Full Moon Haiku

By Richard Kirsch

Full moon in the sky
Surging through my dream with light
Day still or still night

Richard Kirsch lives in Austerlitz, New York.

This Christmas Present

By Judy Staber

That's what it's all about, isn't it?
Christmas, I mean.
Nativity...birth...new life?
Epiphanies of wonder and simplicity.
Those moments when words aren't enough,
When tears rush together with laughter,
Bubbling up through your own wellspring
At the bringing of new life.
New joy.
This wonderful baby boy.

We'll soon forget the hours she labored;
The hours she pushed to deliver him;
The dreary,
yet brightly-lit waiting room,
Where her sister and I sat,
With a pay phone that took only nickels,
A soda machine like a monolith,
And no place to hang your coat.

And that hot, stuffy labor room,
where my baby
Tried for so long to have her baby,
hanging on to her Ed
Under the watchful eyes of a stream of kindly,
but ever shift-changing nurses.
And the doctor, too long on his feet, saying, exhausted,
"I'm going to have to perform a Caesarean."

I saw him just ten minutes later,
Full of unaccustomed grand-maternal-ness,
My eyes clear, my heart full,
marveling at
This Christmas present.
Such a perfect little person sprung
From his mother's womb so complete:
With ten expressive fingers and ten tiny toes
Curling with anticipation of life.

He came out of his womb-room, tranquil and serene,
Almost smiling.
Eyes watchful,
penis erect,
ears shell-like against his downy head.

Under clinical scrutiny, they squeezed his scrotum,
Scratched his soles,
looked up his nose and down his throat.
But he didn't yell, not my grandson,
no, he just
shit.
Twice they had to clean him up.
And when they had done, they said,
that on the test scale,
Out of a possible ten,
he was a nine point nine.

Well, of course he is,
and they probably missed
that other tenth.
Because they're not perfect
like he is.
Welcome to the world, Daniel!

Judy Staber, retired after 28 years in arts administration, now spends her time writing. She also runs the gallery at The Old Chatham Country Store with changing local artists every month. Judy is awaiting her final eye surgery in the new year. Happy New Year to all you writers and keep writing, there are readers out there still. Daniel, now 17, is just as perfect as he was the day he was born in 1990!

"Jessie and Lee"

By Cecele Kraus

Grandmother Jessie brushes her hair
late at night in her rocking chair as
the woodstove crackles out its warmth.
Grandpapa Lee looks up from his book
and with twinkling eyes returns her smile.
They’ve been married for 55 years.

Jessie’s hair was nut brown in early years
while Lee was blessed with wild Irish hair.
Though eyes are dim, he lights her smile,
no need to even move his chair.
The Holy Bible is Lee’s only book,
the red hot stove their source of warmth.

Eight children settled into their warmth.
Young Anna died, the rest are up in years.
The Holy Bible is not their only book.
Faded auburn is now Lee’s hair.
His chair is straight, hers a rocking chair.
Neighbors drop in and bring a smile.

A letter came and brought a smile.
Their son returns, hearts fill with warmth.
For prodigal Tom, we’ll pull up a chair,
he’s traveled far for so many years.
Joyful, Jessie forgets to knot her hair
and Lee forgets the Holy Book.

Jessie pulls out a ragged photo book
of all their children; it makes them smile.
Forgetting the brushing of her hair,
she’s lost in reveries of children’s warmth.
Gone the pain of Tom’s wandering years,
she sees the past from her rocking chair.

Children’s songs heard from her rocking chair,
each face captured in her photo book.
Gone the pain of the longing years,
returned to her each child’s gapped smile.
By the fire, she glows in warmth
and now with a smile loops up her hair.

Cecele Kraus, a psychotherapist, lives in Copake, New York. She is working on a collection of poems and short fiction.

MyStoryLives Supports the Writers' Strike!

MyStoryLives
is not given to watching television.

We're usually asleep before Letterman or Leno lights the screen.

But we know
how many
gazillion Americans are drawn to
the late night shows.

