A Collection

         These are a few poems I've been writing, a collection you could call it. I'm no Billy Collins but all of these poems reveal some of the thoughts and musings I've had throughout this year, and I also think that poetry of any sort is always something worth blogging about and sharing.                                       

                                               The Night I Saw Infinity in The Soccer Field

             Some people say that fog rolls in, but that fog sunk into the world, throwing its

             grasping hands through everything--even through people.  

The fog grew and the day dimmed, cloaking the trees, making the lights fuzzy, giving cataract vision to the world.

I left the library, as it was due my time to leave that place.

The world outside was different, like the prelude in a novel you cannot read before bed 

because it makes you afraid.

My feet drifted onto the path by the gym, beside the shrubs that cower in winter and blaze in

fall.

The fog clung around me, and I purposefully wandered onto the soccer field.

It was wet and mushy, and I could sense the grass beneath my feet.

The fog swept around me, and I could see the fuzzy lights of the boys’ dorm.  

I felt a little  self-conscious, standing there in the middle of the soccer field on this eerie night.

The field and the fog wrapped around my eyes, as I stared across the field.

A sense of infinity overcame me, borderless, awful infinity that grabbed the darkness, staying forever.

Not eternity, like they talk about in the Bible, this was infinity, meaningless stretches of time and space into which there could be no end.

Everything and everyone would stay the same here, the world would stagnate, and our souls would meld together like too many watercolors that fade into brown in the end.   

Hell will be like that.  Eternity in Heaven can be no such thing.

The neverending there is full, vibrant, living, forming each new breath, breathing in and out again, and again.  Eternity and infinity are not the same.

These thought I pondered as I moved back towards my dorm.

Lights from cars swung in the darkness.  The fog obscured everything and the shadows were not afraid.

The few bodies I passed were people, and my heart grew warmer towards them, knowing that we were out here alone on this night, infinity shrouding the living, sinking into the depths of all of us.

But still.

Stars, those electric balls of fire, burned somewhere, existing still--though they were hidden by the smoke.  The stars still echoed on, eternity spinning, dreaming, breathing,

answering, calling again, calling out that one day the dawn will come.

It came, three hours later.

            I wept and closed the door to my room.

 

 

Friendship and Schizophrenia   

        What would it be like to touch and see, and lose your grip on reality?

        When would it happen? Where would you be, when you lost your grip

        on reality?

       

        Would you be in a dark room or a very cold place, far from the sea

        and the human race?

        What would life be like there?  What would you see, far from the human

        race and far from me?

       

        What would you hear in that place, beyond our own time and space?

        Would you hear sounds, chants, and whispering too?

        The garbled sounds of demons and biochemistry floating through you--

        becoming your reality, far from the human race

        and far from me?

        Would you be followed there by your thoughts, and the reality that you thought

        you knew?

        But we all knew it couldn’t be true.

        Would they persecute you there, chase after and follow you with snarls and

        laughter?

        Would you hide in a corner, bent and stricken, a monarch of sorrow,

        far from the human race and far from me?

        How would people treat you there?  Would they even care? How would you say that your mind

        is not well today, tomorrow or maybe even for the next month of May? Would you find     

        yourself locked in a hospital room, a living and white tomb?

        Or would you find yourself living on the streets, with living

        and breathing becoming quite a feat?

        Would you live there with your grip on reality gone, empty of each and every song, far from the

        human race and far from me?

        Then the question appears, of how would I treat you in your ramblings and

        fears, in your reality of untrue?

        Would I forsake the you that I knew?

        If you lived tied to a hospital bed what would I do?

        Would I draw pictures and bring flowers, just to remind you, if not myself,

        that the world still holds grace even though your face seems to have been erased?

        If you were on the street, losing your grip on the human race,

        would I bring you muffins and coffee?

        Would I make sure they were hot, because it’s cold outside the human race,

        reality, and me?

        This is how it would go, this is how it would be.

        You living and alive, but living among the dead,

        survived by me, your one true friend.



