A Pause For Ponderation. . .

Ponder...

One.

Dear Artists, Jenifer Lewis Has A Few Words Of Advice For You... | Shadow and Act

Dear Artists, Jenifer Lewis Has A Few Words Of Advice For You... | Shadow and Act

memories of 9/11...

TERROR...

HORROR...

BRAVERY...

RESILIENCE!

One Love.

Gratitude Is My New Favorite Word

As an artist, no matter how hard you work or suffer or bleed… and no matter how earnest your attempts might be… all you can ask or hope for is that people will pay attention.

From the bottom of my heart, I wish to say THANK YOU for those cool, beautiful people and sweet supportive souls who have paid attention.

"What happens to men, to married fathers who beat their children senselessly...and then storm off into the restless Harlem night?

Do they grieve or lament their terrible actions? Do they hold long conversations with God? Do they think themselves sane and their actions as essential in building the spines of strong Black men?

What happens to them when they walk away from the pain and the ache and the madness they've made? Perhaps some find a soft young distraction that sighs in just the right key, or moans as if on cue, and she or he pretends to understand them...and then that pretty young distraction makes quietly eloquent love to another raging Black man."

From Like Litter in The Wind a novel By L.M. Ross

One Love.

LMR

“I Have a Dream Today…” 50 Years Ago In a Land of Struggle, Progress, and Struggle

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father's died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." –

(Excerpt) By Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr… Given on the steps of The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC-- August 28, 1963

One Love.

DISCONNECTEDNESS

Have you ever felt completely and utterly disconnected from the rest of the world?

I do not mean in some desperate, aggressively sociopathic-serial-killer way that people should hurriedly cross the street whenever they see you approaching…

No. I mean have you ever felt so relentlessly unusual and so blatantly different… that no one else, not another soul ever truly GETS The Real You?

I do. I feel that way most of the time. In fact, I’ve felt that way since time was a child.

It’s this quiet sense of deep inner stillness and it reminds me that no matter where I am, or who I’m with... I am always ALONE.

Freak!

Although there are and have been instances where that lone voice of my freakiness didn’t always hurt or bleed or scream so loudly and I was/am or have been able to blend in with the prosaic rest. However, it was such a part-time phenom that it felt like an almost bogus existence.

Freak!

Have you ever thought that if someone else, anyone else at all truly KNEW you, your card hand would be peeped, the jig would be up… and you would have to forever relinquish each and every one of your Cool Creds?

I do. In fact, any Cool Creds I've collected or amassed would have to be erroneous at best.

I am only me: a freak just beneath my skin.

I don’t think or feel there is anything remotely wrong with this condition---at least not anymore. We can chalk that up to The Riddle of Humanity, the march of maturity and the rules of human evolution.

We are EXACTLY who we're supposed to be.

And what we are supposed to be is different, unique… singular. That is the way God meant for each of us to be.

So this state of disconnectedness, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a wicked thing or a source for hidden shame.

FREAK!

But damn it, sometimes it gets sooooooooooooooooooo freakin’ LONELY.

Smell me?

One.

Ten Recent Things That Give Me Pause… Make Me Ask WTF…(?) Or Just Cause Me To Ponder…

One: How three people from my childhood all just died within a week of each other. WTH???

Two: How certain laws are so deviously designed to keep large segments of this population down... permanently.

Three: How it always falls to us to keep those tedious folks who procrastinate— honest and to remind them to live up to their word.

Four: How some friends take these extended sabbaticals and then you never hear from them again.

Five. How doing someone a favor, being in someone’s corner, or a constant source of support doesn’t necessarily manifest in any form of reciprocation.

Six: How several years of making a concerted effort can render absolutely no positive result.

Seven: How people can deny and lie continuously and somehow arrogantly believe they won’t be discovered. Right, A-Rod?

Eight: How willpower isn’t a sometime concept, but a perpetual muscle to be tested and flexed incessantly.

Nine: How people have taken and perhaps always will take kindness for weakness, and how loyalty seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur, the Edsel… and good ole B&W TV.

Ten: How snatching JOY becomes very much necessary, because the bastards and mofos of this world will always try their level best to steal your JOY away from you (& yo quasi-happy azz).

Just sayin’, yo.

One.

