Her hands as irons, hot
She relaxes the wrinkles beneath my skin,
torturously massaging my ego
until my head and body fall into it's place.
I've fallen in love with her as she's crowned me queen
while she lies and calls herself a masseuse

The last fragments of happy memories are now turning a peaceful silence into shouting matches. While it's a wonderful view from here with a blind and full heart, all I ask is for a temporary deafness, so that I can listen to peace sing it's way back to me.

Poetry, above all, has taught me how to communicate, how to listen - effectively. How to enjoy silence between words, until that moment the words end. To extract meaning from emotion left between the lines. Poetry has taught me that relationships are made without words, without language, without sound. Relationships are built of the communication that poetry leaves behind. Poetry, above all, is not communication - it is love incarnate.

A young girl once planted seeds, where most had sworn the soil barren. She lived her life as though the seeds bore purpose, nurturing them at moments, but mostly carrying about in suspenseful stillness.

The girls name is Hurt, some know her as Pain. A precious and delicate blessing, we should all allow in our lives...once and a while. She'll dance under the faintest moon and quietly escape as the sun rises. But let her plant some seeds before she leaves, and eat from the fruit it bares; it might turn out to be the sweetest you've ever had.

"On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power."

-- Howard Zinn, July 4 2007, "The Progressive"

I can only hope that it's "respectful" to celebrate the idea of Independence Day independent of what this country represents, and instead with the ideology that the people we choose to surround ourselves with will help make this country 'better' through acts of kindness, creativity, and compassion. A moral compass doesn't come with a flag, a cross or an anthem...it's in our hearts, and it's to be celebrated on this day, so that tomorrow we can gain the courage to fight for what Independence Day was meant to celebrate...liberation, freedom.