Tag: Words

Strange Markers (4)

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Poetic EssaysLeave a comment

Eight years old, looking around a brand new restaurant. All around the high walls are watercolor paintings. Sailboats in summer. Horses running in winter.

Nobody has to teach us to love drawings and paintings, we just do. Showing what we see, using only our hands, is kind of an amazing thing.

Loving color, loving the light. Because colors are every form of it.

The delight we take in drawings, in paintings, in greeting cards, in comics, in animations goes back to the fundamental us. For as children, our natural response to seeing the world is to want to reproduce it.

Strange Markers (3)

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Poetic EssaysLeave a comment

Humans play thoughtlessly upon the edge of great waters, even the one called “death”.

Twenty-three years old, though, and while everything was done thoughtlessly, those waters had, frankly, come to look pretty inviting.

January morning, bitter cold, a storm due in. Walking, walking, mile after mile. Another year ahead, another seemingly pointless year. Thinking, at least, things couldn’t get worse.

Things can almost always get worse.

But for a day, a few hours, an agreement was reached with that large ocean: that while there is a season we have to go in, that season had not yet arrived.

Strange Markers (2)

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Personal EssaysLeave a comment

At age thirteen, not much makes sense, so the young heart clings to traditions, where meaning is felt, and does not therefore need to be explained.

Often, all the adults see is the confusion, which manifests itself in discontent and anger, and not the clinging, or the searching, or the questions, most of which are unexpressed, and indeed, are inexpressible. But around traditions, people can unite, even if none of them are aware that is what is going on. Because family is very often what happens when nobody is paying attention.

Singing around a piano. Old songs and new. Parents & siblings, melody & harmony, lights & wrapped gifts, hopes & worries, all unknown to each other. At age thirteen, not much makes sense, but traditions help, because emotions are labyrinths, and secrets are like canyons. But music, like other shared things, can say everything you need, often without trying to say any particular thing.

Strange Markers (1)

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Poetic Essays3 Comments

Grew up in Florida, rarely even seen snow. Twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, working in Florida, sent for a two week class in Ohio. In December.

Started snowing the day after arrival. Walking around on the weekend, cutting across fields through snow, headed towards town. Ice on the roads, ice in eyebrows and on eyelashes, ice all over three layers of jackets.

Finally get to town, walking up to a shopping square. Nineteen eighty-four was the year; the only similarity to Orwell was that everything looked like nineteen forty-eight. 1940’s Christmas music being played through the parking lot speakers; lights across the icy window displays in all the brightly lit stores. Looking like Christmas always looked in magazine illustrations, breath steaming the air.

Wandering, exploring, wondering, marveling. Seeing as through the eyes of a child: all things new, most things beautiful. Alone.

Milestones. Rites of passage. Things that mean everything, but to only one. Finding new meaning in the season without the benefit of company.

On A Reaction to My “5 Times” Poems

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems3 Comments

Yo, dude —

What the hell is up with these low-T stories? You had a girlfriend in college, and never slept with her? I think I might know why she left you. Seriously.

You know, it ruins poetry
To have to explain it.
But —
I didn’t recount the story
To make myself look good,
Or make her look bad, or good,
Or anything.
I was trying to describe
A thing that happened.

You see,
Everything we do, as human beings,
Is dictated by either instinct (at worst)
Or emotion (at best).
It was the emotions I was
Interested in reliving: how it felt.

Our tendency, in these times,
Is to put things in some sort of
Bizarre moral context:
The “you-should-have-done-this-instead-of-that” world
You apparently live in.

When it comes to recounting events
The only thing that matters
Is truth:
Although I won’t deny that
When it comes to learning from them
A viewpoint something like yours
Comes into play.

What we learn from any relationship is always
Half about the other person
And half about ourselves.

Believe me:
Low testosterone
Was not the issue;
Negotiating the desire to be
In control of my own feelings was.

The biggest issue I see with relationships —
Mine and everyone else’s —
Is the desire to be in control of the other person.
How to carry on relationships
On equal footing is always the real task.

But I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing,
And will consider your critique of my artistic choices
As time allows

Why I Can’t Be Batman

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments

Not all that heroic

The way other people feel about sleeping in
Is how I feel about going to bed early

Not really that much into revenge

I’m short of being a billionaire by roughly a billion dollars

In terms of being a world-class
Inventor-detective-athlete-martial artist,
I’m 0 for 4

I won’t look nearly as good at age 80

I’ve never had any desire to turn
Orphaned children into sidekicks

I’m terrible at strategy:
I not only can’t play chess,
My checkers and even “go fish” games are lacking

I would waste too much time
Figuring out what Wayne Enterprises does.
Licensed merchandising is my guess.

Because the Joker sucks,
And Batman is forever running into him

Because it’s all I can do
To do 20 minutes of yoga in the morning

I drive too slow.
And I wouldn’t want a house that big

Because spending all my time in a cave
Is a way-too-stereotypical male thing to do

At Syzygy

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

This poem’s ending happily,
I’ll tell you right up front.
It’s when the moon’s at syzygy
You question if that’s quite a word:
It is. And there’s the brunt

Of what I mostly meant to say
Today, tomorrow, yesterday —
For there are words that you can see
Like apogee, or perigee,
Of doubtless authenticity.
But this is like a stunt:

To use a word without a vowel,
And “y’s” slapped on it with a trowel:
I see it now – you’re doubting me –
That there’s a word like syzygy.
This seems like poem overdose
And not just that the moon is close.

Or better yet, that it’s in line
With earth and sun. All that is fine:
But Owen, really, must you flounce
About with words we can’t pronounce?
But I say we can plainly be
In harmony at syzygy.
And this is how my poem ends.
You see? We still are (mostly) friends…