Prodigal

I remember when my last kid left without so much as a goodbye kiss, only the gift of a radio to keep me company. One morning, fighting with the static, I heard a deer bawl in the breeze full of musk, and saw the buck I’d rescued as a fawn. He must have still been hungry, twitching his tail like there was a message in it, because he came right up to me and nuzzled my breasts. So I fed him from his old baby bottle. He was so tame I barely noticed the antlers growing out of his head.

Celebration

This is the time when winter sunsets illuminate a trick of the dust. The dust floats in a tangle of rays and confuses the cat on the leather chair. The leather chair is too slick for cat claws. Those claws can’t stop the cat from sliding across the seat as if sliding across a waxed floor. The waxed floor is where the baby sits, watching the cat dance, clapping his hands and giggling. Giggles are like champagne bubbles ready to pop. Pop them, why don’t you–there must always be something to celebrate. 

Dinner with Lady & the Tramp

The lady fights with sticks of spaghetti rising above the saucepan. Only those submerged in water bend to her will. The stiff bits hold themselves above the boil and she has to break them off to get them to drown properly. She’d wanted to serve him long strands, each of them eating from opposite ends until their lips met; but now the pasta has been demoted to pastina, and all those wet noodles, no longer long enough for twirling, slip off the plate onto his lap. Across the room, the garbage disposal turns on remotely. It sounds like a chainsaw.

Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy, and her most recent writing has been nominated for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net awards this year. She lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.

Pepper, Palisades and Pearls

                                                              Pohnpei

         ‘Epithets, like pepper, give zest to what you write; And, if you strew them sparely,

          They whet the appetite: But if you lay them on too thick, you spoil the matter quite.”

                                                            Lewis Carroll

Our departure from the Yap airstrip had been de-lei’d, but not by all the Christmas presents which, because of the gift-wrapping, had sailed around rather than through security.

If the color of Yap had been money, the color of Pohnpei was black. The pepper was black, the palisades were black, and the pearls were black. Darker still was the intrigue that swirled around them, in one of the rainiest places on the planet. And the center of the intrigue was The Village people.

                             ‘Together we will go our way, together we will leave some day.

                              Together your hand in my hand, together we will make the plans.

                              Together we will fly so high, together tell our friends goodbye.

                              Together we will start life new, together this is what we’ll do.’

No, not Village People, the gay fantasy disco variety, The Village people, the owners of The Village, the treetop eco-resort that Robyn and I had booked into. Eight years before Go West was released, as a single in 1979, Bob and Patti already had, as a young couple with four children. From Southern California, they pulled up stakes and went further west, leasing a steep-sided spit of land pointing out into the lagoon, and building the largest thatched structure in Micronesia. Bob had been an industrial designer, and retaught the locals how to do thatching, from what he had learned while living in Honduras. He imported mahogany from the Philippines for the floor of the Long House, and then, between the breadfruit and banana trees, built twenty more cottages.

                             ‘I know that there are many ways to live there in the sun or shade.

                              Together we will find a place to settle down and live with the space

                              without the busy pace back east, the hustling, rustling of the feet,

                              I know I’m ready to leave too, so this is what we’re going to do.’

Robyn and I were driven across the Deketik causeway, through the capital of Kolonia (blacker than the Colonia we had left on Yap), past a burnt-out Japanese tank with the wrong sort of camouflage for where, and probably why, it was destroyed, another twenty minutes east to The Village. Up the stairs of the mangrove poles and expansive thatch was a bar called the Tattooed Irishman and beyond that, the restaurant, both open to spectacular views across the reef, the smaller islands that dotted the lagoon and, on the distant horizon, the profile of Sokeh’s Rock. Patti welcomed us with two cold coconuts and straws, and we took them out along a walkway that led to a thatched gazebo overlooking their tropical paradise. Sea breezes blew gently through the palms, and the space we were perched on. It was a damn fine coconut. We were shown to our cottage. Under the mosquito net was a waterbed. You can take the boy out of California. I hoped the floor would hold,

But small cracks began to appear in the Garden of Eden around dinnertime. Patti’s friendliness had disappeared, and she snapped at me for trying to compliment her on what she and Bob had accomplished, with time and thatch. I didn’t know then, about how it was all unraveling around them, and I wouldn’t for another ten years. The food was adequate for where we landed, but quesadillas were not what I had expected for a New Year’s Eve dinner. The huge spiders above us in the rusting ceiling fans were also a novelty. I should have learned from the ecoexperience on Yap, but The Village would take that several notches higher. Two young boys uncorked the bottle of Tokay we had brought to celebrate the New Year and poured it to the brim of our glasses. The path back to our shack was unilluminated, but I had my headlamp. The absence of water pressure in the shower was more than adequately supplemented by the mosquitoes, and the rats. In 1991 the US government bestowed Bob and Patti with the first eco-tourism award, for constructing a hotel‘in tune with nature, with a low impact on the environment and the culture.’ We slept somewhere between the howling of the dogs and the crowing of the roosters.

“Paradise.” Robyn whispered, into my twilight sleep.

“Paradise is exactly like where you are right now.” I said. “Only much better.”

She ordered a platter of Pohnpei hotcakes for breakfast next morning. It came with a maraschino cherry on top, like the ham and cheese sandwiches, on our flight to Juan Fernández. Outside the veranda, the rain was hosing down, trying to reach its annual quota of 300 inches in a single monsoon. Robyn and I did the only thing we could do on a New Year’s Day, in a torrential deluge, on a remote island in the Southern Sea. We rented a car.

It arrived as a silver Mitsubishi sedan, with windows so severely tinted, I wasn’t sure how we would navigate in the downpour. It was an endemic problem, as we were to discover. Everywhere we drove was littered with dead cars- eviscerated cars, cars upended on their side and braced up at strange angles with bamboo poles, perhaps to allow access to their innards, for most were missing parts, and all were missing their tires, for whatever reason. We sunk into potholes that should have drowned us, but thankfully the sun came out, before we reached the 300 inches.

It got positively wonderful at Kepirohi Falls, a seventy-foot cascade a fifteen-minute hike from the far end of the village of Sapwehrek. We swam deliciously in the bottom pools, paradise regained, until a freak gust of wind blew half the cataract through my Fuji camera. Maybe it was some form of retribution for what the Japanese had done to the Pohnpeians during the war, but all my photos would henceforth look like the burnt out camouflage tank we had passed in getting here.

