I think of my own neighborhood, how people do not know each other.  How quickly we go out to get our garbage can.  As we nod our heads briefly so that we might understand, that there is something more important going on inside, than to chat.  Maybe a pot of something boiling for a recipe.  Another meal is always being prepared.  Something is always too important than to share.

I say to my girls, put up your hands high and block. Bend your knees there so that you can’t be pushed over and stopped. Kick them in the balls if you have to.  Scream till their ear drums pop.  I speak to my seven year old as if she’s going to war.  I think of my not being here to look out for, the men and boys that she will encounter.  I think if I train her now, she will not suffer.  She will remember what her dad said ten years ago.  As he tried to pass down a little Aikido.  A little karate. A little boxing.  Keep strong and flexible. Roll when you fall.  Get up quickly and always stand tall.  And most importantly, RUN.

There is a wildness in all of our hearts, that remembers deeply the pain inflicted by others.  It goes deeper than photo albums or family horror stories.  It is scarred into our genes by villages pillaged and raped by mounted horsemen hundreds of years ago.  Homes burned down in a flash as lifetimes flickered out.  This past haunts us and dwells in our hearts.  I might worry more because I want them prepared if I leave in a hurry. Because of the mortality I know I carry.

Anything to make them tough.  To harden them up. I am a man and I know how deeply flawed men can be.  How our culture objectifies women while worshipping violence. As adults, with this training and talking to, I hope to not steal their innocence.  Only to prepare them for the worst.  I do not wish to scare them so, they do not notice the goodness in others.  That if love is walking by they should grab it.

As I prepare them for adulthood, I also teach there is a humanity full of love, not hate. Right under their noses as they seek happiness.  They might pass Jesus.  They might pass Buddha.  They might pass themselves and not recognize they are lost.  Because they are too scared to talk to neighbors, while preparing to defeat strangers.

This letter is to all who survived and did not cheat.

How you punched me in the gut. How you stole our dignity. I now envision your bracelets being recycled to help another cancer cause. Maybe from yellow to gray they might say, BrainStrong.  Taken out of all the dresser drawers they are hidden in. Given a new life for the millions who supported you when, we needed you. Please, help me understand how a man can lie to so many? Bully so many. For victory.

How were you able to sleep all those years as you injected yourself with steroids?  Did you ever weep thinking of the millions you lied to each day to win the yellow jerseys? When you visited the children in cancer clinics, bald from treatment, how could you look them in their eyes as their lives disappeared?  Did you wear a disguise?  Was it the cause that kept you going?  Knowing that if you lied enough you could raise more money and maybe save someone?  Did you ever think that your lies could kill?  That they might make a person more ill.  Realizing what you did to win, many might now give up. Not willing to lie, cheat and steal.

How many are able to raise the money you could that it takes to kill the disease, we share?  When I read your books, I was going through treatment too. Like so many, they gave me hope and they renewed my faith in life. We are all so close to giving up but you rode on.  No matter what the odds were stacked against you, you continued to train.  Stories of you being totally drained from chemo but still biking.  Riding through the storm as we all try to. You made it to the other side where the light shined.  You were lucky enough to be able to share your story, as millions continue to pass. No more time in their hour glass.

When you were writing your chapters how could you leave out the private doctor who helped you beat the hundreds of doping tests?  How could you leave out the how you led a team to cheat in order to beat the world’s best.  How did you leave out all the hours planning how to beat the tests? How did you leave out how you felt when you looked in your wife’s eyes, as she realized you were not a natural man.  Did the drugs drive you to divorce?  Surely a chapter could be written about the course your life took once your loved ones found out that you were a cheat and a bully. How hard it must have been to love you fully.

I call to you to edit your books, now. Hollywood will soon have its take. They will compile the truth from your friends and mistakes, making another fantasy for us to forsake. For yourself and us all, take your timeline and tell the truth.  Write it raw and share deeply, as you must have tried to the first round.  Let us know when you decided to cheat?  How you did it and on what race? What you thought when you looked in the mirror and saw your face? How did the drugs make you feel? When did you realize you could not be beat?  When did it begin to take over you life?  How you decided to not turn back?  How you forced others to be silent, when you put up your hand and swore an oath.  Did you ever think, millions of survivors might read your books now and decide to give up?  To take their yellow bracelets off and throw them away.

