My white name.

One by one, we were pulled,

Goaded into big houses,

And the doors were locked shut.

My brother, just a baby, cries.

The woman who calls me Juan

Tells Maria to shut her kid up.

My mother is not named Maria.

We look at two sticks,

Crossed with a man in the center,

pinned by nails in his hands.

Forlorn, with twigs on his head,

The women call him my savior,

But I have just been captured.

At times, I feel like him.

They call it escuela

And make us read the ink

That blots our papers.

We do our English names.

My sister is Teresa,

My brother is Carlos.

I am Juan, but I do not feel like Juan.

My mother works hard,

So hard blisters erupt on her hands

And her body never moves without cracking.

If my father were here,

He'd say not to protest,

But he died trying to protect us.

He failed, and now we all suffer.

The village has cone down with something.

My mother coughs blood,

My brothers' noses run incessantly.

Shaman tries to heal them

But receives lashes to his back

And a white man takes over

They die a few weeks apart.

Now, alone with Teresa,

I begin to hate my new role

The mask I put on every day.

But the whites are pleased.

To them, I make good progress.

To them, I am a success.

They ship me off to a place called Espana.

Espana is dirty with filthy white people.

The land is gray and hard.

The sky is black with soot.

They do not appreciate their animals;

They raise and eat them for fun

And play games with their buffalo

I cannot respect them and never will.

Yet, I am paraded for the people

Who sit in their seats

Wearing crowns of gold like the savior.

They nod and smile at me

The way my brother and I smiled at a kill.

I am just flesh to them.

I cannot wait to go home.

But, I've never returned.

I was a good man so they married me.

I was a good husband so she swelled.

My children are nothing like me.

They wear Spanish clothes

And they speak in the tongue of my captors.

One day, I will bring them home.

One day, they will breathe my clean air.

One day, they will eat the sweet fruit

And take the rite of passage into adulthood.

One day, they will see their grandmother

Who the whites threw in a shoddy ditch

And told us that is the way.

One day, I will re-educate them.

No, no, please not again. I hate becoming that... thing. Why does this always happen! My body was beginning to change. I shuddered at the thought it. My hair was migrating towards my feet which were becoming increasingly large and bulbous. I was sweating as my whole body painfully swelled. my form disappeared. I was becoming a sausage. My head, the last thing I had was becoming mushroom shaped. Oh no! Oh no! My body was shrinking, shrinking, shrinking! My bones were popping out of place and disappearing. my organs were realigning until they had become a shaft. My brain, the only part of me that was still attached was migrating towards the mushroom top. Suddenly, it was complete. I had transformed. I sighed and looked at myself. It happens every time I watch porn. I don't become the sexy girl. No, I become the dick. Always the dick. I sigh and close my eyes. At least I always dream I'm me again.

Nothing would bother me more than after months of taking the same route to work or school or even the market that one day I wanted to change things up and was informed, "Sorry, that is not allowed."

Something as simple as making choice as to how I would get from point A to point B is denied. I cannot even begin to imagine a directive from another telling me what I can or cannot do, as long as it is not harmful to myself or others.

I can't even imagine driving somewhere and being pulled over by a police officer and because I get into an argument he decides to confiscate my possessions including my car and says he suspected everything I had was drug related and I can't get these things back. The authorities would own them through "search and seizure." How preposterous that even sounds. Must be fiction.

My freedom to be who I am, how I think, who I like or dislike, where I go, and what I do are my freedoms, and as long as they are not intentionally hurting another, they are the most valuable possessions I/we have. 

There are voices from those who do not belong, faces I've never seen and worlds that do not exist fill my head. Sometimes it is far too crowded and I need a place to spill it all out upon, perhaps a page or song. I can see the world as a playground or a place of gloom, only if I wish it to be. My imagination is what drives me, what makes me act the way I do.

When I was young my sister and I would play games, as if we were princesses or in tribes with "powers" belonging to the elements. Our playground was used as a spaceship and at grocery stores we were either spies or in the villain's lair. 

Imagination, without it I would be boring, bland, nothing but a girl with an empty head. Without imagination our world would be gray and gloomy. Movies, books, plays, all that requires creativity would be gone. We wouldn't be alive, but dead.

I can imagine anything I want, and that is freeing, beautiful by itself.

Technology has saved many, many lives in the medical realm. Ultrasounds, X-rays, vaccinations...

Technology has improved traveling. Unlike the pioneers, we don't have to travel for months to get from one side of the US to the other, and half of us don't die on the way, either... :)

We don't have to wait for months, or even years to hear our loved ones' voices or to send them a letter because technology has made phones, Skype, chats, and a reliable mail system possible.

