Laconic Lunacy

Until you stand in a dark field, devoid of street lights and car eyes, of candle wicks tickling the night and fluorescence, on a midnight full of moon the field is a silver fox of rolling fur and its tails are the trees swaying in the twilight breeze - can you comprehend the being-divine? I hear no melodies, Lord, not one running through my mind tonight. I know they shiver and shift on the edges of my consciousness, but they've stagnated or silenced, like gnats in molasses - drowned, perhaps. An inelegance predominates, a hyperbolic nil, and I can't clear it out, for every other "it" is out, and this sticky residue, this vapid ectoplasm alone remains, home of fruit flies and ravens. A great Nothing populates this ghost town, with vacancy on every neon sign, dusty dens, and only tumbleweed duels at noon, though nothing moves, not even this moon as the sun since fled the sky.

vivisect to scrutinize,
I'm an insect on a slide -
careful with my psyche, loves,
where the spear enters my side
bleeds everything that's making me
alive? whispers the night
the bullet moon,
my bull's brown eyes
collide in a horoscope horror
blinding bright

Story Writing Time Approaches

Everything, unwittingly, is old.

this time especially so,

and I don’t know if it understands

what the grass is, young man,

or comprehends spring things just yet.

it weeps without tears to shed;

sleeps without dreams or rest;

it wants with nothing to expect,

and exhales without air

or even breath.

It burns, loves, without anything

inspiring such regrets,

and it moves, with nowhere to go,

and nowhere it has ever been.

The time of stories approaches, and I’m still uncertain where this one is pulling me. At first, I began with a pretty standard fantasy tale, and then realized I wanted something a tad more dramatic. I wasn’t even sure what this meant, but just that I wanted a story that might not bore me initially. Even if the end result isn’t satisfactory, that can always be fixed up. But if the concept is lacking, only so much can be done without a complete rehaul.

But what? That is always the question, no?

So I decided to scrap the original concept of a medieval “tolkein-lewis” mash that perpetuates throughout our simplistic “fantasy fiction” and twist the setting. One of the things I enjoy about Brent Week’s writing is that he doesn’t fear treading on new territory with old themes. He can maintain the semblance of an epic fantasy, but set in Mediterranean Renaissance or pre-industrial revolution era. When western society catches up with the middle east in discovering gunpowder, and warfare gets a strange boost with the discovery that no skill is needed in warfare, only a factory-produced weaponry, a swift lesson on loading, and a bunch of boys with guns.

I don’t particularly plan on joining in on this era, but I think a little branching out, or even inventing of time periods, can certainly spice up an aging genre. I am not trendsetting, mostly because I don’t plan on selling any of this writing, but it will be a bit of a stretch for me doing some of the research required to produce a reasonable and believable setting. The ease of the tolkein-esque world is that it’s been done and overdone, so now we expect every traveler to find an inn, eat some stew, drink a frothy beer in a pub, catch up on the scuttlebutt, roll some dice and head off into the wild unknown after some great reptilian beast that has stolen our gold, burninated the countryside, and needs defeat. I think there is value in these stories, as Gaiman said (after Chesterton said something similar, I believe):

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten

I believe in the merit of fairy tales, but I also believe that if the writing is done right, you can place them anywhere you like.

I’m not exactly writing a fable or fairy tale this November, but a little mythos never hurt anyone.

Brief Autumnal Haiku

summer itches on,
die slowly, dear, or linger
autumn saunters in

barn owls hooting
pines bristling like hedgehogs -
leaves gold transform

the sun-browned grasses
crimson moon o'er city lights
red the fall anon



Haiku is not my specialty, turns out. But they are fun to try anyway.

Moon and Mythos

a la olwen

the fabular moon, unequivocal,

argentine in tiding time,

tugs the waves of my heart

fro and to phantasmal dreams

witness the boreal sky-shivers

boring into my deep being

where black, shadow, light

are born in a breath-bright

moment, it passes, and forever

bliss scars my sea-deep soul

scalding love, blanket violence

together we're never far from home

lunar lunacy, hanging bloody by,

a heavenly sacrifice, only why?

All too often, we flatten our colors into the simplest pictures of black and white. Knowing what we know now, what ill-prepared, naïve decisions might we make? There is little merit to making colorful decisions from black and white knowledge; we are not myths. How often, in our daily lives, do we find characters of unequivocal evil, or unblemished good? The knight in shining, undusty, unnotched armor must be fighting inside a mythos quarantine, for the moment he steps outside his sterilized story, dust settles into the corners, and branches snap at his suit, and swords will seek chinks in his defenses.