Yellow Livestrong Bracelets floating deep.  Bobbing up and down as we sleep, adding to our oceans and landfills. Twinkling like a fish lure into a belly. Into the stomach of a whale.  Into the stomach of a yellowtail.  There are 50 million of you.  How will you impact our ocean’s blue?  Will you find each other soon?  Will you become the next Pacific garbage patch or help grow another landfill’s cocoon. Yellow dye intact, rubber floats, you will surely attract the sea life we need to live. Fish and birds will now use your cause as food and swallow your lies again.  So many species will eat your cancer and die.  Soon to be seen from space above.  FLOAT STRONG.  May your lives take on another in the deep.  Recycling itself of our hero we once held so high. Cleansing itself of the lies molded into glory. Live strong to tell another story.

If you listen, you will hear cries
Of a world becoming desensitized
To the tragedy of tomorrow
Bombs blowing up
Buildings falling down
Shootings in schools
Children stolen and abused
The slaughter of innocents
In another country prevents
Us from taking any stand

How can we make a difference
When the world watches it all fall
Without the power to do a thing
As tyrants trumpet nuclear weapons
As poverty grows in our backyards

Next door you have neighbors
Do you know them
Do you understand
That we are only as strong
As we want to be
Will we hide in our shells
From the sirens and bells
From the horrors our media tells

Because we feel, we can’t collide
With the reality of the people
That live next door
Because of religion or politics
We can’t find common ground
We do not understand that
We do not need all the screens
To look at each other and feel
We are the change we need

Through the kindness of strangers
We can cure the cancer
That eats our culture
And makes us believe
That we do not need each other
To be whole
To be one people
Our back yards connected
Our lives interlocked
So that we might not feel blocked off
By the invisible boundaries we pay for
So that we might be friendly to each other
For our community
For our security
For our humanity
For our future

Let us be neighbors

as you wake each day
there is a mission
get them to school
get them fed
pick up family members
drive them to doctors
be there by our sides
to be an extra pair
of ears and eyes
pick the kids up
let them play for an hour
get them showered
while making dinner
and remembering
all the housework
that is piling up
get them in bed
take a nap if led
then pay the bills
organize the mail
mission accomplished…

but where are you
did you disappear
by being a mother
as you sometimes mention
is it time for an intervention
as i went to the office
to build a career
adding to my resume
so that one day i might say
we are a success
as i lost time with you
losing touch with my kids
i did not focus on us
when trying to pay for us
I became lost too
doing what I must

now second chances have come
we have time
to come together
like our rings
the yin and yang
like the songs we sang
our day on Siesta Key
just like our children
we complete each other
you will find you
in all that you see
for what we do is
what we believe

you are in
the way you read children’s books
you are in
the way you research schools
you are in
the organic food you cook
you are in
the community you have found
you are in
the soil of our garden’s ground
you are you
and you are here
you are Momma
you are Granddaughter
you are Wife
through being you
you complete our lives

Happy Mother’s Day…Dana King

From,

Byron, Willow, Claire

There is grace in you
The way you carry you
The way you lost Mickey
No goodbyes, so quickly
The way you held Joel
Through and through
Till death did you part

The way you worked and toiled
Grading papers till midnight
Putting up with bullies and school fights
So many years of not having
So many years of giving
Back breaking
Bones breaking
Arm torn into
Breast cancer too

There is grace in you
Watching your husbands die
And then lifting yourself up
And helping your son through
Cancer treatment

There is grace in you
For who knew
Your son would become a friend
Our family evolves
Keeps us intertwined
From one life to another
You have held us together
When so many would have given up
You continue

There is grace in you
Received from the divine
Educated by sorrow and time
Given or borrowed
You let it show
Through the love you bestow
To your friends and family
To your church and community

