To Kill The Giant

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The Day God Wore Black

The Day God Wore Black

The calculated and perfectly timed threats rang to fruition in
public bombings. They idolized something much more sinister than a perfect loving God. The untold amount of human suffering and lives lost through their hands replicates a well known darker mankind that was the predecessor to WWII, a Godless society run rampant. This black plague believes that their way is the right way and no other way is existential. Their motives are martyrdom, virgins in heaven,and a path that leads to a non altruistic God. Their holy book has been rewritten to suit them, ignoring the real message. A self proclaimed holy war on infidels construed for their sake of their bastardized religion. One man who proclaims to be the son of Allah or descendant, was previously nothing more than a foot solider risen to power bellowing orders from a white tower, cloaked in black.
The burnings alive of human beings, men in cages, the beheadings, the mockery of nations, to silently and stealthfully sneaking into a country strapped with suicide bombs is the day their God wears black. In their imagined reich of heirarchy, their prostituted way of distorting a loving God into a black diety, is not the same Allah or God who promotes peace and love of which is my God.
Their God wears black on killing days. They wear black every day waving black flags, black head bands, black hearts filled with hate. Their hate is fear and ignorance
When they blow themselves up, they might want to know that there are not 13 virgins waiting on them in heaven because they raped them, sold them into sexual slavery or married them. A virgin would kill herself rather than submit to violation of a darker kind, a killer of mankind, and the killer of a good God.
They forge their destiny into the desolate arena of damnation by their own accord and through it all, my God wears white and My God will win.

How can you say your God will protect millions from radical or extremist islamists? They are a porous group. Follow their path into their own kind, knowledge of them is power to prevent them from succeeding. When you learn their moves, that they are on a infidel destroying  path of idolatry, you will find them. Infiltrate them, destroy them, To Kill A Giant.

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Daisy

She wore a white cloth diaper with lots of safety pins stuck through it on her head, wrapped like a turbin surrounding her stubby areas of black hair that still remained., other areas with no hair. The thick glasses were handed down from the local eye bank or probably my father and she finally got a telephone in her wooden shanty when she was 90 years of age. Time stood still in Cameron SC and it still does.

Daisy imprinted herself on me as a baby, from the time our eyes locked, having lived over 70 years and counting when she came to be our “Mammy”. In the south, they were not housekeepers or babysitters but lovingly called Mammy’s. Today, even fourty years plus later, Mammy is not an appropriate term or considered politically correct when speaking of the hired “help.” She was not that, she was so much more. She was a boo boo kisser, a spanker when it called for it, a bean shucker, a flu shot giver, and a hugger, the most important quality of any good Mammy, a hugger.

To me Daisy was not hired help but my family. No matter what the white folks thought of her or how they treated her, she still was like my second mother and I am white, she was Black, but I am not describing the difference in our colors, rather the important difference in the mindsets that shaped these derogatory cultures that  spawned slavery. A dreaded curse for the south and having to relive it whenever I say I am from the South, that is the first thing that people think of. I get asked so many times, “Have you seen the movie the help?”  Yes, and Yes to what you are going to ask me.

There are fond memories of her sitting on the living room couch, or chair watching tv with a corn cob pipe in her mouth, the hair wrap, and her very thick coke bottle bottom glases, shelling beans or peas while we played with our toys. The moth ball smell never came out of her clothes and she had the “black smell” that only particular older blacks from the South had. It was in her skin and such a distinct smell that if she were to come around me now, I could pick her out of a hundred souls because of her skin’s smell.

I was known as the boy baby. Not because I am a boy, but rather a tom boy among girls. I had all the bumps and bruises on my body that my baby brother should of had. I was rough and tumble, tree climing, bush hogging female. So with that kind of nature, I was very accident prone. Mama threatened to name me Grace. That was how my parents and especially Daisy could tell me apart from my very feminine twin sister Amy, was that I was the wearer of plastic bandaids and the bearer of deep scars.

She never learned to read or write always signing her name with an x when asked. Picking cotton in the fields of South Carolina were left to the blacks starting at the age of of a child, and no one ever knew how old she really was when the good Lord called her home because they did not give birth certificates to slaves or children of slaves. Daisy’s mother and father were what history books speak about, the chained African American’s of long ago, sold openly on the slave market in cities such as Charleston and she was one of many children in her family that grew up and lived in Cameron SC.