Robyn and I stopped to visit the Catholic church in Awak village, with a simple but moving interior, backlit by open blockwork in the shape of two crosses. The exterior could have been Balinese,if rusted corrugated tin had been the construction material of choice in Bali.

We continued to the southern part of the island, where the dark intrigue began, with a soft-spoken Japanese farmer. Mr. Sei owned a cafeteria in Kolonia, but he also had the only remaining operating pepper plantation and processing facility. Only five of his hundred acres were planted in Indonesian and Sri Lankan pepper, on eight-foot balabala fern support posts. Among the long strings of green beaded pepper vines, were magnificent orchids, acting as coalmine canaries, like roses do for grapes in Burgundy.

To hear the way that Bob and Patti would tell it, the pepper business in Pohnpei was nearly dead, when they formed the AHPW Corporation, to produce black pepper and buttons, in 1985. No one had apparently told Mr. Sei that it was nearly dead, and no one can really explain what a black pepper enterprise has to do with manufacturing buttons from trochus shells. But that was what Bob and Patti did, when they borrowed more than $620,000 from the Federated States of Micronesia Development Bank. Bob and Patti assumed that the loan was made to their corporation. The bank assumed they were lending to Bob and Patti.

The following year a moratorium was placed on harvesting trochus shells, because of concerns about sustainability. The buttons went bye-bye, and all the button factory machinery that Bob and Patti had imported, went the way of the cars with the overly tinted windows. The year after that, in response to complaints by pepper farmers that Bob and Patti were being too fussy in purchasing only high-quality pepper, the State of Pohnpei got into the pepper processing business, and put Bob and Patti out of it, in 1998. When the bank called in their loan, for which they now learned they were personally responsible, paradise found became paradise lost.

A year before Robyn and I met The Village people, Bob and Patti filed a lawsuit, Civil Action 1999-053, against the governments of Pohnpei and the Federated States of Micronesia, alleging that ‘In buying pepper from Pohnpei’s pepper farmers at a price greater than market price, Pohnpei prevented competition in the manufacture of a commodity, in this case processed pepper,’ they had essentially driven AHPW into bankruptcy. The lawsuit also alleged that the State of Pohnpei had failed to hold the annual trochus harvest, even though AHPW had been repeatedly assured that there would be one, and that sixty metric tons would be available. Bob and Patti asked for $225,448 in damages. The FSM Supreme Court, to their initial delight, not only found in their favor, but tripled the amount of the damages to $676,344, which would have been enough to pay back the bank loan. When the State of Pohnpei appealed to vacate the trebling of damages, the Court not only refused, but also awarded Bob and Patti an additional $37,422, under the theory of detrimental reliance, for the loss of their button business. Time and thatch, however, unravel at different rates. The two bills that the Governor submitted to the Pohnpei State Legislature to pay Bob and Patti, failed to pass, even though there were sufficient funds to do so. While the State of Pohnpei was getting its head around having to pay damages to Bob and Patti, the FSM Development Bank was wasting no time in calling in its loan. It could have explained Patti’s black mood, and why she might have thought I was pushing her buttons. 

                            ‘Together we will love the beach, together we will learn and teach.

                             Together change our pace of life, together we will work and strive.

                              I love you, I know you love me; I want you happy and carefree.

                             So that’s why I have no protest when you say you want to go west.’

Our Pohnpei circumnavigation turned north, and the high volcanic cone formation of Pwusehn Malek, in Palikir. The local legend relates a story of the defeated ruler of the Saudeleur dynasty, who changed himself into a giant rooster, to fly to Nan Madol, leaving an enormous pile of his droppings. At the foot of Chickenshit Mountain, Robyn and I met a group of inebriated women, celebrating New Year’s Day, all flip-flops and Santa hats, carrying green plantains, and banging their bottles and big square tin cans with sticks, and laughter. We posed in front of an old panel van, with so much vegetation growing so fast out of its cockpit, we made a mental note to close our tinted windows, later. Kolonia was empty, but the signs were still there- Do not spit betel juice on the premises. Pigs for sale 50 lbs to 75 lbs Call and ask for Welson Nedlic… Must be sold during Xmas. Back in The Village’s restaurant that evening, I had the chicken salad. The disparity between the price and food quality had risen in direct proportion to the size of the pepper mill. It was gigantic, and I had an awful black feeling that Patti and Bob had known exactly where we had been.

     ‘I may not know much, but I know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad.’

                                                                                           Lyndon Johnson

*         *        *

    ‘What breadth, what beauty and power of human nature and development there must be

      in a woman to get over all the palisades, all the fences, within which she is held captive!’

                                                                                           Alexander Herzen

They had been constructed from long prismatic columns of hexagonal black basalt almost 20 feet in length, piled log-cabin style, some sixty feet high, forming 92 artificial islands over an area of 200 acres. Robyn was barely visible in the deluge, held captive in the kayak next to mine, navigating the mangroves, and the palisades between them.

Two days before, we had found the poverty of Pohnpei, in the Kirinese carvers of Porakied, transplanted by the Japanese in 1919 from Kapingamaranga atoll, 35 inches above sea level and 740 kilometers south of their old new village of thatch and corrugated iron. Hanging banana bunches and full rain barrels, rigged from commercial food containers, projected off rooftops, and car wrecks rusted languidly under the coconut palms in the front yards. On the day of our visit, their settlement, like their origins, was mostly water. The concrete graves in the cemetery glistened silver in the rain, and even their connected crosses were of cement, a cementery, the only color coming from scattered bouquets of plastic flowers extruded from more temperate climates. We bought a handmade turtle carving, flippers woven from light natural coconut and darker pandanus fibers, from an old Kapingamarangan lady, whose smile betrayed how much more her people had lost than gained, in the move onto higher ground. She was still perhaps more fortunate than the other Pohnepeian immigrants from Pingelap, Oliver Sack’s Island of the Colorblind. My camera, meanwhile, was afflicted with the opposite problem, and was adding colors not found in nature, to the washed-out pig roast celebration, congregating in a clearing back towards the center of Kolonia. Japanese flatbed trucks arrived on masse, each with monster pigs, legs already tied around the poles that four men would be needed to huff and puff them down from, into the waiting firesmoke. Other smoulderings hung around mirrored sunglasses, from cigarettes on lower lips, as breadfruit and yams suspended on similar staves, were portaged bouncing, towards plastic tarps and waiting knives. Perhaps it might have been more festive if there had been fewer Japanese and American ghosts in the vaporized psychedelic images on my memory card.