There is grace in you

Either it is or it isn’t
There is no in between
And is does not ask for anything
It just is
It exists
It is not objectified
It does not have value
It does not ask to be bought
It cannot be contained

And isn’t is purchased
It can destroy
It can cause pain
It needs a place
It takes up space
It needs a time
It does not seek the sublime

An isn’t does not exist without you
If you do not control it, it leaves
If you do not feed it, it dies
As you collect more it collides
In your garage, in your attic it hides

In your space an isn’t lives
Beginning to hold you down
Growing mold
Building anxiety
Inside your mind
For the isn’t has no isness
In retrospect people find
Isn’ts build ego
by seeking business
To build a career
The root of all fear
As one’s isness disappears
Into thin air

I did not get the context
That was intended
I did not understand
What was transmitted
It was cut and pasted
You did not think I would take it
Any other way than
Here is something I should know

You did not get the context
When I went on that rant
You did not hear the inflection
From the voice in my head,
On the screen when you read,
What I typed thinking you would know
That I speak for the dead
I speak for those who are silent
Never knowing their context
I sometimes bully with subtext

I did not get the context
When I read someone was flaming you
I wrote an email that used truth as a weapon
Using ultra-honesty to disarm
Metaphors are not funny when one has
Already put up their alarm

I did not understand
When this all started so many years ago
First email, then blogs, then Facebook
One cannot convey the face to face…look
The way we talk with our hands
The way our eyes speak volumes
The way our body bends
Will we break the digital bonds we seek
Abusing the avatars and profiles through which we speak
Until we bleed our egos dry
Left abandoned to cry for a new beginning
When paranoia does not rule good intention
When we do not seek to hurt but to heal
When each dialogue is a chance to feel
MORE HUMAN

There is a tower that grows
For those who know
How to climb and reach
For the power to preach

Be it staff, faculty or students
The tower constantly produces
Followers of their major’s creed
Graduates know not what to believe

Students come out ready to bleed
For the letters behind their names
Not knowing why they are not hired
They take a job not desired

For this is the game we all play
Secure the now, throw away tomorrow
Maybe just two years here and see what follows
But often nothing ever comes

No amount of tuition
No amount of resumes sent
No amount of deferment
Another degree might make one stand out

But the ivory tower never cowers
For each day it grows higher and higher
With clowns at the top, selling their crop
To the highest international powers

Flying across the seas to court Saudis
The princes of oil come to bring
Money in exchange for engineering
To build more towers in the sand

Education for oil barons
Traded with a wink and a nod
On a balcony with a quick drink
Hear their glasses clink

So many countries now harvest
America’s minds programmed to profess
What they were forced to digest
In order to get from tier to tier

The Chinese are now placed starboard
Those who can not get into Harvard
Fill up the smaller schools
To join America’s dream of fools

As we all now sharpen our tools
Mass shootings in public
No legislation to protect us
Why would anyone ever want to emulate us

As I climb down from the tower
I look up and I am showered
By all the sweat and tears
Falling from the bodies above

Hoping to find their seat at the boardroom
Where a weeks work is done with a signature
To keep the tower oiled and clean
To grease the walls of the ivory machine

Bleached white for all to see
Consuming without empathy
For machines do not feel anything
Soon … towers are all there will be

When you close your eyes
Can you hear their cries
As the ball-bearings pierce
As the nails curse
Flesh shredded and searched

When you saw their photos
Their limbs blown off
Was your face full of disgust
Questioning all of humanity
Did you think about history
Did you think about OUR story

The tens of thousands of years
We have been inflicting fear
From one tribe to another
From brother to brother
As we fight over our lands and gods
As we murder for peace

If I close my eyes
I can hear the hum
I can hear all of humanity
All our laughter and tears
All our joys and triumphs
All our stumbles and falls
As our buildings grow tall
Reaching for the heavens
Reaching for something
That is within us all

A peace that needs no religion
For the path is ours to choose
To let go of our genetic memory
To purge our DNA of hate
Before it is too late
To find internal peace
To renew Earth’s lease