The Son (a poem about the struggle of a boy)

Son (ciaksi)

The gravel road
winds its way like a snake
through the hills to the homes
of the Innu people who have
lived there for one hundred years.

Worn houses dot
the land in a similar fashion
with broken windows and sagging
porches in need of repairs that will
never be completed.

On grey days
the despair creeps its
way into the lives of children
caught in vague attempts to
find meaning.

Alcohol, drugs and
violence become ways
of interpretation that blind
and confuse reality.

On one such
grey day in a home
on a hill overlooking
the peaceful bay the pain
became too much to bear.

Her son who was her hope and
joy, found a quiet place, and with a bicycle chain, kinked it
around his neck, and stepped off the chair.     

 ---Todd Sojonky 2005

Canada's Third World People

Most people are not aware of it. The fact that many people in the Canadian north are dying. In one school division alone twelve suicide attempts in the past four months. Numerous acts of violence, missing women, and hungry kids. The schools throughout the Canadian north are the battlegrounds where teachers, principals and support staff work with the communities to find answers. Why are so many children in Saskatchewan dying? Why does no one seem to care? So this week in Sandy Bay a missing boy is now presumed dead. His footprints in the snow led to a spot near the ice. Like the stinging bite in the bitter wind. It warranted two paragraphs on the second page. If we have a sense of social justice it should begin at home. TJS



Moonlight Over a Northern School

If all the stories had the same voice or the words heard the same source then knowing would appear rational. Like I could touch and feel the voices in my head from the words that were said.

Or perhaps the knower takes the scalpel and removes the discourse from its voice and examines it laying dead. Then what hurt and bled could be touched and the discourse then made solid. Instead the words follow the trees and breeze cross the valleys and through the snow covered woods.

It is cold now and the moon shine has fragmented the solid structure of my mind. There is no reason to the voices only discourses dancing in the moonlight.

TJS 2009

Suicide

Nadine is a wonderful kid who has faced many obstacles. She is a bright light who will accomplish many of her goals. These are her words.........


"I've lost many friends to suicide; if I can't tell them this before they did it I will now.

Suicide isn't an easy thing to take and try to figure out alone. Sometimes you need someone to get you through all the rough things your going through.

Suicide is just being selfish and not thinking of who you are affecting. It is a chain of wrongs and bads that push you to the limit of just letting go. Knowing you are gone is tough, it fucken kills knowing you left us in this world without you.

I know you couldn't take the pain but now you made us suffer for what you did."

-----Nadine (R.I.P. JP)