Robyn and I passed into the main part of town, and the signage that announced its urbanity. Welcome to Good Luck Bingo. Said one. Site Bingo $500 cashpot. Good Luck. On Pohnpei, apparently, luck was easier to come by than justice. Outside the Dollar-Up-Enterprises shop, Growing with Pohnpei, and the Island Soda Headquarters, a big yellow smiley face, surrounded by pennants and Chinese lanterns, tried to provide both. Please try and park straight…so everyone can have a parking place. An Israeli flag, lurking behind a large Santa Claus decal, carrying a bagful of toys, seemed to promise neither. And another sign, STD’s: The Quiet Epidemic Gonorrhea Syphilis Hepatitis B HIV/AIDS etc. offered a hybrid of the good and the bad. I wondered what the etcetera was.

Robyn and I posed for photos on the wrong camouflage of the old Japanese tank, and under the arch of the Spanish wall fort remnant, near the Pohnpei Ladies Club, halfway between Honolulu and Manila. A flame tree posed more brightly near the clock tower. A philodendron was making a nest in the cab of another dead truck, near the spot that we picked up our ride, hitchhiking back to The Village. The views of the lush bay behind us, from our open truck bed, were idyllic, and left the heat and humidity with our exhaust, until we stopped.

The next day, Robyn and I climbed up Sokeh’s Ridge. We were warned at the bottom. Danger- Steep road. Hazardous for both motor vehicle and pedestrian traffic Travel at your own risk!!  The hike was arduous in the midday heat, but the panorama of Kolonia harbor from the top, and the ocean expanse beyond, was just that breathtaking. There were nesting tropicbirds and fruit bats on the way up, WWII Japanese antiaircraft battery, pillboxes, and tunnels at the top, and strange bracket fungus, like cuneiform commas, on the way down. Robyn and I continued by coconut-oil coiffed women in an open boat among the sailboats mooring below, giant hibiscus, and an old guy with a backwards New York baseball cap, jeans, and miraculously white T-shirt, barbequing chicken in an open kettle on the street. It was brilliant. I may not know much…We returned to The Village to collect shells and snorkel, and to float asleep on the waterbed later, until the mosquitoes found the hole in our net before dawn.

‘Once upon a time, a man named Sapkini built a large canoe. He knew that the sky is a roof that touches the sea at its edges. His people, sailing in their fine canoe to the place where the sky meets the sea, would find land there. On the way, they met an octopus who showed them a shallow reef in the ocean. The people brought rocks and stones from faraway lands to make the reef higher. But the waves broke up the stones. So they planted mangrove trees to protect the island. But the ocean was still too close. So they built a fringing reef around the island. Two women brought soil and the island grew larger. On its top the people built a shrine to the spirits and named their new land- Pohn-Pei, Upon-the-Altar.’

Upon the altar of too many soft consonants of Mandolenihmw district, were the palisades on the other side of dawn, where the sky met the sea, beyond the kayaks that had come off our hour-long speedboat trip to the southeast coast of the island. Robyn and I had been dropped onto the mangrove-covered coral shore flats in a torrential downpour. Even with the protection of our ponchos, it was going to be an elemental day. We had the place to ourselves, wherever it was. The rain and the wind, washing over the thick green jungle and slate grey ocean chop beyond, made the unadorned black architecture even more intimidating.

It had originally been called Soun Nan-leng, the ‘Reef of Heaven.’ But we were paddling the Venice of the Pacific, named for the ‘spaces between’ the canals that crisscrossed Nan Madol. 

“Rubble.” Said Robyn, summing up every megalithic ruin on the planet. Instead of an enlightening verifiable historical record to marvel at, rubble was always buried into even deeper confusion, by voluminous academic speculation. The rubble expert, so as not to appear ignorant, in the absence of knowledge and meaning, would describe and invent and publish what he thinks he should be seeing.

According to legend, Nan Madol had been founded by two brothers, Olisihpa and Olosohpa, twin sorcerers from the mythical Western Katau. They had arrived in a slightly larger canoe than ours, seeking to build an altar and religious community, focused on the adoration of the sea, and dedicated to the god of soft consonant agriculture, Nahnisohn Sahpw. On their third attempt, the brothers levitated huge stones with the aid of a flying dragon. After Olisipha had died of old age, Olosohpa became the first Saudeleur, the first ruler of the Dipwilap Deleur dynasty. From about 1200 AD, over the next five hundred years, the clan chronicle emerged from legend to lineage with each subsequent saudeleur.

A few were benign rulers. Inenen Mwehi established an aristocracy, and Raipwenlang was a skilled magician. Others were cruel. Raipwenlake used his magic to locate the fattest Pohnpeians, and ate them. Another, Ketiparelong, is remembered for his gluttonous wife who was fed her own father’s liver by suffering commoners at a banquet. Perhaps that worst was Sakon Mwehi, who taxed his people ruthlessly, requiring frequent tributes of seafood and breadfruit during rak, the season of plenty, and yams, taro, and fermented breadfruit during isol, the season of scarcity. Over time, the initial seasonal demand became much more demanding of labor and material, leaving a wake of starving slaves in the tidal canals. Each time that public dissatisfaction broke to assassination, another Saudeleur simply rose in place of the last.

The Saudeleur derived his legitimacy from the central cult of the Thunder God, Nahn Sapwe, who used the sakeu ceremony, the kava of Fiji and Vanuatu, as an elaborate affirmation of dominance and dedication. Sakau was first made through magic, also by two brothers, Widen-ngar and Luhk. Widen-ngar was the ghost of thunder, and Luhk, the ghost of the underground. Luhk had hurt his foot on the way to the Pohnpei, and his injured skin was pounded it into small pieces and, using hibusicus bark, squeezed out the liquid, using Widen-ngar’s kneecap to catch it.

The meat of the ‘Life-Giving’ Turtles and the ‘Watchmen of the Land’ dogs was reserved especially for the Saudeleur. He controlled potential rivals by requiring them to live in Nan Madol, rather than their home districts, in the same way that Louis XIV controlled his nobles at Versailles. He controlled his population with the food and water supply, which needed to come across in boats from the mainland.

