There is good reason to prefer my body over my mind.

My body is mine to do with what I please. I can decorate it, mold it, pamper it… even kill it if so inclined. My body is free to wander wherever it is strong enough to roam right up until it isn’t.

My mind, though; that thing belongs to others. My mind has been filled by others, trained by others, and must behave itself on account of others. Whenever my mind ventures outside of it’s box it is quickly pushed back inside by those who witness, lest I am found to be odd, or wicked, or plain Jane insane. And worse about the mind? I fear I may never be free of it.

Yet, despite that I do not prefer the physical me. I remain equally partial to body and mind, and could not choose one over the other, nor would I trade either for another. I am satisfied. Mine are good partners, body and mind, partners which together stand alone through this life, while also working diligently to face whatever lies ahead.

They lived under the ruins, in a labyrinth of connected cellars and tunnels and, when necessary, in the sewers, surviving on whatever they could catch and kill, and any other scraps they could scavenge, only daring to go above while the dark of night, Piotr said, restrained their shadows, because, to be caught would mean the train to Neverland: the camp from where no one had ever returned, with its barbed-wire fences coiled between guard-towers, the searchlights, the soldiers with their rifles, and the gas chambers.

It’s not the person you miss

it is how they made you feel about yourself

when you were with them

those moments of ecstasy

It’s not the person you miss

it is the fear you’ll never ever love again

that haunts you laying alone

in cold sheets tangled from sleeplessness.

Two opposing pressures

push aside memories of negatives

to build a monument to what was lost

standing so much higher than it ever was.

To move on

blow up the falsehoods

tear down the monuments

stop wallowing in the meager pleasure of pain

then love again.

Loving no magic

given to chosen others to grant

like genies in lamps you must rub the right way.

the power to love

abides within

activated by simply deciding to give it away

thereby feeling it fully again

you taking back charge

by loving first

instead of waiting to be loved.

There but not present

watching as a spectator

tight rope with no net.

* *

I'm every bit the nutrient-rich, slightly fatty, humble, suet-like cake of my native American ancestors. I am not for everyone and definitely not designed for every day consumption. I'm a little too substantial for that.

While I can admittedly be somewhat dense and boring (especially to more refined palates), I can also save your life when things go wrong. I have the ability to encourage, sustain, and bridge you over to better times. I am dependable that way.

Unfortunately, I'm not something you'd probably ever look forward to having. Not when there is an entire world of fancy, laboratory-derived, “power” bar type snacks in shiny packages available. However, will you ever be glad to find simple me at the bottom of your daypack in a survival situation.

Take me along. I make a decent companion for life's journey.

Talent. Tantalizing, too tall to reach, and yet

Ceases to be itself when you climb for it

The envy of the average, the drug of the exceptional

A gift from God grasped by the fingers of Want

Want although we do not know its meaning

Want although we question its mattering

It lies deep within us

Tangled up in our obsessions and drives

The minotaur in the maze, the string that we follow, and the bride who waits with held breath

Its size does not matter, it fills us the same as it leaves us empty

The talent to sing is not the talent to smile

The talent of mind is not the talent of hands

But these talents, living in our bodies like a spirit of their own

Are nothing more than the insatiability for skill

And a raw hope that we may one day see what our Want already does

A palm is put up, that no pity could make it through

“How can you console her knowing death is afraid of you?”

I did not compose these words, yet they are mine

Uttered in a dream, one echoing line

Spoken by Death herself, while she holds a girl’s hand

She looks only twelve, and the child smaller stands

An audience watches, a statement, a show

To a pit at the bottom the children all go

The sand does not sort them by age or by name

They fall, listless, down, to be buried the same

Death never asked us for these bodies, so small

What she asks is a question, overworked and appalled

“I am but a reaper, a guideman, a door

What terrors are you who keep sending me more?”

So her palm is an army that will not make way for you

“How can you console her knowing Death is afraid of you?”

How can we console her, us watching the news

With our guns in the closet we’ve never had to use?

It was not our bullets that broke through her chest

But we fought for the weapon that laid her to rest

How can you console her, you preachers who pray

When you say that the young must retrieve those astray?

How can you tell a child, while wishing them well

That their weakness and fear sends their playmates to hell?

Were none of us sacred before we were grown?

Are none of them sacred now, not on their own?

Is innocence meaningless, the perfect white page

That we write on and fight on, turn black as our rage?

Are they pawns? Are they dough? To be molded and used,

Or abused, until like us they grow? Death begs no.

Iris was the daughter of the gods, Thaumas of the blue sea and Thaumas' ocean-nymph wife, Electra. She chose as her mission, color, because the sky was black and, of all the emergencies the other gods addressed, she felt the dark sky was the most critical.

She tried to paint the sky, jumping so high that when she came back down, she had left a streak in that dark night, a multicolored band--an arc of variegated ribbon.

Thus she became known as the goddess of the rainbow.

But even a thousand rainbows could not prevent the black from bleeding through. So she jumped so high that she found a green star in the night and pushed it to the world. But the sky turned green, which made all of the lush gardens invisible. She jumped again, so high, that she found a red star in the night and pushed it together with the green star.

"Oh, no," she lamented, for the sky was yellow, and when she jumped along it the streaks of her rainbows were only brown. "A yellow sky just won't do, nor will brown rainbows!" she complained. She jumped yet again, so high, and was able to locate a blue star and tether it, pulling it into the star that was the combined red and green.

The sky became bright, blinding white. She made another arc, but the colors of its rainbow were completely overwhelmed by the brightness of the white. "Who wants to live their lives with eyes closed?" she grumbled.

She had an idea. She looked about the blinding landscape and removed everything brown she could see. She removed the bark of the trees, the stink from the shit, and the mush from all mushrooms. The sky darkened somewhat, but was now gray.

She looked about the bland, dull, muted landscape and removed everything red she could see. She ate all of the apples, picked all of the roses, and coagulated any blood there was into dark scabs. She looked up at the sky and saw it was cerulean. "Almost," she huffed.

She wondered about the green now. She wondered about removing the chlorophyll from the grass, the emeralds from the black shale and from ladies, and the hate from envy. But surely if she removed all the green, she calculated, she would be left with only a pure blue, which would wash out the blue in her rainbow, making each look like two--one of red, orange, yellow, and green, and another of indigo and violet.

"That not the way I will have my rainbows," she said. "Cerulean will have to do."

And she rested, for she saw that it was good.

MORAL OF THE STORY: If you live by the color wheel, don't look for complements when you're searching for rainbows.