Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

August 21, 2006

Today’s announcements

Today we are announcing a wonderful new poet with an Eastern Flare in celebration of our cultural awareness. Umara Saleem becomes writer # 348 and pens such beautiful feelings about her God (Allah). Please write her and let her know how much you appreciate her work.

Now onto the good stuff!

Today’s Queue Stories

~**~**~

Suggestion about Roosters

Sharon Bryant

Could you ask your readers if anyone could send me a serious suggestion pertaining to roosters?

I have three and they're mean as hell.  We spent days and hours fixing up our yard this year, not to mention the cost to buy bushes, plants, and trees.  I had everything the way I wanted it.  When my dad died, I planted a tree in his memory and placed a beautiful plaque by the tree, then bordered the tree.  I bordered all my flower beds also.

I come home from work and these roosters have torn everything apart.  I have shavings and pine straw around each tree and plant and they dig it up and spread it all over the yard.  We have a large yard.

The roosters get me so mad when they mess with my dad's tree.

These roosters live in the tall pines bordering my house.  They climb high and I can't get up in the tree high enough to catch them.

I told hubby to get me a gun and I'll shoot the suckers out of the tree.  He laughed.  I told him tonight to get me a sling shot and I'll knock them out of the tree.  His reply was, "Oh I gotta see this, and I'm bringing a chair to watch this one!"

I know how to use a sling shot.

I really don't want to shoot these roosters but I can't catch them.  If I weighed 50 lbs. I might be able to get up high in the pine tree, throw a towel over them one at a time, bring them down and put them in a cage and ship them off.  But.......I don't weigh 50 lbs and I know the limbs where the birds go are not strong enough to hold me.

I need to know HOW to catch these suckers.  They run like greased lightning. 

And how LONG do they live?

Sharon Bryant

1946@bellsouth.net

~**~**~

SIX QUEERS CAME OUT OF THE CLOSET

Roger Dean Kiser

The six of us stood silently waiting for someone to answer the question that Emmett Gillman had just asked. Those in our group at the Children's Home Orphanage had been there for many years now. Most of us were nine and ten-years-old and we knew that we had no chance of ever being adopted. I guess the time had come for us orphans to begin to question the unusual things in life.

Being locked in a dark closet was the normal punishment for anyone using the bathroom, or getting a drink of water, without asking permission. This time, however, it was for the six of us saving the crusts of our bread at supper to eat later that evening.

"Only queers hug men people," whispered Wayne, finally answering Emmett"s question.

"We're all friends, aren't we? If we was to hug one another, does that make us queers too?" quietly asked Tommy.

"Anybody who hugs a man is a queer," said Wayne.

"But I see Larry's daddy hug him in the park almost everyday," blurted out Tommy.

"Shhhhh, be quiet. You'll get us in trouble. That's different. That's his dad," said Wayne.

"Since we ain't got no father or mother, does that mean we can't ever get hugged?" asked Johnny.

No one answered his question. Each and every boy just stood there silently having no idea what to say.

"I don't mind being a queer if someone would hug me," mumbled Emmett, in a soft tone.

"Why does anyone have to hug somebody anyways? Hugs don't mean nothing anyway," I said.

"It means you love people. Don't it?" questioned Emmett.

"It gives you a special feeling when you get a hug," someone said.

"I hugged myself in the mirror one night, when everyone was asleep, and I didn't feel nothing special." I said.

"It don't work when you do it to yourself. Someone has to do it for you," said Wayne.

"The matron hugged me one day 'cause I picked up the clothes she dropped," said Tommy.

"What did it feel like?" I asked.

"I didn't feel nothing but her titties on my face," Tommy snickered.

Childhood laughter filled the small closet. All at once the closet door jerked open, filling the dark room with light.

"Am I going to have to beat the shit out of you little bastards?" screamed the Matron.

"No, ma'am," said Emmett, placing his finger in his mouth.

Each of us stood there in silence, heads down, until the door once again closed.

"Is she gone?" whispered someone.

"I don't see her feet," said Wayne, as he tried to look through the small lit crack at the bottom of the closet door.

As the hours passed it became cold and very damp in the closet. We huddled together as closely as possible in order to keep warm. Once in a while we would fall asleep. We took turns listening for the footsteps of the matron. Once placed in the closet we were not to sit down or to fall asleep. As the hours passed several of the boys began to cry, or whimper, as we all shivered. I heard the matron's alarm clock go off so I began waking everyone.

"You dip-shits are coming out here in about five minutes for breakfast," said the matron, through the door crack. "Any of you piss or shit in your pants last night?" she continued.

"No, ma'am."

"No, ma'am."

"No, ma'am," went our low voices, one after another.

Several of the boys began to cry and I knew that they had used the bathroom in their pants. I also knew they were going to be taken to the sewing room, laid across the wooden table, and beaten with the leather strap.

In a state of fear and mental confusion, each of us, almost in tears, began to hug one another in a state of panic.

The door sounded as if it was going to break down, as the matron hit it with her fist. The door opened and no one said a word as we marched, single file out of the closet. We knew the routine and began to drop our pants and underwear so they could be inspected.

"We ain't gonna tell anyone now that we're all queers, are we?" whispered Emmett, with his teary eyes, wide open.