Happy Birthday To My Da

Dear Da,

Today, on this July 28th, I feel this need to tell you everything inside me… roll call all my successes, failures, joys fears… and my heartbreaks. I feel as if I should name them all, one by one, for each day, each month, each year you’ve been gone.

Instead, I’ll simply say: Happy Birthday, Da…

Your brown and brooding essence is now a Spirit that possesses my older face. Beneath its surface, some claim to see this trace of Implicit sadness. Still, Da,

I need to tell you this:

I’m so glad you were my father. Blessed, that you stayed when other fools ran, strayed or escaped to places free of their sons and daughter’s cries. Each day in my mind, I thank you for being the person you were: A Man, a Husband, my Dad… and not some Houdini version of manhood.

You managed to form the words: “I love you, son.” And you said them more than once. You spoke them in a voice that even today carries me through this world of uncertainty, untruths, disappointment and ruthlessness.

Thank you for showing and giving me lessons in loyalty. Thank you for that voice which still lingers here like the singer in my brain of this song I call My Life. Thank you for being strong and standing for The Real Things, like hard work and honesty; a steadfast belief in God, and humility.

Thank you for the gifts of laughter; for those golden seasons of summers, and even the winters. Thank you for loving my mother in a way she always deserved to be Loved.

Though you weren’t very tall, I walk in your stalwart shadow now. Yes, I am a small thing made larger by your presence. Some say I am your ‘spit,’ your son, your mirror reflection. and yet, in some lone way, I am different.

I wish we had more days in the sun, more time to decipher and fix all our mutual complications. Yet, when I speak of love there is no mystery, no bitterness, nor distraught insensitivity.

I GET love now. You taught me this! Though the clouds have coalesced and swallowed your sun, you’ll always cast a giant’s shadow over this kid, this runt, this man I’ve become.

I need to tell you this:

I’m so glad you were my father. Blessed, that you stayed when other fools ran, strayed or escaped to places free of their sons and daughter’s cries. Each day in my mind, I thank You for being the kind of person you were: A Man, a Husband, My Da.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

One Love.

from Lin

Copyright© 2013 By L.M. Ross

For Your Listening Pleasure: Gregory Porter - "1960 What?"

Ain't It Strange How History Can Repeat Itself When We Don't Pay Attention?

One.

Reality Check...

By George! I think he's got it!

If only Florida lawmakers,

Judges and their juries

Did!

One.

Stevie Wonder Reacts to Zimmerman Trial Verdict

Stevie Wonder says he won't perform again in Florida until the state abolishes its Stand Your Ground gun law, which permits using deadly force against those who pose a risk of killing or seriously injuring someone. He made the announcement during a concert Sunday in Quebec City, a day after the acquittal of George Zimmerman.

Zimmerman was acquitted in the Feb. 26, 2012, shooting death of teen Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. The outcome has sparked protests nationwide and an outpouring of outrage on social media. Wonder urged his fans to support his boycott.

"The truth is that — for those of you who've lost in the battle for justice, wherever that fits in any part of the world — we can't bring them back," he said. "What we can do is we can let our voices be heard. And we can vote in our various countries throughout the world for change and equality for everybody. That's what I know we can do."

You can watch Wonder's entire statement above.

One Love.

Trayvon's Scream

Everyday and every night some black or brown child will slip through the cracks of this world… disappear… meet with a violent event that

stops his heart…

that steals his breath

… that ends his life.

And there will be silence.

* * * * * *

Who really screamed that rainy Florida night?

I believe it was Trayvon Martin.

I believe it was his mother.

I believe it was another faceless,

Nameless victim of America’s

Injustice.

Who really screamed that rainy Florida evening…?

I believe it was a chorus of my ancestors. It was

Emmet Till’s scream…

And Abner Louima’s

And Yusef Hawkins’…and

Michael Griffith’s…

And Michael Stewart's

And Eleanor Bumpers’

And Oscar Grant’s…and

Ramarley Graham’s…

I believe it was Trayvon Martin’s scream

Knowing

His right to a life of Liberty was

A cause too small to hear

And too meaningless to process…

His Life was just

A scream to be ignored or

Crushed

Like a beetle upon concrete.

And now. . .

Who will scream for all of them?

And who will scream for him

If not us…

If not me, a lone poet who knows nothing

About the pain or velocity of a bullet

To the chest?

All I know for sure is this:

Justice is a blind bitch that doesn’t give a shit about us.

It just continuously breaks my heart that we must live like this!

