NANOWRIMO April 17, 2025 In Another Time

 

In Another Time

The last time the cicadas sang

the life and the work and the world

was different

and after seventeen years of silence

am I ready to sing?

©2025 Noreen Braman

 

 

NAPOWRIMO April 15, 2025 Betrayed By My Own Logo

 

Betrayed By My Own Logo

The orange sun hangs over my work

proclaiming smiles and laughter for all

"come out and play, let's smile all day!"

fool your brain into releasing endorphins

be silly and build your resilience

for tomorrow is a country of unknown intent

where you may walk in joy the morning 

but stop to weep at sunset

holding back fear of the coming night

holding breath until dawn

waiting for the orange sun to rise. 

©2025 Noreen Braman

 

NAPOWRIMO April 13, 2025 Traveling

 Traveling

 There are roads and paths and rocky terrains

filled with right turns and wrong turns and steep hills and flat plains

days and years with fellow travelers, and days you traipse alone

days of wonder and nights of wondering

thoughts of future bliss and past mistakes

while leaving trails full of u-turns and dead ends.

so easy to be discouraged in the face of disappointments,

dilemmas and catastrophes

darkening the sunlight, casting shadows over joy

and suddenly the roadway is replete with detours and warning signs

but the journey has been long, and only one placard keeps you going,

keep living on the smile side of life. 

 ©2025 Noreen Braman

 

 

 

NAPOWRIMO APRIL 11, 2025

Rain

Expected in April

to bring all the flowers

but this year the showers

are cold and dark.

April threatening snow 

lingering winter refuses to go

coating the budding greenery.

(C)2025 Noreen Braman

NAPOWRIMO 2025 April 10, 2025 Subtraction

Subtraction

At the top of the heap

the numbers are incomprehensible

and those that live there

have their privilege and tricks.

 

While lower down the pile

months and years of scrimping

are wiped out in hours

while smirking television hosts

tell us not to look.

 

But looking is mandatory

to understand the lack of consideration

by this purposeful manipulation.

 

In 1929 the top of the heap

managed to still make money

while those unable to face

the loss of lifetime investments

jumped out of windows.

©2025 Noreen Braman

 

NAPOWRIMO April 9, 2025 Heartfelt

 

Heartfelt

Not the graphic on the Valentine's card

not the cute red and pink shapes of love

but the vital engine of the human body 

without the heart nothing else matters

so the brain works behind the scenes

giving the heart the starring role.

©2025 Noreen Braman

 

 

 

 

NAPOWRIMO April 6, 2025. Now or Never

 

Now or Never

 

Talked about, sung about,

declaring the shortness of time.

Years, months, weeks, days,

hours, minutes, seconds,

and yes the milliseconds.

Flying by at frightening speed

the lives of humans barely a speck,

while the stars and planets live on in eons.

Does the sun worry about going supernova?

Do the planets and asteroids and comets and spacedust

contemplate eventual demise?

Or do they just accept the changing of form?

As matter never disappears

the light of our lives will still travel across galaxies

which we now consider endless,

therefore, we never die.

©2025 Noreen Braman

NAPOWRIMO April 5, 2025 Retreat

 

 

Retreat

 

So many definitions

the verbs all about a signal in war

to withdraw from a losing situation

if that is at all possible.

The nouns still mention warfare

but in another sense provides daily life

with places of safety, whether in the mind

Or a calming place, for seclusion.

Perhaps the comparison not so strange

battles come in many forms.

©2025 Noreen Braman

NAPOWRIMO April 4 2025 - Card Play

 

 

  "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the game." - Randy Pausch 

 

Card Play

When the Old Maid sits down at the table

she shuffles the cards and suggests the game

at first Go Fish and Rummy,

then a sly smile,

she turns the deck to Crazy Eights

and later to Snap and SlapJack

saving for last the ace in her hand

declaring all play War.