So. Reading in this morning's New York Times, this troubling little tidbit caught our eye:

"David Letterman is pursuing a deal with the Writers Guild of America that would allow his late-night show on CBS to return to the air in early January with the usual complement of material from his writers, even if the strike is still continuing."

We were, if you will, interested. And concerned.

The Times report goes on:

"Executives from Mr. Letterman’s production company said Saturday that they were hopeful they would have an interim agreement in place with the guild as early as this week. That could potentially put Mr. Letterman at an enormous advantage over most of his late-night colleagues."

Check it out for yourself.

http:www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/business/media/16strike.html

So. Does this sound anything like strike-breaking to you?

Hmmmm.

How about this from a blog called The Silicon Insider, published mid-November:

"Producers for late night hosts David Letterman, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien are in secret talks to bring the shows back... Network execs say there's talk of resuming production on the shows without the writers, in part to keep the hundreds of idled non-writing employees working -- and in part because all three shows are huge money-makers for their networks. Note that Letterman did the same thing during the 1988 writers' strike.

"The return of the late-night shows would be a huge coup for the networks; right now the absence of those shows (along with Viacom's Daily Show and Colbert Report) are the only visible sign that a writers' strike is underway. If the writers lose that bargaining chip, most viewers won't feel the impact of a strike until January or later, when the networks run out of new dramas and sitcoms to air.

"The backchannel talks between latenight producers are delicate; no one wants to be the first to go back on the air, nor do they want to return if a resolution to the strike is imminent. Any return to work before the strike ends would likely mean big WGA-led protests at NBC studios in Burbank and at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York. But if it appears the strike is going to drag on, Letterman and Leno would agree to resume their shows on the same day."

What Letterman's folks are up to, is,

NO JOKING MATTER.

We at MyStoryLives are writers. It seems only write, sorry, right, that we stand in solidarity with those striking writers who are holding out against the likes of the media giants — General Electric, News Corporation, Sony, Time Warner, The Walt Disney Company, Viacm and CBS — whose entertainment units dominate the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the industry bargaining group.

We support the Writers Guild of America. If you support this cause, and you have a blog, we encourage you to copy and paste the Writers Guild of America's logo up top into your blog. Pass the word.

A Prayer for Health Care

By Dan Beauchamp

It seems to me, as we plunge deeper and deeper into our presidential election season, we never talk about issues with the seriousness they deserve. Instead we talk about haircuts, adultery in the Hamptons, or favorite Bible verses.


Then, after everything is over, we quail in the presence of the most recent winner.

Even when we do talk about important problems, the policy wonks drown us with technical details.

Nothing important ever gets discussed in terms of the deep, invisible questions that need airing.

Take health care reform, for example.

I believe that one of the reasons we constantly drop the ball on health care reform is because we don't see how profoundly this issue challenges our ideas of membership in a democratic community and the meaning of our life together, and, indeed, the meaning of life itself.

Yes, I am saying that I believe that at bottom health care reform is about how we view life---how we view life itself underneath it all and what this means for membership in the body politic.

Ultimately, this is a spiritual question, where 'spiritual' means our views on what we mean by life, life itself, to whom and what we belong, and what it is that we possess and own to dispose of as we choose.

Spiritual writers like the Franciscan Richard Rohr, in his book Adam's Return, boil down the answers to these fundamental questions with the insight that, "Your life is not about you; you are about life."

Rohr is actually giving a spiritual twist to a deeply ecological idea of life and our membership in a biotic realm, an understanding that is at once utterly realistic and spiritual, reflecting the mutuality and interdependence of all of life, human and all else.

To say that we belong to life is to say that "life" is something that we find ourselves in the midst of, in our birth and in our lives together, and in our deaths. Life itself is something that we do not possess or control; life itself possess us.

This is our original blessing.

To say that we belong to life is to reflect a deep ecological reverence for our place in the large and intricately interconnected processes of life. We are mutually connected and mutually dependent on air, water, the earth, and the sun, as well as on the prudence and judgment of those billions of fellow inhabitants of our planet called human beings.


