i can't make death a bad thing

cuz it happen to my mother
so we has to flower it up.
sweeten the cup
too sweet too tempting
to sip
it
up.

circle n triangle. triangle stands for change

hx of symbol.
delta means change

jonestown

forgot i wrote this.
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume6/artwisniewski.htm

	“Playwright Considers Life for Adolescents in Jonestown” by Anna Wisniewski
	I am a playwright looking for information about what life was like for adolescents, especially young people who were gay or bisexual, in Peoples Temple and Jonestown. Dark Matter, the working title of my play, is a work of fiction, but I want it to be as accurate as I can make it. It seems the more I read about Jonestown and talk to the people involved, the more I realize how much there is yet to be learned. I want to do the story justice. Set at Cornell University in 1982, Dark Matter is a traditional two-act play about a young man, Mundy Gato, working on his doctorate in astronomy. Mundy's doing fine in school until the anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre approaches. Then he starts having nightmares, intrusive memories, and flashbacks. Mundy hasn't told anyone at Cornell that he is a Jonestown survivor. Recognizing that he is a fictional character, I have placed Mundy in conversations I've learned about, such as Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby's plan to leave with Congressman Ryan. Mundy leaves with Ryan's party but, like others, is shot during the ambush. Also like others, he left behind family members who died at Jonestown. Despite Mundy's best efforts at putting the experience behind him, Jonestown maintains a strong hold on his psyche. He realizes he can't keep Jonestown a secret from everyone, but has already experienced rejection after telling friends about his involvement with the Temple. Mundy's dilemma is how much to share and who he can trust. He is also afraid that if he opens the floodgates of his memories about Jonestown, he will become so incapacitated that he won't be able to go on with school. Keith Wade Photo Courtesy of California Historical Society, MSP 3800 The character is based very loosely on real-life member Keith Wade, a friend of Vernon and Monica. Keith actually was in on their discussions about leaving Jonestown, but ultimately did not join the "defectors" on November 18th, and died with the others at Jonestown. I hope to capture a sense of what Keith's life might have been, had he survived, to help audiences understand the larger losses. I'd also like to learn more about Tommy Bogue, the young man who led some children into the jungle during the ambush, and all survived. In doing background for my character, I decided that Mundy joined the Temple in 1973 with his mother and siblings when he was 12 years old. For the next five years, Mundy and his family lived communally in San Francisco and then in Jonestown. What I would like to ask former Temple members and relatives who read this report is for your recollections of what it was like for Temple youths: how did adolescents date, experiment with sex, and form friendships. I'd like to know what it was like for a young gay person growing up in the Temple communes. Would Mundy, who is bisexual, be easy with his sexuality, or would he have hang-ups and fears? How would the Jonestown community have treated him? I'd also like to know about the Jonestown School. Would Mundy have been adequately prepared to enter a highly competitive university such as M.I.T., Harvard, or Cornell and study physics? I'd love to hear from people who have recollections of growing up in the Peoples Temple. Stories about Keith Wade, Tommy Bogue, or any of the young people who were punished for trying to escape Jonestown would be invaluable.  I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts about being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered in the Temple, and any insights about LGBT life after Peoples Temple. I'd also like to learn about opportunities in the Peoples Temple and Jonestown for more informal learning from mentors or independent reading and study. For example, would there have been an opportunity for stargazing at night? Thank you to all of you for sharing your experiences and stories so openly.  (Anna Wisniewski is a freelance writer and psychiatric nurse living on Cudjoe Key in the Florida Keys with her wife and three Abyssinian cats. Under the creative and incredibly supportive tutelage of the writing and theatre communities in Key West, she's had feature articles, poetry, and fiction published, and a staged reading of a prior play. She may be reached at kwanna1008@gmail.com or at 305-395-0108.) Back to Volume 6 Back to the Top Back to Arts Index
	05/13/2012

Poem: Desperate

"Desperate. I love that word."

"Everyone I know is desperate..."
          --Desperately Seeking Susan

There's a positive side to living in crisis. To being desperate.
You don't need to scrutinize your plans/behaviors/motives too too meticulously. Peeps will understand and if they don't then they are not your peeps.
But the Peeps who understand, my peeps, seem to get tired of understanding.