All of Nan Madol, itself, in fact, had to have come over from the mainland. Prisms of black basalt were dislodged from their main island quarries by building large fires at their bases, and cooling them suddenly with sea water, to cause them to fracture. The stones were manoeuvred onto rafts, floated within the fringing reef across to the building site and, with inclined planes of coconut palm trunks and strong hibiscus fiber rope, slid into orthogonal islets of headers and stretchers, and filled with local coral. Pole and thatch structures were erected on top of the platforms, residences, and meeting houses for all the black intrigue that would follow. For a people that had no pulleys, no levers, and no metal, the 750,000 metric tons of black rocks moved into place at Nan Madol, averaging almost two thousand tons a year for four centuries, represented a much larger per capita effort than had taken place during the construction of the Egyptian pyramids.

In 1628, the last Saudeleur was overthrown by an outsider named Isohkelekel, who divided Pohnpei into the multiple nahnmwarki chiefdoms that still endure. Hidden weapons had suddenly appeared.

Robyn and I kayaked down the Nan Madol main street, the central waterway separating Life and Death. To the southwest was Madol Pah, the lower town administrative sector where royal dwellings and ceremonial areas had been located. We pulled up onto the high-walled complex islet of Pahankadira, the residence of the Saudeleur, a basalt battleship almost three footballs fields in area, the ‘place of announcement,’ surrounded by prismatic palisades over sixteen feet high. A bathing pool had been excavated inside. On the islet of Idehd was the place where turtle entrails had been offered to the sacred eel, kept in a sacred tunnel-like channel, constructed of carefully cut coral laid between basaltic prisms. We passed a row of sakau pounding stones, where two conch shells trumpets had been excavated. Nearby was Durong, where clams had been cultivated. The largest walls rose almost sixty feet high, on the south corner of Pahnwi.

It began to teem down, as we paddled towards the 58 islets northwest mortuary sector of Madol Powe, the upper town where the priests lived, and the tombs. Some islets served a special purpose- food preparation, canoe construction on Dapahu, and coconut oil preparation, for anointing the dead, on Peinering, the most beautifully proportioned islet on Nan Madol. Students of Western architecture familiar with the Golden Section of 1:1.618, would hear the arias of stacked prismatic basalt headers tilting markedly upward, projecting beyond the exterior wall faces to form a crafted cornice of some of the most sensitive skilled masonry in the world. The sun came out.

The crowning achievement of Nan Madol was the elaborate royal mortuary of Nandauwas, a 25 foot massive sea-walled palisade surrounding a central moss-encrusted tomb enclosure within the main courtyard. One of the cornerstones weighs 50 tons. Here were entombed the Saudeleurs, before being buried elsewhere. Powerfully conceived, sensitively sited, and skillfully executed, we approached it by kayak from the open lagoon, and moved along the jungle-covered islets on both sides of the canal, ascending steps that led to the interior courts, enclosures, and tombs. The breaking waves were deafening. Here were found adzes, circular heads, bracelets, needles, breast pendants, necklaces, pearl-shell fishhook shanks, and other valuable shell artifacts. Even a gold crucifix and silver-handled dirk were found by visiting ships’ captains between 1834 and 1840, suggesting possible Spanish contact before the 1820s.

Robyn and I arrived on a beach with hermit crabs and button shells and returned for dinner out in a café under thatch along the river, tortured by a cute young girl with two red orchids in her hair. The food arrived under aluminum foil, from the main island.

                                                   ‘Go west, life is peaceful there.

                                                    Go west, lots of open air.

                                                    Go west to begin life new.

                                                    Go west, this is what we’ll do.

                                                    Go west, sun in wintertime.

                                                    Go west, we will do just fine.

                                                    Go west where the skies are blue.

                                                    Go west, this and more we’ll do.’

                                                       The Village People, Go West

*         *        *

                                    ‘Even pearls are dark before the whiteness of his teeth.’

                                                                           William R. Alger

Black clouds swirled over the remaining intrigue on Pohnpei. In 1886, the Spaniards, as part of their claim to the Caroline Islands, as part of the Manila-based Spanish East Indies, founded Santiago de la Ascensión, in a place that the Pohnpeians had known as Mesenieng, the Face of the Wind. The Germans had renamed it Kolonia.

Robyn and I visited the Pohnpei Visitors Bureau, admiring the old thatched buildings and the soft curves and consonants of Miss Madolenihmw, on a poster inside.

Outside we met Johnny, one of the hosts, who showed us the botanical gardens.

“These trees are very, very old.” He said. “Like you.” According to the signpost, we were standing18127 miles from Berlin.

It hadn’t made any difference to the German colonial administration how far they were from Berlin. They had brought all their ideas, and toys. One of their ideas was to force the Pohnpeians to labor 15 days a year on public works projects. One day in October of 1910, a young man from Sokeh Island refused the instructions of his overseer and was flogged for his transgression. The following morning, all the Sokehs refused further labor, and returned to their island. The district commissioner, Gustav Boeder, with his assistant Rudolf Brauckmann and two translators, was rowed to Sokeh by six Mortlock Island boatmen, to ‘reason’ with the laborers. Riflefire rang out from a concealed position, and only the two translators and one oarsman escaped. It took two months for the news to reach the Colonial Office in Berlin. A month after that, the light cruisers SMS Emden and SMS Nürnberg, joining the gunboat SMS Cormoran and the survey ship Planet, fired their main batteries on the rebel fortification on Sokeh’s ridge, and then launched an assault team of sailors and Melanesian police up the mountain. The rebels gave as good as they got, but couldn’t hold out, and surrendered on February 22, 1911. Two days later, fifteen of them were executed by firing squad, and the 426 remaining souls of Sokeh’s tribe were banished to Palau.

The Styrofoam crosses in the storefront window, behind all the left footed shoes on display, were decorated with colored ribbons, and bouquets of artificial flowers, that flowed into the patterns of the material shop next door. We passed the Touch ‘N Go Windward Mart, and a handpainted poster of a pregnant woman, smoking. Simoke sika karehda serihkan ipwidi paun tikitik.

The burned-out ruin of the State Department of Education, with the Japanese Kanji script below, had stopped smoking after the American delivery of 118 tons of bombs, 600 incendiaries and their own naval artillery bombardment had destroyed Kolonia during WWII. A newer sign underneath the ruin, was buckled and soiled. Pohnpei Sarawi Our Home Our Pride.

Another, at the library posted its ‘standing rules.’ Keep quiet at all times. The following are not allowed: No food, pets, smoking, betel-nuts and fighting.