Life itself then, is a gift, an enormous gift. Whether this is a gift from God or the universe I will leave to others to proclaim. The ecological point is the same; we are part of an ecological totality where the greatest sin is that of hubris, the arrogance of self-sufficiency and pride.

Despite our horrific destruction of the processes of life on this planet, I think we are gradually coming to embrace an ecological ethic.

As someone who has written a good deal about community and the idea of advancing our health together I am constantly reminded of how little I have said compared to what could be said, and it strikes me that "Our lives are not about us; we are about life" is utterly the point of our health together, of healthier together, of epidemiology, of sound health policy, and much else.

At the personal level, to remind ourselves that we are about life is to bestow on ourselves a huge gift, and of course that is a funny and upside down way of putting it, because the gift is already ours if only we are willing to receive it.

This is the point made by Wendell Berry in "Health is Membership," in his book of essays, Another Turn of the Crank. Berry argues that health is a communal and ecological concept, referring to our membership and participation in communities, both civic and ecological.

The ecological confession that that we first belong to life only increases individual responsibility.

The discovery decades ago that smoking is a dire threat to our health has led to increased individual responsibility for quitting smoking and for the health of those around us at the same time that it has led to higher tobacco taxes, health warning labels, proscriptions on smoking at work or other public places, and bans on tobacco advertising.

Seeking the common good of highway traffic safety or cleaner air and water only increases our individual responsibility for health and safety in these areas.

We can run, but we can't hide from the task of health care reform. As the Nobel Laureate, Joshua Lederberg says, (of the threat of resurgent epidemics), “there is nowhere in the world from which we are remote and no one from whom we are disconnected.”

But this is true of health care reform also. The confession that our health is about our health together, is about the interdependence of health in all its dimensions, teaches us that we cannot pursue more insurance, or controlling costs, or defending quality as separate goals, because what we do here affects what we do there.

In ecology, in global health, and in health care, everything is connected to everything else.

Who is talking about health care reform in this way?

Not many. Still, plans that contain the elements of the ecological confession of the interdependence of all of life together are plans that make health insurance uniform, that forbid refusing coverage to the sick, that promote health care costs control and that evaluate new health care technology, and that also build upon the success of our existing universal health care program, Medicare, all at the same time.

These are the plans that admit that everything is connected to everything else and our life together must reflect this interdependence.

Most of the Democratic proposals point in the direction of the ecological confession. Whether the Democrats stick to their guns, we shall see.

The Republican candidates promote plans that do little more than stand for their Johnny-One-Note theme of individual responsibility for health, embrace the hubris of "We're on our own" in this world.

Parker Palmer, in To Know as We are Known, says about prayer:

One one side, prayer is our capacity to enter into that vast community of life in which self and other, human and nonhuman, visible and invisible, are intricately intertwined. While my senses discriminate and my mind dissects, my prayer acknowledges and recreates the unity of life. In prayer, I no longer set myself apart from others and the world, manipulating them to suit my needs.

It is this kind of prayer that we need for health care reform, a prayer that our leaders and we ourselves, as citizens, will acknowledge the unity and interconnectedness of life itself.

Dan Beauchamp is a former Washington representative, university professor, health official, and small-town mayor. He is working on a memoir about meeting yourself again, for the first time, again and again. His blog, on politics, spirituality and other matters, can be found at http://talesofcoppercity.com.

"No Way Out"

By Bob Willner



Run from him, Run from him,
Night and day I run from him.
Minutes pass; hours flee,
Yet,
I cannot escape from him.
He seeks me out,
He knows where I hide.
He makes the law,
Oh God!
Must I abide?
The answer always comes,
The answer always comes.
Not if I escape.
Not if I escape!

I hurry through plains
And crouch behind hills,
Clawing at snow and ice,
I reach frozen peaks,
Alas – he’s on the other side.

Dodge the moon, never in the sun,
Curse the light and live in the black.
Not seeing him, I still
Tremble from the breath on my back

I’ve traveled far; I’ve glanced at beauty.
Never to admire, never to stay.
And now,
I’ve lost my way.