Crux of the Morning

I and Lord
stumble into the coffee pot, the bus stop,
the close-mind gourd -
complacently divine, you'll find us
sitting, not dead,
relishing finger corn still hot
with Yeshua hoping I'll hold his cup,
though my chai is steaming full
in whose depths Rorschach wrestles
with murky devils new and old -
I swallow the last kernel my body represents
and the Lord looks betrayed
that nothing was saved.
ambling on down towards pumpkin morn,
chimney stubble, and ashen cheeks,
window smudges herald a bloody third dawn
whose sacrifice our morning greets
as I fork over thirty suspicious cents
for a glum and dismal paper
with naught save hellish news
of a father-forsaken earth,
and a cuckoo crows thrice on the hour
and I am not alone


I haven't written anything worth reading for almost a month. That's really rather embarrassing, and something I hope to rectify. When it comes down to a more full experience, life is a priority queue. I wrote in my journal a few things worth considering, including a passage on balance that is woefully incomplete, but has such silly, over-breathy sentences such as: "our foolish culture screams at us to fill only ourselves, and our childish comprehension of religion demands we only fill others, leaving us as useful as a broken see-saw."
Even though the sentence is a bit wonky, I appreciate the topic, and hope I have time to continue that train of thought.

Summer's Close

It’s amazing the different forms writing takes simply based upon what I’m reading at the moment, or what fascinates me, or how my days progress. As I encounter different stimulus, I find myself enamoured of certain facets of life, like angles on a beautiful gemstone or vantages on a ridge over a magnificent vista. A fleeting infatuation that my aesthetic teen dictates as love, for how can it be anything less?

Right now I’m reading an assortment of books: Gilead (Ems), The Sparrow (barely started), Fragile Things short stories by Gaiman (JG), and fluttering around with the attention of a fish for flowers over poetry. I’m probably not getting enough sleep, but summer is the season of love, not hibernation, and I’m more bear than marsupial – I’ve no tendency for estivation. I sleep poorly in toasty weather, and ever since my high fevers of this past Christmas, I’ve found myself waking up more and more drenched in sweat when using fewer and fewer blankets, or in chills when using more. I occasionally believe my sleeplessness is having an existential crisis, and inventing reasons for dragging me from the ocean depths of dream.

My journal lately is so hodgepodge, it’s certainly a testament to summer, sleeplessness, the wired and antsy reading regimen I’ve developed, relationship, and the ambiguous and divergent passions kindled by spreading myself thin over so many breads. Even now, I feel so tentatively tied to this topic, I almost wrote, as my next sentence: I haven’t even seen any waterfalls this summer; I do so want to see waterfalls afore the summer’s end. But what has that to do with the rest of this? Little, I expect.

There are many things to pray for this month, as it’s been bountiful in love and grace, but also hardship and pain. Matthew’s mother-in-law’s death, little brother’s going to college, P  getting a promotion and losing weekends, Ems starting school and the frustrations and angsts that attend that dramatic switch of lifestyle and scheduling, the continued changes of being a homeowner, friends moving from Bend to the valley, friends getting jobs and starting school, friends just continuing on in the norm and growing frustrated with the status quo or debating whether it’s worth a change in life to upset the balance of normalcy. Really, there are a lot of prayer requests, and as many joys if you remember to look for those, equally. There are always a lot of joys.

a people pauper, indigent of joy

holds a slim stack of papers

whose columns claw at the sky

and grunts, cold beneath the smoky night

without friend blankets or family fires

a lacrimae factory shivering and tired

he sneezes, allergic to life

until a cup, half full of empty wine

passed over from whoever

bears the stigmata tonight

saves some time for a fleeting life

ah ophelia, I loved you so

believe me well this time, and give up not

Buried Treasure

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/buried-treasure/

in the staggering steps of night

a trite, yet honest, man, speaks:

standing upright means less than once.

brushing back the cobwebs of summer

as a brawl laced with liqueur -

ah, he stutters, whittling at a stone

he clasps tight between his fingers,

war is a brutish adze we claim carves

figurines, or a hammer for sewing doilies -

he sips his soup carefully, balancing

each broth drop on his sharpened blade.

true marble sculpture, he tells me,

requires just the right sort of scythe;

and then he dies laughing, and night goes on.

