I'll never do nothing again.

A North Korean Poet Wrote It

Exhausted, in the midst of the market she stood

"For 100 won, my daughter I sell"

Heavy medallion of sorrow

A cardboard around her neck she had hung

Next to her young daughter

Exhausted, in the midst of the market she stood

A deaf-mute the mother

She gazed down at the ground, just ignoring

The curses the people all threw

As they glared

At the mother who sold

Her motherhood, her own flesh and blood

Her tears dried up

Though her daughter, upon learning

Her mother would perish of a deadly disease

Had buried her face in the mother’s long skirt

And bellowed, and cried

But the mother stood still

And her lips only quivered

Unable she was to give thanks to the soldier

Who slipped a hundred won into her hand

As he uttered

"It is your motherhood,

And not the daughter I'm buying

She took the money, and ran

A mother she was,

And the 100 won she had taken

She spent on a loaf of wheat bread

Toward her daughter she ran

As fast as she could

And pressed the bread on the child's lips

"Forgive me, my child"

In the midst of the market she stood

And she wailed.

And then it hit me five years later:
I can do anything I want within the confines of the Bible.

When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung.
I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.
I go to school to youth to learn the future.

What Fifty Said by Robert Frost

tRuth

My everyday question to the Lord:
"Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?"

mortal combat

Is there a way to fend off thoughts?
Can one make a choice to dwell on a noun or not?
I wonder if I just let my mind free, free to rest wherever it pleased. On pleasant things or prickly. I wonder how I would be if my mind was left undisciplined. Would it only rest where it's easy, comfortable, close, and immediately gratifying?

These thoughts launch me into what I need to hear.
I need to exercise mental discipline. I need to set my focus on imagining good things--not unhelpful things.

I don't want to over think possibilities and negativities. I don't want to be satisfied with planting my thoughts at the foot of difficulty, but to advance to the crest where help resides.

Help my thoughts, O God. Don't let them hurt me.

How liberating mental freedom is. How sweet is the liberation of the mind.

Don't let me hold on to anger. It will only burn my hands.