I’m tired weary and sick --
I know that I will die,
But if by death I can escape
There is no need to cry.

They think that I am dead,
So they put me in a box.
My eyes are shut,
I hold my breath

Bob Willner, a lawyer and writer in Chatham, New York, will read from his memoir on Saturday, December 15, 2008 at 5:30 p.m. at Stageworks in Hudson, New York. For reservations, please call (518) 822-9667

"A Miracle in My House

By Amira Abdul-Wahhab

It was November 25, 2006, Thanksgiving Day, one of the coldest winter days I have ever faced in my 19 years on the earth. Man it was so bitter cold that those tiny hairs on my arms and back were sticking straight up toward the heavens. All the houses on my block had little ice sticks hanging from the gutter and the roof and snow flakes were falling so gently on the icy side walks.

Sounds like a little fairytale story right?

Well it was nothing like that at all. A few months before, my mother had lost her job. She felt let down and so ashamed. She knew that Thanksgiving was not going to be as delightful as in years past.

Just the year before we had celebrated the most magnificent Thanksgiving dinner that I had ever seen. We had macaroni and cheese, candied yams, turkey, and stuffing. You know, the works, anything you can think of, we had it, and lots of it.

But now it was 2006. A year of relative famine. We didn't even have heat, let alone a plump turkey to fill our stomachs. It was so cold in my house that you were able to see your breath in the air, you know the way those little fluffy white clouds come steaming up?

Many times I asked my mother "Why do we have to live like this? It’s not fair, none of my other friends have to go through this." I would stomp out of the house crying with nothing but rage in my eyes and fear in my heart. We had no idea where our next meal or rent payment was going to come from, and I tell you, that is one of the scariest things to think about, for my mother had three children including myself to care for.

I spent a lot of time in my room crying and hating my life.

That Thanksgiving Day I lay there on the bed sobbing when something rather miraculous happened.

I actually heard a strange voice coming out of my closet. It was the voice of an unfamiliar old woman. A voice like you might hear from a grandmother. Crazy? Oh yeah. The voice asked, “Why are you crying, dear?”

Scared to my toes, but trying to be brave, I asked, "Who…who's there?" and out of the closet came the funny reply: “What do you mean who, you know darn well who this is. It is your closet, girl, you see me, don’t you? Every single day I am here for you. You throw your shoes at me, don’t you? And don’t you remember all those days you would climb into my arms and cry almost every night. I never asked why, did I? Well not until now.”

Shaking, I nodded my head and said “I don’t know what in the world is going on, am I dying or something?”

The closet didn’t answer. Not at first.

Finally, she said, “Tell me, honey, what is wrong?” And she said it in such a nice peaceful voice that, as scared and confused as I was, I found myself answering her.

“I'm sad because of my mother. She lost her job and we don’t have a cent to our names. So we fight all the time. It’s gotten to the point where, when she hits me, I can feel and taste the warm salty blood in my mouth.” I paused.

“Go on, honey.”

“She hits me sometimes as if I am some strange man off a lonely street, a man trying to steal from her. It feels like she hates me and now it’s Thanksgiving and we haven’t got any food. What did I do to deserve this?”

I started bawling. “HELP ME, please, what can I do to stop her?"

With the sound of sorrow in her voice, the voice began to speak. “Here here dear, first, why don’t you wipe your eyes.”

I reached for a tissue and blew my nose.

“OK, so there you go. Now close your eyes.”

I did. She continued in that wonderful grandmotherly voice. “All you have to do is let all of your pain go. And breathe. Can you do that?”

I took in a long breath. I breathed out. I did feel a tiny bit better.

“Whenever you need to, come to me. Sit here in my arms, and close your eyes and breathe. And I will sing to you.” And she did. She began to hum.

Imagine, some kind of a closet that holds you close AND sings to you?

“And one more thing, honey.”

“Yes?” I whispered. Her words of wisdom came singing out:

“Next year, you will go away to college. You will find friends there. You will find yourself growing in ways you never imagined. You will be happy. You will no longer have to cry out for help. Make school your sanctuary. Learn everything you can. You will be free of all this. And you will have your dignity with you at all times.”