I'm living my life according to the principles:

I am Happy

I am Joyous

I am Free!

Then here comes this pigeon-to-be pooping

          on my spirituality

.
I'm the experienced one. It should not be that the less experienced one can knock me down a step or two ... too many. How on Earth does that happen? I'm secure I'm doing what I need to do

I have my shit together dammit

I'm as close a follower of the principles as I can be
and of course I will help you though it might hurt me

          but it can't hurt me I'm spiritual you see you must have seen you aimed and hit it
          U press my buttons
          You are me...and I was you...

and that's a wicked big principle,
maybe two

service, unity...

I imagine a long-timer confronted by a short-timer or a boomeranger

...do you pray? Is that how I help you I make you
desperate

remind you no one no thing not your own self for sure
but
something bigger like a god or a crowd or for what it's worth
a knob
can protect you
or a saint if that's your leaning a candle, a fortune cookie, the animal rescue
where you can
talk to the animals
drink the dragon's blood so you can know
the words of birds the songs of animals.
She gave us fresh pomegranate seeds juice flowing deep
deep red like blood
Can I hear you now?

I'm a poet, are you?
We tend to end with our heads in ovens, an O.D. or two, and one so smart he found the latest trend...

helium suicide Google it NO don't.
Smart enough to rig it...act the part...work full-time times two...
but couldn't find one big or several small little reasons
--some things to balance out the pain?
Teeter-totter/be or not
or teeter totter
teeter teeter
have a big fall.

Everyone I know is desperate.

We had the same dead mother story more-or-less
a father there but not there: virtual orphans.
I chose sorrow over rage I'm still here half a century

old.

and how's that working for you?

It's not it's not it's not...I haz less balls now...

[Is it fewer balls or less balls (POETIC LICENSE IS REVOKED for breaking 3rd wall you nitpicking  fool and spoiling the poetry you were licensed to kill. Justifiable homicide? Less marbles or fewer marbles...between you and I or me does it matter who made the rules anyway I break rules. some rules. The ones I choose to break. I can be a sweet little thing you'd never know unless I want you to know I should have such control. i don't mean to be bad and I don''t even know if I can help it or not)]

I'm really here for research like in my
first
rehab
(i said no-no-no instead I made a fantasy come true
Juliet and Romeo
and barely made it back in time for
rehab
number 2.)

and how's that working for you?

It's not It's not It's not I lost my cherry my naivete my belief
I never believed in Santa Claus I had an older brother and cousins,
you see when you learn too young
it messes with your head you know
even after half a century how strange.

In my fantasies like my books (the plotted ones at least)
everyone is desperate.
My closest friends are fictional characters.

even IRL friends and yes I have them I don't tell them much.
Psychiatric diagnosis: (I've collected more than a few)
DID (did not)
Divided Identity Disorder
Which may explain why I could play 4-player Monopoly all by myself
in my room
as a kid
and never not once get bored.

I'm never all there. An I miss what's lacking.
I don't believe any of mes are bad
but some are hurtful without realizing cuz our connections are skewed
In fact we shouldn't need connections we should
be
fully
emulsified
then you would never find yourself beside yourself
If it's a meme it can't be that odd.
So perhaps even emulsified you might just find yourself
beside yourself.

So yeah ok maybe we understand one another.
We are emulsified. Me is, you is, we are
all one Peeps

Enough of an overlap at least yet
I am so afraid
I can't do what I need to do today
A fear I remember from 5th grade
When I disappeared into stories I told my brain
and IRL through a glass darkly

but I'm here half a century
and I should not see
as a child sees.
but it's too much
bright light!
and close my eyes I close my eyes I close my eyes
and never wake up again

Hamlet got it right and wrong.
Don't go because the other side might be worse.
But then you scare yourself of death
(better a fear of taxes.)
like, what's the point of dreading the inevitable?
or believing it's a bad thing

Agreed: life is better after life #1
afterlife so
why the fuss over an early departure?

despite sponsors, the hotlines, PSAs, desperate threats:
no sacred ground for you
no beatific vision.
It will be worse--to not be.
A self murder will be punished
you got off early for bad behavior this life
(ha showed you)
next time around? your heavily Karmalized soul
will be apple-chomped like
pomegranate seeds in chewy karmal

The beast chomps
juice running
down his chin
doing you
in.