It just continuously breaks my heart that we must die like this!

The saddest reality of all is this:

Justice is a blind, cold-hearted bitch, that doesn’t

Give a shit

About us.

One.

Copyright© 2013 By L.M. Ross

All Rights Reserved without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in or reintroduced in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the author, except brief quotes used in reviews.

For Father’s Day … a Kidhood Memory

I’d heard so many stories of my father... the elegant jazz vagabond, the fine pomaded dandy who dressed to the nines, and who had people lined up to see him play in every city, every town and every state.

He held court like royalty. He was far too important and much too busy, so he didn’t always attend to the needs of those tedious subjects who comprised his family.

Back then, I was just a kid. Between him and my mother, I didn’t know of their marital politics, and I couldn’t decipher the strange, algebraic equation that formed my parents’ private life. And so, in those first five years, I’d had no real or touchable memory of a life with my father, at least, not in the physical sense. And then there came that moment, when a boy sees, digests, and processes it all, and it’s then that he falls in love with his father.

I was six. I vividly remember it. He was stepping off the train from Cleveland, carrying a small brown reptilian suitcase and a larger, more elongated one that held his prized trumpet. He appeared to be very big to my small eyes. He was statuesque and more handsome than all those shiny-men emoting from our small, black and white TV set. This was my daddy, my Pops, damn it—looking like no one else I’d ever seen! It was as if he were from another planet, man… a planet called Cool.

You could hear the music in him when he walked. A sound like a snare drum’s beat with its own unique syncopation seemed to reside inside of him. It lived in the carefree sway of his shoulders and resounded in the bop of his stride. I remember thinking, this is what I come from... this is what I could be! He was an outstanding example of a man. He was... magnificent!

It was more than the stylish cut and taper of his blue, double-breasted, pinstriped suit. It was more than that mysterious fedora which shaded his face in a way that was dramatic and subdued; and it was more than those fancy spectator shoes he wore, which made that lively tapping noise.

There was a certain quality, a magical sheen to his rich copper skin, and it seemed a corona glowed all around him. He moved in the slowest motion towards us. Everyone else around him was rushing swiftly to those places strangers go, and yet, he was gliding. I’d never seen a colored man glide before.

Yes, I was falling in love with my father; falling in love with a flowing vision kissed by a corona of light. He appeared to represent some extension of myself. And thus my love affair began with a revelation in a natty-blue suit.

His love for me was always an enigma, shaded under a sly fedora.

From Like Litter In The Wind By L.M. Ross

One.

About Walls. . .

There were barricades as tall as The Great Wall of China and they extended across our community. Few knew that these walls would veil our deepest secrets; or that they shaded and protected our most primal selves. Yet, most times they did; they shielded our imperfections and never exposed us for the frauds that we were.

Walls… what are they really good for anyway?

What are we all so busy hiding from?

There were some fools and envious clowns who got their jealous jollies by referring to us as: “Those Proud-ass Swintons…”

Names and labels are invented for the sole purpose of reducing the core of our spirits. In the end, when we’re all dead and gone, will it really matter anymore what people said or thought, or what the hell they called us?

BUY Like Litter In The Wind, a Novel By L.M. Ross

One.

Snatching JOY(!) At The Second Anniversary of My Extended Life...

True story: I no longer take anything or anyone for granted. I make no assumptions about anything or anyone because assumptions can only lead to profound disappointment.

None of us, not a single one of us should take this hour, this day, this year, this life, or the people in it for granted.

Neither should we ever take the fact that we awakened this morning, or that tomorrow is a given to be absolute.

Life doesn’t play that way… and neither should we.

May 27th Marks The Second Anniversary of My Heart Surgery, and on that fated Friday morning, I was given a second chance at life.

'Above all...guard your heart...it is the wellspring of life.' Proverbs 4:23 NIV

Heart disease will kill you if you don't detect it and treat it in time.

That is true - physically and spiritually. It's why the Bible states, 'Above all...guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.'

Wanting to look your best is admirable. It can enhance your sense of self-worth and improve your prospects in life.

But it's not a very gracious act to dwell upon one’s appearance and yet neglect the upkeep of your character. When all is said and done, '...Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.' (1 Samuel 16:7 NIV)

This is where the Bible comes into play. It's like a mirror; it shows you the condition of your heart at any given moment. So, how's your heart today?