Roger Dean Kiser

trampolineone@earthlink.net

~**~**~

Poetry Section

~**~**~

If Allah helps you, none can overcome you: if He forsakes you, who is there after that that can help you? In Allah then let believers put their trust.
(Holy Qur'an 3:160)
... Lo! Allah loveth those who put their trust ( in Him ) Al-Quran (3:159)  :-)
~*~*~*~*~*~
"Believers, uphold justice. Always bear true witness, even if it be against yourself, your parents, or your relatives—and regardless of whether the person against whom you are speaking is rich or poor. God is close to people regardless of their material circumstances. Do not be led by emotion, as this may cause you to swerve from the truth. If you distort your testimony, or refuse to testify, remember that God is aware of all your actions."
-Qur'an, (4:135)

You Are As Far Away From Me

Umara Saleem

You are as far away from me as a billowing seed in the wind

I have let go and you have floated into the world

I use to leave heart shapes in the sand

So that if your spirit would walk by

It would see that I loved you

My messages spanned the world

But even the world was not enough to access your heart

I can see the roads you are walking

You show them to me in glimpses

Dusty roads, and uninhabited terrain

Tell me, is your heart as empty?

How could the flood of my feelings not cultivate any shoots in you

How could you be so simple, so untouched after the storm of my love

Maybe you are the beautiful seed that never hatched

Beautiful to look at, to treasure

So beautiful that my hopes settled on your skin

But you never bloomed and greeted them

After a while, you know, a coarse seed can damage one

I have been carrying you all this while inside

Until I let you go, I could never heal

Yes, we are making different lives now

You are walking on, rolling on

And I am standing here watching you, recovering

I do not wish to call you back

The holes in my body cannot contain you any longer

And you were meant to bloom in a different field

Umara Saleem

us2103@columbia.edu 

~**~**~

 Allah (God), in Your name

Umara Saleem

I traveled on hand and knee
Upon the scorching unconquerable deserts

When I had my head turned away from You
The famine in my soul, unquenched,
Remained with Your every bounty

There was a ripping of my soul
With my descent away from You
Like the Moon loses a part of itself
As it leaves its rightful place

The sweet Winds carried your name to my body
Falling upon my self made deaf ears

I was Ignorance
A hollow reed

I tried to stomp my connection
But my ever faithful soul
Escaped my treacherous body
And flew to Your keep
My every cell cried Your love

My heart was senseless
Without Your presence

Still, life reverberated in me
Held up by inescapable threads
That will always bind me to You

With Your infinite touch
My thirsty eyes drink sunrises, sunsets
Captured, enraptured by Your beauty

My smiles pay homage to Your greatness
My ears are ever alert
Seeking threads of Your praises
Spoken by Your lovers
Both Man and Nature

Umara Saleem

us2103@columbia.edu 

~**~**~

The Sunset Descends Like the Eyelids of My Love

By Umara Saleem

Sleepily, your murky colors
Instill in me a profuse calm

The sky tilts behind this tall city
As you adjust your head to sleep
You muss your hair, opening the night
Step by step, in strands

If I open my hands up and
Place them against this dark sky
I can trace the silk of your hair

The stars are the speckled sweat on your skin
Your hair gleams as you turn your head softly in the night

Morning
I do not need the one sun to know my day has started
When you open your two radiant sunrise eyes
Piercing me with their brightness

I can say I have felt the dawn

~**~**~

Umara Saleem

us2103@columbia.edu 

Each Crystal of Sand Holds a Love Story

Umara Saleem

Old lovers become sand in the wind
Carried out to this world's vast deserts

Each crystal of sand holds a love story

Wise nomads travel upon that heat
Which the sun fans
Flames of our hearts

Thirsty travelers travel upon the treasure they seek
A cool water that only their soul can drink
From a lover's lips

Old lovers become sand carried by the wind all over the world
These heaps of sand of testify to the composition of this world:
Love

Umara Saleem

us2103@columbia.edu 

Readers Feedback

Senior Writers

Chief writer: Sharon Bryant

Chief researcher/historian: Hartson Dowd

Agee, Vance; Apted, Violet; Baker, Kathy; Batt, Al; Berry, Nell; Blaine, Pamela; Boda, Ginger; Booher, Paula; Buhagiar, Victor; Cassady, B.J.; Costner, Joan Clifton; Cavalera, Robyn; Crider, Mark; Dees, Mary; Deming, Barb; Doherty, Maria;  Dowd, Hartson; Dowd, Helen; Gilbert, Robert, Jr.; Gold, Ron; Goodier, Steve; Grisham, Mary-Ellen; Braun-Haley, Ellie; Harris, Kathy Anne; Henry, Linda Ann; Hunt, Sharlett; Hymes, Christina; Jacobson, Gary; Kiser, Roger Dean; Kerens, Claudia; Kevin, Tim; Jenkins, Pamela; Liles, Norma; Lily Jodi Flesberg; Lock, Joyce; Marlor, Janice Bumbalough; Mazzella, Joe; Mizrany, Mary Carter; Morris, Deepak; Ojeibge, Georgewaters; Petry, Dianna Doles; Roberts, Susan; Shiveley, Debra; Shaw, Bob; Sims, Richard; Streidel, Saskia; Swarner, Ken; Vaknin, Sam; Verhoeff, Jan; Walker, Bill; Walker, Joe; Warner, Gordon, K; Walsh, Sue; Weymouth, Barbara J.; Whirity, Kathy;

Wainland, David; Westerfer, Clara; White Robert;

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