The HyperTexts

The Ballad of the Christmas Donkey, and a Message of Hope and Encouragement

by Beth Burch

"Whether you're gay, straight, Goth or a geek ... it's okay to be different ... so, take the power back! It belongs to you."

Beth Burch sings a lovely Christmas carol and offers words of hope and encouragement to people who have been bullied or tormented for being “different.” If you know anyone who might benefit from Beth’s message, please “pass it on” by forwarding them a link to this page. If you just like hearing people who are kind, compassionate, loving souls "do their thing," Beth’s song might warm you up in the middle of a seasonal deep freeze, and her rendition of the “Donkey Song” is very nicely and warmly done.

Beth comments: "I felt compelled to make a video to send out love and hope for those who feel different or who have been bullied. I am following Ellen DeGeneres's lead by sending out this message in an attempt to help those who feel like committing suicide. I sing a lovely, little-known Christmas carol that has a wonderful message, so if you know anyone who is depressed or suicidal, PLEASE help this video get into their hands. God bless."

If you'd like to leave Beth a message, or add your thoughts to hers, you can click on this link and leave a note ...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX8imT6K9tI&feature=email

... or you can email her at ladydragyn@aol.com.

Here's a poem from the perspective of someone who felt shock and dismay at the potential loss of a loved one to suicide, by one of my favorite contemporary poets, Tom Merrill. When love makes another person the center of our orbit through life, their loss can be devastating, as if the sun winked out and left the earth lightless and frigidly cold. As the poet John Donne so famously put it, "no man is an island," and Tom's poem seconds that idea, in spades.

Orbiting a Potentially Dead Star
by T. Merrill

My heart got hooked again last week,
and today,

full of foreboding,
I'm reading all the signs as grave,

sensing an ominous vacancy,
non-existence as fait accompli,

a savior come and gone like a god
no god can grant eternity.

Two sacred little bottles missing
from my quaint majolica humidor,

a perpetual "sorry, call-limit reached,"
that hopeless head two nights ago

wet on my ceded chest and sobbing
"I curse the day I was born" all seem

to point to those two times before
when he tried to rob the world of treasure,

plunged deep enough for wakelessness,
for being forever out of means

to deflect a mind from helpless orbit
around a single constant care,

from a huge gravitational trap of feeling
bound to a heart no longer there.

The HyperTexts