I live in a world where everything that merits nothing demands my attention, and those things that deserve my notice are drowned in the clamor. Today, I received five piece of mail that all said: “urgent, please reply as soon as possible”, and each soon found a new home in the recycling bin. And there are those tiny advertisements from charities, demure, tentative, knowing that each cent must be well spent and spread thin over a vast territory. But these are the silent questions, the dumb mendicants and lepers who shame us with their neediness.

Anyone can laud the fashionable, the showy, but it takes a great deal of courage, heart, and patience to love the derelict and the wretched. But everything, almost without fail, asks for some semblance of notice. It may be an obscure misdirect, or an embarrassed request, or a gaudy sign that leaves no doubt of intent, but we’re not eternally solitary, aloof creatures.

There’s a lot of life, yet, to live; I see this in myself. But I must also engage in vying for that life in others, so that their joy, too, may be complete. Often I set that precedence so blithely, and blindly glance over the wounded ones, the lepers, the untouchables – those who need more than anyone else in the world the touch of divinity. Can I be love’s hands and feet?

Summer 2

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/summer-2/ ‎

far away and all too near,

my thoughts dress a thousand shipwrecks -

shattered stained-glass windows

collected into a graveyard

of a colored cathedral smashed in our laps;

and through this pastel mass

I dance on magic toes that float

above every little death the sea holds.

an apology to the wind, I deny

its grasp on me, no one my master be,

I'm over the clouds the ocean breathes.

how silver and august the marine waves -

don't chastise me for flying defiantly

through a beautiful world whose spirit

comforts me, and carries me ever home

Summer’s ever so busy. People bustling like bees, believing this to be the season of flowers, nectar, and dreams. And I’m behind where I thought I’d be, and ahead. Every day breathes so carefully, like a child behind a late-night couch where their parent watches tv, knowing they should be in bed, but needing, feeding on the closeness and love of unknown proximity. Life is tilting, and every time I shift my feet, everything else shifts. But I’m thankful.

Everything is a balancing act, and I’m trying to decide how to best navigate the things in life I need, want, and provide. And which should be first? I always consider my giftings as the most important, but that should not always be so. Perhaps never so, over my own needs. But what do I actually need? Most things are just wants. Other than food, water, sleep, warmth, and hope, what do I actually require for survival? My hope is in Christ, I’m well fed, sleep is iffy lately, but I’m certainly getting almost a REM cycle a day (maybe), and summer keeps me very warm. Everything after that is wants, cravings, and it feels greedy and selfish to ever expect those over provision for other’s wants. But perhaps this, too, is even not always so.

There is too little that is black and white that we try conforming into that dualistic picture. When we see greys and colors, we mentally try to collect them into black and white boxes for easier compartmentalization. Ems and I discussed this for a moment after watching Les Mis, when contemplating the suicide of Javert. When black and white justice acquires some semblance of grey, when Jean Valjean displays kindness, mercy, and humanity, Javert loses his pedestal of righteous judgment. His divine purpose is twisted, and his entire life’s compartmentalization is unboxed, and like the Greek story of Pandora, all his fears and nightmares are released.

Little is actually black or white, but that’s still what we pretend to see. I, in particular, want a simple trigger clause for activity and love, though such things cannot be applied. If so-and-so situation is this, follow this list of directions; if so-and-so does this, reply with these exact words. I don’t want to be a machine, but I sometimes internally fancy a set of machine instructions. What a silly world I’ve constructed for myself.

And summer is ever so busy with the musings on such topics, and the movements of life. Life is dancing, running away, and flirting with my consciousness in such a way that I’m ever confused, bemused, and craving more. 

La la lune

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/la-la-lune/

Of what does the other moon dream?

That half whom we never might see

Does it face the stars complacently?

Knowing the sun its other side feels?

it pulls at tides on a world unknown

oh, olwen, I’m following the heart of thee

as a doe lightly leaping over still waters

my heart quickens – I loved the darker half last

la la lune, la la lune, what do the shadows see?

You can spend every moment of every day studying the facets of spiritual love, and be completely baffled at its prisms on a twist. “You can learn all that there is to know about their [love’s] ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they [love] can still surprise you at a pinch. –Tolkien (with Ben interpretations and additions).