The Japanese had brought thousands of Okinawans to Ponhpei, during their occupation. Visitors to Kolonia in the 1930s reported that they had been able to walk the length of Namiki Street under shopkeepers’ canopies without getting wet in the rain. The Americans had bombed out the canopies, and Robyn and I enjoyed no such protection. We were drenched by the time we found Joy’s Restaurant, and a table for one of Joy’s black and red lacquer tray tuna sashimi lunches. Two men with dark faces and white teeth joined us, after Joy had made a phone call, after we had seen the brochure on her counter. They were Polynesians from Nukuoro atoll, a remote island 450 kilometers southwest of Pohnpei, with 300 residents, no airstrip, a sea charter connection that called only every few months, and cost ten thousand dollars per visit. George had been the Chief Magistrate for Nukuoro. He pulled out a case of what he had brought, each one nestled in a little round plastic box with a white foam bed. They were charcoal, with iridescent hues in blues and greens and violets. They were gorgeous. 

George’s cooperative had seven employees who harvested about 6000 black pearls a year, enough to find enough round ones to make a single necklace.

“It takes eighteen months to produce a pearl.” Said George. “We must bring in a ‘seeding technician’ from Tahiti to seed them, and that costs about three dollars an oyster.” In the photo, George held up his brochure, his assistant held up the traveler’s cheques, and Robyn held up her new pearls. She was the pretty one with the jewels. A thing of Joy is a beauty forever.

A quarter of a century earlier, Laurie Anderson, the experimental performance artist and wife of Lou Reed, had arrived in Pohnpei to work on her new album, The Ugly one with the Jewels. It got very ugly, and the joy ran out, as she eventually related in her track, Word of Mouth.

‘In 1980, as part of a project called Word of Mouth, I was invited, along with a living other artists, to go to Panape, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. The idea was that we’d sit around talking for a few days and that the conversations would be made into a talking record. The first night we were all really jet-lagged but as soon as we sat down the organizers set up all these mikes and switched on thousand white light bulbs. And we tried our best to seem as intelligent as possible. Television had just come to Panape a week before we arrived and there was a strong excitement around the island as people crowded around the few sets. Then the day after we arrived, in a bizarre replay of the first TV show ever broadcast to Panape, prisoners escaped from a jail, broke into the radio station and murdered the DJ. Then they went off on a rampage through the jungle, armed with lawnmower blades. In all, four people were murdered in cold blood. Detectives, flown in from Guam to investigate, swarmed everywhere. At night we stayed around in our cottages, listening out into the jungle. Finally the local chief decided to hold a ceremony for the murder victims. The artist Marina Brownovich and I went, as representatives of our group to film it. The ceremony was held in a large thatched   lean-to and most of the ceremony involved cooking beans in pits and brewing a dark drink from roots. The smell was overwhelming. Dogs careened around barking. And everybody seemed to be having a fairly good time… as funerals go. After a few hours Marina and I were presented to the chief, who was sitting on a raised platform above the pits. We’d been told we couldn’t turn our backs on the chief at any time or ever be higher than he was. So we scrambled up onto the platform with our film equipment and sort of duck-waddled up backwards to the chief. As a present I brought one of those Fred Flintstone cameras, the kind where the film canister is also the body of the camera, and I presented it to the chief. He seemed delighted and began to click off pictures. He wasn’t advancing the film between shots, but since we were told we shouldn’t speak unless spoken to, I wasn’t able to inform him that he wasn’t going to get twelve pictures, but only one, very, very complicated one.After a couple more hours the chief lifted his hand, and there was absolute silence. All the dogs had suddenly stopped barking. We looked around and saw the dogs. All their throats had been simultaneously cut and their bodies, still breathing, pierced with rods, were turning on those pits. The chief insisted we join in the meal but Marina had turned green and I asked if we could just have ours to go. They carefully wrapped the dogs in leaves and we carried their bodies away.’

A thing of Joy is a beauty forever. For Bob and Patti and black pepper, as well, joy was about to run out. In December of 2008, the FSM court issued an order finding them in contempt for non-repayment of their loan and filed a lawsuit for default. After they refused to sell their shares in Apple Computer, they were found guilty of contempt of court, placed under house arrest, and their US passports were confiscated. On June 10, 2009, Bob and Patti fought back, and filed their own suit against The State of Pohnpei, the Federated States of Micronesia Development Bank, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and US Secretary of the Department of the Interior Ken Salazar, for breach of contract, breach of Compact, and unjust enrichment. Two years later, the US Court of Appeals dismissed their case because of non-jurisdiction ‘over the foreign state.’ At the same time several different long-term land leases came due, and some landowners refused to renew. In 2013, Laurie Anderson’s husband got a new liver, and The Village people, after 40 years of operation, shut down their dream.

One of the word-of-mouth rumors that came out of the sakau bars was that Bob and Patti were relocating on Yap, to take advantage of the Deng Hong’s big money investment, coming in from China. But like the pepper and the palisades and the pearls, it’s the dark matter of dark intrigue.                                  

                                        ‘And the colored girls say

                                     Doo do doo do doo do do doo …’

                                       Lou Reed, Walk on the Wild Side

Lawrence Winkler is a retired physician, traveler, and natural philosopher. His métier has morphed from medicine to manuscript. He lives with Robyn on Vancouver Island and in New Zealand, tending their gardens and vineyards, and dreams. His writings have previously been published in The Montreal Review and many other literary journals. His books can be found online at www.lawrencewinkler.com.

New Money Talking

a parvenu offer discharging

other beveled rhythm clatter

created the natal glassware

negative distention shared

slowly with caravan garnish

a vernacular surfeit ravenous

when placebo clutter scented

all vinyl camels sentenced 

to motivation from bonfire

moons harvest night visions

baring simple reverberation 

mixed donation count slowing

the explanation always current

alkali confessionals assimilate

slowly crumbling nonchalance 

nouns confused beyond focus

boxed the intended explanation

their asymmetrical rout buttons

left the blot workers hot hands

gripping for work when shading

though a new belief metropolis

tried as nominal monorail dreams

asphalt moving where plumage

displaces pinnacle precursors

sweatband mavens manipulate

sandbar dissertation swamping

catapult mustard blown ashore

cranks threatened clatter thirst

where shore’s old money fails

recumbent vengeance battered

blossom soundtrack bromide

while chopstick hipsters loaded 

before fetal setters waddled

partnership plumage protruding

acoustic manacle swamping

subterranean passengers worm

behind a retro simulacrum pit

repository staterooms gamble

old management vendettas

trace a subliminal condition

called nom more than noum 

and crowing transparencies

go postal for envelope return 

or warrant rampage visions

the intricate endeavor served

over fresh apocalypse lotion 

gives notions pixellated rancor 

King Leering

1.

