11-20

Choosing to dream

Do I dare admit what I really want

And how bad I want it,

Admit my heart’s desire,

Invest the emotional currency

Dreaming of a good, joyous, fulfilling life

For me and my wife,

A place of health and wellbeing?

Do I live in the tension

Such an admission entails.

Do I risk the profound disappointment

If my dream is shattered?

Do I live a hopeless life

Never even catching a glimpse of the now,

Let alone the not yet?

 

                        Hubris

Point of view

Surrounded by the prejudice of individuality

Has no discernible meaning.

It is an idolatry of experience,

One of the blind men

Trying to describe an elephant by touch,

Limiting the world to the boundaries of personal hubris.

It allows no existence of the other,

Barring the door to embrace.

It gives no quarter and takes none

It is without mercy or grace

Being only concerned with what it knows,

Defending against all comers

Its right to live in a world

Devoid of anything but itself.

  

              An Overtly Christian Poem

I’ll say I am a follower of Jesus Christ to get it over with,

But, so not to be misleading, that’s not his name,

Like John Smith, unless speaking historically,

As in John, the smith.

Also, to be more truthful,

I am a bad follower,

As, biblically speaking,

Though you might want to check this out

With some reputable theologian,

All us Christians are,

Bad followers, that is,

Though I’m sure some theologian s would disagree.

I won’t even bring up post-trib and pre-trib,

Which is an inside joke or a horrible blasphemy,

Depending on your denomination,

Or just plain gibberish

If you’re of the persuasion

Who thinks all us Christians are

Way too far out in left field,

Though, admittedly, some of us would rather die

Then be considered left of anything.

 

An Overtly Political Poem

for Mark

I’m sorry I don’t fit into political categories

As I’m sure it confuses some

By the inconvenience of not being able

To categorize me with a simplistic label,

Thereby defining me as other

And easier to dismiss or ignore,

Such as welfare queens, Muslims,

Christians, and queers.

Nuance is the enemy of the bigot,

The Taliban, the Tea party,

And the Earth Liberation Front,

Or any extremist organization, for that matter.

Extremist and frenzied mobs require easy labels.

It’s too hard to think and hate at the same time.

I’m Still Here

What do you do with regrets,

All the missed opportunities piled up

Over the years,

Or the things that just happened,

Blindsided you and knocked you flat?

What do you do with the mistakes you made

You knew you were making when you made them

And you feel like you haven’t learned a bloody thing.

Time doesn’t stop piling up things

There ain’t nothing to do but carry,

Not that there isn’t good things,

But I don’t seem to have a problem carrying those.

It’s the heavy shit I need help with,

The crushing human burdens you naturally acquire by being alive

And living long enough,

Things nobody ever was meant to carry alone

And no other human can carry either,

Let alone understand.

So I’m still here uncrushed.

It stands to reason

I’ve had help from somewhere.

Faith

Sometime I don’t like being left with nothing else but hope.

It’s like being out on a hike

And running out of water

Wondering if the stream farther away than you’d like

Is still flowing, or run dry.

You put one foot in front of the other,

With the pack digging into your shoulder blades,

Taking little sips of what you got left.

You go on because you’re only other choice

Is giving up and lying down to die,

But there are all these other places you haven’t seen yet.

So you’d like to quit, but not really.

You get mad at the obstacles,

But you feel good getting past them.

You stop, look around, take in a breath of mountain air.

You go on.

It’s still a bitch,

But you smile now,

Remembering why you’re on the hike to begin with.

Hope

I hope it’s not too late

To be who I was meant to be

To give voice to the things that scare me to say.

I hope it’s not too late to say them.

I hope my legs will not fail,

While I’m running the race

I was meant to run.

I hope my heart does not loose courage

When it confronts what still remains.

I hope my vision

Does not come up short

When I choose the place I aim to stand.

I hope my faith proves true

As I’ve taken this long wild leap

To who knows where

On the promise and assumption

There is good a place to land.

Flying by the seat of our pants

Sequester is not a word recognized by my computer.

I think it means something like meat ax,

Or possibly it’s a shortened version of

“To shoot yourself it the foot,”

The idea being, “We won’t be dumb enough to let that happen.”

Didn’t I learn in grade school

Congress is supposed to control the purse strings.

I supposed they’re too busy blaming each other

In a rare case of bipartisan agreement.

I hear some of them are also good for entertainment value.

For enough money

They dance to the suggested tune.

Yahoo is also a made up word.

I’ll use it in a sentence.

The yahoo’s in congress are selling us down the river,

Though I am of the opinion

A good deal of them

Should be sent up it.

Saturdays, long ago

I remember the maggot infested flat cats

Run over by semi’s in Pumpilo’s cinder covered lots

When the Kennedy was just a big muddy ditch

I wasn’t supposed to play in.

The semi-trailers were made of plywood,

Burning furiously on the occasion

Of a hobo’s over-cooked dinner

Or a reckless smoke

Or, possibly, a misbehaving youth

Whose adventures went astray

And sent hobos running

And flame licking the stars

Like some great signal pyre

Announcing the birth of a king,

Or the death of one

Or the end of an age

Like the last time I saw I great Steam Locomotive

Roaring into my memory

Leaving behind the faintest trails of mist.

                      Punching Keys

A jab here, a combination there,

A bit of fancy foot work, but above all,

Keep punching the keys,

Arms up and loose, fingers limber,

Sparing with the words,

Aiming for a knock out down the line.

But right now I’m in training,

Trying to build up my literary chops.

Hitting the pages is an endurance thing,

A keep at it sometimes slog by slog,

Sometimes, only sometimes,

Finding a groove when it feels like

You can dance on the keyboard all day.