Threats

Written on a day where there was a shooting threat that everyone at Sachem North "was going to die":

I can't believe we live in a world where students have to walk through metal detectors to learn, where ID badges and desks are the only line of defense, where we should be worried every time we go to a mall. Why can't the defense be a pen, a pencil, a piece of paper? A conversation with a friend, family member, teacher, anyone?

Instead, we are reduced to threats written on bathroom stalls, guns drawn on Christmas shoppers, and fear clouding our everyday lives like an impending storm hanging over our heads, waiting for the first drop of rain to fall, which will bring about the deluge, the torrent that will flood the world until we have to start all over again from the beginning.

What's for breakfast?

I have nothing to say.
I am a ball of paper, crumpled up into a mangled globular mess being shot through the air into the nearest waste-basket.
I am a tree that can no longer bare fruit due to a recent fungus infestation.
I am a river that has dried up.
I am a crayon box with one color.
I am a cigarette that just won't light.
I am a kernel that just won't pop.
I am a sneeze that just won't happen.

Gesundheit.

I need a second to breathe.
To come up from the water and take a breath.
To take a drink of water after a 3-day drought.
To find where I'm going after having been lost.

I need to not step into the same river twice.
i need to make everyday better for someone other than me.
Someone needs to make my everyday better.
I need to live everyday as if living everyday was uncertain.

My brain is fried like two eggs over a hot burner, skillet turned on high, crackling ham and melting cheese, aroma wafting in the beaming, hot sun of dawn, pine air refreshing the smell of dirt and dust, earth that is revolving, tilting, spinning, catapulting light years into and away from a black hole of oblivion.