                                                               The Age of Discovery
                           Sea-salt against your face, wind chasing and tangling your hair.
                           You are me and the ship rises heading into a new space.
                           That smell--can you sense it, can you drink it in?
                           It's the smell of adventure.
                           Christopher Columbus said there's a new world across the sea.
                           Can you imagine all the things we don't know?
                           Can you sense the curiosity?
                           Maybe you'll come back a sultan, clinking with bags of gold, or maybe
                           you'll have a pet monkey perched on your shoulder?
                          You'll meet new peoples different from us, and you will learn.
                          You'll be learning for all of us, you know.
                          The adventure, this seeking, it's something that echoes inside our
                          humanity.
                          Set sail go seek and be sought.
                          The world is a mystery and you are curious, dying to know,
                          to touch, taste, and understand what is beyond the sea.
                          Welcome to the adventure.

                          
                                                After Reading "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry"
                           I reached the last page, my fingers closed the book,
                          and I was finished.
                          But the emotion still rolled through me, rocking through my chest in
                          the silence of the library.
                          The Logans' plea became my own, and as they suffered so did I,
                          as I read through the rhythmic laughter and pounding sorrow of the book.
                          The Logans became my family, and I became an attached observer.
                          Books teach us more than just metaphors and vocabulary;
                          they teach us empathy.
                          They teach us to feel beyond ourselves.
                          That's something worth teaching in school.
                          I had to write this, for it just didn't seem right to unfeelingly head into another
                          assignment and forget.
                          Forget what had been done, what had been felt, what had been understood.
                          To lean empathy we must grow to walk beyond ourselves.

                                                                     Iron Maiden

            Bitterness is a cramped room and a claw.

            It shoves you in and locks the door, promising that it will last and protect you

forevermore.

But really it gnaws at your bones and skin, drawing you deeper within.

It whispers spells of protections, urging you deeper into its embrace,

but those arms are acid and nibble furiously at your heart.

It never leaves you quite as you were before.

But oh, sometimes it feels sweet, breathless and delicious--

makes you feel powerful, like maiden wielding an iron

rod of destiny.

It makes you feel cold and hard, full of uncracked, impenetrable ice.

Bitterness is a prison of protection.

You can see if they’ve felt bitterness’ embrace.

It’s always in their eyes.

You can fake laughter, you cannot fake the eyes.

Those eyes have lost their warmth, and have turned to steel.

It’s putting up walls and striking cannon fire,

yelling, screaming, that the flames I will shoot you with will grow

hotter and hotter if you try to enter in.

May I begin again to make or renew this acquaintance?

But no, she laughs with that bitter, callous laugh, an iron maiden

wielding an iron blade with an iron grasp, and a beating heart protected by

an iron gate.

And I must say that I understand this now.

I understand how people become this, as it becomes them and they are changed.

I understand now.

But now I also know that deep within us all a choice must be drawn,

to close ourselves off and rail at the night or to still believe in something,

someone, and allow laughter and heartache both to enter our sight.

Or do we just become just those with iron lungs, breathing after and not before

the dawn, wielding iron rods, commanding our own iron destinies?

But for me and myself, I choose life and I choose it all--

the laughter, the heartache, the kindness, and the woe.

I choose to open my gates to let others mingle within and to not let my heart harden               

to stone as the iron maiden would have done

            forever and within.



                                                New England Fall: Written on Simpson's Grave
              Feet dangled over edge and stone, bumping, smiling, dreaming girlish dreams,
              the earth a fog of leaves, clouds, and morning dew.
              Your eyes dive into the river that cannot be separated from the sky.
              You wonder if this is the time that angels travel between heaven and earth, whispering
               to men and women.
               But you know that is not correct theology.
              
               The call cries out--the silence void of all conversation, and yet
               You hear the hum of cars on the highway, endless and unceasing, the sound
               the roars like breakers on the ocean.
               You see a woman with a scarf around her neck, a tell-tale sign of Fall, and you feel the
               cold coming, rising, sinking--but not here yet.
               The stone is cold though, perhaps it has stood here far too long, between the ages
               and triumphs of men.
               Now this stone is your seat and it is cold, but it is this you love--
               the air, the atmosphere, the utter silence, your belly filled from a hearty breakfast.
              
               You sense the ghosts of New England poets, the ones you read in school.
               You wonder if you could catch a glimpse of Longfellow straining at the oars of his boat.
               Somewhere between the mist and fog he disappears.
               You sigh, enchanted by days deep filled with mist and mystery.
 
               You wonder about this new life and college, as you stare out over the river.
               You hear a fog horn call out to the halls of humanity.
               A grin lights up your face, and you are glad that it is fall.