Married at age 13, Daisy had 9 children, some not making it out of the womb, or maybe she was 9 years of age when she married and had 13 children. I simply can’t remember that part. When she died, her alcoholic son Thomas, was there but most had already gone on to be with their Lord. Why did the almighty let her live so long? Daddy thought she was well, well over 100 years of age when she died but sadly, there was no way to prove it.

When Mama and Daddy had bridge club nights out, all of us children, four in total would line up on the couch and watch Daisy sleep in the leather chair. Her body would jump violently and we would start crying and screaming, never waking her up. She slept like the dead when she closed her eyes. We were afraid she was having a heart attack in her sleep or feared the worst, she was dead. Sometimes she did it to pull a prank on us. Doctors kids know everything about everything and we swore she was dying. Mama and Daddy would eventually come rushing home to find everything normal as it should have been and Daisy still alive.

When Daddy died, I gave Daisy Daddy’s wheel chair. I wheeled her upfront to be with the family, and covered her up with his blanket. She was family. She was my cherished Daisy and no one was going to tell me otherwise. Color didn’t matter to me. It never did. Even when the community of Cameron SC made my father build a waiting room onto his medical clinic for the coloreds, the blacks in the 1970’s or 1980’s, because they smelled funny, I never saw color.

Being the outcast, rebel and instigator, I enrolled in the Miss Black Orangeburg pageant. I did it to cut the stigma  between colors. The audience gasped when I walked out on stage. It was to prove a point at age 15. I did exactly that. Even though it was not the right kind of point to make, maybe it coming from a teenager who hated the segregation even in modern times, might have touched someone. I did it. I did it to prove there is no difference in color of a human being.  I can still hear that loud gasp from the hundred or so patrons and some certain members of the audience saying, “What in the hell is that crazy Lawton girl thinking?”

Today, my soul says go home, just go home Mary to the piece of history that few know about. To that special place that doesn’t exist today. I will, eventually, but I don’t think the time is right. The sad part is seeing what the South still believes in. If I could have given Daisy more, I would have because she gave me so much. She gave me the biggest hug of my life.

Copyrighted, TM 2000  from my book

Glass and Metal

He cleared his desk in the glass office overlooking the square below, putting the pictures in the small packing box, hesitating at the picture of his baby boy. Holding onto it, he lit a half smirk at the how the time had flown since this picture was taken. His baby boy, no longer in diapers, changing every day right in front of his eyes. That would be his next agenda, getting more pictures of his precious baby boy, spending more time with him. He was now 3 years of age and how many days had he spent with him since he took this job? He could count on his hand the moments. He definitely wanted to enroll him in karate in the next two years and teach him how to throw a baseball. All the things a father should teach a son.
Looking around at what he was leaving, at his own request, the momentum had not ceased. The office was bustling, hectic, women in skirts buzzed by him, carrying paperwork, zuit suits on telephones in glass offices in the sky making deals and yet, he felt so removed from it. Like he didn’t belong there. He never belonged there. Yeah, there might have been a time he felt he fit in but it was a brief moment. The boys in the office were cut throat and he didn’t want to teach his kid about the kind of lifestyle that he had been caught up in. The nightly happy hours, the broads, the booze. If you didn’t socialize with the gang, the heavy hitters after work and compare notes, your law degree might as well be thrown in the trash. You had to socialize to get ahead in that firm. Maybe he didn’t belong anywhere but back with his family. He couldn’t go home. She threw him out. “Choose me or the job she demanded two years ago. How could he support the baby and her if he didn’t work? What was she thinking when she issued that ultimatum? Had she been taking lessons from her father, a master sargeant in the Army? Now, he made the final choice, to leave the firm, for a quieter position across the river. He could finally spend the time with his boy like he wanted to. Now he had all the time he wanted and some money in the bank for support for his son.
With the stroke of the packing tape dispenser, he was through with his personal belongings. Grabbing his lone possessions, he shook hands with a cohort. Where were his close friends? The ones he had beers with at the local tavern? Were they to busy to wish him well in leaving the rat race? Realizing they were never his friends, the determination showed even further as he grabbed his box and headed down to the elevator. He didn’t think he would miss this life. It had already cost him his wife, and home life. Now he had to rebuild what was left. He had saved enough to buy a small white apartment across the river in the burbs and he would start over. Just him and his precious son facing life together, depending on when he could see him. She always held the reins to his little lifeline. Now that he had the time and finances in place, he decided to spend his energy on the baby and building a law life away from the prestigious firm and maybe, just maybe, she might take him back.
The elevator door opened and out he walked as fast as he could to his new life. It had taken time to get to where he wanted to be so his hopes were to rush to his new home, his baby boy.
Then it happened, his box went flying in the air, papers caught in the wind, tossed around like a lost soul searching for a place to land, scattered like his life had been all those years..all the moments that could have been were now lost. Glass met metal.
He never saw the bus.