When you're desperate, it's hard to tell
pleasure from pain
or pleasure that's a price you
cannot pay.
Is it enough to scare you away?
At least for today?

Why I Sucked my Thumb til I was 8 years old

• 
  
• 

  Anna Costello how do we know mosquitoes don't mourn?

The Court Jester

the role I played and how it affects my life now with no king to jest for

breaking out in writing groups

Anna Costello

If America had not rebelled against the British, all of what is now the USA would be like...Canada. Imagine America without guns and with bad TV. Or would we have stayed more medievel? Would America have more forest and fewer cities? With serfdom, they need not import slaves. What if slavery had never happened? Want to build a novel? Let's play...

drama

N tells story the same way as first time she told it to me. I could tell she had formulated the story to be told a certain way with certain words. On one level it's funny but then again it makes perfect sense.

One of the multitude of diagnoses I've received over the decades was "hystrionic personality disorder" I think that's the technical term for "drama queen"

Histrionic didn't follow me like depression did. I may have traits but I don't believe that's my nature.

On the unit one day, a nurse who is Cuban told me about how the hospital mis-handled a woman whose daughter was in labor.
"She wasn't hysterical. She was CUBAN."

like my loud Italian family, only...they were only emotive .... it was all or nothing. Either faint into a heap on the carpet, foaming at the mouth, or zip it. Maybe I just didn't get it. I could never get a word in edgewise.
I remember one afternoon we were driving away from "the house" where my Uncle Al, Aunts Gloria and Dee Dee and cousins Marianne and Donna lived. It was my father's parent's house, and the house next door. Delores lived in the original house (the maiden aunt gets to take care of the parents and lives with them forever and ever amen. I broke with that.) Albert and Gloria lived in a house they'd built when they got married, I presume, next door on the corner lot.

They made a sitcom out of the Sopranos. I can has stories to tell. M wants me to tell them.

She said my mother told her I was like a little adult when I was a child and she (my Mother) enjoyed talking to me. M's mother also died when he was 13. Did he want to be with his mother? Who died not like my mom, of cancer. shhhhhh

Back to N, K want's to fix her. I don't think she's broken. I mean no more than the rest of us.

I don't want K to die I'm scared. Fuck humans. Fuck relationships.

Southernmost Suicide

clawing at the edge of nothingness
to gain a foothold in something
that may be
foothold-free.
Y bother?

suicide
so glamorized:
the last house on the block on the street the world the other worlds
...well, maybe not the other worlds.

that's for the suicide to explore.

we all die. does it hurt more if a human chooses the moment
or Nature does? Or a snake? A retrovirus?

can a free soul suffer after all?
It's too too ineffably sad to imagine
dead souls
clawing at the edge of nothingness
trying to walk through a wall cuz spirit should but spirit can't?

Am I spirit?
what happened where am I? I see them
crying over me

O I C.

but I am over me and over them
I am over them.
I am over me.
I am over.
I hover. 
It was helium,
after all.
Smart, aren't I? Genius, even.
no impulsive acts for me
I researched and
re-searched.
With this squeaky voice.

It was helium, after all,
I chose.
fooled ya.

And a bag.
What color was the bag?
What color was the bag?
You want to buy me matching pumps?

No. Sorry.
Can't satisfy the natural urge to witness the
unnatural, though this is Key West
Where nothing is unnatural.

Is that why he chose it?

He was straight, good as gold
thoughtful to the end.
He didn't make a mess.
of course I made a mess
He wasn't in a dress.
NTTAWWT
It wasn't what you think.

You'd think and think and it wouldn't do you
a damn bit of good.

so I don't imagine it.
there's no such thing as ghosts
there's no such thing as ghosts
there's no such thing as ghosts

happy joyous and free
my cage rattles me.
my bone cage
my bones
my cage

some men are islands.
O I NOES
this is Paradise, the preview.
last house on the left the end of the road.

he no longer needs roads.
it was helium he chose,
after all
to make them laugh in paradise
with a squeaky voice
from a soul free now
from choice.

---anna c.
rip
2013