What kind of thoughts are you entertaining? Are you constantly comparing and resenting? Do you get easily upset? When you hear gossip do you silence it or spread it?

Jesus said, 'Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.' (Matthew 5:8 KJV)

In other words, when you start to see things God's way you'll begin to act accordingly. If the water in the well is polluted it will make you sick. Indeed, if you drink enough, it can kill you. What's the point?

Simply this: it's not enough to try to change your bad habits; you've got to go to the heart of your problem - which is the problem of your heart!

The Psalmist realized this so he prayed, 'Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.' (Psalm 51:10 KJV)

If you want God to prosper you, get your heart right.

That’s it. That’s all.

Thank You, Dr. Alexander Delvecchio for your God-given gifts… and thanks to Professor Mark Addis for your wisdom.

Snatch JOY!

One.

Horrified... Haunted... Heartbroken

Like most everyone just awakening to the news, I am completely horrified, haunted and heartbroken over the tragic events that befell the citizens of Moore, Oklahoma, yesterday afternoon.

In the tornado's wake, as the numbers rise and the stories grow sadder, our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims, their families, the first responders, and the wounded survivors.

With such profound devastation of this magnitude, one can only consider the children who were lost, knowing that with every death of a child, a part of the future diminishes.

Anyone willing and able to help the victims of this catastrophe can contact:

www.redcross.org

or

www.cnn.com/impact

One Love.

Yet Another Tragedy For The Family of Malcolm X

The Amsterdam News has learned, and the U.S. Embassy has confirmed, that Malcolm Shabazz - grandson of Malcolm X, was killed in Mexico. Several reports around the circumstances of his death, still unconfirmed, have rumored that he died early Thursday morning, May 9, 2013 from injuries sustained after he was thrown off a building or shot as he was being robbed in Tijuana.

"I'm confirming, per U.S. Embassy, on behalf of family, the tragic death of Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of Malcolm X. Statements from family to come," wrote close friend of the Shabazz family Terrie M. Williams on twitter. Family members have confirmed his death and that he was in Mexico but have not confirmed the exact location or circumstances of how Malcolm Shabazz died. Malcolm Shabazz is survived by two daughters, his mother and several aunts. Malcolm Shabazz pled guilty and was found guilty of manslaughter and arson and was sentenced to 18 months in Juvenile detention. His stay was extended and he was released four years later. Years later he told the Amsterdam News that he had not set the fire. Malcolm Shabazz was in the process of writing two books, at least one of which was a manuscript, and he was attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. * * * *

So sad.

One.

For Mother's Day, A Remembrance

The Sickness

Ornette

As most every young kid does, I truly loved my mother. I did. Still, as time progressed and my observations grew sharper, there were some things about Dakota Swinton that I did not particularly like. It went beyond her deceptions, her mind-games, and even her hoarding of secrets. What I liked least about her was the sum of her weaknesses. The weakest thing about her was the lack of willpower it took to ever quit her nastiest habit: smoking. She smoked entirely too much. She’d had asthma since she was a child. She’d never gotten over it, never outgrew it, and still she smoked. It’s like she was slowly trying her best to commit suicide, and if she killed the rest of us in the process, well, that would just be a bonus.

She smoked like some minor demon, roasting in Hell, and I hated it!

This had long ago become her lifestyle, and her shackle. She was a pack-a-day smoker when Gig first met her. While Gig blew smoke so coolly from his horn, Dakota blew smoke from her Kools. Maybe back then she didn’t know the harm, or that cigarettes were so dangerous, but she smoked obsessively when she was pregnant. It seemed that nothing, not even the fear of miscarrying… could stop her from inhaling all those damned toxins.

To make matters worse, she smoked obsessively whenever she became upset. She smoked when she was nervous. She smoked the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. She smoked when she was pissed at Gig; smoked during and after their fights, and she smoked after they’d kissed and made up. She smoked after every meal, and then she smoked in between. The woman was clearly a fiend for nicotine.

She smoked even more when she was sketching— oh, most especially then. Gulping steady cups of java and hits of nicotine awakened the creativity sleeping in her brain. It wasn’t her greatest sin, but it was a telling sign of her inner weakness and how it manifested outwardly. It was hard to picture Dakota without a lit cig nearby. It would have been like a street bum without his trusty brown paper bag, because in many ways, those smokes provided her with a much-needed crutch.