reptilian camphor

never a slither too soon 

     adorned &

adrift in scrotal motoring

     epilogue in fourth pursuit

     culpable as a faded legion

     grown foreign to its tongue

no matter the sliced enticement

     a filter guord

     sharing tooth bleeds

     a bellied circus

cordially monochromatic

     and always available

                  in shortened outbursts

2.

writhing mayhem

occlusion spoils the winning 

     whose circuits

shorten the soiled spread

         caught 

         in a tandem remake

         unclogged 

                          its calling core 

a new suit (gray) covers the slay fang

     implant

     the chronic rotary ogle

     replayed

                   a grip-firmed gin

         attuned to automatic

             outbursts parlayed cast

                  nuance to dating figurines

3.

turning left-

handed on the condo circuit

                  a rebel 

                  without a paw

     no star north

     on the Hollywood walk

to warm 

             the break

                            of a lizard chill

just flip on the zeitgeist filter

     ecalate downward

          an eye on ascending

               the scent of his ointment

Sometimes it Takes a Weatherman

roadhouse winds seem leftward 

prefixes to convenient pursuit 

of roadblock carnage bellow out-

play setbacks that failed to stray 

from a victor’s convenient minibus

motoring a firestorm transit rumor

alongside visor launches designated 

to pillory schemata recipients 

formation grows vexation turf

wavering against the sciatica blister 

employers left to forage custard or silt

stock dilemmas in the fetid marsh

no predators attended the bramble 

an armpit thrust lowered bandanas

red animation compounded assent 

backbone boost informally intoned

no caliper adversaries compounded

another tangible venom change

left a salvage phone dispatch filter 

ventilated natal fortification glory

the phrenolology firestorm forecast 

their linear organ liter landmark trails

fair comparison to a roman jockstrap

lunchtime exorcism belch emerging 

nice caricature to bump upon a bias

the lemur media already receives 

empty support from intrepid reflectors 

where roadhouse monuments dazzle 

filler but diminished drizzle glazed

the vagabond camouflage too relic

dooms its own discursive slipping

duffers hail a coastal mausoleum

tabloids blow messenger predilections

past the looming preconception 

syncophantic retrofit pulsations glimmer

ghost implosions when darkened

bolero dining to a sepulchral medley

Long Motel Stayed

larvae pudding 

low tipper cleats turn out 

the other thrust

whisper texture

fades on feel from heating

motive a venom waylaid

as linear guffaw exports

a raw blockade enclave

daydreams

boast hourglass staterooms

immediate 

pallor stains the worn brain 

dispensing

sedentary replication

to delay any pocketbook guest

sidecar candelabera boast

a vaunted misanthrope rotisserie

stroking visible pork shading

dazed veins

turning patio temper vacant

Why the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora Celebrate Carnival

By Jacques Fleury

As a young boy growing up partly on the francophone island of St. Domingue or Haiti as we know it today, few things gave me more pleasure than seeing random festivities making a raucous in my neighborhood.  I would later learn that they are colloquially referred to as “raras.”  Rara is defined as a festive Haitian musical category, religious ritual, dance, and sometimes a system of political dissent that originated in Haiti.

I remember running to my mother and saying in French : “Maman, il y a un tas de gens qui jouent de la musique et font des bruits joyeux dans les rues ! Et d’autres personnes les rejoignent en chemin ! On dirait qu’ils s’amusent ! Pouvons-nous les rejoindre aussi ? ’’ Which translates in English to: “Mom, there are a bunch of people playing music and making happy noises in the streets! And other people are joining them along the way! Looks like they’re having fun! Can we join them too? “

I never asked “why?” I just felt the joy in the deep part of my youthful soul, replete with then a plethora of auxiliary wonderment. It was the few times that the border between adults and children blended and we all became simply humans just being. It never occurred to me that there was a reason why the historical legacies of these prima facie “happy” islanders were rooted in pain, which they would then deliberately mitigate by suffusing their hearts with joy rather than congregate to commiserate in an amalgamation of anger over egregious hurts from their historical past.

This is the island I remember as a child. Running naked with my cousins in the rain, playing hide & seek during blackouts and flying kites under the perpetual summer sun and of course CARNIVALS: an equally festive but much bigger version of “raras.” A colossal event that encompasses floats of popular bands replete with polemic reciprocal banter all in good fun, lavish costumes and a time when they forget about dictators, and the politics of malicious foreign policies and governmental undermining of bigger more powerful countries that seemingly condemns them to a state of perpetual hardship and political unrest.

It wasn’t until I came to America on a student visa that I learned about America’s relationship with Haiti, which was and still is not so good. As I watched the American news media portray the Haitian people as sorrowful, pitiful peasants who “need” to be “rescued”, an ideology that conceivably corroborates “the white savior complex.” Even after over one hundred years of genetic research from top universities like Harvard have traced the VERY first human civilization back to the deserts of  sub-Saharan Africa from which all other civilizations evolved 50,000 years ago! According to generative artificial intelligence, this is defined as:  a mentality where a white person supposes they need to rescue or “save” people of color, often by belittling or meddling in their lives, while concurrently denying agency and authority to those they claim to help; fundamentally portraying themselves as the generous force needed to uplift demoted communities, which is often seen as a detrimental typecast and a form of racial despotism. 

Key points about the “white savior complex”:

• Patronizing attitude:

A white person with this complex may view people of color as incapable of solving their own problems and needing white intervention. 

• Performative actions:

Their actions might be more about self-image and gaining praise than genuinely helping the communities they target. 

• Ignoring systemic issues:

This complex often fails to address the root causes of inequalities, focusing instead on individual acts of charity that may not create lasting change. 

Examples of white savior complex behavior:

• A white person starting a charity in a developing country without consulting local leaders about their actual needs. 
• A white individual taking credit for the achievements of people of color they are “helping”. 
• A fictional narrative where a white character is the only one who can solve a problem faced by a community of color. 

Why is the “white savior complex” problematic?

• Perpetuates stereotypes:

It reinforces the notion that people of color are helpless and need white people to save them. 

• Disregards agency:

It denies people of color the ability to advocate for themselves and solve their own issues. 

• Centering whiteness:

It puts the focus on the white person’s actions and motivations, rather than the needs of the marginalized community. 