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

What is it, Olwen? It is the quilt of snow over the trees and fields, the cirrus clouds on summer days that look like cracked ice drifting over a tropical sea, it is in the sunflowers and snowdrops in their seasons, the tulips in the moment, and the cold snarl of the mother bear; it is the dance of sun and moon, the clasp of a warm hand when yours is chilled to the bone, and it is being tucked under a mighty wing, wide as the heavens and closer than your own heart. 

When I can't

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/when-i-cant/

when I can't

the holy spirit ties my shoes

double knot, just so, snug

and my hair loose, arms out wide

whispers catch the cat of nine

the trees slap at my knees;

turning aside the burning nib

that pens in hateful words

onto my parched and parchment soul -

muse and music, wine and time

for lying by Elijah dining

on the gifts of ravens,

where the world is an empty

deserted place without any water

I am lifted on the wings of eagles

sipping holy water and unraveling

the spiritual knots so I might

wander heaven's pastures, bare of foot

On difficult days, more than other days, the second string steps up to play. I’m falling on useless legs like a world-cup stumbler, praying for a foul, a little grace from a biased referee. And when my knees break, shins crack, and I curl into a little helpless quaver on the thin green grass, the stretchers come to carry me into the wings for a rest. There is nothing wrong with the bench, nothing I couldn’t anticipate. Oh, and how those who wait want to run. How could you not, sitting on heaven’s shores, waiting for a little chance to soar?

Agrarian Things

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/agrarian/

All around me, sinking ships

shipwrecked into sidewalks, streets,

jettison your hold, you are driftwood

swimming down like a sinking stone -

how many have lost their way from the sky

now swallowed by the earthen bones,

the mighty maw of urban night -

the gravestones windowed and tall

house a thousand, million souls,

with bent backs, ambling, they pretend

they are not yet dead

and only here are they,

for passing over the waters into the breeze

the green, gold, and red will resurrect

those who leave their steps behind

set sail on this dingy life into eternity

holding hands and barely breathing

I feel like our culture is consistently trying to be convincing. Through advertisements, arguments, doctrine and indoctrination of the media, politics and picture portrayal, we're stamping our persuasive arguments at every passerby. Who are we trying to convince of our rightness? I think, often, it's more ourselves than others. Convinced we've chosen the correct, the healthiest path; convinced God will respect our decisions, or forgive us for them even though we persist in faulting; convinced that each step is valid, sound, and permissible in the eyes of ourselves, our audience.

Is it possible to miss that which you never had? I, too, try to be convincing to myself. Sometimes I'm convinced I miss the times of community, in humanity's youth: the pastoralists, the nomads, the tribes, the polis, the smaller feudal towns. More, I miss the concept of the Amish, where community, tradition, and holding tight to values is captured perfectly in intentional love and family. I miss the wildness of the world, the time where warriors fought for theology, not money, and the whimsy of birds on the wind free.

Everything and everyone attempts to convince me otherwise, but I’m holding onto these things, the countryside and the wildflowers. Don’t swallow the arguments whole or you’ll find yourself spit on a hook and dragged to where your gills can’t breathe. 

These Hands

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/these-hands/

As I lied, I lied

tears shook your shoulders while you cried:

please stop, and hide the truth no more -

A ghost, poltergeist, an echo at most

left behind when you’ve carved out hope

replacing dreams with ash and lime;

traipsing down the somber street side

blithe and blank with an empty face

no matter the distance down aching lane

turn around and you’re home again

beside a hearth-whole fire

safe inside these walls

It’s amazing how little distance you must travel to find people hurting. We assume missions are necessary to Africa and Eastern Europe, or dangerous places for Christians like China or the Middle East, but plenty of hurt sits next to us on the bus, at the dinner table, or even on the church pews - perhaps especially on the church pews.

And how do you address such pains, the problems not of meals and poverty, but of internal poverty and spiritual starvation? How do you address depression, anxiety, loneliness, anger, despair, a lack of self-confidence, doubt, pain, or stress? These things our individualistic society has told us to bury deep within our psyche until they are embedded in our personality, entrenched in our existence, when a person cannot separate their identity from stress, pain, and the horrors of ill-relationship.

And I’m an introvert, tentative with hands of healing, shy with words of comfort, timid with grace and mercy, wordless with exhortation, bashful with blessing, hesitant with hope and helpfulness. How do I extend hands that are stuck in my pockets, and how do I open eyes that are self-consciously staring at my toes, and how do I love when my heart hides in my sleeves?

Holy Spirit move in me; a susurrus of wind and wave that washes me from head to feet, and dresses me in neat white linens, and sets me free to serve and be, and be wholly loving.

These hands that have taken, let them give; these feet that have wandered, set them true; these eyes that have judged, let them cry with mercy and grace.

Flux

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/flux/

I read an article recently on divorce, whose author suggested that America's concept of marriage is tremendously skewed into believing you are marrying an instant of a person, a daguerreotype. People change, year by year, day by day, moment by moment, and if you love someone as an instant, as a trophy mounted on the wall, it's no wonder that divorce rates skyrocketed. There's no value in a person as a person, but only a value in the haloed, sanctified idol we’ve replaced them with.

I’ve never been in a relationship before (until now!), but I can’t tell you how excited I am to change, and see change moving through us as we grow in relationship, Christ, and simply as persons.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, said that no man ever steps in the same river twice. He invented the concept of “flux”, the constant shifting of things, organic and inorganic. There is a hint of truth in his words, in that things are constantly changing, new molecules pass down the river instant by instant, and experiences mold the clay that makes a woman or a man. But there is some quality, a consistency of being, that stays.

Life, being, persons, everything is in flux, perhaps, and it is this which makes the “daguerreotype love” so precipitous, and enduring love so beautiful, even divine.

Your first love for somebody can last ... but it changes too after promises have been made and time as passed and knowledge has come.
Wendell Berry (in Hannah Coulter)

At the same time, the rustling zephyr canters

Through the leaves of trees and pushes clouds

Across the countryside, a gentle scythe over wheat

It transforms fields into a great, golden sea;

And a newspaper tumbles like a wheel of weed

Down soggy streets whose only light bounces down

From building window to window until it drowns in the road

And makes alchemy of oil, puddles, and spilt drinks;

And the clever man tips back his tumbler and taps his feet

To the beat of the jazz hands stumbling up the bass, down the piano

While a hundred classy customers celebrate with feast and dance;

And the same stars rise, climb, and fall where a boy sits

In the hospital and glances out the screen, remembering

That in the relativity of things, the heavens are a great eternity

Tonight was soccer night, coffee night, and the beginning of the weekend. There is nothing like soccer to end a week – I wish every night ended thus, sometimes: the adrenaline, the friends, the grass between my toes, the goals, the smiles, the joy at understanding how to run and kick and play.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines - Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

...

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

...

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

Pablo Neruda – Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

I understand, Pablo. And it is no depression, no sadness that summons these lyrics, the metric of melancholy or the glossary of gloom, but the rhythm of the rain dancing against the window pane and the emptiness of the night. The day was bright and sunny, but the night – oh, what is the night? – is full of the null of time, and now is when I write.

I’ve made many mistakes I think, Olwen, and I only hope my triumphs define me and not they. Earlier today, I had in mind to write on topics of weddings, of joyful unions and communions of friends, old and new, of misty-morning drives and the celebration of fathers, but I feel like a child in the Cat in the Hat, uncertain of the joy that’s arrived, and whether, indeed, the fish is right.

a long ways away, the river speaks like voices,

echoing high and light over the morning, it reigns

from the clouds formed from droplets falling into the waiting

open arms beneath, where spray lifts as water drops

and dashes against the rocks, and  opal lights briefly

find being, and lose it in a breath, one they’ve stolen from me

and in these virginal waters I see the still naked eve and a’dam

so absorbed in the moment, they notice not me

nor the snaking, twisting branches of water falling –

before and after, such feeling,

though for a moment there was peace

Before pain, before the fall, would oysters still have formed their pearls, without the itch? 

Rivers Mighty

There is beautiful land here: the Columbia gorge, the Willamette (the river why?), Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, the Olympics, the Cascades, the Issaquah Ridge, the national forests, the stony refusal of nature to comply with silly roads and forested towns, the bays and ocean vistas, the lakes and river curlicues – how arabesque and wavy is our world, like a dervish dance spinning or the sinuous shapes of ancient eastern art, twisting and rolling like the waves and the snakes, and the wind eddying around the minarets and parapets of time.

But every string I’ve seen possesses both beginning and end, end and beginning, even the wind whispering and the ocean waves singing, even the dreams I’m clinging to, with distant, foggy shores. Some metaphysical kitten plays with the sweater-threads of my life, gnawing, clawing, fraying its unravelling strings and deftly splitting the colors into a mess of sudden ends and new. And though it is a sweater no longer, I’m beginning to believe it’s beautiful, nonetheless. Perhaps more so, with its spontaneous elegance, an arbitrary truncation into a colorful next – a rough patch in a river makes the river leap, and where water falls, rainbows spring.

Is the river’s might in raging rapids,

smoothing the stones and leveling mountains?

or in the width of its waters gently

etching a means towards eternal seas?

perhaps her strength lies in a sleight of hand

breaking boulders into sand and hiding

around clever bends, tracing the moon’s path

through desert, forest, fields, and quiet hearts.

but no matter where it goes, it’s coming

home again, racing to the end, he sways,

tipsy and tired – greeting the ocean

with sad smiles, wondering now and then,

how poignant the sunrise and set can be,

even here, even now, even eventually

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/rivers-mighty/

Audio Books and Fae Things

I used to glance askance at audio books, always assuming that listening to a book was ridiculous in comparison to reading the book myself. Only in the past year have I realized how foolishly blithe this was. Audio books are awesome. Not as a replacement for reading, but as an opportunity for reading while driving, running, working, or for listening to other interpretations of passages that I’ve only read within the echoing chambers of my skull.

At first, I started “audio reading” books that I was struggling to find time for, but had always wanted to read, but then I realized an alternative use for this particular format. My speakers aren’t particularly good in my car, and the bass and treble often get truncated, and because I often acquire my audio books for free from librivox, every chapter is a different reader and some of the authors are impossible to hear. The difficulty, then, is knowing that I might miss important information, and that makes reading more involved books almost impossible. The alternative I found is listening to poetry and mythology. I’d always wanted to read the whole of the Ramayana, the Poetic Edda and the Central American mythos. Listening to the philosophical conversations between Arjuna and Krishna is easier than struggling to follow difficult Russian names in War and Peace (which I’ll just have to read in my free time), and listening to the rhythm of poetry has revived my interest in certain poets that I previously struggled reading because of how I read their poems.

I started listening to Wordsworth, Edgar Allen Poe (I’ve liked his short stories, but his poetry I never read much of), Keats (I always liked Keats), Whitman (thought he was a bit wordy), TS Eliot, William Blake (I really enjoy listening to Songs of Experience). I even have new playlists lined up for some other poets I’m excited to listen to as well. One of the neat aspects of public domain readings is that I can find single poems all over the place, and combine them into playlists for long trips.

Turns out, audio books are awesome.

Today, as I sat on the deck listening to The Raven and then The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, I realized just how beautiful it is in the hills. I always realize this, over and over. I can’t even count the number of types of trees I can see just from my deck, even though the big-leaf maple does its best to hide all the rest. It’s really quite beautiful.

Is this your dream,

your fulfillment of being?

a heart leaves on wings,

forgetting – does the brother bird

remember his siblings

when they are old, gone

from their fledgling feathers left

to molt on the forest floor?

melancholy hills cover the sunset

so it strobes over and over –

a million sunsets over the ridge lip

bleeding until the silhouettes run

together in the dark,

and father earth and mother sea

flush the light into the western reach

of endless night.

I’m fae today, stepping gingerly between the shadows of the moon left by lofty branch boughs – silver traces like icy-argentine rivers, like eyelashes of light on the cold, bumpy ground. The moon is too slow for the agile earth, and revolves the wrong way though it tries, like swimming against the current, to travel east, though each night its journey is westward bound, following the sun inevitably. The stars wink, knowingly, for it’s all a ruse.

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/audio-books-and-fae-things/ 

Castle Caretaker

I collected all of my “100% poetry” computer writings from over the past year (not including prose of any sort), and the compilation is over 11,000 words and 50 pages. It’s odd looking back over them, not only because I consider many of those poems irreparable, ugly, or hopeless, but because they are footsteps along a journey I’ve taken. Faltering, yes, but an obstinate trek nonetheless. I see in those words things others cannot, knowing when I substituted joyful poems for sadness, or vice versa, or wove a net of complicated ideas into an elitist glob. And there are pretty moments, also.

I remember.