But the woman had asthma, and still she smoked…most days, most nights, much times too much.

As a kid, you can’t stand the stink of it. You hate hearing that harsh rattling sound in her throat as your mother began coughing, sometimes uncontrollably. You hate it with all your heart, and yet there is little you can do about it. You just become an inhaling prisoner of it. Still, even death-row prisoners eventually get used to their surroundings.

You get used to the foul smell of cigarettes and the odor they leave in the smoker’s wake. You get used to the reek in the hallway coming home from school, and the lingering stench in each one of the rooms. You get used to it being like another presence in your home, in the curtains, on the furniture, and even in your hair and in clothes. It was never pleasant, but you get used to it.

Dakota smoked, as if it didn’t really matter that she had asthma. It was crazy. I worried about her. Addy did too. Gig smoked only occasionally and even then just to be seen as cool amongst the other players. He was never in the same league as Dakota.

She had asthma and she smoked. Wasn’t that a recipe for very bad things?

In addition to her long-lasting affair with nicotine, there were all kinds of pills and potions in our bathroom cabinet. The one bottle that stood out contained something called Betamethasone. She must have taken it for most of her life because it had been prescribed to treat her chronic asthma. But a lifetime intake of this steroid, I later discovered, only led to her bouts with chronic depression.

No one, much less we family members, seemed to understand that her despair was caused by this medication which had been prescribed for her. We just thought Dakota was peculiar, moody and sometimes deeply, most profoundly melancholy.

Then came that one traumatic day, when I arrived home from school to find the spinning red beams of a police car and two ambulances parked outside our building. There were all these curious gossips and people milling about the street. Some were peering out from their fire escapes, and others were looking out of their windows. I didn’t know what had happened or which one of our neighbors was in distress.

I didn’t sense much fear or much of anything else, until Miss Lola emerged from the building, looking shaken, and visibly disturbed. It appeared as if she’d been crying. I knew Miss Lola loved a crowd, so she was either trying to gain attention by over-dramatizing some minor situation, or else there was something seriously wrong. And then her eyes widened when she saw me.

She spoke softly to one of the emergency attendants but it was loud enough for me to hear: “Oh my God! That’s her son.”

Suddenly, I was overtaken by an intense kind of dread and it filled me with a fear like none I’d ever known.

* * * *

One.

From Like Litter in the Wind Now available on amazon.com

Chapter 2 "The Anguish" ~ Excerpt From: Like Litter in the Wind (a novel by L.M. Ross)

Visit: http://outskirtspress.com/likelitterinthewind/

As she left the squad room which had held her captive for so many hours, on the way through the thin corridor housing a few weary cops in their cubicles, she saw a waste paper basket protruding into her path. Without even thinking, just out of pure anger and frustration Dakota Swinton kicked that can violently out her way. The noise alone jarred the attention of the other assembled policemen.

Once leaving that precinct, Dakota felt completely exhausted. Her body had grown so weary that every part of her ached from fatigue. Her mind felt shaken, thrown into some dark and sociopath alley—where her skull would lay, aching in its bony cage and riddled by terrifying thoughts.

She just wanted to crawl into bed, bury her head beneath the sheets, to fold her body into a fetal position and weep. She wanted to pray that when she awakened, this maddening nightmare would be over and done. It had been almost more than she could stomach just to endure that extended interrogation. Now she had to drag herself home, alone, inside that relentless storm. The clamor of the weather surrounded her with the furor of lightning and the clashing of elements at war in a fight for attention.

She’d tried in vain to hail a taxi, but none would stop. And so, she kept walking. She was walking inside that storm, if only to keep sane.

The rain on her skin felt as if the sky was spitting hailstones at her. The high soprano winds moaned in that haunting way it sounded whenever angels cried. The thunder became like a bounding chorus of howls and rumbles and still that disharmony of cop voices echoed in her mind. This was clearly one of those terrible days, perhaps one of the worst in her life. It was a time and a season that truly tried any mother’s soul.

She weighed along a windswept West 110th Street wondering if people, even those who didn’t know her, would look in her direction and recognize her story. Could they see and read it now? Was it in her face or did it reflect some place inside her eyes? Her irises were hurting because she’d long denied them the privilege or the permission to cry. Her eyes momentarily traced the sky, as if she were expecting to find someplace inside the clouds, the crying windswept face of God.

The Creator was otherwise engaged.

