a work in progress for the town i grew up in..

Trenton

We had one stop light in town

And hops on the breeze from the brewery

Strong enough to make you queasy during track practice

The high school swaddled by corn fields

One year the farmer plowed a path for the runners

Straight through and one year Coke bought into our school

So we could build more classrooms and

They installed vending machines in every wing,

Downstairs and upstairs. Kids were tossing back Skittles and caffeine

Between classes, swinging hallpasses from one curled up knuckle

Tiny peeks into door windows, the middle finger, the FFA,

The town.  Trenton before the big boom you were just a Liquor Quik and chicken place,

Wranglers and skating rink. There were the tough girls

With Marlboro moms and older boyfriends walking the sidewalked block

Halfhiding the ganked smokes in pulled down cuffs

Running to make the crossroad

The time I started doing laps around the bank

Around the apartments, past the church

When I almost stepped on fresh roadkill

When the IGA closed and another baptist maison flaunted an extension

Brick and proud

(more…)

Katie passed along a zine by Rachel jay dot, called “May Cause Dizziness.” Rachel lays it all out—she has a chronic illness, and this is what she had to go through with it. From the doctors to the hospitals to the blood tests and medications, the side effects, the mental anxiety and anguish of being someone with a chronic illness. The mental struggle is something no one seems to talk about when it comes to pain and constantly being in some form of it.

I’m only through the first handful of pages and already I am inspired to do something expressive in regards to my migraines. I have writings but I tend to keep them private—there is this weird sort of embarrassment that comes with hurting I think, one that I cannot explain. I do not like admitting to being in pain of some sort; perhaps because it alludes to a weakness, or an inability, a lack of normalcy. Sometimes I feel that nobody wants to hear it. But that isn’t really the point of expression, is it?

So I’m going to get to work on that.

I feel lucky to have such intuitive comrades. Katie knows what I go through and I adore her gesture of passing this zine to me. Rachel’s story is amazing. Her bravery is utterly inspiring.

He turned to the shadowing pre-med student & said, “patients give you a lot of abuse.” I replied with a quick, “it goes both ways..”…
During that time I saw at least ten different doctors, but never once did one ask me how I was mentally feeling, how my mind was dealing with the fucking mess my body was in. they treated me like a broken machine—just add this, oil this, oh! Take that out, put in this chemical, and…perfect! All better.

“It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins. ” - Barack Obama

<a href=Read full speech here</a>