And the tears that arrive at the corners of my eyes, well, I remember why, and they are warranted, welcome, for the happiness, fears, failures, pains, hopes recalled, restored to me in moments like these where the soul needs a little refurbishing.

I’m the caretaker of a cobbled castle

stoking forever the struggling furnace.

never do I, even on whim, allow visitors

ringing the threshold carillon in;

my fortress is drafty, and only

by locking and shuttering myself within

might the fires suffice.

yet here they are, outsiders - oh my soul -

drinking the wine, pulling the pork,

leaving trails of grime and dirt,

opening every window and door -

and I care for them all the same

opening the treasures of my domain

which they collect in their inquisitive hands –

overnight they slip out again, whisking

the gold with, with windows wide behind

and every morning, the biting cold,

the drafty emptiness of morning

shoulders in, settling over everything,

and the furnace is insufficient again

Some of the poems I remember writing fondly, and some I scarcely remember writing at all. These poems are the oddest, because usually I can remember journal entries I wrote years ago, merely by reading the opening lines of the page. But as I glanced over my poetry, even pieces I wrote mere weeks past are foreign to my eyes. I cannot recall the emotional backdrop or even the time I spent puzzling together those lines. I had those pieces inside of me, once, but they are mine no longer. 

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/castle-caretaker/

June Bug

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/june-bug/

Hello, June. I look away a moment, and you’ve arrived in alexandrite, pearl, sunshine, and a weightless world. Everything’s on me, Heracles, but I’m along the ridge and gone. A season of life is come and aloft, and suddenly I’m a child no longer. May I still be one?
I’m wobbling in place, and flirting with the precipice, and everything is upon me at once: summer, home buying, weddings, graduations, mortgages, goodbyes, travel, moving, faith, love, hope, patience, hurry, flowers, exhaustion, tension, uncertainty, opportunities, roads, activity, danger, water, the warrior, the king, anima, existentialism, philosophy, friendship. It’s the realization that the daffodils, rhododendrons, tulips, roses, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, geraniums, nasturtiums, crimson dragons, maples, poplars, plums, apples and all the beautiful trees are efflorescing in time with the weeds: the horsetail, scotch broom, thistles, dewberries, poison oak, nettles. 
Spring does not choose only joyful blooms, but the weeds spread seeds in sync. And are they not beautiful, also? The blackberries, “big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes / ebon in the hedges, fat / with blue-red juices” as Sylvia Plath wrote; or the belled foxtail and the huckleberries with their lovely little berries hung out; the blue-button flowers, pervasive and poisonous; queen anne’s lace, so blithe despite its near resemblance to hemlock, and the death of Socrates.
My life is such, as wide with weeds as the world, yet full of trees, valleys, rivers, and peaks as well, wildflowers gracing the faces and banks of each. I’m reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, currently, and I see in the fanciful fiction some of me: the journey, the home, the community that comes and goes, the unexpected additions, blessings and curses, and the oddity of it all. But it’s still lovely, and it’s mine, absorbed into a little Macondo in me, like the precious pearl in Steinbeck’s story, both drawing me together and rending me apart. I’m a cross-stitch mess, a knitting nightmare, and I’m likely to be unraveled and re-begun for the summer’s out.
And I’m excited, frightened, ready – anyone can come along.
My heart’s a magic carpet
aloft beneath the heavens
my arabesque thoughts
and minarets, whirl,
a world to resurrect 
with regress and love
I’m signing a curvature of signature into a thousand filed bureaucracies, an ugly necessity of an angry system. So many complaints, so much nightmarish idiocy and everyone covers their tracks with a thousand words of legal mystery. 
I’m too late, too late by half. With some stories, the protagonist never has a chance, but history is writ by the winners, even if there is none. Is this all Pyrrhic? 

Trains

The train: now I understand the buckling, the swaying beast of it; the whole train judders as the uncertain serpent. My legs are ocean forests beneath me, roiling at the whim of the railway waves. My hands, free, free though some force propels this dumb inertia through the forests whose hands are raised in praise, the eggheads, the fox-face pines staring up at the sky enduringly.

And now the pines whisper their slow, long goodbyes, a farewell a hundred miles wide, as green shifts into grey.

