Guest Column in the Intelligencer about Partial Victory at Creekwood - Assert Thyself - Poem: Straight Up Fearlessly Into the Night

 Always give em a pretty picture to entice them in. This is by a Magnum photographer.

Read my article here.

I write these columns b/c:

- I love to write and feel incomplete when I'm not working on something, like now!

- I like to help educate the public about bipolar disorder to try and dispel stigma.

Did you know there's another meaning of the word 'stigma' thanks to my friend Bob, a former biology teacher.

Due to space considerations, many points were omitted. But Alan Kerr always does a great job of editing.

I gave him a choice of two photos to use, one taken by my construction guy, Dave Small.

 Instead, Alan chose this one, which is my Facebook photo:

This morning I went to Quest Diag to get blood drawn. The two phlebotomists are Alice and Betty. Fake names.

Last time I was there, Alice could not find my vein and kept sticking me. It was horrendous.

She again was the one to draw my blood but I requested Betty.

Betty came in, apologized for Alice, stuck me once, I didn't feel a thing, and was outa there in two seconds, pulling off the bandaid in the car and swallowing it whole.

In honor of my article, lemme publish one of my many poems.

Below is house of Martin LeBur - who he?

STRAIGHT UP FEARLESSLY INTO THE NIGHT


On the occasion of visiting the Horsham PA home of Lillian Higgins, July 3, 2006

I'm a house
sloped like a woman
My strong legs the casement
toes pressing concrete
for more than a century
a female Atlas
shouldering the world.

I'm a house
and listen
in silence
to the lives of the hundreds
whose whispers
still dwell within.

Like the elm at my elbow,
I know all.
But say nothing.

Many tenants too busy
to see me,
they dream their useless
lives away,
drifters on the rivers of time
whose lonely lives
walk the stairwells
while down the highway
once horse-trod dirt
now two-laned pavement
striped by an endless
yellow line,
the cancered, the tumored, the legless
the blind
would change places
if only they could.

Lightning strikes
my cantata breasts of
endless romminess.
I hold firm
my tenants
nursing them equally
Mine to posses
till their tenure is
done.

My towers and turrets
beam eyes that are
windows
flirting with
tunderstorms
booming like warm drums
testing my strength.

I am more than a century
but fail not my tenants
who stare from their
beds at lonesome ceiling fans.

Under moonshadows
I preside
over lovers
over readers
over stillbirths
over drug overdoses
over water drawn from
the well;
I'm a church
a confessional
a brothel
a table spread with wine.

I stand
toes like a pea-hen
squawking in silence
o'er my brood
until the wrecker's ball
wrecks me,

Fearlessly I rise again
into the night,
hips catching
fireflies.