To be a poet is a condition, not a profession - Robert Frost

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things - T. S. Eliot

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul," - Soren Kierkegaard

Poetry is the ability to smell the individual hairs stand up on the neck of a cat in danger. It is the ability to hear cigarette smoke waft through a hazy restaurant, the ability to smell the bitterness in the words of a child with disappointed hopes, and the ability to taste Mendelsohnn in the gentle simplicity of piano notes. Poetry is born when one is able to touch the intangible. -Me


I have these dreams buried deep that I will one day wake up and be able to truly write in all the ways I wish I could write. But, you see, writing style, though evolutionary, is not something one can completely change. But maybe the way I write now truly is acceptable.
I long to make words dance, to free them from the cage of Ordinary. That is what I like to read, and what I believe makes a true poet. I so desperately want to be a true poet, but I don't try, and therefore probably never will be one.
I particularly love the quote by T.S. Eliot up north of here on the page, perhaps because when I do write it is a way to escape from the thoughts weighing heavy on my mind - even if I am writing about those very thoughts. There are little bits of me in everything I write, but just because I write something doesn't mean that that is who I am.

So with that as preface, here are a few little bits of me. (Some are terrible and not worth posting, who knows? Perhaps all of them fall into that category. But pieces of me they remain.)

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Sin (written sometime last year that I just retouched a bit)

Deep and dark,
Brooding, glaring, angry
Eyes piercing into my mind
Fear gripping my throat
I cannot breathe
Clawing at the iron fist of terror
Cutting off my gasps, I look around
Frantic, for help
Where can I turn for relief?
Crowding into my mind, images
Black and shadowy
Horrific pictures unavoidable.
Crying out for a Savior
Anything to free my feet
From sinking sand,
Miry clay.
Mud creeping up as I sink
Lower and lower.
Encasing my body and soul.
Grimy cold.

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(Still new and untitled)

Shadows in the night
Hush
Chill
Breath of death lingers
Each doorstep is empty
Each door is closed.

The door does nothing
The darkness creeps in
A void to empty the air
Air that was so heavy
Full before.

Silence, not even a whisper
No footsteps, no rustling
The silence of a tranquil blade
Drawn and thrust
Before the tiny victim awakes.

A great wail floats
Above the void
Upon a haunting breeze
The wail of a woman
Whose heart has been mangled
Soon joined by a low tone
An unmanly whimper
"What have we done to deserve this?"

Death sweeps its dark-sleev'd arm
Sailing to the next closed door.
Unmarked door
Empty wood
Humanity receives a gift:
Justice.

On the inhaling breath of Death continues
But wait!
The seeping void halts
This door is different.
Gentle teardrops of blood
Trickle down the sides,
The top of the frame,
Too, has been smeared.

The weeping of the receivers of justice
Swirls and twists
Rising in the black of pitch
There are no stars tonight.
This lamb is not enough,
Not worthy of a star
Not worthy of man's worship.
This slain lamb is not Deity.

A timeline
Years on a ruler, an inch a century.
A few inches away
From death's rank victory
Another pitch night
Dark and deep, silent and still
Calm, holy, dreamless.
This Lamb slain before time.
This blood, too, drips down, this time
Mingled with tears.
The cup must be swallowed,
The blood must be smeared.
Humanity receives a gift:
Mercy.

The weeping of the receivers of mercy
Swirls and twists
Rising in the black of pitch.
There is a star tonight.
This Lamb made the stars,
This Lamb who is worthy of man's worship.
This slain Lamb is God with us.

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