Saturday, March 29, 2008

Can't Choose Your Death


An infant
Suddenly dead in his crib.
My grandpa 
dying in his sleep
At hundred and six.
Women, dying  giving birth
Solders dying in battlefields.
Car accidents, plains falling
Some die crossing streets.
By stray bullet 
drive by shooting.
By Jeffrey Dahmer
Decapitating.
A fanatics' poisoned cool aid.
Cancer and Aids.
In a dumpster, in an alley
By teen parents.
Drowning, 
In the bathtub
Your schizo mother.
A hunting knife
By your athlete husband.
A snake bite,
A dog mulling.
In an earthquake
Buildings falling,
In wildfires and mudslides.
The gas chamber,
Electric chair
Firing squad
The guillotine.
Death by hanging
Lynching, dragging
Horse back riding.
Hang-gliding, train crossing
Striking lightning.
On the slops
By avalanche
In SUBMARINES
and Space Ships.
Death by torture,
Death by hunger,
Stoned to death.
An overdoes at twenty eight.
By your surgeon,
Mercy killings
By Doctor Death.
Suffocation
Mutilation
Liposuction
Mad Cow disease
Tylenol tampered
The Bird Flue, SARS
And suicide.
And on    and on
The list   goes on.
Which one's better?
Which is faster?
Which is painless?
Which one is fair?
You know, I know
We must all go
But we can't choose
How to exit
This damn world
Just like when
We didn't chose to enter it.
 
First written on September 22, 2001
Edited on March 29, 2008
 

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Motherless

The woman who gave birth to ten human beings died without even one of them by her side. Life is a bitch, too short for some and agonizingly long for others. Mom died one day short of her 90 Th birthday. My earliest memories of her are from when I was about 3 years old. I would watch her bathe my baby brother. I washed my babies just like her, washing their head first without immersing them in the tub. I would dry their head and then washed the rest of their body so they would not be cold too long. I remember going grocery shopping with her, to the butcher shop, the bakery, the fruit stand and my favorite, the European deli/candy/biscuit/powder milk shop. When we entered that place the rich aroma of freshly grounded coffee would great us. The dry salami and pastrami that mom would order would make my mouth water. Once when I was following her in the street I probably was daydreaming and I fell behind and when I realized it I started to scream and cry out for her. She was just a few steps ahead of me chatting with a friend. The first time ever I began to appreciate her was a month after I got married. Every single day I had to decide what to cook for my husband and me. I thought, boy she had to do this everyday and keep more than 10 people happy and have enough for unexpected guests that were a common occurrence in our family then. She was married at 17, had her first daughter at 19 but even at 40 when she had her last child, her golden son, she was an innocent. She loved my handsome father for as long as she was in her right mind but after getting Alzheimer's disease she could hardly remember his name. Slowly she lost most of her memory. People and objects lost their meanings for her. She started to forget to eat. It was sad to see her fading away. She was not the mom we used to know. We never loved her less it just was heart breaking to see her go even before she was gone. Mom, if my children love me today it's because of you. You taught me to be a good mom and a good wife. I have loved you as long as I can remember and will love you to the day I die. May you rest in peace to eternity
        

Sunday, March 9, 2008

No Time To Be

To feel you exist, you must think. To think, you must have time. To have time, you must have money because if you don't you should be working & if you are working you don't have time. Everything I do revolves around my work schedule. From every 24 hours in a day I work about 9 hours & spend 1 hour commuting. That leaves me 14 hours. I sleep about 6 hours, spend about 1 hour on grooming. Every morning it takes me 2 hours to get my daughter ready for school & dropping her off. Now I have 5 hours left. I need to cook, clean, shop, do laundry, pay bills, entertain my daughter, feed the dog & find some time for myself or maybe watch some TV or read. (Oh I forgot I'm married I need to talk to him too sometimes.) Granted I don't do all these things every day but all of them need to be done sometime. I either do them & have no time for any thing else or don't do them at all & live in squalor. The reality is that I do some things some time & worry the rest of the time about not doing those things. So basically I feel unproductive, overwhelmed & at the same time overworked. I know I'm starving my mind & intellect while at the same time not winning in the great rat race either. All this brings me back to my first sentence, TO FEEL YOU EXIST, YOU MUST THINK. Therefor because I don't think, because I don't have time, I DON'T EXIST.