But now, we rate people by their Facebook following, or how we looked by what we see on Pinterest or Instagram.

We don't go outside and talk face to face anymore, and our only friends are laptop screens and phones.

There's got to be a balance to technology; technology is not bad by any stretch of the imagination. But how we use technology can be harmful to us, and others as well.

Two kids ran from her.

Glassy eyed and transparent,

Her body bore bruises

Of the apparent strangulation.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

She'd never hear those words again.

The sitter, sick and tired of her,

Calling her mother,

And her brother,

And her sister,

And her ex-lover.

"Someone's gonna get this baby."

Flashes of light fill her with guilt

As the sitter watches the dead body

Loaded into a black van,

CORONER, covered in a white sheet.

Husband's screams ring loudly.

His stepson starts crying.

His mother-in-law holds him

As her first born is carted for an autopsy.

Solemnly, they identify her,

Wrapped in each other's arms,

Gasping shallow breaths.

"That's her. That's Lorne."

Twenty-eight and fragile.

Medical examiner notes his findings.

Bruises on her face, ribs, legs.

No sexual assault, no fluids.

Blows to the head caved in the skull,

A fall possibly twisted the ankle,

A knife could've sliced the forearm.

His stomach churns as he prods

This is his job, his life.

His family was destroyed by this,

Yet his work was never done.

"Official C.O.D. is asphyxiation."

Investigators scramble to learn

She was doted on as a child

Though her mother left her father

And took her and her brother.

The move to Philly and the remarriage

Hit her like a bunch of bricks

But resiliently, she excelled in school,

Graduated with her masters in law,

Got pregnant and broken up with

Only to marry and have another child.

She was perfect in all ways,

"So who could want her dead?"

They opened her computer,

Greasy and hot from previous uses.

Scarcely dead twenty-four hours

And they were invading her privacy,

Ripping apart her accounts.

Twitter provided no leads

Since she only used it for politics.

Instagram, used for snooping,

Proved even less successful.

However, on Facebook

Hostility had boiled over.

"Who's Amanda Greene?"

Amanda Greene wore the title

Best friend, like a badge

Though the messages didn't reflect.

She's such a stupid whore.

How could she do that to *****?

Their kid deserves better.

She should rot for what she did.

Ugly words splatter the page.

Lorne's friend since fifth grade,

Who played at recess with her,

Who shared her juice boxes,

"She's the prime suspect?"

But the signs were there

Clearer than a bottle of Fiji.

The accusations,

The slander,

The messages.

The police car rolled out,

All eyes set on one target.

Coming out of the grocery store,

Ms. Greene was met with cuffs.

The bags were tossed aside.

As her car was ransacked, they heard,

"I didn't kill that heartless bitch!"

But there it was,

The rope suspected in her death.

Her son, sitting next to it,

Slept peacefully in his carseat.

Carrying him out,

They handed him to his father,

Lorne's ex-husband,

And realized the thick plot.

The love affair for many years,

The addiction and the rage,

The final straw came when,

"She said she still loved him."

Amanda, in her own words,

Lashed out by finding Lorne,

Punching, kicking, tying the rope.

The fear in her eyes as she realized

Her best friend, her oldest friend!

Et tu, Brute? Oui! Oui!

Amanda stoically told the tale

Older than time and history itself.

The tale of love strained

Under the weight of technology,

And then, even more stoically,

"And I'd do it again too."

There are so many people, who have come to be contented by what they take from the online world. Many people who feel it is keeping in touch by just messaging eachcother. We used to have our Mums get us together so we could hangout and play. But nowadays we are enabled to feel fulfilled by social media. For many it encourages antisocial behavior because people would rather just.. see it be done online than do it themselves. Its like many have lost the need for true friendship. Its enough for them to just see your vacation photos and give them a like. Some years ago they would've been developed at a store and to share them you'd have to get together.. or mail them. People get to live vicariously because of social media, its too easy to falsely experience anything. Its a temptation we all face, and many give in to. 

In developmental psychology

Circles, a widely held 

Belief is that the play

Toddlers exhibit is

That of play, side by 

Side, without interaction

Between the players.  This,

While typical in tots, produces

Vomitous sensations when

Exhibiting by my teenage

Daughter and her parallel play

Text partner/friend as they

Sit side by side (but not face to

Face) "enjoying each other's

Company".  Speak!!!  Dammit!!!

We used to meet. Ice cream, throwing at each other during fights. 

We used to see our emotions and know the sound of each other's voice when things went downwards. 

But now, dear best friend, I can't remember the sound of your voice when you're at the edge of crying as you're always hiding emotions before sending an audio message. 

Now I try to get your style of writing to know how you really feel.