Lament For Love

I’m sorry, 
I can’t love you
like a love should be…
Out here I stand
beyond the glass,
the wall of distance
between my heart
and the world…

Love’s such
a quiet subtle thing
so easily drowned out
by need and want
and hungers wailing
from a time
the time when children
learn to love
by being loved…

I’m sorry
my missing pieces
make this puzzle
that is love
forever incomplete…
Yet I want to love, 
you are so very dear
although my heart is mute
and broken…

I know love
is something like
the yearning
crouched in here…
I wish, I wish, I wish 
that I could feel
all that I know is true.
I wish that I could give you
all that you should have from me
without the firewalls
that make my space
a safer place.

I cherish you
as I have always done
I want to know
that this is enough 
for you to understand
all that you are to me.
I would not have
your heart, your life
be broken, too.

2015

Tolkien Tribute: Symbelmyne

Even here the glimmering simbelmyne grows
in the ghostly pale green meads and haunted hollows
far from the hallows somber in their ordered rows
where our old bones the cold earth slowly swallows.

Of certainty indeed no living person knows
and none but guess what after long life follows
yet, even here the glimmering simbelyne grows
in the ghostly pale green meads and haunted hollows.
Ages pass, and generations–so life ever flows,
sire and son, one after the other follows…

Echoing faint, hooves thunder out of meads and hollows…
The Dead also remember, in our long repose:
Even here, the glimmering symbelmyne grows.

The Long Flight Home

A few years ago, my son was on his way home from college for the holidays, but our airport was under assault by snow and wind, and so incoming flights from other airports, like his, were delayed and then cancelled. I started for the airport, a two-hour trip each way in the weather–3 times, only to hear the flight was not coming. He lived in the Denver airport for 4 days before he got a standby seat, and was finally actually arriving. I wrote this as I waited at a restaurant near the airport.

Everything will be all right
as soon as we are home tonight–
all the miles, all passed by,
distances closed with a hug and a sigh…
Now I’ll enjoy without a qualm
the snow behind this evening’s calm;
the house will be alive with chatter–
nothing now can be the matter.
I don’t care now how deep it gets
or if wind plays branches like castanets,
if roads are too slick, or hills too steep
or where you’ve safely found to sleep–
As soon as we are home tonight,
everything will be all right!

The Karpman Triangle

It has been called a ‘trap’ that the Evangelical extremists set for Americans, with accusations against those who demand actual separation between Church and State. It is meant to put their perceived adversaries on the defensive, to use the fairness intent of politcal correctness to promote the sense of the Evangelical extremist’s being treated badly, unfairly.

This conservative, evangelical “Christian” program of absurdism bases its argument against secularism on the unconsidered assumption that morality is only achieved through religion, and specifically, THEIR religion.

What nonsense!

This kind of “Christian” is so profoundly invested in being victimized, in being the underdog, in being conspired against and persecuted… They can’t stand the idea that anyone might simply not care about them or their world-view, that as long as they stay in their own lane, they are of no particular interest.

So here they are, jumping up and down, setting their little ‘trap’ that only takes in the suckers who are caught up in the dysfunctional dynamics of the classic Karpman Triangle.

Which is, in fact, a lot of Americans. It is cultural with us, to root for the underdog, to side with the oppressed, so much so that we do it without looking into histories or more complete pictures, or even giving a situation much actual thought. We assume that the weaker is more deserving of outside support. Seeing the need, we provide, because we are the Good Person. And when the one we’ve judged the oppressor is brought low, we are so Good, we immediately, automatically forgive them and help them up without regard for whether or not they have learned from their embarrassment and suffering.

We don’t stop to wonder if this is part of the underdog’s necessary learning process. Or if it’s fair consequences because last week, this person was oppressing the person who is now oppressing them.

In the Karpman Triangle, the participants constantly shift from one role to the next: Oppressor oppresses Victim; Rescuer opresses Oppressor to rescue Victim, becoming the Oppressor and making Oppressor into Victim. Original Victim becomes Rescuer, attacking the former Rescuer, now Oppressor… And so the triangle rolls on jerkily down the hill, a game, a self-perpetuating negative social dynamic.

And the only way to win the game is not to play.

October Days

It starts a little drear and grey
beginnings of an autumn day
dew revealing spiders high
in fir and cedar against the sky…
Low-hanging cloud obscures the sun
but it will show before day’s done: 
webs will move with rainbow glimmer,
leaves in breezes, flip and shimmer,
sunlight sideways gilds and limns
with memories of summer times,
even as the daylight’s going
making way for evening glowing.

2008

One of Those Days

Oh I can sit in my warm bed
and feel my day
has been for naught
or worse
for I have fumbled badly
with a friend
and feel unloved and distant
from my joy
and happiness that filled
the hours before
the broken minute
when it changed…

I can sit glum
and nurse an ache
within my belly
and my heart as if
forgiveness cannot be
although this friend I know
is better far than that.

But then…
I think again:
remember that the world
is darker far and full
of deeper pain than mine,
and hungers that devour
soul and mind;
overhanging death
that mocks the goodness
in a simple human heart;
and children weeping
with no thought of being heard…

And thus my little glum
becomes
amazingly absurd.

