Go ahead, grab yourself a slice of the moon. 
It's only here till sunrise. 
Then it will disappear, with the dawning of the day.  
This, too, shall pass.
Grab hold of it,
make it your own,
possess every second of it. 
You only get so many, you know. 

The Earth has no concept of hours, or days, or months or years. 
Eons, perhaps.  
She may yet recognize eons. 

Waves pound sand
mercilessly,
unceasingly,
interminably. 
Have you ever listened to the sea's assault upon the land? 
There's rhythm to it,
a steady washing of the earth. 
She will hypnotize you with her siren song,
If you're not careful.

The seasons come and go. 
Life hangs in a delicate balance.
For Nature is both nurturer and fiend,
Mother and Murderer.
Orange blossoms fall, spring brings new life. 
Yet the newborn calf is devoured by wolves,
and worm chews away the leaves. 
So it goes.  

Carry on, Atlas! 
You bear your burden well,
with broad shoulders,
sturdy legs,
and stout heart. 
You who bear the weight of the whole world. 
I wonder, do you also carry the weight of our own burdens, too? 
Hope and Fear,
Hurt and Anger? 
Surely, it must amount to a burden only a god can bear.

Heh, I started this one with no idea where it was going to go.  Anyway, here it is.

Something  inspired by what you see in this photo  by Youandwhosearmy.- Mode of creation open-  ( 3 pts) 

     Three hundred and ninety-nine dollars.  Spouse's signature not needed.  I know quite a few guys who would have gone for that.  Jeff paid his lawyer over two grand.  That was before the divorce was finalized, so I don't know what it wound up being.  Or what she took him for, either.  Jeff was my friend, we were in the Army together.  I didn't know his wife, not really.  Everything I knew about her, I learned from his complaining.  I could tell that theirs was the kind of relationship that wasn't healthy in any way, shape, or form.  They drove each other absolutely nuts.  He drank a lot, and he was a pretty poor drunk, too.  It irked him that she would purposely dress trashy when they went to Wal-Mart, because she knew it would piss him off.  So he drank some more. 
 
Jeff was my friend, but that doesn't mean he knew how to successfully deal with conflict. 

     They stayed married through our deployment to Iraq, but they were separated.  To finalize the divorce would have been to take a nearly 50% pay cut.  In the military, everyone makes their "Base Pay."  That usually ammounts to peanuts.  But married soldiers get a housing allowance, or single soldiers who managed to get authorized to live off post.  In combination with other alottments and allowances and stipends, the pay isn't so bad, so long as you know how to get it.  So, they stayed "together."  Although Jeff had a girlfriend and his wife was living with some guy in the mainland.

Hey, if you don't fuck the system, the system gonna fuck you.

     Other guys weren't so fortunate as poor Jeff.  Yeah, I know, it's pretty twisted to say that Jeff was fortunate.  In reality he wasn't, but relatively, he was.  Other guys still loved their wives.  Wives who slept around while they were gone.  Wives who spent all their money, left them with nothing, and then divorced them when they came home.  Yeah, Jeff was lucky.  His wife didn't give him an STD or convince him to sign the birth certificate on her illegitimate child.  I'm not saying these guys were perfect, either.  Half of them would screw around on their wives, if given a chance.  More than half drank too much.  And they didn't exactly pick winners, when they proposed to their wives.  Then again, neither did their wives when they said yes.

Life's a bitch.  You'd better learn to make sound decisions.

     I could hear them talking on the phones.  The phone booths in Iraq are not very private.  If you're lucky, there's a board between you and the next guy.  So when someone got in a fight with his wife or girlfriend, everybody knew.  It wasn't pretty.  Usually they would start out normally.  "Hey baby, how are you doing? I miss you."  Then their conversation would turn to a whisper.  A whisper that would grow in intensity, until the poor guy didn't care about who heard anymore.  How can you care who overhears when youre wife tells you she's pregnant, and you haven't been home in over a year?  Oh, and she drained your bank account to buy her boyfriend a car, or a tv, or whatever.  And that he's living in your house and sleeping in your bed?  And fucking your wife?

And people wonder why the suicide rate is so high among returning soldiers.

       The things they carry with them.  Not just the heavy burden laid on us by war, but also by life.  It takes broad shoulders to carry that weight.  You see them every day, you know.  Well, you don't know.  You pass them on the street, not knowing.  How could you?  It is a burden too broad and vague for utterances.

Yet, you never forget.

     I was driving up to Uncle Vern's place the other day, to work on my table (by the way Brick, I finished sanding and applied my first coat of varnish.  I'm pretty excited!) when I noticed a small, collapsed cabin about 60 yards into the woods on the west side of the road.  When I asked Vern about it, he said "Well it's at least 100 years old!" like I should have already known all about it. Maybe I should have noticed it before?  Anyway, he told me about the people who lived there.
     The Goat Man and his wife, The Goat Woman, were a couple of old folks from Wisconsin who moved into that cabin in the 1950's.  They had come down as seasonal workers, picking strawberries, and decided to stay.  I guess that they had 13 children up in Wisconsin still, but they didn't want anything to do with their parents.  "They drank." said Vern.  The reason they call them the Goat Man and Woman is that when they first moved to the area, they came and took pictures of Vern and Ross working wtih the goats they had on the farm.  Eventually, they found out that they did in fact have a name.  The Randalls.
     Anyway, they stayed in this cabin about a mile down the road from the Wilkinson farm.  They'd walk around together, Mrs. Randall towing a red wagon behind her, collecting things from the ditch.  Mr. Randall had a long scar running down his face, from eye to jaw, the result of a knife fight years ago.  People would leave their magazines and newspapers out by the road for them to collect, which they'd take back to the cabin they rented from the Franz's to either burn or use as insulation, as needed.  Dad said that Mr. Randall had quite the collection of Playboy Magazines.  He also told me that Vern and Ross used to play pranks on them.  For instance, once they filled a bag full of cow shit and left in the ditch for them to find.  When Mrs. Randall opened up the bag, she was greated with quite the sight and smell. 

I walked out to the cabin on my way home.  I was trespassing, but whatever.  I don't pay much attention to things like that.  I guess you can call it  "Trespasing in the name of art."