©2025 Noreen Braman

NAPOWRIMO APRIL 3 Crashing

 

 

Crashing

Couldn't remember my password

for my retirement account

perhaps the universe protecting me

from seeing the damage

from a financial tornado

combined with a falling star

leaving shreds of money in its path

 ©2025 Noreen Braman

 

NAPOWrIMO 2025 - A delayed start, but for good reason

 

 

 

April 1, 2025

 

NAPOWRIMO 2025 has begun!  But first:

 

Time to Blow My Own Horn

Recently, I’ve been gathering all my Poetry Month poems from my blog, to attempt to put them all together in one place, from childhood forward. What a project it is going to be – but, with a landmark birthday coming up, I feel the burden of time.

 

I got an inspirational kick in the butt by Herb Alpert, and his performance we attended at Lincoln Center this week. He recently celebrated his 90^th  birthday, on tour, and not missing a beat. We attended the second performance of the night for him (and never mind the many many performances he has been giving non-stop for several years now). It was the first time I have ever sat in a box seat, and it was perfect, because I could not stop moving. The on point music was memorable, the backdrop videos amazing, and Herb’s anecdotes in between were refreshing, humorous, and honest. To me, he epitomized “taking the bull by the horns” (so much meaning just in that phrase!)  and living life joyfully and generously. 

 

He represented, to me, the resilience I so often talk about in my well-being presentations, and how you need to cultivate resilience for the times when life is not so much fun. He not only brought me back to some of the best times of my life, especially the days of playing baritone sax and singing with a swing band, but also the idea that there is more to come. 

 

Thank you, Herb Albert, for the years of delight, the inspiration to keep moving forward, and how music helps build our resilience.

 

 

 The Music Never Dies, It Just Changes the Tune

 

My father, who died too early, loved the sound of Goodman

and a clarinet would be my companion for many years of learning

leading to orchestral bass clarinet, and then the swinging baritone sax.

While I listened for trumpets in rock-n-roll,

and I heard trombones in movie soundtracks,

I loved to find the baritone sax way down at the bottom

on every new type of recordings,

still feeling the vibration in my hands

humming along the bass line,

finding the notation for “Blue Champagne” 

so many, many years later,

hearing every deep note in my mind.

©2025 Noreen Braman

 

 

 

 

As a Landmark Birthday Approaches, A Blast From the Past

 

Reprinted from July 18, 2013

40 Years of Running on the Hamster Wheel

Greetings to all of those 1973 High School graduates out there. Ours is a class that graduated at the dawn of the Information Highway and many of us helped pave the first miles of the road. Some of us took other roadways and now look at the proliferation of electronic mayhem in confusion and distrust. However, the classes behind us have increasingly embraced this new world and fly around in cyberspace like the Jetsons in their space car. For me, grabbing onto the tail of this dragon has allowed me to put a roof over my head and food in my stomach for many years, despite the best efforts of the American economy to starve and de-shelter me.

In the 40 years of my adult life so far, the amount and cost of consumer goods and living expenses has accelerated at an exponential rate.  And I know that I cannot be the only one who feels she has been on a giant hamster wheel all this time, running at top speed and getting nowhere.

It is true that we have an “embarrassment of riches” in this country. I own a house and a car (well, as long as I keep making the monthly payments). My house is an electronic playground that includes several computers and a large television. My smart phone is my constant companion, and I am entertained by an assortment of music players, eBook readers and digital cameras. In many ways, I am living in the bright, shiny future portrayed at the 1963 World’s Fair. Yet, not too far from my front door chronically jobless people are hanging out on a corner, there are transient homeless people in the woods that border my town, and the abuse of drugs and alcohol continues to destroy lives right in my neighborhood. To complain that, at 58 years old, I am still living paycheck to paycheck does pale in comparison, and I cannot even comprehend the more horrendous conditions in other parts of the world.  But aren’t there big, important people who deal with that? Great minds focused on improving life for all? More often, it seems that those in powerful positions are fighting with each other like, Godzilla and Mothra, and we are the tiny people on the streets of Tokyo, trying our best to not get stepped on.

My children are grown, and having children of their own. They are embarking on their own years of adulthood.  I wonder, after 40 years, will they look back, wondering where the time and money went and worrying about the next 40 years. Will they have broken out of the hamster wheel existence or just traded it in to become drones in a giant hive of worker bees?