2005

Journal reprise: Bullwhips & Dinosaurs

I’ve been going through some old posts on my blogit.com account, and came across this gem from 2009 when he was in college, age 24.

Got this email from my son in response to the query of what he plans to herd with the pair of 10-foot bullwhips he wants for Christmas.  I guessed dinosaurs, and was on the money:

It only works on certain dinosaurs of course.  Maiosaurs, Edmontosaurs, Corythosauruses, and such.  You would think Iguanadons, but they have these pretty nasty thumbspikes they are not afraid of using if they get pissed off or feel threatened.  And you always have to watch out and make sure you don’t create a stampede.  Using a whip to scare a triceratops is just asking for a new chest cavity.    It may run a raptor off for a while, but of course with them its the ones you see that you don’t really have to worry about.  And then of course you always have to be careful not to let the big ones associate the whip-crack, which can be heard for miles, with food.  Strangely enough it’s pretty good against baryonyx.  They are mean but prefer fish.  It is ideal however for running off Compsagnathi and squirrels both.  Pops their little heads right off.

He currently writes and makes stuff as The Fire Thieves Studio here on WordPress, and on Patreon.

Autumn

Walking in the woods of autumn fire
in my own autumn, wistful
heart to the colors lifts: All
the triumph of a spring advanced
victory of a summer lived
the flowers gone to fruit
and fruit to seed dispersing
on the errant winds that blow…

All finished now, and so
green departs the leaf and reed,
the wind whips over flaring brights
to muted shades, of rust
of faded pink, of watered red
and weeds are dead
beside leaf-littered
acorn-scattered path
where I slowly walk
in autumn of my own.

2009

Rainbow Child-Man

Silly, hurting child!
Don’t you realize– Somewhere–
while you whirl entrapped
like furniture in hurricanes,
dancing grim and wild,
Thought, Emotion, Dream, enwrapped
together in your house
of angst and pains,
goose-stepping pas-de-trois
to old orchestrated sorrows–
Guilt and Disappointment tuned
to Loss and Shame and Fear…
that even so, the friends you’ve earned
by simply being you
are always very near!?

Hurting’s loud, belligerent–
intimidates
the deeper Truth:
Poor wee Child’s
beleaguered–huddled in
a room without a window,
wrapped in rugs
of intricate design and beauty,
against the raging hurricane…
He thinks he is alone
and that the Tempest–
that hardly knows that he exists–
has come for him,
destruction on its mind…

Truth may be–
It is the Rage, the Anguish
that’s afraid,
that seeks within
its battened, padded core
the One Who Is—
Who Knows– Who holds
in golden hands the Light
of All-Acceptance…
Who holds
within His shining face
the Peace that heals–
these things the wages of a life lived
in the key of grace…

Oh, hear, my friend,
in the bellow of the blast–
the beauty of the bellow:
the breadth of love,
the height of courage,
the adamance of life!
They lied between their teeth–
loving humble children,
and thinking to be making
macho men—
all those who told Thee
Thou were not
simply
Beautiful.

2005

Journal: Counting the Costs

I have taken a step back from commenting on Facebook and other social media platforms–even here, sometimes.

It isn’t that I am not reactive to some of the stuff that gets posted there, or that I don’t disagree strongly, or don’t see an opening for a really clever comeback. But I have taken another look at who I am when I get clever that way, and I am noticing that what I’d opine has already been offered, often more than once. 

The thing that is getting to me most, though, is how it changes me to indulge in those clever retorts. I am adept with the language, I know things many people don’t about, for instance, science and the natural world, psychology and spirituality. And there is a word for when someone more able deliberately uses their skills and strengths against someone less able, less strong. 

There is also the matter of all the things I think I know that maybe I don’t so much. Will Rogers said, “It ain’t what I know that gets me into trouble, it’s what I know that just ain’t so!” 

And then, there is audience to consider.  Am I doing anything more meaningful than just adding another voice to an established choir? What is the chance that my remarks will reach and influence another mind not of the choir? Who do I hope to reach? Are they even likely to see my words?

Here, particularly, several of the folks who read my stuff have expressed in their own posts a weariness and futility with the whole political scene. Some of them/you are on Facebook as well, where the parade/assault of atrocity and absurdity and falsehood is constant. There is no lack of sniping and smarm, of articles from unreliable sources, that are out of date, that amount to nothing more than click-bait playing on outrage, of declarations of problems without suggestions for rational solutions… So I’ve made it my policy to mostly share good news, hopeful reports, success stories. 

Yes, if I feel strongly about something–like voter empowerment vs suppression–I still share what I’m thinking everyone should be aware of for their own self-protection. But mostly, honestly, it’s elephants and great apes doing better than expected, and kids being bright and funny. And, sometimes, just a little of someone being really, really cute–like a yawning sloth baby.

I am shying away from the clever, the mean, the bullying, the pedantic, because indulging in that stuff, I just don’t like who I am then.

Youth values cleverness; Age, kindness.