xiii
Love cannot be found riding a white horse;
Nor is it revealed by a valiant kiss.
Forget youthful fancy—that potent force
Repelling bemused hearts so close to bliss.
Ignore tales told of tall princes charming;
Beware the toad puckering slimy lips.
Alas! The shoe never will fit, harming
The offered foot with a cool, glassy grip.
One may hope for Cupid’s piercing arrow,
Trusting that the feelings will be the same.
But, they’re not. The path to love is narrow.
Nothing is as easy as stories claim.
Fantastic tales warp the passions askew.
To find love, stop running. Look behind you.
When I was about six, I remember swiping one of my sister’s dolls and tossing it into my old playpen. I then piled every toy and pillow I could find into it—couch cushions, stuffed animals, throw pillows, toy trucks, Slinkies, Hot Wheels, Legos, and even some crusty Play-Doh. This stew became the Dragon’s Lair, and I morphed into Althazar, valiant knight on a quest to save my plastic damsel in distress, Violet.
With a shout, I leapt into that Pit of Despair. Toy trucks scratched at me like sharp claws. A pink stuffed snake wound itself around my ankle like a tail. The cushions suffocated with a dragon’s fetid breath.
But, I tunneled deeper, eventually freeing my Violet from her curse so that we could live happily ever after in the belly of my imaginary beast.
That is what fairy tales taught me. They gave me hope for something perfect and untarnished, something fit for a Disney story. I came to expect that, to want love to be that way—princesses rescued by their princes, frogs rediscovering their true human form, good people getting their just reward in love.
But that is not how love works. It’s a bloody-brained conspiracy, as my friend Lee has said. It is as imperfect as those trying to love, but somehow still true and deep and wonderful. Fairy tales don’t allow the allowances needed for love to grow. None of us can be the white knight or the perfect princess. Neither can we experience that happily ever after.
Nevertheless, I think we hope for it and frequently turn our backs on what is right in front of us. It’s a child’s dream and, yet, stays with us till we die.
In a murky pond
My child wades in the reeds
Cupping a small frog
xii
Sing, Winter! Hum as snow slips from Heaven.
Comfort the heart during this time of sleep.
Dispel this bleak soulless season riven
By that unforgiving chill buried deep.
Such frozen silence is Nature’s mandate:
A hibernating spirit recovers
Like willows waiting for Spring to create
Buds blooming into broad leafy covers.
And under these covers, a spying eye
May discover two young lovers held rapt
By words a far cry from this leaden sky
Hovering over naked trees snowcapped.
Such wintry dreams as these are Nature’s gift,
Heating hearts buried beneath deep white drifts.
During winter, I struggle with the desire to hibernate and the need to function as a human being. I want to curl into a ball and become a squirrel. My bed is my tree, my clothes my fur, and that cold pizza in the stove my stored acorns.
Of course, the dog needs walking. The cat needs food, and the car needs gas so that Mary and I don’t get stranded on the side of route 50 with me delivering our baby.
All I can do is dream of spring.
Beneath a willow’s
Tented limbs two lovers sit
A baby giggles
xi
Praise pilfers the meaning from works of art;
Like a thief prowling secluded streets, applause
Stalks and steals the silence needed by hearts
Reflecting on hidden and fatal flaws.
Actors mirror ourselves during great plays;
Their tragedy is our calamity
As the action sears sleeping souls ablaze.
In dark theaters, drama lights our frailty.
For a moment...until the stage is sealed
By a falling curtain and all morals
Are forgotten behind the jarring shield
Of hands clapping like gigantic cymbals.
Hearts crave silence to pay their faults tribute.
Blind not the sight. For a minute, stay mute.
Last night, Mary and I saw Elmina’s Kitchen at Center Stage. I’m always a bit dubious about modern plays because I have trouble engaging with the actors. More than likely, this is not the fault of the playwright or director but rather is caused by my inability to find the proper state of mind. Not having attended many live stage productions as a child—much preferring the hypnotizing antics of action movies—I never cultivated the senses necessary to appreciate the theater.
If the play is the thing, then my conscience has never been properly caught. Until now.
I suppose it started before last night...when I saw La Boheme directed by Baz Lurhmann. Something happened during that performance; my mind expanded and the actors stretched me to feel. It seemed as if I was both watching and living the story at simultaneous moments. I became the actors; their characters seeped into my marrow. The distinction between audience and performer disappeared.
