On What I Learned from a Man Named Cummings

So, a couple posts ago, I alluded to some thoughts to be developed later. This post still has nothing to do with those thoughts. Apparently, they are developing much more slowly then I anticipated when I posted that. I also fear that when those thoughts finally come, it will be such a great belching forth of my thoughts, that no one will have the patience to read it all. Ah well, until then I shall continue to provide little snippets of reflection or pieces of my life.
This poem was inspired by a speaker I heard last Friday. The analogy he made was by no means a new one, but something about how he said it triggered my poetic urge. However, I did not write about it that day. Instead, I wrote another poem that had been churning inside of me for some time. Nor did I write about it the next day. That day, I wrote a poem about thought and ideas slipping away before I had a chance to set them down. I've written several poems like that. It seems to be a recurring worry for me. Even yesterday, I did not set down this inspiration. I wrote about sand, loosely in reference to time. It was a cheep analogy but I think I served it well. I hope. Anyway, it took until today for me to finally figure out what structure would hold together the shell of a poem I was contriving, so I wrote it down. I am not sure if its finished form is quite what I thought it would be when I began, but I am just glad that it is finally on paper, and now it shall be online as well.

Being

come to me
all you men and women of the earth
come
and fall
on your knees before me
worship me
for my power is endless
and my reach knows no bounds
i have risen to the highest
and you shall all be my servants
for i
am
god
and you shall obey me
or i will cast you away
and you
will suffer
alone
i am your lord
and i command worship
from all
please me
and i shall show you favour
but i will never fulfill you
i will
never
give you life
for i
am man
and i cannot
i am merely
man
you can sacrifice to me
and i will accept your offerings
i will take even more
and when you have nothing left to give
i will cast you away nonetheless
and we
shall suffer
alone
for my power is fleeting
and my reach will fail
no matter how i cling
the cracks will widen
give way
i will fall
in the end
even i
am a slave
a slave to myself
and i work myself mercilessly
trying to gain more power
trying to gain more praise
trying to gain more pleasure
trying
but even i
still suffer
alone
i am in the dark
with all the scum
the ones that I look down on
the low
and the filthy
the weak
but i am one of them
and we all
are
gods
for ourselves alone
fighting for supremacy
struggling
climbing
to rise to the highest
to look down on all
but it's all just king of the hill
king of the landfill
and we're pushing each other down
and we cry
we weep in the dark
we suffer
alone
in the dark
and i will
suffer
alone
in the dark
forever
if i don't
come to him
come
and fall on my knees before him
worship him
for he will fulfill me
he will
give me
life
only he can
he is
God
and only he is free
for only he is love
and he
loves me
how can i not worship him?
how can man not?

On Illumination

The thoughts to which I alluded in my last post are still forthcoming. However, I recently wrote a multilayered poem of which I am rather proud and indeed a bit fond, so I thought I would share it.

Illumination

The light above the sink
Shines a pallid white
Casting a soulless gleam
Like an impersonal authority
Bidding me hush
Be quiet
Sit still
When I look in the mirror
The light bears over me
Inspecting
But quietly
In silent judgement
And by its sickly rays
I see a face
As drained of colour
As these white walls
Grey stone
Painted a semi-gloss white
These walls are dying
Breathing weakly
And gasping
Their last struggle
Illuminated by the hollow fluorescence
The putrid light
that sticks in my throat
Dry
And insufferable
Washing out colour
Like winter washes away autumn
Burying all
In cold sterility
And the light glares unmercifully
Creeping up my spine
If I try to look away
Even the shadows it casts
Are smothered ghosts
Wafts of smoke
That scream and die

I need the sun
I need it to shine
Shine
That its warmth
May fall all around me
Resting on my skin
And wrapping an arm around me
Like a brother
Offering comfort
Offering love
For the sun will stifle death
Piercing winter's shroud
And calling forth colour
Life
Sweeping away the remembrance of bondage
Of so many evils
To stand in the open air
In the sunlight
And feel the rebirth of the soul
As the sun gives us sight
Waking us from our empty dreams
Into truth
That withers our man made rays
And shows them for what they are
Fragile
Lifeless
A misrepresentation
Of what it attempts to imitate
Somewhere
We forgot
We lost track of what real lights are
And filled our lives with artificial meaning
Manufactured illumination
A light that is not white
But blank
And I call out for the sun

On Thoughts to be Developed Later

With our firm foundation on the Declaration of Independence, we here in America tend to set freedom as our highest virtue.
Sometimes I wonder if this is entirely a good thing.

On the Post-Modern World

I can't believe I passed by my 50th blog post without even realizing it. Now I won't be able to celebrate a marker until I reach 100, whenever that comes. Ah well, perhaps it is better this way.
The following poem started out mostly as an experiment in style and vocabulary, but I really liked what came out of it, I am not sure if I think it is done, but I am finally going to post it and see if it gets a reaction. Maybe it is silly of me to expect one and even sillier to admit it, but now that I have, please feel free to tell me what you think, or if it even makes any sense at all.

The Nebulous Malaise

I am the phantasmagoric
Image of the waning
Light that rains in destitute
Shards as I shake my jaded
Fist at all the lofty
Dust in the broken
Derelict
Death
Wears a tragically ornate
Masquerade among the foolhardy
Confidants who think that their vapid
Silence amounts to more than the gleaming
Fragility of modern
Aspiration
Hunger
Gnaws in all the shouting
Hearts that palpitate beneath the shadowed
Egos in their corrupt
Dungeons as the transcendental
Cowards avoid the dreadful
Genuine because fractured
Comprehension refuses the bloody
Truth
Burdens
Plummet through the everlasting
Darkness with flabbergasted
Souls who battled fitful
Time beneath the ever watchful
Fate they fashioned with a purloined
Pestle by beating out the obtuse
Beauty of incomprehensible
Uniqueness
Shadows
Poison the disconcordant
Avenues where the effervescent
Lightning lies in murky
Heaps with the malused
Thunder as the ostentatious
Shroud defenestrates sacred
Hope
Loss
Permeates the distant
Spirit of former
Idealism with a stagnant
Disillusionment as the raucous
Sea consumes the flailing
Stragglers clinging to an irresolvable
Nothing
Distance
Hides behind falsified
Proximity when the opaque
Faces dissemble with practiced
Barriers before dissipating like stifling
Smoke to which we give our metamorphosed
Worship though it hangs like beggared
Loneliness
Pursuit
Continues in the labyrinthine
Twilight where I find the perpetual
Derision and the looming
Menace of colluding
Fears
Light
Illumines the broken
Vagabonds and leads their belaboured
Spirits through overbearing
Shame where I am found in tattered
Knowledge with discarded
Logic of the striving
Generations who have led me to this brutal
Juncture and I finally discern the repulsive
King whose humiliated
Body shows the immaculate
Source of long-awaited
Life

On Transforming Worldviews

The world is changed.

Every now and then, something happens, an event or an internal exploration, that makes a person question their worldview. It is usually the occurrence of something contradictory to and unexplainable by their opinions and understandings, though sometimes it can come about by self-assessment. When this occurs, a person has no choice but to adjust their worldview in order to understand this new happening.

Today...I ate Chinese food....and liked it.