Author: A. Long

Sticky Note Quotes

The Silent Killer

Quote | Posted on by A. Long

Everywhere I went rape was the silent killer. But it became quickly clear to me that these women were not just the collateral damage of war. Rape was a strategic, organized, scheme to destroy entire communities.

–Angelina Jolie on working with the U.N, from Glamour’s The Guardian Angels article.

Every

Posted on by A. Long

Every Monday
my life falls into disarray
screaming depression binds me to the bed
Every Tuesday hurts a little less
I pick up the pieces and mull over the rest
Every Wednesday I fall back down
Every Thursday I pick myself up
On Fridays I am born again
On Saturdays I am happy
so happy that I am scared it won’t last
And then on Sundays
the fear manifests
I am alone and shaken by my own happiness
distressed I count the hours
attempt to clean this place
call a friend and when he doesn’t answer
desperately call again
I talk to God for direction
and forget to eat
Lie awake in the cold because I can’t afford the heat
I’m stuck in a stalemate with the wall
wondering how I could want so much
and not enough
Of all the things I thought I’d be
I never knew this could happen to me…

Thank God for the music and the mission for keeping me going

Poem For My Son

Posted on by A. Long

I seem to know all about you:

your time, your place, your name,

the clean Indian-wheat colour of your skin,

your unpolished words.

But I know that there are also sounds

that you do not know, shapes

that you wouldn’t recognize.

For instance, the owl’s lean dark cry,

or the sea at Puri

during a small moon’s night.

And, at this hour, when

you are breathing so quietly

beside your mother,

I seem to hear a faraway whisper

that almost tells me

you’re not mine.

I hear the owl’s cry,

the gentle expanding roar

of the blue waters of Puri.

Never mind. I know where my night sleeps,

undisturbed by every sound and thought,

so peacefully.

–Bibhu Padhi, India

Hood Dreams And Tar Beaches

Posted on by A. Long

He reeks of cookie dough and alien paranoia, wipes his astronaut dreams on a snot crusted superman shirt as his eyes climb every star. He counts them as day slowly releases it’s grip and turns to night. “1,672…1,673…”. He used his fingers to mark his space in space and counted until his eyes were red and sore. Unable to focus anymore he drifted into sleep, dreaming of a cold shapeless desert filled with planetary wonders on top his tar beach.

The next day began with his mother’s knocks on the door to the rooftop, telling him to get ready for school. He rolled out of his lawn chair and raced down the stairs. Shower, dressed, and breakfast. He raced down a few more flights, out of the double doors, then ten blocks down to his elementary school. When his mom hugged him good-bye, there were always stars in her eyes that dripped down her cheek. Those hugs were for every teacher that would report back that her son was nothing more than a dreamer. He needed reality. Great feats and stars were beyond his grasp.

The angle of the tall, red, brown brick school building reminded him of communication towers on Mars. He was a spaceman, outfitted with a suit and gear to find his friends among the aliens. To the control homeroom before the bell rings, and he shrinks back into his regular clothes. He takes a seat at his desk and tries his best to listen to what the teacher says, but she was a creature with a ruler that didn’t believe in him. Year after year they would be there theses creature features pitted against him. He would laser blast them. He was invincible; with each of his counted stars he built a shield against their bitter remarks, stereotypical and cynical laughter.

Then came high school and those afternoons into the nights were no longer spent on his tar beach. He hung out with his friends in the streets, movies, parties. Sometimes smoke filled the nights because he no longer gazed at the sky. One by one they faltered into the sea of daunting maturity like sunset, drowning those hood boy dreams. He was at the edge overlooking his friends. The Dancer, the Artists, the Basketball star…the stars…

And there she was, his mother, sitting across from him. It had been a long time since he actually looked at her, or hugged her the way he used to. Her star drops, her wasted tears rippled through the gulf that had formed between them to reflect his night sky before morphing back into the kitchen table. He couldn’t bare her disappointment, so he strapped on his boots and reached for the moon, graduating at the top of his class. He returned to the roof, but this time, instead of counting his stars he held them in the palm of his hand.