When it comes to Haiti and other predominantly “black” nations, the scenarios above are what I’ve come to know as an adult through the American media and personal interactions with fellow Americans across all racial and cultural backgrounds. What America fails to tell the world is that despite Haiti’s people being enslaved and brutalized for over a hundred years by the French, Haiti managed to single handedly secure its freedom by becoming the FIRST BLACK REPUBLIC in history in 1804 after the pivotal Battle of Vertieres. From the authority of generative AI:

The Battle of Vertières was the final major battle of the Haitian Revolution and the establishment of Haiti as the world’s first independent Black republic: 

• When and where

The battle took place on November 18, 1803, near Cap-Haitien in northern Haiti 

• Who fought

The Haitian army led by General Jean-Jacques Dessalines fought against Napoleon’s French expeditionary forces led by General Rochambeau 

• What happened

The Haitian army stormed the French-held Fort Vertières and eventually defeated the French troops 

• Significance

The battle was a critical blow to Napoleon, forcing him to focus on building an empire in Europe. It was also the first time an army of enslaved people led a successful revolution for their freedom. 

• Monument

A monument was constructed on the site of the battle in 1953

And it was money from the then richest island in the Americas that France used to supplement the American Revolution against the British, in the late 1700s, Haitians came to fight off the Brits in Savannah, Georgia for which they are memorialized in a colossal monument erected in 2000 (better late than never, eh?). Not to mention that it was a Haitian American trader by the name of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable who is regarded as the primary permanent non-Native colonizer of what we now know as Chicago, Illinois, and is documented as the city’s founder.

Despite all these accomplishments, Haiti is still being portrayed in the media as pitiful underachievers who need to be “rescued” by the self-proclaimed superior powers that be.

So why does the African diaspora celebrate by throwing lavish “fetes” or “parties” in the form of Carnivals? As an adult, I had to research and educate myself about “my story”, no thanks to my American “His-story” classes of yore. The carnivals represent a joyous middle finger to their oppressors, much like when during the tempestuous epochs of the civil rights movement, black people used to sing negro spirituals as they were being arrested to reclaim their individual power, joy and dignity.  The idea of “the carnival” was conceived to celebrate the liberation of the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora from slavery…something I didn’t know when I was child in Haiti.

It is a reclamation of the Afro-Caribbean power as a people, to tell their OWN story. I once read that until the lions possess their own historians, the history of the hunt will always extol the hunter. Hence the carnivals represent the formation of the hunted “lions’ historians” and they are “glorifying” themselves by telling their OWN stories through song, dance, fabulous customs and costumes!

Dedicated to my brother, Dr. Guy Claude Fleury for his inspiration and advocacy for Afro-Caribbean culture.

Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self”   & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, University of  Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, amazon etc…  He has been published in prestigious  publications such as Muddy River Poetry Review, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others…Visit him at:  http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury.

a tempting red sky

wake up pissing

blood, think nothing

of it

still enough vinegar

in your soul to kill

any mortal man

a tempting red sky

these are the nights

you’ll drink gin

from an old cup

you used as a child

might as well,

that’s where all

the pain comes

from

———————————————————————————-

in dying arms

and here come all the

reasons i wanted to die

as a child

scattered ashes in a field

in the middle of nowhere

black roses in dying arms

someone put on some

mozart

dirty looks all around

i remember when we

tasted each other on

the top of a mountain

in the rain

you brought out my crazy

like no other soul on this

planet

and here we are

in tears

what could have been

just another dirty rumor

if they aren’t talking

about you, you ain’t

doing your job

remember that shit

loose lips

we danced like everyone

was watching and were

jealous

——————————————————————————–

needle still dangling

enchanted beauty

falls into the void

of this world

the neon bleeds

though the thin

walls

needle still dangling

a rush of something

more than a mere

mortal can handle

the crushing tragedy

of depravity

the endless escape

from anything based

in reality

take my loneliness

and stuff it away

where only the false

idols can find it

hold tight

i will be there

broken as always

loving with

whatever i

have left

the demons only

bite if you pay

in cash

——————————————————————————–

natural to me

i think i wanted to grow

up like kerouac and just

die sooner

i never felt like i had

‘on the road’ in me

of course, i had planned

that cross country coming

of age trip but the friend

i was going with left

without me

that became a running

joke in my adult life

take two steps into

the future and brace

for the bottom to

fall out

i look back on those

years and wonder why

the joints were never

laced

how did i never catch

something from the

homeless or the strange

women in the dive bars

this dystopian madness

that i find comforting

chaos is natural to me

that life isn’t for just anyone

it takes a couple of screws

loose at best

——————————————————————————————-

lost empires

slip on some coltrane and

lose yourself on a yellow

brick road of crack babies

and lost empires

we were supposed to be great

our own kings and queens

the rulers of this little domain

we are peasants

modern day slaves

thankless jobs and a world that

won’t let us have any fun

and they wonder why these

four walls are enough for me

how one soul can get lost in

constant states of wreckage

and pain

i can’t help but think i’m

way past my expiration date

a lost carton of milk at the

back of a dying fridge

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is stuck in the suburbs, wondering where all the lonely housewives have gone? He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Yellow Mama, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Beatnik Cowboy and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Men and Society

Society creates a structure to survive

Men would have to live through the hard means, sometimes with a knife.

Men have to pay for being masculine 

Their objection Is out of line

The subjugation of this specie in accordance to the agenda align

Sadly, most men can’t meet up with the current society’s demands

They are faced with tasks that are of threatening commands

Men are evaluated based on their purchasing power

Society creates structures that dwindle the ability to be the builders

They are not genuinely loved by women

Living ATM machines are what women see men

So, it because uphill seeking love from a people who are emotional

Men know this to be carnal

If men  can’t provide they are relegated as being irresponsible

They are being treated as being unrecognizable

If there be children, it becomes more of a burden

The pressure on men becomes more of a struggle den

It appears the struggle of men is their fate.

Existence, can you answer me?

Am I just here to exist to exit?

What if the live I’m living is a function of an esoteric transit?

 Are my living or just here to add to the ecosystem?

Is nature fair to my living?

How did I get here in the first place?

What tells me I’m living?

Was I told  to live?

Is living a culture I was indoctrinated with?

Could I be living a life of death?

Could I be dreaming in the name of living?

Could death be the real existence?

Who told me I was a man?

How sure is it that I’m a woman?

Could sleep be an in-between of life and death?

Is life living a purpose?

What’s the purpose?

Is that realistic rather than an illusion?

In fact, is life just a phase or a complete illusion?

Could my living be a function of my  birth to the time of death?

How realistic is time?

Is it a construct or what I was programmed with, from time of birth to death?

Could the past, present and future exist in the NOW?

Who am I? 

An identity given to me by my parents?

Are the teachings by parents, schools and  religious houses define the life I ought to live?

What lies after I die?

Does my soul migrate to other worlds or just vanish into the thin air of infinity?

Is heaven or hell here on Earth or somewhat in the Great Beyond?

Could death be an ease of living

Are my living in an illusion?

What’s reality? Or a 

Patterned illusion?

Is Nature real?

Could I be a living version of holographic consciousness?

Am I being told the truth or being lied to?

Am I educated or just indoctrinated?

Where lies the truth about my existence?

Or is this what I would live with within the construct, known as time?

Existence, can you answer my questions?

My Belief

It shapes me and how I see the world

It forms my underlining principles against the odd

It is the pivot of my rationale

It is the make-up of my aspirations above every minimal

It is a decider to the company I keep

The connection between me and my kind is deep

Away from my belief…

I have come to realization of the world is no wrong that what’s left isn’t right

And what should be right isn’t left

The deviation from my belief recognize the world is in a R.A.W state,

Right And Wrong is actually what the world is!

Back to my belief….

 The tree of my life’s essence

The definition of my greatness

The character of my  goodness

The fountain of my meekness

The foundation of my benevolence

The state of my carefulness

My belief is my life;

It makes me free from the knife

It keeps in me line, despite prevailing strife

I’m confident of its efficacy

That’s why I’m sure of its accuracy

I’m a living proof of my belief

My daily aspiration

I wake in the morning in anticipation of a great day

It’s a necessity I plan out workable ways

Lo and behold, I have to put things in order before I set out

In the cause of the day, I work out

The realization of challenges emerges

I have to put up with the  surges

The stress,

The behaviours of people,

The unsettling environment,

I have to endure

That’s what it takes to measure

I’m almost forced to give in

My good character couldn’t fit in

I had to develop a tough skin to handle the difficulties

It was imperative I severe negative ties

To achieve my set objectives for the day,

Come what may

Mingling with well-meaning persons is a boost

That’s not in my place to unwisely boast

Exchanging great ideas to advance my agenda

Learning from their wealth of wisdom

To become behaviorally better

With the peace of mind and fulfilment of purpose for the day, 

I’m good to go

That’s the daily motto

Marriage

A man is the gatekeeper to marriage

It is expected of him to be comfortable at his age

He is expected to provide and protect

That’s what his role actually meant

He searches for a help-meet

A difficult task it is, he gives his best shot to a woman of his choice

A woman eventually gives in to his poise

The union begins

A tough journey, it means

Trying to understand each other makes things complicated

Her expectations are overrated

His trying to be responsible within his means

She seems not to comprehend how he handles his things

Two people from separate backgrounds

To live under one roof to face the odds

He thinks he’s in love with her

Only to find out he’s expectation of love from her is far

She’s in business based on what she stands to gain

At times, this could come out of his pain

He looks up to his mentor

He sees his case is minor

He faces his business to save his relationship

His woman has turned the union to a situationship

She’s seeking other options

Because there are no available options on his side

He gives her his all

But she wants the unaffordable mall

Her backup plans for other options are at her beck and call

He becomes disturbed and decides to rise tall

Sadly, he realizes she’s all about her feelings

Not what he has to offer from his belongings

After all said and done, 

The differences become irreconcilable

With or without the children, the separation becomes inevitable

He understands the game has been rigged

Participating wisely is the only it can be fixed

But wonders “what do men exclusively gain from marriage”?

The Life Of A Man

He wants to live a life of ease

But wants and desire create has created dis-ease

He is at war with himself and world

Because he’s faced with the odd

From birth, the tag of masculinity becomes a daunting task

He would wished he has his mask on to dodge responsibility

but the mindset of being a man can’t rule out accountability

The struggle continues…

There has to be patience in his manner of approach

Else, he would be face with reproach

The need for self improvement sets in

The development is ongoing even in that inn

All the time, he wished for better days ahead

But it’s sad no one really cared

He has to move on with life

Even though his challenges are like a knife

The pressure to become his aspirations on him mounts each day

He’s bothered because he’s yet to find the way

There’s an urge to cut corners

His  good conscience wonders

Working legitimately becomes his watch-word

He puts his health on the line for the wealth

Sacrifices present pleasures for future treasures

Time is not his friend

He fears his financial clock might end

He puts in every effort to make things work

Stress begin to lurk

He has to persist, at the expense of his health

To make wealth

After years of long suffering, he makes it

There comes a ‘but’ that makes his struggle not worth it

He has a disease

Made possible by his inability to address his past dis-ease

He uses his wealth earned from his struggle to improve his health

There’s a slim chance he would live to enjoy his sweat

His struggle is the legacy he met

The struggle of a man is his undoing

Life Happened…

If you are a winner, life happened

If you are a loser, life happened

If you succeed, life happens

If you lose, life happened

If you are married, life happened

If you are single, life happened

If you are sick, life happened

If you are healthy, life happened

If you have children, life happened

If you are childless, life happened

If you came from a wealthy home, life happened

If you came from a poor home, life happened

If you believe in something, life happened

If you believe in nothing, life happened,

If you marry a good spouse, life happened,

If you marry a bad spouse, life happened

If you are the first, life happened

If you are the last, life happened

If you are the favorite, life happened

If you are the least, life happened

If you are rich, life happened

If you are poor, life happened

If you are a lender, life happened

If you are a borrower, life happened

If you are purposeful, life happened

If you are careless, life happened

If you are available, life happened

If you are scarce, life happened

If you are worth it, life happened,

If you are worthless, life happened

If you are diligent life happened

If you are indolent, life happened

If you are happy, life happened

If you are sad, life happened,

If you live long, life happened

If you die young, life happened

I

Life happened to us all…

The Life Of A Man

He’s mandated to commence his responsibility at the times of  Morning

He’s anticipated to meet up every task set before him at the times of the Afternoon

He’s to ensure everything he does gets applauded by society at the times of Night

He has to be on his guard at the times which are Not Obviously Waiting

He’s expected to implore the mindset of being successful at all times

He’s looked at as a living resource factor to be drained by those who would, at times of want

He’s pocket has to contain what needs to be taken away, for one thing or the other, at times of need.

He’s someone who supposed to be that struggling entity for everyone’s enrichment, at times of taking care of himself

He’s anticipated to suddenly die from the stress from his struggle, possibly at the times of his prime

The Life of a man is like a pathetic zombie: struggle to die.