Two From The Archives Of Craptastic Poetry

So here is the deal... the conundrum...  Whenever I write something lyrical or poetic, I find myself getting wrapped up in it, and striving to make it as true and non-cheesy and "cool" as possible.  Often friends will even compliment these works.  Almost inevitably though, I will come across these verses a year or so after writing them, and at that point they seem like some silly monologues from a movie, only I know that I was never cool enough to be in a movie (or have a movie made about me) so these scraps of lyrics seem even more silly.

That being said, I submit this for your approval.  Be kind, but be honest.  They were written over a year ago.

I Am

 

I am a tattered flag on a splintered mast.

I am a vessel made from broken pieces.

I am the thin line between the darkness of tonight and the promise of tomorrow.

I am the deepest strata of ocean, where the sunlight finally surrenders to the cold dark oblivion.

I am the last bastion against entropy.

I am a mess.

I am always willing to help.

I am utterly incapable of asking for help, even when I know I need it.

I am waiting for the clarity of my next life to answer my question.

I am so confused I will listen to anyone.

I am a watch that is set twenty four hours behind.

I am a thief, a liar, an imposter, and an abuser of hearts.

I hope I am a good person, but I am not certain.

I am not afraid of death.

I am afraid of a life without purpose.

I am hollow, from giving too much of myself to the wrong people.

I must be shallow, as I overflow with pride at the slightest nod from an intelligent girl.

 

I am who you see me to be;

            A friend,

            A scoundrel,

            A child,

            A father,

            An entertainer,

            An anonymous face,

            A bear,

            A minnow.

 

I am not the hero I want to be.

I am there to catch you when you stumble.

I am there to pick you up and dust you off when you fall.

I am honorable in my intentions.

I am a teacher as well as a student.

I am the river.

I am a voyeur of the living.

I am introspective.

I am not the cancer.

I am not the cure.

I am a pair of chopsticks standing in a bowl of rice.

 

I am my beliefs.

I believe that Homer Simpson was right when he said “trying is the first step towards failure”.

I believe that “doing” is the one and only step for success.

I believe that if you trust no one, no one will betray you.

I believe that if no one ever betrays you, you will never have the chance to forgive them.

I believe that the single greatest pleasure, for me, in life, is getting a beautiful girl to blow milk out her nose.

I believe that true clarity comes from understanding the confusion of others.

 

I am the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

I am not a saint, but I might be a Jin.

I am an iconoclast.

I am a catalyst.

I am complex.

I am simple.

I am broken.

I am whole.

I am me.

 

 On the flipside...   Here is a short essay I wrote a while back.  It is not lyrical in nature, but even as I read it now I fully grasp what I was thinking when I wrote it.  I still ask the same questions, I still wonder just the same.

Sometimes I wonder…

 

Sometimes I wonder who my true friends are and what they think of me. 

 

Sometimes I wonder if I was as nice as I could have been.  Should I have been so honest?  Should I have been more willing to smile and laugh at someone’s joke?  When people laugh with me are they just being kind?  Are they just taking pity on me?  I can’t find it in myself to fake laughter.  I wish I could.  I have tried before and the very sound of it makes me hate myself.  I suppose this is the same question of sincerity that I perpetually ask and consistently receive no answer for.  Should I stop caring about such a question that I will never see answered?  Does anyone else worry about such things?  I realize that such concerns are the trademarks of insecurity.  Which is more foolish, or, for that matter, less attractive, insecurity based on what may be a valid concern, or false security based on the assumption that everyone who smiles at you likes you?  If anyone perceives these questions as a weakness, then I should ask them not to waste time or conversation with me, for I am attempting to carve out the smallest social pocket to fill with people unafraid of being sincere.  Do not confuse this with melodrama.  Overreaction is just as bad as deceitful complacency, and in fact may be the source of it in good people who would otherwise be honest but for the fear of wounding the melodramatic bleater.

 

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll find an honest girl whom I can really connect to.  I wonder if the personality traits that I find attractive are intimately linked to those I loathe.  Am I looking for a farce, a myth, someone with definitively contradictive features?

 

Sometimes I wonder if life as a hermit would not be better.  Then again, the last time I set myself to that course I met a girl and fell in love.  Obviously that didn’t work out for me. 

 

Sometimes I wonder if the old friends that I don’t see anymore think of me as often as I think of them.

 

Sometimes I wonder what the future will bring.  I have some new adventures coming soon, so the odds of making more “true” friends are certainly increasing. 

 

Sometimes I wonder.

 

 

The Dream

This is actually a short bit that I wrote a couple years ago about a dream I had...  I just had the same dream the other night, so I thought I would post this.  Enjoy.

The Dream

 

In the darkness, calm washes over me.  Cool haze kisses my face, my cheeks and my closed eyes.  The fresh scent of dew and thunder fills my nose.  I open my eyes not to the brilliant sun, but to a grey autumn day.  The foggy type of day with light rains when magic happens.  I am sitting on a flat stone cliff.  The valley below is so deep I can see clouds pouring through it at a languid pace, and they appear as sheep lazily herded to pasture.  Beyond those clouds the river rages, but I hear only the faintest roar.  Behind me lies a small glade among the evergreens.  The grass and ferns, sparkling with dew, seem alive with the gentle breeze.  My mind is swimming inside itself as I try to understand where I am.  As I stare into the ravine and think of how I know this place, a wolf walks silently up to my side and sits with me.  As I admire his silver coat, he guards the valley with a watchful eye. 

“I shall help you with your burden.”

