CAT DAY--our master, the SPHINX who lords it over us; and now, just in time for ALL HALLOWS EVEN, another one, POE!

On a sad day over 2 years ago, Smoke, our past stray master, suddenly, took grievously ill and died.

Being the subservient humans that we are, we diligenty searched animal sheters to find a new master, but then out of the river bed near our house on the coast of California,
(where we sometimes spot opossums, a raccoon or lost dog, even a coyote),
the SPHINX arrived and sat, day after after day, attentively out in our yard with paws out front, watching us (like his namesake, the SPHINX of ancient Egypt, where cats first ruled).





NOW ENTER, this autumn, a new stray, black as pitch, POE, just in time for ALL HALLOWS EVEN.

Pic from Silky Sally Friends For Life Animal Rescue

May the Great Pumpkin bring you a new lord to order you around at this hallowed time of year;-).
How CATastrophic your evening could be.


You may even want to go online and read, "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe.

Dan Wilcox

Reflections--stopped at an intersection and, again, dealing with horrific lifestances

Starbacked

Starbacked night, coffee-drunk sky,
rows of cars meet
at the red orb,
anonymous

a lone skateboarder foot
maneuvers
waiting for the flash to sage green,
his board-wheeler a bill of adding
getting a toehold

from the faceless

hidden in their auto glass
street
fathomless

when all dreams night
into marred perception




connundruming

not dumbing, not plumbed down,
not damn-waiving for godot,
no abstract snare

but rather Transcendent inspired;

no theolgoical smart aleck bolt,
no horrific T.U.L.I.P.S.
of poisonous
calvin's sort

no foreordained inscrutables
no despairing dilemmmas
no fated eternal fire

but
instead that everlasting jolt
of the good, true, and just



--Dan Wilcox

First pub. in poetry magazine,
Clockwise Cat

He "raped me 3 times," said the 15-year-old. Scars

“My stepfather raped me 3 times. I’m going to kill him!” said this teen girl who was talking to Dave Roever, a motivational speaker, and to her high school counselor.

Roever later said, "I know the difference between a promise and a threat. This was no threat."

"I realized that all of my training in college level psychology and sociology had not prepared me for this confession of pain."

"I didn’t know what to say..."

His own excruciating memories blasted in--

"I lost 40% of my skin and 60 pounds of flesh to a hand grenade in Vietnam."

"She lost...to a rapist of a step-father along with her trust, faith, and...protection."

"I didn’t know how she felt and I wasn’t going to fake it."

"Not now."
--

"What could I say?"

"I began to weep..."

Then, suddenly, this distraught young girl
"reached across the table, nervously wiped the tear from my face and said,
'Nobody’s ever cried for me.'”

"I lost it...started crying and threw my arms around her and soaked her sleeve with tears."

"She patted me on the back and tried to comfort me, saying,'It’s okay, Mister. It’s okay.'”

The girl's counselor sat quietly, waiting.
--

The girl "dried my tears, and then I allowed something I would probably never allow anyone else to do except my...doctor..."

This traumatized student touched the man's severely scarred face, tracing every fissure...

"...only the deepest empathy...She spoke quietly, 'Mister, your scars are all on the outside;
mine are on the inside.'"

"But if you can make it, I can make it, too!”

"...the pain always bleeds through in tears of broken lives...'
By Dave Roever
Unknown Source Article
--

What a powerfully deep true story.

So many Annie's* and Jim's out there...

Whether in Syria, Iraq, or down the street in any major U.S. city, when “the night comes on,”
the Ocean of darkness...

Weep with those who suffer, with those wounded, with those so tragically scarred.
Reach out and help each individual in need.

Please touch their faces of hurt, wounding, and suffering.
Touch the heart of this hurting world.

Heal their wounds. Touch their scars with empathy, compassion, and caring.

Work for a more humane world, one filled with truth, goodness, and beauty.

*"For Annie"

No one ever noticed Annie weeping
People all around, but she was all alone
Mama's got her meetings, Daddy's got his job
and no one's got the time so Annie's on her own

No one ever knew her desperation
People couldn't hear her cry out silently
Locked inside the bathroom she grabs a jar of pills
The medicine that cures becomes the poison that kills

[Chorus]
And it's too late for Annie, she's gone away for good
There's so much we could tell her and now we wish we could
But it's too late, it's too late for Annie
--

If only we had known her situation,
We'd have tried to stop this useless tragedy
Annie's lost forever, never to be found
But there are lots of others like her all around

[3rd Chorus]
And it's not too late for Annie, she could be next to you...
--
PETRA
Songwriters
Robert M Hartman
Published by
DAWN TREADER MUSIC


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Good Friday?

Isn’t that like saying Good Assassination?

Good Murder?

Good Holocaust?!

Yes. This is so as the Jewish writer and Holocaust-survivor Elie Wiesel so powerfully and cogently demonstrates in one excruciating story in his memoir of the Holocaust—Night.*


How can there be good-evil?

Yes what an oxymoron.

What a contradiction and ethical absurdity where human grieving never ceases.

At first, all of this may seem like past history. Most people know about the Shoah (Holocaust). And many probably have heard of "Good Friday" since it still occurs on calendars. But nowadays most people put little focus on history unless forced to do so, and most work or study or spring-break party right through “Good Friday,” unless they are devoutly liturgical in their religion.

Years ago back in the 1950’s in the Midwest, all religious people commemorated the special Friday, and many attended very long services. I remember as kid sitting through 3-4 hour services where 4-5 ministers took turns preaching on and on. But that was then, this is now.

Looking back on that yearly event now seems very strange: how those religious leaders taught us about the torture and execution of a Jewish leader by the Romans 2000 years ago and why it was vitally important to us, even elementary children.

Even more baffling—at least to everyone not convinced of the Christian faith—is why speak to the general populace in the present of such a capital punishment by ancient governing authorities so long ago? And why claim this execution has anything, indeed everything, to do with humans today?

Last and most incomprehensible of all, why claim that this execution is “good”?!

How can moral evil, especially when conducted by civilization’s leaders ever be considered “good”?

How as human beings can we ever deal with moral atrocities—so many horrendous massacres throughout blood-gushed/disgusting history?

This is the beginning of the philosophical and ethical question that Elie Wiesel asked in his book Night, speaking of the murder of so many by the Nazi death camps including his father, mother, and sister:

“Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”

Then Wiesel tells the story of a young boy executed by the Nazis:
"The three victims mounted together onto the chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses. ‘Long live Liberty!’ cried the adults. But the child was silent.

"'Where is God? Where is He?’ someone behind me asked. At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.

"'Bare your heads!' yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping. ‘Cover your heads!’ Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive..."

"For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet glazed."

"Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is — He is hanging here on this gallows'"

"Where is God? Where is He?"

And I heard a voice within me answer him: "Where is He? Here He is — He is hanging here on this gallows..."


To be continued

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox