In her evening gown
Love poses before a mirror
War is reflected
In the past few weeks, I’ve read McEwan’s Atonement, Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, and Nabokov’s Mary. Each of these novels contain stories of love found in war time, which got me to thinking about the relationship between the heart’s passion and the sword’s might.
If there is a connection (which I think there is), I wonder how our modern method of battle reveals how we love today. Have we changed? Does our more impersonal methods of killing each other mirror the modern romance? Just as the heroics of WWI and WWII point to a larger more passionate love affair, does this computerized age of smart bombs and remote-controlled slaughter expose the apathy of contemporary love?
Does war without empathy uncover love without passion?
Perhaps, my first novel will answer that question.
Water like clear glass
Reflects the blue sky singing
Music of the spheres
Last night, American Idol ended with the crowning of country diva Carrie Underwood. According to the producers of the show, over 500 million votes were collected over the length of the season. During the last Presidential Election, approximately 121 million citizens cast ballots, which either means this country is filled with far more hip teenagers and music-loving illegal aliens than we think or the show stimulates something deeper in the human condition.
Because of the show’s format with its live broadcast, average talent who many people feel they could out-sing in a duel, sporting event-like competition where the loser is voted home, Simon’s acid wit, and the possibility of a contestant tanking in front of a studio audience, the show has become a ratings monster. It’s easy to say that a perfect combination of publicity and a ravenous under-twenty-one population with money to burn has made the show a commercial success. I think there may be more to it than that, however.
A program like Top Model or Extreme Makeovers or even Law and Order will never have the ratings of American Idol because of the power of music. Music is telepathy; it is memory. Song, especially familiar song, has a power to peel away time and transport us into the singer’s or composer’s state of mind. When played with passion, we feel passion. When sung with soul, soul is revealed.
Even if its just a glimpse, I’ll always come back for more.
xlii
Is the Word struck dumb by action speaking?
Or are pens far mightier than these swords?
Does prose gain potency from scribes seeking...
Enough.
Scribbling sonnets has become a crutch, and now its time to walk. Or, in the case, write. That is not to say I won’t ever compose another sonnet, leaving the above, unfinished stanza as my swan song. Rather, my pen craves to travel across new paper, confined by the struggle inherent with a different form, perhaps the novel.
Sonnets are wonderful exercises but frequently require an extreme amount of resources—time and energy that will be needed to tell my next story. But, more importantly, over the past few weeks, I began to notice my brain forcing lines, struggling against the river of words sung by my Muse. When done right, nothing can beat the joy of constructing a sonnet; the ideas seem expertly transcribed from ethereal inspiration, pulled from the wrinkled landscape of my mind by a delicate flick of a pencil just as silk is drawn from a worm.
Lately, however, there has been little of that joy and ease. Sonneteering has become a chore; when writing seems as tedious as washing the gravy-encrusted plates after Thanksgiving Dinner, it is time to change or else Dread Writers’ Block will strike.
My own construct for this Blog has become a prison, and now it’s time to free myself and change its character. For as my good friend Heraclitus once said, it is in changing that things find purpose.
A river of words
Carries me East, toward dawn
Heraclitus smiles
xli
With inked quill trembling above white paper,
The Poets scribe stories that expose soul,
Capturing from our internal vapor
That ghost caught in glass reflecting the whole.
But, this phantom shrinks from words as shadow
From noon sun. With pen rooted as an oak,
Heaven’s angles alter, setting aglow
Parchment with dark scrip curling like wood smoke.
Such smoldering prose seers shabby pulp black
And brings sunlight to inward-looking eyes
With a magnifying glass that attacks
Our hidden ailments with songs spirit wise.
So, give Poets their due. Read their tales
And by that act will we discard our veils.
A couple of my friends have started a book club. We call it Read It Or Not because, upon its inception, an issue developed. Certain individuals decided they don’t like being told what to read because they don’t want to waste time forcing through bad books.
Of course, such thinking defeats the whole purpose of reading something as a group, which raises some very interesting questions like:
Why read anything for discussion when reading is such a solitary activity? Who is trustworthy when recommending books, your friends who have similar tastes or some arrogant reviewer? Does a book club perpetuate the tyranny of bad fiction or does it rather expose one to work that would have remained dusty on the shelf otherwise? Are all books, from John Grisham to John Locke, worthy of discussion or do only certain books (i.e. the good ones) warrant conversation? Who decides what the good ones are? Is it possible to waste time while reading or rather is the very act worthwhile (no matter what is being read)? At its root, what is the purpose of reading?
But, these questions will have to remain unanswered because those with the most interesting answers to these questions are silenced by their unwillingness to even make an attempt at reading the damn book.
High on the top shelf
Dust flocks to pages, rusting
Imagination
xl
Gentle Muse, on this the second of May—
This your thirtieth birthday—my heart swells
With memories that time cannot decay
As long as light casts in your eyes love’s spell.
Lost within those deep green wells, I’m found,
Reborn a father, a husband, a man—
The gifts of your strength and courage surround
And expand as only a lover’s can.
With passion fanning fast my every word,
The mouth trips; I stutter with tongue love-drunk,
Striving to speak the feelings you have stirred
Yet can’t; for how do leaves praise the tree trunk?
Just know, my oak, I am because of you.
For thirty more birthdays, this will be true.
Happy birthday, Miss Mary.
Thirty candles glow
Atop strawberry shortcake
Our wish has come true
xxxix
Upon the tumbled tunnel of my mind,
Memory and imagination breed
Unicorns, pirates, and princes that find
Breath. And with breath...life. Sustaining my need.
Mythical beasts from long-forgotten times
Carry Neverland dreams of childhood lost,
And if remembered, shatter—like wind chimes
Blown by Spring breeze—adulthood’s quiet cost.
Maturity leeches with grave glances
And serious speech the soul's suppleness.
But, stretch! Lighten to see as she prances
A princess after her very first kiss.
Within the mind steps our most private hopes.
Don’t be afraid. Wake them. Unbind your ropes.
Inside my secret heart, I am stretched by a serious contradiction.
On one hand, there is the gravity and seriousness that the responsibility of fatherhood demands. Yet, on the other, I feel like I’m eleven and want to put on Army fatigues. The wilds of Maryland wait to be explored. Behind the flat petals of dogwoods sleep imprisoned fairies dreaming of freedom. If only I can tame those rampaging bison possessed by the spirit of a hook-handed pirate, I will be called Max, Lord of the Wild Things.
But, the cries of my daughter pull me to reality.
The solution, I suppose, is to go to Sonny’s Surplus and buy some infant camouflage.
Flattened pink petals
Reveals a world that blooms bright
Despite furrowed brows