Misery, Fruit and Love in a busy NYC subway station

 While waiting for the train at 34th Street Herald Square....I watched a woman on the other platform offer a banana to a homeless woman. I thought....how sweet. She then went to a row of sleeping homeless men and left other fruits on their laps...

Sometimes it seems the most difficult questions in life...have the simplest answers.

Falling in love with ColdPlay All over again...

Falling in love with Cold Play all over again.  They color life in technicolor and make it a canvas I can imagine myself in.

World Wide Beauty Spectrum

I'm no artist...well at least not a visual artist...  but while riding the train today this image entered my mind and I had to create it.  Think of it as a friendly reminder or a quick refresher course in love...

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Step 1 to making a better world: PROTECT ALL CHILDREN

Walk out the door yesterday to go food shopping... before I make it down the stairs a girl comes up to me and asks if I know anyone missing a little boy... Yeah. That's how it started. So I say no and she points over to a little boy who looks about 2 years old. He is wearing a t-shirt, shorts and no shoes...its been snowing and cold in NYC so everything about this picture is odd. I go over to the boy and an older woman who is holding his hand. He seems oblivious of everything and is jumping up and down on his barefoot and seems in his own world. She asks if I know him, I say no. She explains she saw him running in the street...I'm in shock. She asks a passing couple if they know the kids. No. While they are discussing this in Patois I mention that the boy must be freezing and we have to find him clothes and call the police. I take the boy back to the front of the woman's house where we wait for her to get a sweater and the couple goes to their house to get some shoes and socks for him. At least 4 people including my mom and sis call the police...they don't arrive... We ask people door to door if they know this little boy. I ask him what his name is...he just says "no" and goes back to playing. We ask where he lives....he just points...in 2 separate directions... at least 30 or more minutes pass without either the police or his parents showing up...finally we see an old woman looking around confused and then sees us and puts her hand to her mouth in shock. She walks over...its his "grandmother". At this point we don't want to hand him over as we cant be sure of that and the police have already been called. Next come his "mother" and sister. She looks in shock and tells a story about him somehow leaving the house when the door was unlocked. He has delayed speech so is unable to say much... We continue to wait for the police....This all happened yesterday...the police never showed up... There's a LOT I can say here...but I'll just leave it at that.

And this random situation pushed me to look back into the missing boy I had joined the search for months ago... Avonte Oquendo... As I do not follow the news I wasn't aware what had happened until now...So sad...  I really hope people see stories like this and we all put the CARE and SAFETY of ALL children first and foremost in our minds and actions: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/nyregion/remains-found-in-queens-are-matched-to-missing-autistic-boy.html?_r=0

We can all be Free...In our minds

I am aware my poetry is not exceptional...  and yet I know from experience when I am dealing with an extreme case of writers block...the best medicine is Music, Art and Poetry.  And so I find myself up after midnight, headphones on listening to "Maybe Not" by Cat Power after hearing it play during some obscure movie.  I've played it twenty or so times...as I sit here in the dark...the only light coming from my laptop screen and the christmas tree still up despite the fact that christmas has come and gone...I am at an odd place in my life; an almost surreal place.  And so, as I begin this journey to free myself of this writer's block, I can only imagine that what comes from my soul and touches the surface of paper...will be equally awkward...but hopefully someone, someday will find some sort of beauty in it...

Admit Time

I really dreamed

When I was new

Shot orange flowers out of bazookas

In yellow sundresses with white trim,

Walking down the beaches of paradise.

Time is a heavy sand, running through fingers

Sifting through toes and hardening the soles

To accommodate these rough paths we pave

And follow.

Dreams are nothing but sand

Running like rivers through the crevices

Of a beautiful yet

Casually Underestimated mind.

Mind…and mine

Is a black and unwanted vision

Of the world.

And so I lived comfortably in my dreams

When I was new

For they were pearly, shiny, sun filled things

Like on the tv with all the smiling golden haired cherubs

Life is never what

They want it to be.

Life is most times

Everything we don’t expect

And yet time plays on; the chords of a  piano

Keeping step, tapping and moaning

An opera of a life…

An opera of a life…

Oh how time has played me…

Oh how life has dimmed…

Oh how my dreams have bled of color into simple things

All black and white, no dialogue, only muted flashes…

And yet time plays on; a song no one wants to hear

And yet…

The wise…so few in number….

Know…the opera of life…

Has no

True

Ending

Everything is perfectly circular

Yes, even this silly

Mess of moments I have collected

In a place I know nothing of

Where I must belong, where I am held captive

For an unknown

time…

By

Haajar Johnson