Not yet; I must not yet.

stolen, I know not when

jailbroken, as it were, from behind

bleached bars torn apart

though what they found, I know

I dream it even now, haunting;

a wooden circuit board, sundered

from its circuitry and liquid wiring

chisel and knife, carving into me

such beautiful things, whittling down

a face in ecstasy,

a bramble crown

the whole of sea echoing.

but enough is not found

they sandblast the image down

until nothing remains but memory

and less of me, a sawdust trail

remembering

The silhouettes of mountains approach as sleeping giants. Are we the snake beneath their heels? I cannot ignore their gravity. Hoodwinked, the tunnel, the wool drawn over my eyes and I am blind for moments before the curtain draws back and soaring over everything – nothing exists but – the snowcapped peak.

I’ve swallowed the heart of darkness, walked in the valley of shadows, and I’m through – a crooked path though the shepherd’s staff crooked my neck into greener pastures. I scarcely imagined such still waters.

Train trip to San Francisco was a success. There is a peace aboard trains, and a community that isn’t present in aircraft trips. People walked to other tables to participate in games with strangers, and as we played bananagrams, our neighbors leaned over and offered helpful definitions of words we didn’t know (had made up, Matthew), or asked us about the game.

Now, I’m sunburned (I’m actually rather shocked I got sunburned. I almost never get sunburned), exhausted, and pleased. Mostly, I think I’m a bit resurrected and ready for everything. Life’s a train, and at every stop, things are exchanged – but not everything. And the views are magnificent if you are willing to look out and see.

Spinning on a Dime; Tea Time

Spinning on a dime, friends, our tiny-toothed edges augmenting our rotation with wobbles. Love used to be a function of chemistry, a mingling of elementary romance; now it’s interdisciplinary, a little messy geometry mixed with theatre. Oh, such a masquerade, with such interesting shapes, distinctions made on circles and squares. Sit back, mon ami, soon drama and entertainment will ensue, and an interlude before the comic end, or tragic, depending on your view.

Today, I went on a long walk. The sun was out and the weather sat perfectly at eighty. Is it sad that only as I went outside I put shorts on? I’m always cold: how is that? The orchards smelled of newness and spring, and I walked past roses, hydrangeas, poppies, daisies, geraniums, nasturtiums, and dozens of flowers whose names I don’t know. Will someone tell me the names of flowers, please? I want to know the names of all of the flowers, and their stories, but I have no one to tell me.

I wrote this as a bit of silly poetry, and though it’s a tad lousy, it was fun. Someday, I’ll even edit things like this and they won’t be so completely ugly. I actually cringed a bit re-reading it, but figured any changes I made tonight would only be undone tomorrow if I look at it again. For now, here it is: Tea Time.

The Mad Hatter another tea party holds:

Psyche arrives in formal attire,

Bacchus, bearing a barrel of beer,

Pan appears in a flourish, theatrical,

piping a tune; a boy shuffles in tow.

Ah, tea time, as always, the Hatter sighs,

but Bacchus pays no mind, and starts

on wine, while Pan guffaws.

Psyche’s eyes are lost with love,

beautiful, sad, and demure.

The boy, however, with thoughtful eyes

asks what is the matter with tea time?

Nothing’s wrong, but it is ever the matter,

the Mad Hatter brusquely replies,

and never time for love or wine -

Bacchus, though, begged to differ.

What, my boy, begins the Hatter,

have a faun, a madman, a god,

woman and boy in common?

Drunkenness, remarks Bacchus.

Why yes, mused the faun, it is

what a tea party is for.

Love, mumbles Psyche.

Everything else, as this god, is a boor.

Bacchus, asinine, paid her no mind.

Only he is here, the rest are who

here is for, said the faun.

Ah, things have come to a tee,

The Hatter clapped with glee.

What may we do you for?

I don’t know, what do you mean?

Asks the boy, sipping his tea.
Mean? Mad, perhaps, not mean.

Psyche answered: a gift each

will bring, to guide you

to wherever it is you dream.

Bacchus began with a blessing:

be not an ass, revel and sing,

who knows what tomorrow may bring?

Psyche gave the boy a golden apple.

Choose what your heart desires

and pay dearly the cost for love.

Pan piped a ditty and passed over

a song and flower; remember

my boy, the earth and the water,

and the path the moon takes over sea.

The Mad Hatter, last, asked:

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

The boy, for this, had no answer.

And so it is with love, boy,

The impossible is possible if

You believe impossible things.

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/spinning-on-a-dime-tea-time/