#gia1o

[gia2o]

Disco balls and lava lamps

Home phones with a cord

Box TVs and stereos

Rubber ducks, no tears shampoo

Green grass and elmer’s glue

Pancakes every Saturday

Homework through the week

Flying kites and birthday cakes

Sunday school at church

Green grass and sunflowers

Dressing up on Halloween

Homemade costumes and candy bags

Kids on every street

Up and down on bikes they go

Same with trampolines

Slip and slides and water guns

Clear lip gloss and Barbie dolls

Legos, go fish, Lincoln logs

Monopoly and uno

Flintstones and Simpsons

Geraldo and Donahue

Scholastic news, library cards, Time magazine

Curfews, groundings, a spanking or two

Braiding hair and coloring books

The smell of crayons and sharpies too

Not all children know the joys

Of all these little things

These memories may be dear to you

They’re even dear to me

But not all children know the joys

Of all these simple things

No mom. No dad.

No holidays. No tradition.

Kids in the system.

Kids on the streets.

An injustice and no one listens.

[banmaihong]

Ngày 20/11, nghĩ về tình thầy trò qua những vần thơ

Ngày 20/11, nghĩ về tình thầy trò qua những vần thơ

Nhân dịp kỷ niệm ngày Nhà giáo Việt Nam 20/11, thầy giáo Nguyễn Văn Khánh chia sẻ đôi điều suy nghĩ qua những câu thơ về tình thầy trò.

Từ xưa đến nay, tình thầy trò dù có những lúc thế này thế khác nhưng tựu trung lại vẫn luôn là tình cảm cao đẹp nhất của mỗi con người.

Ảnh minh họa: Báo Giáo dục và Thời đại

Ở đó, không chỉ là gói gọn trong khuôn phép của đạo lý thầy – trò mà còn thể hiện cả…

[gia2o]

It’s a gloomy summer still in August. Way passed “June Gloom”. I went on a walk today. One foot in front of the other. I was next to my mother. My dad and my brother, well, they weren’t home. They are pure. Unlike me and my mother. My brother goes to meet a friend to play tennis. My dad visits his friend’s dad; an old man he likes to keep company. The second they leave, believing my mother and I will make good choices, her and I watch out the window to make sure they drove off and away. Not much longer we have our walking shoes out and we are out the door. But no, we are not going out for a nice, summer walk. It’s gloomy anyway, so why not be gloomy ourselves? One end of our street has a post office, and the other side, a market. Our house is in the middle. Both places being a little over half a mile away. We head towards the market because the post office doesn’t sell booze. We wouldn’t have gone out to walk if we didn’t have a bottle to go home with as a reward. Tequila being the chosen trophy. We get to the market in a relaxed state. Ask the cashier for a bottle of tequila of which the brand name I don’t remember. My mom changes her mind, but not for the better. “Actually...”, she says. “I’ll take two and save is another trip.” We pick up a small container of ice cream and two large gatorades. The ice cream for me, and the two fruit punch gatorades for her because “she needs the electrolytes.” “What am I doing?”, I asked myself. Now I understand all those years she was watching me hurt myself and chose to enable me because she didn’t would rather me stay close and unhurt than to stop me and risk me shunning her. I kept my mouth shut, and wrongfully so. I need to learn how to say “no”. We go to pay. The cashier asks us if we need a bag. My mother declines and takes her designer backpack off and stuffs all of our “treats” into it. Nothing but her wallet and our mandatory masks were in there prior. She is too weak to carry this backpack now, so before she even tries to put it on her back, I put it on mine. She asked me if it was heavy. I told her no. I lied. We walk back home and now she’s in more of a hurry. Paranoid my dad or brother might beat us home, even though we logically knew that they both would be gone for hours. I now see behaviors in her that I saw in myself before. The mind of a paranoid addict is enough to drive a person mad. We get home, and as I knew, no one was there. As I knew, no one got home until hours after. I take the bottles and pour my mother a single drink and hide the bottles. She did not like this. I did not care. She felt betrayed. I did not care. The reality of her bad health and my no good enabling slapped me across the face. I explained to her why I decided to do this and that if she has a problem with it, I will have no choice but to tell my dad and brother about our little adventure. She did not like that. I did not care. She felt betrayed. I did not care. I told her I loved her too much to let her to destroy herself to death. She understood, thanked me, and gave me a hug. When the boys got home, we told them we went for a walk. They asked where we went. “To the post office and back”, I said.

