We aim to detox from you

Not from a drug or an addiction
But from you, our culture
Which has polluted the environment
Which has poisoned our bodies
Which has programmed our children

To believe they always will need your products
To believe they can never be here, now
As we always look for the next fix
By the toxic toys you mix
Into our “Happy” meals
Into our buy one get one free deals

The West has made “progress” by
Digging holes and filling them in
Blowing up mountain tops
As our fresh water slows to a drop
Stealing land for natural resources

The West sells us their plan
Of always needing more
Of never having enough
Economics is a hitman
Killing cultures for more holes to dig
Growing more feed for pigs

We will detach ourselves
We will deactivate
We will cleanse
We will tell stories
No screens to hide our eyes

And create a way without you
Where our world heals itself
Where our collective body functions
Without disease
Without  cancer
Without the disorders
You have sold us as normal

We will find the us, buried deep in you

Lack of impulse control is
Not knowing what you are saying when
You feel you are sharing
To people who don’t want to hear
Every little thing in your head

Lack of impulse control is
Writing manifestos for
Quitting your career
Posting them to Facebook
And closing any future doors

Executive dysfunction is
Not being able to process
All the data you need to
When there are many things to do
Not being able to remember
All the little things
That soon become too big
Not being able to know when
You are making others feel awkward
By sharing too much information

You might experience this
With severe brain damage
You might be in a car wreck
Or be hit by an I.E.D. in Afghanistan
Your head jerked back and forth
Then the brain swells

You might experience this
With a brain tumor when
A couple of inches are cut out
And your brain is irradiated
To increase survival

You might feel you are often alone
Not because you are depressed
But because you can’t repress
Any thought that comes into your head

As if your thoughts come from a water spicket
Always on
Always flooding your lawn
Always exploding
With mood swings

Plucking hard at your heart strings
That seems to be stuck on one chord
That continues to feed discord
As harmony tries to find its way through

We used to hide in your backyard dressed in camouflage all day. BB guns pumped up twenty times. That’s nearly .22 caliber we’d say. What might we kill today. Ready to shoot anything that moved. Birds, squirrels, a rabbit. Little boys without a clue. Just mirroring what we thought we knew, what men are. Playing army, too young to raise our hands and make an oath. No reason to pause and think what our paths might bring that day.

We were twelve as we raced back and forth then, from bush to bush. From house to house. Getting outside when, our parents told us that we played too much Nintendo. The summer of Legend of Zelda, the hours spent killing in 8-bit with swords. Going outside and looking for, more because our culture was already depleting us from inside. So many toys for a generation that would become defined as ME not WE. So much for a little one. Before cell phones. Before “i” anything. Nearing the death of drive-in theaters.

How our parents would cram us all in the car, how we would put down the back seat in the station wagon and turn it into a bed. How we would gather at the snack shop. Seeing everyone from town, as we looked at the memorized menu options. Hotdogs or burgers. Add cheese. Add fries. Add chili. Large coke. When cancer was still a joke, because everything caused it. Next thing they’ll say, water causes cancer. Next thing they’ll say, breathing causes cancer. I sure love my burgers. If it comes between my food and a heart attack, I’d rather die. And many did. My dad died. And I now have cancer. We didn’t think of that when, we joked back then that the jokes might be… on us.

Back to your backyard. That day it all went right. A hunter was born and a hunter died. I shot a red bird. We quickly approached it and it was still alive, heart beating, wings trying. The flap of death. You looked at me and told me to put it out of its misery. I pumped the rifle one time and shot it in the heart. As it lay dead, I began to weep. You made fun of me for the tears that tore deep.  And now as I look back, and see what we became, I wonder what other moments define us, like memories from an Instagram filter movie, like ET or Jaws. Two kids with different paths from the same town, to become extremely different men. The one in tears becomes an artist and a vegetarian. The one without becomes a big game hunter in Alaska. Seems like a dream. Were we defined in that instant, in your backyard. How different our paths’ of life, liberty and the pursuit of manhood. Too different to be friends. Only time would define it when, we looked back. I feel lucky to have cried that day.

I feel lucky to habe been bullied so I might say, I wish you all the best in Alaska.  

A day can be long, as time d-r-i-f-t-s
from full moon to rising sun and back again.
You can watch it all live, now, on demand.
3D, HD, full of color
full of giving,
full of loving.
full of forgiving.

But….you must choose.
Choose if you want to get out of bed.
to see the colors change.
The light hitting the waves.
The moon and sun’s slow dance overhead.
Or if you want to wake up mid-day instead
living in a comatose dream state.
The choice is yours to make.

Make it yours and then give it away.
Donate your time.
Help make miracles happen.
By being part of a community.
By being part of a child’s memories.

I’m going to make this summer
the best one of my life.
This will be the one songs
will be written about, not by me
but by the children I help raise.

Through time I spend with them,
I praise their existence.
I honor their birth.
I honor the lives
they will live
By being here with them, now.

Making up for any lost time.
As their voices change.
As their bones grow long.
I rearrange my calendar
So I will not miss a thing.

Standing on our porch
I told them it would last forever
Oh and when they held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those are the best days of our lives

Now in the summer of ’13

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