And here, a year later, I am in Albany. I am a student. I am doing well.

Sometimes I think about that closet. And how what she said to me was, so true.

Amira Abdul-Wahhab, who grew up in Binghamton, New York, is a freshman at the University at Albany, State University of New York. This is her first published piece of writing. It appears this month in LATINO NEW YORK.

"My First Love Was a Wicked Twisted Road"

By BSM



My memories don’t exist for you. When I look out of my head through my eyes, I see the now. All that ever happens in front of my eyes is the now. I figured that out a few minutes ago.

If there is such a thing as a collective memory in this country, it must include trains. No matter how often I ride on a train, when I get on the train my now that’s in front of my eyes starts to mix with my memories behind my field of vision.

I’m riding the Now and Then Line from New York City to points north. Fascists, like Rudy Giuliani, generally rail against the Now and Then Line in their stump speeches and campaign ads. They attack this venerable, historical railway as, "not on time," "neither here nor there," and perhaps most damning, "Now and Then but Never on Time." True, when the Now Local arrives, it most often was scheduled to arrive then, and is therefore late. And in an odd synchronicity that proves Amtrak does have a sense of humor, the Then Express generally arrives now.

On the Now local, the woman sitting in front of me is always a fat blond woman eating potato chips. I can see her playing a game on her cell phone reflected in the window.

The guy sitting behind me always likes to call people at regular intervals during the ride to ask annoying questions. He says, “Hello!” in a way that completely captures the essence of Now. His singsong repetition of that most basic of words is an eerie simulacrum. He means it to be a imitation of a cartoon character, but there is no cartoon character that sounds like that.

By now, the fat blond lady is crinkling the empty bag of Frito-Lays and has taken her Blackberry out of her purse. Double fisting her phones, a flip-style one in the left and a PDA in the right, she clears her throat as if to say, "this train is just so now right now."

Sometimes this train is more then than now. Those are the rides I like the best. The people stay off of their – excuse my French – motherfucking cell phones, unless they are speaking in hushed tones. On the then train, the golden glow of reading lights falls on clean, wide seats. The train speeds along the Hudson River. During the day, the Then Express passes sailboats, and at night, the opposite bank of the river offers a never-ending string of twinkling lights. On the Then Express, my steel cocoon rumbles through deserted stations where white lamps splash pools of light down onto solitary train platforms. In the summer, there are moths gathered around the lights.

Every now and then, I catch a whiff of the Jim Beam sour mash whiskey that someone in my general vicinity is furtively sipping. Although, I have never had the good fortune of sitting across the isle from this whiskey sipper, I know his name. He’s the Gambler from the old Kenny Rogers song. He knows when to hold ‘em, he knows when to fold ‘em, he knows when to lay down, he knows when to run.

I’m not sure if it would even be possible for the Gambler to ride on the Now train. I mean, he’s been riding the Then train since it was the Now train. I’m like the Gambler in that way.

My memories don’t exist for you. They exist for me, though – all of the time. My life is looking out of my head via my eyes and seeing about 150 degrees of now. The other 210 degrees are on the Then Express, 24/7. In front of me are the bright fluorescent lights and high-speed data connections of Now. The Now Local stops in grimy subway stations and navigates 6th Avenue in the rain. The pavement is slippery, the wind is cold, but that’s only now. Behind my eyes, wrapped around my shoulders, and trailing behind me, just my memories.

Memories of the caress of an ex-girlfriend co-mingle with memories of the wind on my face in the evening as I was getting home to my seaside apartment in Cancun. Memories of the gently swaying palms of Cancun brush shoulders with memories of walking down the tree-lined streets of Vedado in the springtime.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I do not believe that most people live as surrounded by their memories as I do. Maybe old people do. My two living grandparents are probably on this Then Train Express somewhere also. I guess I’ll go find them now then.

BSM lives in Brooklyn. He writes at night and reads on the subway.