[gia2o]

It took me a long time to realize that you do not need to use big words to sound smart. Many times, I find myself reading stuff I wrote long ago only to think about how boring it sounds. Just because big words aren’t used to write a post or in your journal, does not mean that it doesn’t sound intelligent. If anything, more people will be more likely to read it because a more general population can understand and relate to it. Not that most people aren’t smart, but sometimes, even I was guilty of using a thesaurus to find words that might sound, what I know new recognize as pompous. Without having heard of them myself until looking them up. If I, myself, cannot understand a word I used years ago to write something, without having to go to a dictionary to look up what it means without it being obvious by what I was trying to say, then why should I expect everybody that might reading to enjoy it, yet alone understand? Even when I am reading posts or a script from from a book with words longer than the size of my pinky finger, I roll my eyes. I roll my eyes and get bored. Now, I have come to recognize that if something can be made to sound intelligent without the use of these huge words, that is even more brilliant. More beautiful. More relateable. Not that big words should never be used. That’s not the point of this. Sometimes there is no other word, but a long word, that exists to fit perfectly into what is trying to be said. But it is usually very noticeable when people use big words just to use them. Just to sound “smart” and better about themselves for knowing such a big word and how to spell it, when they most likely did what I used to do, which is to look it up anyway. I had an ex-boyfriend who did this. He wrote to impress only. What you write should be for you. From your heart. And if it so happens that it impresses the minds of others, then so be it. But it is an even bigger success if it touches them as opposed to impresses them. If what you write is touching others, that is what I consider impressive. And beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

[gia2o]

(Part 1) One baby hit of fentanyl almost changed my life forever. One baby hit of fentanyl almost changed my family’s life forever. I hear my mom snoring lightly. She’s sleeping comfortably. I hope she’s having the nicest dreams. I thought I lost her the other day. Not looking for pity, this is just a safe place for me. I’m so grateful for my wonderful friends who brought her flowers. Except, my friends don’t know she overdosed. She overdosed from one baby hit. The story they heard is that she had a stroke. This is my safe place for honesty. My mom and I were sitting together. Laughing. One small hit of fentanyl she asked for to sooth her back pain almost changed our lives forever. One baby hit. One. Fucking. Baby. Hit. Almost. Changes. Our. Lives. Forever. She’s next to me. She’s snoring. We didn’t almost lose her. We lost her. She came back. But we lost her there for couple of minutes. Two hits of narcan brought her back. One hit wasn’t enough to reverse the effects of one baby hit. If you are reading this and have never fallen victim to opiate addiction, don’t do it. You’re not invincible. If you are already an opiate addict and have no intentions of quitting, listen to me please. I beg of you. If you are taking pills, stick to taking pills. If you are smoking heroin, stick to smoking heroin. If you are using black tar heroin, stick to black tar heroin. If you are using china white, stick to china white. If you have not already started using fentanyl, do not intentionally try it. As addicts, especially addicts with a tolerance, we look for the next best thing. Our sick minds hear about an overdose and we want what they had. One baby hit of fentanyl is all it takes to change your life forever. If you’re like me, and are addicted to fentanyl already, don’t for one second think you are safe. You, like me, are lucky to be alive. One baby hit of fentanyl can take away your life. My mom was so close to losing her life. That would have killed her parents; my grandparents. Almost eight years ago, they already lost their other child to drugs. Not from an overdose, but from a heart attack. A heart attack that could have been prevented if my Uncle wasn’t addicted to uppers first such a long time. Nonetheless, they already lost one child to drugs. To lose their last living child for any reason would be devestating. To lose their last child to drugs, to go through that again... the word devestation would not even begin to explain the treacherous pain they would feel. My brother would have lost his mom, at the young age of twenty-one. And although I’ve been told it’s not my fault, I would blame myself. My mom is my best friend. My mom is an amazing mom. She came to every field trip, despite the overwhelming exhaustion she felt from having a full time job. A full time job that she had to drive through hours of traffic to get to, only to be treated like a slave. To be there all day, five days a week and have to drive back in more traffic to get home to help both my brother and I with homework. To be a wife to my dad. My dad who adores her, disregarding the problems they were facing with their marriage before this awful occurrence, would have lost his life partner that he’s had since he was sweet sixteen. He would have lost the love of his life. The mother of his two children. His best friend. The woman he is supposed to grow old with. My father is a good man. My mother is a good woman. They are going through a mid-life crisis. But she made it, and because he almost lost her, all the problems they were going through no longer mattered. What mattered is that he loves her. He loves her as he should. She devoted her life to him since she was a new teenager. She was barely fourteen when she first laid eyes on him. She was vacationing at her parents home country, Greece... like she had every summer in her young life. The first time she saw him, he was playing soccer on the beach with her cousins and summer friends. She was the exotic American girl. Something he has never seen. Every year, they would count down the days.

[gia2o]

It’s foggy and I’m lonely. Cigarette in hand is burning. Early birds don’t get rest because they’re up until the morning. Still awake when they start chirping. Boring and cliche. Staring at the ceiling all night long, hoping the bad thoughts go away. West coast sees no sunrise, but light peaks through the blinds. Black sky turns to grey and white noise on the telly. Go outside for a morning smoke. Cigarette is ending. Crawling back in bed while the smell of smoke lingers. Same pajamas worn all week now dampened from the dew. Feeling tired and entitled. Also feeling very weak. Expecting things to change, but I don’t want to change. Same song and dance and same routine. Days spent sleeping. Nights are mean. I dread going back inside. A spoon full of peanut butter is what breakfast has become. The smell of crispy bacon is for those who like sun. In the next twenty minutes, the neighbors will walk the dog. Have their morning coffee after making the bed is done. They say a made bed is the best way to start the day. I haven’t seen a made bed in awhile. A mattress with messed up sheets is where I choose to lay.

[gia1o]

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