"The Doors at the End of the Golden Hall" by Samantha Tolleson

 "The Doors at the End of the Golden Hall"

 

To the quiet place that I retreat to internally.

Come, construct my mental warehouse with me.

The safest space a child can remember with either terror or joy.

Matilda's favorite place.

Uncounted universes and brutal truths.

Dazzling words of invention and argument betwixt creations.

Eventually, my enjoyment couldn't come home with me anymore.

My big day had come and went.

I couldn't go back to the chair where I found quiet and focus

Looking out and over the trees.

The bench off in the distance,

Almost out of sight.

My peers laughing and having a match of hacky sack.

 

Lonely but safe among the stacks and fluttering verses.

Mumbling broken curses when your finger was punished

by careless angles of how you handled.

I say careful,

That binding should be an incredible find, for your mind.

I didn't fit in, so I ran within the doors of knowledge

that encouraged that I explore what its walls were hiding.

Every nook and cranny now filled with old friends I met later in the years.

One by one I met them in yards and garages

To spirit them off one at a time for no more than a dime.

My room now becomes so full.

Of the adventures of others,

Facts that dispel the mysteries,

 

A mighty struggle

of the adult

is still grasping that great place where I still recall,

where it's so lovely in the fall.

It was a place I could go and say,

"what's on the end of my pen today?" 

"My Love for Janice Dean" by Samantha Tolleson

“My Love for Janice Dean” by Samantha Tolleson 

    She's the lady I can always trust to get the weather from while I read my paper, drink my coffee, and down my daily dose. She’s on the days that I feel so crummy and my bones creak. I look up and there she is smiling so bright. Day after day she visited people on New York City street outside until Covid-19 locked her up and even then, she still has a smile on her face just trucking along and singing her weather songs. Like on those USO shows when I was no taller than a bean pole. I know that I can trust that Janice Dean's pearly smile will always shine through on any day she's on with the friends. She shows her concern and says her prayers for people right there, while she's on the air. I read her book because I liked the look of her with an umbrella skipping away from a puddle. Happy go lucky and always seems to have the perfect hair.  

    “Pretty gal looks so much like my Minnie,” I push a button, no need for the rest of the horseradish. How long has Minnie been gone now? I grab my walking stick and take my cup to the sink and sigh. My teeth are coming loose again; need to get the gunk for ‘em. I look out my tiny kitchen window and wish Minnie were still here. So many memories that we made in this house. I thought the husband was supposed to go first. I rinse the cup out and set it to the side. One cup, one fork, one plate and bowl, one knife, and only one spoon. No more laughter until that pretty gal joined the friends. I hope my angel has a pretty cloud to sit on today.

"Out of Sight" by Samantha Tolleson

“Out of Sight” by Samantha Tolleson

Disheartened and frustrated by people for years 

I gave my everything to carry on with a smile or a grin. 

Cleaning up as I went trying to give the grouches good cheer. 

Even though all I can see any more is covered skin. 

My thoughts turn deeper and wander the paths of despair 

Disappointment driven home time after time after time. 

Death took them, it isn't fair! 

It's not my time yet and I'm left behind 

Permanent stopped clocks I can never consult again. 

Their voices are slurred 

Leaving their lonely friend 

My memory doesn't serve. 

 

Is the pitch even right? 

Are the order of words still right? 

"Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot" by Samantha Tolleson

“Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot” by Samantha Tolleson 

Native noble sons 
Jumping at Sarge’s whipcrack 
Brothers ne’er to come back 
Your rest you have won. 
Ducking behind the wire 
Scuttling and creeping like a snail 
That's the trap, we gotta bail! 
While the field is under fire. 
 
Home again- so wonderous to see something green. 
A place of plenty and choice 
When did home become so loud? 
The fighting we do must seem obscene 
All so our girls could have a voice. 
Now we hate to stand in the crowd. 

"The Higer-Ups" by Samantha Tolleson

“The Higher-Ups” by Samantha Tolleson 

How do the bad ones keep getting away?   

For more than forty years these people   

have come to our capital.  

Elevated to pedestal positions   

never recalling the ones   

who sent them there and why.  

The longer they are there   

the more their wagging lips lie.   

Bureaucracy hell-bent to defy.  

A speaker that is so unfit the   

alphabet soup wrote her into their script.  

The Department of Justice running lame.  

Poor Flynn will skyrocket to heroic fame  

but he'll never trust Uncle Sam the same.  

The test shall be,  

will he remain tame?  

What ill fortunes to get stuck in yesterday’s dream —today.  

Those fancies faded  

Withered gray. 

Time plays magnificent tricks 

One would forget the wrongs we did. 

Stuck in indecision 

Sinking fast like quicksand. 

Ajax by Sophocles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dear pretties,

Who is this Sophocles? What was this about? These were the questions I asked myself while I was reading. I had Sophocles mixed up with Socrates from Plato's The Republic.
This play. This play...

This makes 13 Reasons Why, seem like a walk in the park. I honestly had never even pondered the ramifications. This brought suicide into perspective in a very jarring and callous manner. Just so you know, if you haven't read the The Illiad by Homer; you will be lost. So go read that first!
Lots of Love,
shizuku


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Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh pretties,

This book is utterly God Damned heartbreaking. There are so many instances of why I think Religion poisons Everything! The pages ripped at my little black soul, and I wept. If you are a fan of Romeo & Juliet, then this is the book for you! One of the most beautifully written tragedies I have ever read, and that's amazing since I'm nearing 4,200 books in my lifetime. I didn't sleep at all for two days after reading this. It threw me into major fits of anxiety and depression, flip floping from one to another.
See you next time.
Lots of love,
shizuku



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“In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply "Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a finer intuition, a close interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties,disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies.”

“Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about [history] than I know already. [...] Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only--finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and you past doings have been kist like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'. [...] I shouldn't mind learning why--why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike, [...] but that's what books will not tell me.”

“Let truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye. While there's life there's hope is a connviction not so entirely unknown to the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would have us believe.”

“Never in her life – she could swear it from the bottom of her soul – had she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgments had come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently?”

“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”