Yes, it sounds like doom and gloom, and we can give in to that.  We can, and will, bemoan the fact that life is difficult, plans don’t always work, bad things happen on a daily basis and the money is never enough.  It is therefore, incongruous to see people smiling, to hear them laughing, to watch them dancing and generally acting happy. Or is it?

Look at it this way. That hamster wheel is the only one you are going to get. You can paint it black and let it squeak until the noise drives you insane. Or, you can decorate it with shining moments of your life, open it up to family and friends, and laugh in the face of its unproductive movement. You can run on and on, waiting for happiness to fall down on you from the sky, or you can actively seek and create happiness. You may have to start off by fooling your brain by acting happy before you actually feel it. You may have to smile even though you don’t feel like it. You may even have to find some other people to help you wrench that happiness back up from the hole it has fallen in, but do it.  The future generation of worker bees is depending on you to show them the way.

Using Humor At Your Peril

What is humor anyway? just something silly to make us laugh, or can it be biting satire the reveals that the Emperor has no clothes? Here is a previous article I wrote, published by 360º Nation.

 

 https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/using-humor-at-your-peril/

Finally, a Mystery May be Solved

 

 William Johnston Braman 1931-1955

 

 Tomorrow, documents will be sent to the Brooklyn Veteran's Administration Office, to finally start an investigation about my father's death. I am hopeful that records will be found, and we will know if he died for his country.

 

 

 

 

 

Memorial Day - 2024

As Memorial Day approaches, I realize that it is 69 years since the day in May when my father died. A USMC Corporal, who served his country in several places, including Camp Lejeune, who died mysteriously at age 23. He left behind my grief struck grandmother, my devastated newlywed mother, a brother, a sister, and me, a 3-week-old baby. The pain and trauma was so deep that I grew up learning very little about my father, and what little came my way was mostly inaccurate. I was told he died from inhaling airplane exhaust. I was told he died from tonsillitis. I was told he died from a cat scratch.

I found a drawer full of memories when my mother, then my stepfather, passed away in 1988. The drawer had photo albums, receipts from a young couple’s married life, wedding cards, and many, many, cards expressing sadness and grief over William Johnston Braman’s untimely death. His death certificate, typed on paper so thin you can see through it, revealed his cause of death – Uremia. The dictionary definition is “a raised level in the blood of urea and other nitrogenous waste compounds that are normally eliminated by the kidneys.” The origin of the word means “urine in the blood.” The National Institute of Health states that uremia “develops most commonly in chronic and end-stage renal disease.” Those words would become important to me.

But Uremia was not a final diagnosis. Below, as a contributing factor was written “pending chemical.” No matter how much I searched, I found no report of what those chemical tests revealed. I closed the box, confused, but I was a busy young mother, with 3 active children who would all have to deal with our own trauma in the years to come.

But when I began to see solicitations by lawyers, looking for persons harmed by contaminated water at Camp Lejeune. I submitted a request to the Veteran’s Administration. Yes, he had been at Camp Lejeune in the 50s. His death occurred at the Brooklyn VA hospital. His death certificate was incomplete. Something felt wrong.

I asked the City of New York for another copy of his death certificate and checked the box to included cause of death paperwork. What I got back was a clearer version of what I already had. No chemical testing reports.

The TV lawyers were not interested in helping me figure this out. Did my father die from contaminated water? Renal failure is listed as something caused by this contaminated water. Did he actually die from serving his country? How in the world could anyone ever compensate me and his last remaining sibling for his loss?

I called and called the Brooklyn VA Hospital. Calls were misdirected, voice mails never returned. As a government hospital, it could be possible that records from the 50s were still in some rusty file cabinets. But no one even called to say those records had been destroyed. Nothing.

I approached my Congressional Representative, sending copies of everything I had, service records, death certificate. No answer, no answer, no answer. Finally, in late 2023, I was told that a request had been made to the Brooklyn VA Hospital, and to allow 30 days for a reply. No answer came. Not from the Hospital, not from the Congressional Office.