Measures in Time

The eternal smile, worn tight, fosters an agist culture that demands youthfulness. Constant bombardment of natural cures, anti aging creams, cool sculpting to going under the knife for the sake of erasing time stares back at you in the mirror. The deep circles or sagging neck, the jowls all define the human person as it ages. The greying of the hairs, crows feet flying, smaller eyes, are but the signs of father time and the measures he places upon the human body.
The time it took someone to experience life, to outgrow diapers, to spell, read and write, hit their first baseball, or learn to ride a bike, is wiped away. Where did the line go that signified true loss and pain or , the moment you captured love in the eyes of another? Is it magically lessened? Sent away in one knife and one pull of the skin? Where did the smile upon attending the grandchild’s first birthday go? What happened to the wrinkle that upturned on its own, that symbolized the marriage to the love of your life? The frown line when you scrunched your face thinking? That cuteness with abandonment filled by botox. When the character lines are erased, where might have the character of the moment of that particular memory have gone? Each subtle pull of the fingers, tightening ever so gently, takes away what life intended you remember. The scar from falling in the river on oysters, the laugh lines from the comedy club, a night spent with friends to the minutest engravings left behind after the worst breakup, where has it gone? Holding the lifeless furry body of your best friend after getting hit by the car, where is the life line on you to connect you to that moment? It’s gone. This is life found in the memories of your skin, character lines of where you have been, and what your soul has experienced.
The attention placed on the soul must be greater than the attention placed on the outward appearance if one is to remain forever young.

Pennies and Dimes

A feeling of despair, looking toward the ivory tower on the green pasture in front of me. One of the finest East Coast Educational systems is at my feet. I walked in the rain today to retrieve cashmere gloves for the cold. I dress much nicer than most.  I sit in a hotel room staring at the college that most students, let alone every adult who thinks of returning to school dream to attend. Its too late for me now. Too late to have my head filled with alegebra, world theories in mismanagement. Education is something that I did not take seriously, rather couldn’t. I did not have the capabilities to sit in a normal classroom. Hyper? OCD? ADD or ADHD? Perhaps. Names of disorders weren’t tagged to people back then. We were just told we couldn’t pay attention in class. We couldn’t concentrate. School was not for me. Then I am told, it’s never too late. Has anyone told society it isn’t too late? No one hires you after 50. Too much liability, too much health risk, too old. Turned out and too old.

Instead, I am a caregiver, chef, who only wishes she had continued her education. Now past a mid century of living, regrets still follow this middle age body and inhabit my mind of what I truly could have been. A physcist? A doctor? No, instead my God given talent is that of a medium. I can see to the other side and clearly communicate with the souls in Heaven. No amount of education or learning can train you for that. School books don’t teach that. I can also see into the depths of the darkness and know in my heart, no amount of monetary value will make me want to do something so evil as to want to end up there. I live pay check to paycheck. I made choices in my life that most people would have not have chosen. Yet, I am better paid than most in society with college degrees. My position is not for long. I don’t have much time. Distance education is a thought and so are dreams. My dreams paid the bills for over 25 years and still continue to do so.

“Your a survivor” my mother would say. True, I could get a job with the best of the them, for the best of them, for the 1% of the world. I fit in, even though I don’t have the BS degree, the MS degree or the doctorate. I am a high school graduate with certifications. Certifications in street smarts? In life in general? Was my way the best way? The learn by doing trial and error method? I don’t want my nephews and nieces to choose the same path. I will scrub toliets to not let them walk in my path, no matter how glamourous it appears, it is not.

Alert: Fox news reports that college students are striking. They want free tuitiion and waiver of repayment or debt forgiveness. They can’t get jobs in their chosen fields to pay back the loans.

I cant forgive myself for not doing better in school and they want debt forgiveness for not getting a better job? Where is the irony in that?

Let them tread in my footsteps for a day. Let them figure out how they are going to pay for what they feel entitled too, let them learn by doing, then they will covet that degree, make it work for them as a niche and carve a name for themselves in their chosen field, and pay it back, then they will not be sitting in a hotel room staring at the past while waiting on the future to catch up with them which is closer for some than others.