The wolf speaks with many voices.

“Burden?”

I can’t comprehend what burden he might help me with.  In fact I don’t even know what burden I am bearing.

“That is why I will help you, for you refuse to help yourself.”

Still confused, I finally notice the satchel of stones slung across my shoulder, resting at my side.

“Cast the largest stone into the river.”

As I rummage through the satchel, I notice each stone has a face on it.  As I glance at each, I remember my friends and family.  I find the largest stone, which has no face but I still recognize.

“Who are you?”  I ask the wolf.

“I am who you think I am”

“No.  If you were, you would not ask me to throw this away.”

The wolf now speaks with more of a roar.

 “You say you will not?  You would defy me?”

“If I must… then yes, I will defy you”

The clouds darken and thunder claps in the distance.  Lightning strikes the wolf and blinds me.  Before my eyes can see again, I can already sense that I am thinking more clearly.  Then there are cool fingers touching my eyes, and a chorus of feminine voices calming me in a language I cannot understand.

I open my eyes to a young face framed in silver hair that shines and flows as though it were in fact a fountain of liquid silver.  It is untamed and yet wildly perfect.  Her face literally glows with a faint white essence, and her eyes are silver of a shade only slightly darker than her hair.  I have the feeling that she is nude, but I cannot take my eyes from her face as she smiles at me with calming lips and knowing eyes.

“You are starting to remember now?” she asks in an angelic harmony.

“The trials.”

“Yes.”

As she speaks now she does not move her lips, but the music of her voices simply fills my mind.

“Matthew, you remember where you are now?”

“I do.”

“Then you remember your task.”

To my chagrin I do not.  I feel as though it is only a thought away though.  As I think of making up an answer or a lucky guess she smiles at me and shakes her head.

“Don’t worry my child. You will soon enough.  Start with the lessons.”

“First… Defiance.”

“Accomplished”

“Then… Acceptance”

I close my satchel with every rock still inside.  She smiles at me with approval.

“Sacrifice?”  I ask, though I am fairly certain that is the next lesson.

Rather than speak, or nod, she only tilts her head and looks at me curiously.

I shed my jacket and hold it open for her but as she slips her arms through the sleeves it grows and changes colors from brown and green to charcoal with silver embroidery.  It is now a magnificent cloak with a large hood which she pulls over her head.  The hood would have cast her face in shadow if she did not glow with that white aura.  I now notice the chill in the air has quite an edge to it.

“Remember the Numbers”

“I remember one, two, four, and five, and seven… and something about a fee for pie”

She smiles and I hear her loving laugh.

“Phi and Pi.”

I am embarrassed that I would think food might have anything to do with the meaning of life.

“There are more numbers for you to learn, but those are enough for now. Do not forget this either.”

Her finger cuts through the flat stone we are sitting on as though it were fine grey sand.  She draws a circle, and then puts five dots around the circumference.  She then draws an “S” inside the circle spanning it’s diameter from top to bottom.  Over the “S” she draws a perfectly symmetrical cross.  When she is finished her symbol fills with blood.  The blood turns to water, and the water evaporates.  The water’s vapors smell of an ancient memory, again just out of reach.

I feel something crawling all over me.  I look at my arms to find that, from every freckle, mole and scar, something is growing.  Some sprout thorns, while others weep a dull grey pigment, and yet others become raised letters I cannot read in shiny blue and white inks.  The thorns are large and sharp, and the script is hard and armor-like.  I now smell like a blend of woods, cedar, sandalwood, pine and sweet fern roots.

She pulls back her hood to reveal fiery red hair, still as wildly beautiful as before.

“Now you remember who you are?”

“Yes.”

“Then stand and your task will come to you.”

As we both stand a raven comes from the forest and alights on her shoulder.

“You will meet help along the way, and you will know them by this.” 

She touches my hand with hers and something secret courses through my arm and into my heart.

A rumbling begins in the forest, a noise far worse than the thunder of the storm.  As I turn to look, she takes my head in her hands and holds our faces so close I can feel her cool sweet breathe on my lips.

“The time is coming for your next step.  You will learn the identity of that blank stone.  I will not help you as I have before, but I will lighten your burden as I promised before.  Yes, I was the wolf, as I am the storm, the river and the fire.”

“The fire?”

“Tearing through your forest this very moment.”

Fear creeps into my mind, and shows in my eyes.

“I don’t understand.  Why?  I thought you were the forest and the mountains?

“No, you are the mountain.  That is why you could not be rid of your largest stone.”

“If I am the mountain why are you burning me?”

“Fire is not death, and death is not finality.  I am helping you as I said I would.  Now watch closely, open your mind, and choose your next answer wisely.”

With this she casts off her cloak and swings it around my shoulders.  Her body is covered in raised black tattoos of vines and plants that grow and entwine around her until her skin is the tone of slate with a raised floral pattern.  Her hair fluidly changes from bright red through several shades of brunette to a dark and glossy black.  Her silver eyes and lips are the only parts not consumed by the dark transformation.  White patches begin growing from her eyes and just as a white line begins to vertically split her torso, she turns and dives from the cliff.  I cannot see her after she passes through those low clouds, and I can’t hear a splash over the growing sounds of the storm and the fire.

I pull the hood over my head, and the raven, whom I had forgotten about, grasps my shoulder.  Something about the raven’s eyes makes me want to be dangerous.  With my stones around my shoulder, I look back at my serene forest and I see the fire racing towards me.  I face the cliff, take two steps, and then I plunge into the valley with arms spread.

~And Then I Wake~