished and loved?"

We didn't know.
And nobody gave a damn
Until it was too late.
And then the assholes called it 'fate.'

Whatever.
SSDD.
Same Shit,
Different Day.

Some days are better
Than others.
So we hold on,
My sisters and brothers.
We hold onto the end
Of that proverbial rope,
And do our darndest
Not to EVER give up hope.

We Are ALL Works in Progress

This saying on the picture is one of the few things I remember that my grandmother taught me in German. Loosely translated, I think it means "a lazy lady uses a long thread" (or something like that). She used to say that to me when we were sewing or mending something by hand. You see, if you make your thread shorter, you have to re-thread your needle more often. I used to like to take what I thought were "shortcuts" ... so I would make my thread longer so I that I wouldn't have to re-thread my needle so often. The problem with that was that by using a longer thread, my line was much more likely to get tangled up in knots ...which meant wasted time and perfectly good string having to start all over again. I think that maybe what my Grandma was trying to tell me with this phrase wasn't so much that I was being lazy using a longer thread, but rather that sometimes in life there aren't really any feasible shortcuts.

I'm forty-three now, and the older I get, the more I realize how much more I still have yet to learn. The more I think about it, the more I realize that some of the most valuable things in life take a long time to come to fruition. Also, I think Grandma was trying to tell me that anything in life that needs to be done is worth doing to the best of one's ability (with the present resources and strength that one has). I don't remember offhand who said it, but one of my favorite sayings is a rather simple one:

"Do what you can, with what you have, wherever you are."

There's a song like that called "Brighten the Corner Where You Are." I can't remember all the words, but the gist of it is that no matter what circumstances we may be facing at any given time, it's pretty much a guarantee that somebody somewhere is having even more problems, so try to cheer up whatever place you may find yourself in. 

So these days, I'm trying to focus on basic, essential things -- simple things. Some people have told me that I'm a really complicated person ... maybe that's so? (okay, most definitely so) But I think, deep down, what most people want is to feel a sense of belonging and purpose -- to feel like we have a reason for being alive. 

I have faced death several times -- often as a direct result of stupid choices that I thought were my only options at the time. It's a long story ... but one time, after coming out of a coma, I realized how very precious every moment of life is and how much I had taken for granted. Being able to see, being able to hear, being able to speak, being blessed to be able to be a mom, and even having felt great love numerous times & then lost it ... So yes, sometimes I get down in the dumps when my meds or hormones are out of whack or I'm once again reminded of traumas from the past. But day by day, I'm learning to let go of the stuff that weighs me down and focus on the here and now. 

Life is too short for me to agonize over what I should have, could have, would have done differently if I had known better at the time. The simple truth is that I've made MANY stupid decisions over the years ... and there were almost always natural consequences for those choices. I only hope and pray that my children, other family members, and friends can forgive me for putting them through so much stuff. And frankly, the most difficult of all is learning to forgive myself. I'm still working on that ... but we're all works in progress, right?

Song for Today - When the Words Won't Come

Song performed by Amy Grant. These words/lyrics below are not the original ones, but have been edited somewhat. To hear the song as it was originally recorded (to the best of my knowledge, anyhow), click on the text link below:

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO

God loves the lullaby
In a parent's tears in the dead of night
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
God hears each broken cry,
The fighter's plea not to let him die
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a memory
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah.

The woman holding on for life,
The dying man giving up the fight
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes
The tears of shame for what's been done,
The silence when the words won't come
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a memory
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah.

Better than an old bell ringing,
Better than a choir singing out, singing out.

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a memory
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah.

We pour out our miseries
God just hears a memory
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah.

Songwriters: Chapin Hartford / Sarah Hart

Song for Today - Neunundneunzig Luftballons

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON YOUTUBE

According to Wikipedia,

"The English version is not a direct translation of the German original and contains somewhat different lyrics. (click previous "direct translation" to read that as well as a side by side comparison of the original German versus the English version). If, for some strange reason (INCONCEVABLE!) that link no longer functions, I will post the main stuff at the bottom of this post as well.

While at a June 1982 concert by the Rolling Stones in West Berlin, Nena's guitarist Carlo Karges noticed that balloons were being released. As he watched them move toward the horizon, he noticed them shifting and changing shapes, where they looked like strange spacecraft (referred to in the German lyrics as a "UFO"). He thought about what might happen if they floated over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet sector. 

Also cited by the band was a newspaper article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about five local high school students in 1973 who played a prank to simulate a UFO by launching 99 (one was lost from the original 100) aluminized Mylar balloons attached with ribbons to a traffic flare. The red flame from the flare reflected by the balloons gave the appearance of a large pulsating red object floating over Red Rock Canyon outside the Las Vegas Valley in Nevada. 

A direct translation of the title is sometimes given as "Ninety-Nine Air Balloons", but the song became known in English as "Ninety-Nine Red Balloons".The title "99 Red Balloons" almost fits correctly with the syllables falling in the right places within the rhythm of the first line of lyrics, although Neunundneunzig (99) has one syllable more than "ninety-nine".

The lyrics of the original German version tell a STORY: 99 balloons are mistaken for UFOs, causing a general (military officer) to send pilots to investigate. Finding nothing but children's toys, the pilots decide to put on a show and shoot them down. The display of force worries the nations along the borders and the defence ministers on each side bang the drums of war to grab power for themselves. In the end, a 99-year war results from what would otherwise have been just a harmless flight of balloons.  The ensuing war results in loss of life and devastation ON ALL SIDES, without any clear victor (winner). At the end of the song, the singer walks through the devastated ruins, lets loose a balloon, and cries as it flies away."

-----------------------------

From Siobhán Silke: If you're interested, here is a *very* unpoetic direct translation, just so you know what she was singing originally. The translation is line for line.

Do you have some time for me?
Then I'll sing a song for you
About 99 balloons
On their way to the horizon
Are you perhaps thinking of me?
Then I'll sing a song for you
About 99 balloons
And that something (like the war) comes from such a thing (the balloons)

99 balloons
On their way to the horizon
They thought they were UFOs from space
So a general sent
A flying squad out there
To raise the alarm if it was true
Yet there on the horizon were
Only 99 balloons

99 jet airplanes
Each one was a great warrior
Thought that they were Captain Kirk
There were great fireworks
The neighbors didn't understand anything
And felt immediately felt "pissed off"/provoked
Yet there they shot on the horizon
At 99 balloons

99 war ministers
Matches and petrol cans
Thought that they were clever people
Already caught wind of great spoils [of war]
Shouted: War, and wanted power
Man, who would have thought
That one day it would come to this
Because of 99 balloons

99 years of war
Don't leave a place for victors
There are no ministers of war any more
No jet planes either
Today I'm doing my rounds
Seeing the world lying in ruins
Found a balloon
Think of you and let it fly

----------------------

If you're still with me, you should really check THIS out .... It's a side-by-side comparison of the original German lyrics versus the direct translation to English versus the "English Version." Very "interesting."