Johnson Grass Turns Yellow in the Winter

Johnson grass turns yellow in the winter but other types of grasses remain forever green.

Was it for the money or the wanting of a better life? No, the money was there wrapped up like a roll of one dollar bills in real estate assets. The love had turned into a business. Others didn’t speak so unkind. Was it an awakening to what was and not what should have been? Maybe living in a fairy tale with the picturesque house and possessions wasn’t enough or maybe it was too much.
What you didn’t have today will it have appeared tomorrow? True love, it might have been, but not for us, if it did not come with stipulations and contingencies whispered with every other word of “if you don’t change I am leaving”.
Perhaps the love subsided with every evil remark left in the wake of a eruptous argument, like a belt with notches, a new notch created for every unkind statement. The heart broke with the words emblazoned like a neon sign upon its intended. Retreat and withdrawal into oneself never to be discussed left a gregarious person empty and subdued. In Front of people experiencing the tumultuous relationship will replay like a movie shown over and over. Was it really his way or the highway, no detours, no emotions shown? Apologies remain imprinted on their life as scars remain from riding a bike. She always ushering in the first hoping for forgiveness or some acknowledgement of wrong doings. But was it always her fault, no. Simply two minds who thought differently. Sometimes, the grown over scab can be peeled back to expose the hurt and pain.
Never forgetting what was said but never striking back like a cobra with it’s master who mesmerizes it. Then the years fade, birthdays are obscure and come and go, no present, even to the one celebrating it. Anniversaries aren’t remembered except only by friends who remind them of the important date.Christmas is spent at loved ones and vacations are experienced apart. Was it meant to be remembered? Was it not two people who were wed?
Secretly the heart yearns for more in the wake of forgetfulness or unkindness. Still reeling and recoiling, yet, the grass is still yellow. Will it be seeded to turn green again or left to suffer the deprivation and degradation of weeds growing in its path? Never to experience true happiness found in another soul?
The yearning of more is akin to a tumbleweed spinning out of control in a dust storm, and yet eventually finding a place that it can’t be swept away any longer, it journeys to a different hiding spot, supposedly where the grass is greener. Or so it seems.
Johnson grass turns yellow in winter but other types of grasses remain forever green. The grass is never greener while standing in yellow pastures.

This was about my marriage.

The Jokers Smile

The eternal smile, worn tight, fosters an agist culture that demands youthfulness. Constant bombardment of natural cures, anti aging creams, cool sculpting to going under the knife for the sake of erasing time stares back at you in the mirror. The deep circles or sagging neck, the jowls all define the human person as it ages. The greying of the hairs, inset eyes, are but
The time it took someone to experience life, to outgrow diapers, to spell, read and write, hit their first baseball, or learn to ride a bike, is wiped away. Where did the line go that signified true loss and pain or , the moment you captured love in the eyes of another? Is it wiped away in one knife and one pull of the skin? Where did the smile upon attending the grandchild’s first birthday get whisked away to? What happened to the wrinkle that upturned on its own, that symbolized the marriage to the love of your life? When the character lines are erased, where might have the character of the moment of that particular memory have gone? Each subtle pull of the fingers, tightening ever so gently, takes away what life intended you remember. The scar from falling in the river on oysters, the laugh lines from the comedy club, a night spent with friends to the minutest engravings left behind after the worst breakup, where has it gone? Holding the lifeless furry body of your best friend after getting hit by the car, where is the life line on you to connect you to that moment? It’s gone. This is life found in the memories of your skin, character lines of where you have been, and what your soul has experienced.
The attention placed on the soul must be greater than the attention placed on the outward appearance if one is to remain forever young.

The Timeless Red Ribbon

The box appeared on the doorstep. The red bow, the allure of a gift awaited the recipient. Redemption in a package. But for whom? The seller or the receiver?
The age didn’t matter now, only what she carried with her, in her heart and mind. No one was paying attention. No one but her and what awaited in the bow tied red box.
A promise that was never delivered was now sitting on her front door step. For how long could it keep it’s promise? A day? A month? Perhaps, the box needed more time, for she was out of it, time having run out for her.
Still, ever so gingerly lifting the lid, was this what she had been waiting on for so many years?
The promises were never kept. Empty at most, at best, she moved on to other boxes with red pretty bows. Holding out hope even though her time had come and gone and now age was thought of as a thief, robbing the lucky wearer of a valiant resolution, only to have the lid shut on it again.
Another empty promise in a bottle found inside a box with a pretty red bow delivered to a front door step.
For her, time, the evil thief, had stolen it from her when she was not looking but the red bow never aged, it remained intact inside the white box holding the fountain of youth

Blue Shag

The ruined carpet leading down the hallway to the rooms started as a deep shag, blue in color some 40 years ago, now, stained, the stench of cigarette smoke embedded its cancer into it. Patches of it matted together, laden with dirt, compacted over the years, offering a bumpy walk.
The ends worn from tired and dirty feet trudging along its path. The smell was of covered up mold and mildew, with freshening powder.