Meanwhile, there is a timeline ticking down to make the government aware of those who were harmed by this contamination. Currently, staff at one of my state senator’s offices has stated they will try to get info from the VA, to find out if the records still exist. And if they don’t, what does that leave?

Should I go on without ever knowing, or should I start believing that the words on his death certificate are proof enough that his death had a “chemical” cause?

I was born in April 1955. My father died in May 1955. Thanks to his 14-year-old sister, who snatched me out of the baby carriage while my mother argued with nurses who refused to let a baby into the hospital, my father was able to hold me. He wept uncontrollably and died soon after. My eyes fill with tears as I write this, just as they filled with tears when my father’s last remaining sibling, his sister, told me this story, just a few months ago.

And now I am desperate to fill in the blanks. To pass on the story of a man who died young, but whose genes live on in me, my three children, and my seven grandchildren. A man who may have given his life for his country.

 

2020 Revisits

 

Overcoming

To
talk without speaking
listen without hearing
work without producing
 
and
rule without leading

Creates
words without meaning
sound processed without understanding
jobs done without purpose

and
orders given without conscience leads to
gibberish
silence
failure

and
revolution.
 
©2020 Noreen Braman

 

Because I Have to Repeat Myself

 

 

©2017 Noreen Braman

 

 

Because

Because of the priest who told my mother she was doomed to hell

for a tubal ligation after life threatening childbirths,

and almost leaving three daughters motherless. 

 

Because of the man who cornered me in the boathouse

attempting to remove my clothes while laughing,

knowing my adolescent self would be too ashamed to tell anyone.

Because of the knife held to my throat

at the workplace where I was the only woman on the floor,

working too fast and making the men “look bad.”

 

Because of the men in the office addressed as “Mr.”

while women were addressed by first names,

and paid significantly less for doing the same job.

Because those same men felt entitled to grope women in the hallway,

make job security contingent on sexual favors they demanded,

or withheld them to punish your noncompliance.

Because of the insurance providers holding the key to healthcare

denying treatment for my children and myself,

until a protracted fight was engaged.

Because women who came before me fought so hard to get here

bequeathing me a country where I can raise my voice,

continuing to demand that we don’t go backward.

Because it is too easy to get comfortable

allowing erosion to do its deadly work,

destroying the firmament under our feet.

Because the women that come after me should never suddenly find themselves

back in the dark places that exist in cultural memory,

but rather go only forward,

reaching their hands down to pull other women up,

and with them humankind as a whole.

©2017 Noreen Braman

 

©2025 Noreen Braman

 

 

 

 

 

 

Human Sacrifice - A Poem from 2020

 

 

Human Sacrifice

Useless blood spilled
appeasing non-existent gods
the life taken to ensure
the lives of others will go on
never stopped earthquake
tsunami or pyroclastic flow
made it rain
blessed the crops
or protected hordes of warriors
in uncountable battles of pointless wars

Death was the only winner.

And now you tell me
sacrifice myself
on the altar of an ancient god
made of stolen gold
my blood in exchange for
monetary stability
status quo
the kingdom over the
surplus population
dangling generations of descendants
in front of my eyes
while the barons of finance
hide out in their counting houses
and those who once we thought of as leaders
sputter and threaten and withhold favor
choosing instead to watch from afar
as the rabble fight each other
over food and medicine and haircuts
pointing fingers at each other
assuming no blame for their actions
listening to new world Svengalis
spinning tales of intrigue
proposing heretical solutions
hiding behind philosophies and beliefs
they push on others
but ignore themselves

While death is the only winner.

And now you tell me I owe my life
to the future in which you have already dirtied your hands
where you have pushed your piles
of filth and betrayal ahead
as gifts for those same
generations of descendants

Do they not dangle before your eyes?
Do they not know your dread complicity?
And your schemes and plans and usury
for only your own benefit in this world of today?

I would step in front of a bullet
throw myself in the path of a train
sell all my possessions
and mortgage my soul
to spare my progeny suffering
but I will not die on your altar of gold
to support your narcissistic survival scheme
and with my last breath I will call you out
for the harm you have done to humanity

And not let death be the winner.


©2020 Noreen Braman

New Year, New Word for 2025