"On Deck"

By John Grey





A splendid serenity suffuses the planet
and stars, buoyed by the pale calm of their glow,
gift the world their pledge of unending sobriety.

The new moon glimmers in the sky's low trough,
a golden curve like a wheelman's smile
and the ocean flattens glossy like a silk sheet,
stretches windless to the arc of the dim horizon.
Propeller spins. The dark fleck of speeding hull
creases the invisible.

On bow, starboard, a deep crease of water,
endless through the shimmer,
traps, within its crests, its valleys,
white curls of foam that fracture, fizzle,
wavelets that, left to themselves,
would ripple all the way to shore.

Poet John Grey, a frequent contributor to MyStoryLives, is from Providence, Rhode Island. His book, “What Else Is There,” is published by Main Street Rag. He has been published in Agni, Hubbub, South Carolina Review and The Journal Of The American Medical Association.

"Family Tale"

By Camincha

The 50s

She arrived virgin. Was baptized by the foam of new waves. Swallowed by 5 & 10 cent stores, radio, the tube, night school, boyfriend, car, dancing. Swallowed by wars, turmoils, universal and personal.

Her wedding gown compounded the problems. Covered her like a shroud. The first of four chubby babies made them proud, a boy! In ignorance they celebrated. In ignorance they lived. Their ignorance like a boil grew. In them it grew. Then came two little sparrows. One straight hair, one curly top.

And all were swallowed by the American Dream: OWN YOUR OWN HOME, their little house. House swallowed by termites. Not a home that house but a menace hanging over their flimsy heads. They, not the owners. It was owned by FHA and BofA. In the garage, cars, owned by dealers who demanded payments. Also demanded: payments on a couch, chairs, washing machine, dryer. Worst of all the freezer, AMANA, BIGGEST IN THE MARKET. WILL SAVE YOU MONEY AT THE TABLE. Sharks sold it to them. Sharks devoured them.

The 60s

Another little sparrow came. Also curly topped. Came with the New Year, almost. Which found them, bleeding hearts, desperately trying to save their love affair from unnamed horrors. Unknown dangers in face of impotence against discrimination, lay offs, frustration, despair. Divorce. He did what he had long been practicing for, his GREAT EXIT. Left her juggling mounting bills like a circus veteran: merchants, banks. Doctors, for diarrheas, colds, flu, viruses. Dentist bills, for teeth retainers. Orthopedics, for feet retainers. Felt she could use some for her head. Maybe could keep it from falling off.

She switched to powdered milk to save for socks and shoes. Meantime she carved pumpkins for Halloween and stuffed turkeys for Thanksgiving. This took on meaning, when seen through her children's eyes. And on and on. Good moments few and far between. There were lovers, hers. One, she married. A mistake. Divorce didn’t make it good. Brought shock, destruction. Learned to lie: All is fine. Yes, all is fine! To so called friends in disguise. To so called neighbors who denied them the Christian virtue of looking the other way. But rather, pointed and stared.

The 70s

Materialistic well-being. Big disappointments. Strange comforts. Spiritual discomfort. Adjustments. Adjustments. Counseling. The long-haired boy looked like a middle aged lady: marijuana. Wine. Beatles. The Doors. Janis Joplin. Protests and sit-ins. Hippies, beads and flowers. The girls wore long hair and no bras. More protests and war. War of un-sung soldiers. Graduations, birthday cakes, good-byes. Trips to far-away, long-longed-for relatives. Earning power. And with it they knew envy and discrimination at its best. Despair. Disappointment. Unemployment. She searched. Searched spiritual growth.

The 80s

New passions, alliances, new life, new joys. Awesome expansion in learning power. As a reentry she first earned an AA, then a BA, then an MA: She, a Master. Oh, with great effort and perseverance, a new language for her.

The 90s

The one of the GREAT EXIT, performed his last. And left her to tell the story, which she did, in a prose poem. And here it ends. Not the story but the prose poem. For she knows now that writing will never end for her. Rather. She thinks this is but. The beginning. . . *

END

Camincha is a pen name for a California-based writer.