Some of the shoes were leather, just polished that belonged to a very important businessman to dirty sneakers and loafers who were just there to visit for a while.
Wheel chairs and walkers left their mark some rubbing against the tired paneling lining the walls. The money collected in the rooms never went to update and replace the worn, dated and dirty carpet, only the rooms or what the owner deemed necessary for continued business.

Other shoes have tread the thousand of miles placed upon the carpet, to include high heels, some broken spikes as the wearers unsure of their feet mis stepped, piercing a hole into the underlayment and breaking off.

A path so worn, yet, what it led to, was what everyone who trudged along the blue brick feeling street came to see, to spend time with.
Hidden in the shadows, in each room, hung dim lights, covered in lace cloths, white sheets, double beds and behind these lace cloths, sheer window panelings were young girls.

The fancy shoes delivered them, the high heels belonged to the young girls learning to walk in them and the loafers were the johns, the henchmen, the bodyguards protecting them. When the girls were knocked to the ground or roughed up, the blue shag caught them, protecting them, breaking the fall of the innocent. Tears have been shed on the carpet, as well as sexual favors. The shag in its hey day offered a plush bedding, now, only sharp edges.

This worn carpet contains the memories, the imprints of young girls sold into a life that they did not ask for. Perhaps it was their parents so that she could earn money for them, to saudia arabian and eastern european heists of young girls to sell on the black market, a kidnapping, a robbery of innocence.

The blue carpet, like the tears of crying blue eyes, has withered and grown old with hardness and age. Once it is too old for any use, it will be replaced.

Cardboard Castles and Gold Dreams

Don’t make eye contact. Just keep walking and don’t look at them.
They are strewn throughout the city. Covered in newspapers, cardboard boxes, garbage bags, littering the streets. A shower is never heard of. Food is from hand outs or the local soup kitchen with mandatory worship service. Signs held in their weathered hands show their status, a displacement in the world and what they need. The destitution, the despair once shown in their eyes are now placid, glazed over as pain no longer affects them. Some are seeking medication and don’t know it, while still others have been turned out by society, family disownment, societal outcasts. Loss of jobs, death of a spouse, mental illness, the list is as long as a train to nowhere.
Some are seeking their last fix on the streets, some are selling the only thing that they have left for money, their skin, and some won’t make it to see the awakening of their agony in the next morning. If only to be discovered by some lone stranger walking by who has never stared death in the face before. The lifeless no names, lying in a pool of their bodily functions that let go upon death. Their bodies are brought and tagged in the morgue as jane or john doe. No one desires to claim the remains of remorse and pain left in their lives and save the last bit of dignity they left behind, their soul, left on the streets.
The shopping carts are filled with belongings, the last of the goods they believed they owned, a shoe found in a dumpster, a torn stained blanket taken from a dead boy or from the homeless shelter, to a plastic toy when wound up emits a smile for brief second.
Lifting these items secretly looking around to make sure no one sees them, their finds are gold treasures. These trinkets and junk mean nothing to the people unlocking their front doors with heat and air conditioning. The comfort of leather and embossed silk sheets offer luxury to slink into from high heels and hundred thousand dollar jobs but anything to someone who has lost everything with nothing to be found or given to them, except taken when no one is looking is worth more. The cardboard box, wet from the dew in the morning is their refuge from the cruel animals that toss pennies their way.
Was their homelessness a request from society? Was it a gift from their higher power to teach a lesson? Or was it that the animals who toss pennies have no empathy for someone who truly suffers?
The helping hand extended for the weekly sermon in church is reverted when help is asked outside of the gothic emblem representing the Diety, the almighty.
Was it not Jesus who fed the poor and who died for the sin of the world so that you could have eternal life in a city of gold, happy and free? The splendours not found for many on this earthly plane. Again, the meek shall inherit the earth? He will come to judge the living and the dead. Should it be such justice as to consider that the meek are the homeless and you will be judged for not looking into their eyes.