“You have brains in your head,
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own and you know what you know
And you’re the one who’ll decide where to go.”
Dr. Seuss
The Casualties Of True Love
True love is not gentle, calm, or casual
It’s the harshest, most demanding, and arresting
Occurrence of the human experience
It tackles the heart with the force of a whisper
And in an instant can raze the landscape of your past
Sending tidal waves of pain, joy, doubt, and change
To wash over the loved ones of your former life
There will be casualties
Such a shift cannot happen smoothly and
Death cannot be avoided
There will be many deaths of a thousand different shapes and hues
Deaths of lesser loves and simpler lives
Of easy answers and unforgivable crimes
With the terrifying leap of faith into a world of true love
Comes the risk of disappointment and the inevitable
Severing of now unnecessary support lines
Frivolous interests and anything incapable of measuring up to love
I cannot claim to have been a saint or
Even to have acted respectfully to all involved
But I have acted out of love
Intermittently misplaced as it has been, is, or will be
And I know no other way to live but through a life of sacrificial love
Giving Thanks
On a rare occasion, I had a few days off and was close enough to my parents to go home for Thanksgiving. It was great to finish the first leg of our tour in time to meet up with both my immidiate and extended family. We decided to hand out stationary so everyone could jot down the things they were most thankful for this year. Having temporarily lost my voice the first night back, I had enough quiet time to compose my thanks in verse complete with a rhyming quatrain prologue. I hope you had a brilliantly grateful and serene holiday.
Had I my vocal faculty
I’d say this with verbosity
But from my sore necessity
I’ll state it with simplicity:
I’m thankful for my fam’ly, ev’ryone,
And for th’ amazing things that you have done;
Through times of war your fight has won me peace;
By working sleepless nights you bought me dreams;
You raised me right and true through all your pain,
With late-night talks of God that weren’t in vain;
Of course I can’t forget to mention sis,
Your very presence here’s enough to give us bliss;
Without you I couldn’t be called a man
For you ar’the giants’ shoulders’ on which I stand.
C is for … Change
Change is either neither good nor bad or both good and bad; your perspective, your choice. That’s the subjective nature of reality, as I see it. It could be written with your own loving hand on tear stained paper, or casually revealed as a piece of a movie montage. The life we choose to view in any given moment only illuminates the path perceived by peering through one pair of spectacles. But if we dare to peek outside that singular frame of reference we see we’re suspended in a sea of spectacles, each one just and true within themselves.
Whatever way it’s viewed, the one thing change will always be is inclusive. Change touches everyone every way; from the trivial to the tragic. A misplaced appointment can scramble my synapses and hijack my intention of health; a simple call from a sibling cancertainly stir dreaded thoughts of mortality from the silt in my soup-kettle soul.
How should we view this? Where should we turn; to friends, family, and loved ones; to God above; to the God within; to hell with this victimizing bull-shit and write our own story with depictions of realistic immortality?
…
My world has changed.
Although, as much as my melodramatic imaginations would blind me to the fact, her’s has changed more, with less sense or sympathy. Why would a brother be denied his only life-long friend; mothers their sleep; or a son his mother’s milk, all as she is forced to believe in heaven while bounding through hell.
I cannot see the glory through the gloom,
But yet I pray, for my dear sister’s sake,
This cancerous cloud will, like my nimble mood,
Have need enough its own great change to make.
Adventures in Aging
About the time the rust was falling to the floor
My knee took on a red-orange glow,
Unfortunately forced to head for the door
Waiting to watch what The Dude might know;
Now at home with my pain and my peas
Some saline signals the need for change,
With acupuncture, pills, and trees,
I believe again in a dancer’s range.
Overdue Poem
Well it’s about time I think, being just shy of two months hibernation from the blogging world. There is nothing that can make the wait worth the while so the anticipated entry might as well be a frivolous poem on the nature of man and drink. Not the masterpiece I thought it was when I wrote it, but it serves its purpose. I hope you enjoy.
I’m light of heart with laughter that’s deep,
The true nature of man comes in drink,
For when the time comes when I am drunk,
I hear my true heart’s beat as loud as a drum.
Maiden Voyage
My maiden voyage missed a man of Mamet proportions by mere minutes, but comforted by the contented chaos of cutlery covers at the Counter Cafe, and awed by the audacity and alacrity of authentic Austin abodes, I proceeded to peddle and pedestrianize this place of
Austin.
…
loss is real I cannot hide from its harrowing harangue fear is real failure is not a frivolous feat but an unfortunate profundity I know these things from my experience of them, and yet my knowledge of them suggests a medium more ethereal than real; and yet the attachments to these trivial things; these disdended details of the day to day; these life altering trivialities can, with the encouragement of our will, seemingly subjugate our lives as a mouse on a throne of lions.
Silent Night
A bottle of cabernet,
House to myself,
Silence,
Someone who listens,
Someone who understands,
On the eve of change,
Silence,
Longing for more,
Contented with “See you soon,”
And the rest is,
Silence.