As they always had, people glanced at her in passing. Some did so because she was quite beautiful and a most striking woman. They’d told her this with a slow approving smile. She had a face and figure that could stop some people dead in their tracks. Perhaps it was the mesmerizing sable-colored eyes and the soulful gaze which often appeared inside them, especially in those times when she wanted to cry. When people looked at her, they undoubtedly noticed the full and sensuous lips which were, by turns, sometimes alluring and then determinedly matter-of-fact. Her high rattlesnake cheekbones projected a slightly aloof quality. Dakota Swinton wasn’t really so aloof, but she didn’t care if others thought her to be. No matter how attractive some found her physically, she was, first and foremost, a resilient Black Woman, in her own selfish element: frank and stridently outspoken, and she didn’t make a habit of suffering fools too gladly.

While walking though the streets of Harlem, she tried to wear her bravest face. That day, it seemed frozen that way as if bravery were a mask she was afraid to forsake. As the uptown parade bopped forth and drifted by her, there were times when she would almost forget her celebrity status. Yet, people would look at her curiously, having seen her work, and having admired her for it. But even those glances from the strangers felt somehow... different now. She turned to look behind her. She saw a few people trailing her in the rain. She wondered if those people were following her. For a moment, one insane and unbalanced moment, she imagined those people would stone her.

As Dakota walked and tried to keep her head held Swinton-high, she wondered if God was now ashamed of her—not for her past, but for her present. She wondered if something in her stride, her carriage, her posture or in her back silently told the others of this crime. She pondered whether that crowd rushing, shifting and sliding past her thought that she was a corrupt human being now.

With each step, she longed for enough strength just to reach her building. All she wanted to do right now was just to get home, just to shake off the rain, just to cover her ears and scream LOUD enough to drown out the sound of Harlem.

She opened her door slowly and just stood there, gazing into the room. Aside from the careless disarray the cops had left behind, beyond the toppled and trampled furnishings, there was something unfamiliar within the walls and the floorboards of her home now.

She thought she’d known the people who had lived there quite well. They were, after all, her family. But family is often just a word for disparate souls who happen to share the same bloodline.

The reality was beginning to dawn upon her that they’d been nothing more than dwellers within the same space at the same time. As family, they knew each other’s moods, strengths, and weaknesses. She knew the reckless dance of their tantrums, but even she could not always decipher the odor of their secrets.

There was a sad and pronounced odor to the room behind that door now. What was it exactly? Was it the pitiful stick of a loveless home?

The darkest thoughts flew like sightless birds inside the cage of her mind:

I wonder if he still believes in God. If he does, did he bother to think that this awful, unholy thing he’s done is making God cry? I truly do believe that God cried today.

He must’ve looked down upon this earth and saw the way we’ve kept Him out of our lives. He’s seen how little we cared about each other and how we rob, hurt and... kill each other. I see how it’s storming... raging outside. I have to believe it’s Our Father crying. And I swear by all that’s inside me, I never thought someone I knew... someone I raised and taught, and loved with all my heart, could ever make God cry.

Now on Sale at: http://outskirtspress.com/likelitterinthewind/

Like Litter in the Wind

One.

I’m Feelin’ Very John Legend, Who Is Channeling Gershwin Byway of Bruce Springsteen: Who Ain’t NEVER LIED!

“You sit around getting older…

There's a joke here somewhere and it's on me

I'll shake this world off my shoulders…

Come on baby the laughs on me

Stay on the streets of this town And they'll be carving you up alright

They say you got to stay hungry…

Hey baby, I'm just about starving tonight

I'm dying for some action

I’M SICK OF SITTING ‘ROUND HERE TRYING TO WRITE THIS BOOK…

I need a love reaction…

Come on baby give me just one look!

You can't start a fire, sittin' 'round cryin' over a broken heart

This gun's for hire even if we're just dancing in the dark

You can't start a fire, worryin' about your little world falling apart

This gun's for hire even if we're just dancing in the dark…”

Excerpt from “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen

One Love.

Hiatus

To My Blog Friends & Fam, Writers & Fighters, Lurkers & Jerkers, Winches & Winchells: Hoping all is Blessed and chill inside your collective ville(s)... I'm currently taking some much-needed time out as I prepare for the release of my next novel. That's it. That's all. See ya when I seeya... & in the meantime... Snatch JOY! One Love. Lin