This happened again last night. The tragedy of the Elmina’s Kitchen smacks you in the face and tears at your own complacency. It pulls the mind; it yanks the heart; it wrenches our humanity and then spits it out into the broken neighborhoods of our inner cities.
As the curtain fell, applause broke the silence of tragedy. I understand wanting to honor the actors for their performance, but to destroy the moment so quickly, to tug one’s awareness back from the edge, is a disservice to the stage.
Why do we feel the need to hide?
Like waves, applause booms
Behind falling red velvet
The stage is hidden
x
Progress yanks the old into a new age
Kicking and screaming, eyes clouded by gold.
The past is always so tinged in its cage,
Barred by memory shaped by shifting molds.
To hold true experience in the heart,
Remember how the cock fights—claws and beak
Ripping and tearing its brother apart—
Unaware of its own terrible shrieks;
Wholly in the present the cock battles,
Feeling nothing, but alive, free from bars.
Passing time makes man memory’s chattel
And the cock nothing but a chicken scarred.
Today is for the young ones to behold,
Only later to shape when they are old.
Modernity gives us many gifts: cars, heat, electricity, running water, fancy computers, and most importantly chickens wearing boxing gloves wired with electrodes so that less violent cockfighting can be brought to a new generation. I, for one, am hungrily craving the drama of the under-rooster, Rocky Beak-boa, as he destroys the big bad, red comb-chewing, "Iron-Claw" Mike Tyson Chicken.
Better than Ali vs. Frasier, it'll be a fight for the ages.
A winter wind brings
The scent of smoke across fields
As a rooster calls
ix
Like a musician afraid of music,
My muse cowers in a soundproofed room.
To my appeals, He is anacusic—
Made deaf by the dread a blank page entombs.
Wingéd words once flew from the tongue like wrens.
These memories of thoughts scribbled with ease
Freeze all action—the hand, the heart, the pen
Becalmed like a sail-less boat washed by breeze.
So many words dance through the restless mind,
Yet, lack a unifying principle;
My passionless quill, so maligned, now blind,
Still seeks that love which points to a life, full.
Fly, words! Unclog the clogged, make old ears new.
Pierce fear’s stony grip, and the heart unglue.
There are a few friends of mine who stare at the empty page and shake. They grasp for words, which may even tickle the fingers like feathers, but are blown away by the gales tearing through their minds. There is only hollowness.
A void.
I wish I could give them advice. I wish I could open my mind and water their spirits with my words. But, a muse I am not.
Winter. Wrens fly south
Across endless fields of blue
A single cloud drifts
viii
From moonset to sunrise, sweet sleep squeezes
The ripening womb with contracting dreams.
Across the brow, a fragile dawn eases
Open the eyes with a touch of rose, gleaming.
Mist, steaming, follows Night and flees the sun
To that Plutonian shore where blue sky
Is forgotten. The labor has begun.
So, begins a new life, pushing higher.
With fresh tears, birth unfolds as jasmine blooms;
Petals unwrap, limbs bend, the breath hums
A new song, expelled from the shrinking womb.
Hands grasp thumbs, proclaiming what we’ve become:
A thrice-beating heart bound by tied sinew,
Clinging to each other like grass and dew.
A new child. A new Blog. A new writing project...
Times, they are a-changing.
My life is about to make a sharp left turn into a mist-heavy forest, and I can't say for sure what lies ahead. That is true for most things, of course, but there is something particularly sobering about the approach of fatherhood. There isn't fear, but rather something I can't quite put my finger on, which I hope this Blog helps uncover...
I never cared much for diaries, and the idea of a web-based journal seemed--and still does--a bit oxymoronic; a true diary's worth is in its secrecy. A proper diary is one in which the author knows with complete and utter certainty that no one will ever peek at its pages. A Blog, on the other hand, is designed to be seen and even commented on.
And that is how this site was born. I was an electronic voyeur, riding speeding electrons to peep in on others' lives, getting increasingly frustrated at their lack of dedication to posting, yet refusing to share my own thoughts.
Then I posted a comment. Many comments--mostly as haiku or sonnets because writing straight sentences was just too easy.
I think the red-haired man mule got a bit frustrated at my enthusiasm and suggested a Blog of my own. So here's the plan: I hope to begin each entry with a sonnet--because, well, they're fun to write--then blab a bit and spit out a haiku, perhaps based on a line of the newly penned sonnet.
Like this:
Grass and dew clinging
To each other as dawn breaks
Mist rises skyward.