Poetry

So I have been taking a creative writing class at my university and thought I would share some of the poetry that has come out of it...

Robot

He was built inside a factory

With gears and steel and sweat

And men praised themselves in industry

For the challenge they had met

“He’ll be better than a man” they said

A robot always is

Ship him out and box him up

Put nails into the lid

He arrived at noon and twenty

And the neighbors stood and stared

The father grabbed the crowbar

And the mother pulled her hair

“He’ll do everything we hate, they say”

As he was made to do

Turn him on and let him go

A robot shiny new

At first he washed the dishes

And soon he mopped the floor

He built the tool shed in the back

And painted red the door

“What a wonder of technology” they cried

Far better than a man

He could do almost anything

Where once man had lent its hand

But one night as they were sleeping

From the basement heard

A pounding and a banging

And gears and motor’s whir

What could he be doing there?

Tomorrow we will know

Back to dreams and satin sheets

And let our questions grow

But when they woke up in the morning

And called upon their bot

All they heard we’re tears and cries

And answers they were not

So they crept into the basement

The woman after man

And looked upon their robot

In terror, hand in hand

It had built a little heart

And placed it in its chest

It beat and glowed and spun around

Like a fire within its breast

The mother screamed and the father yelled

And the robot simply cried

He finally felt emotion

And now he wished to die

The moon and the mirror

The bridge is painted fog and holds me still.

The river below as dark as oil,

stirs and sways and licks the banks.

The spear like reeds break through the mist,

Pleading to bring me down upon their softened ends.

Image of a ghostly pearl and clouds that lightly drip.

The deadly sound of the laughing eddies,

Twist sweetly in Mother Nature’s mirror.

No

I looked around the room then lay her on her back.

She smells like rye.

I smell like cigarettes, rye and ginger.

“Will we always be like this?” she asks.

No

I forget the time when she wasn't here

like this, unkempt and unimaginative in her looks.

Her heart is here for now, and so is mine.

“Do you think we’ll always be like this?” I ask.

No

I’m silent and so is she for once.

She’s like the book she gave me on the table,

closed so tightly I hardly care.

The radio sings before I turn it off, “as my guitar gently weeps…”

No

We look up at the ceiling.

Her body begins to twitch itself to sleep.

Our bodies are tangled and I brush her hair away

and I think, “I hate when it finds its way in to my mouth.”

No

The Lament of Daedalus: My son

My son, my son, oh greatest of my creations

Whose life was quickly taken by what my hands did cruelly do

That now causes my eyes to shed more than the water that did take you

Curse these hands, whose age is writ in scars and browning callus

Curse my name and all who give sweet praise and dwell upon it

My son, my son, oh greatest of my wonders

How do I bring you back to me, how do I pay the cost?

How does a father say goodbye to a son so swiftly lost?

Do I tell them of your dreams or my looks you seemed to borrow?

But all my words do simply fall and sink beneath my sorrow

My son, my son, oh greatest of my triumphs

For all that I have made and built

From wooden trick to stone and brick

Of monsters made and maidens lost

You were my noblest feat and now my shameful loss

My son, my son, oh greatest of my follies

If Gods can hear, then let them listen now

On bended knee their servant’s head does so lowly bow

Please give me one last mercy and switch the old for young

And raise him like the phoenix and set me like the sun

My son, my son, oh greatest of my regrets

No other could replace you, no other will I raise

And if they come I’ll throw them out on each and every day

Do not wait for me my son, pay the boatman’s fee

And know that though you fell so far, your soul is now set free

Oh Messiah

Oh Messiah       

Let me bend your ear

Will you listen to what I most fear?

The dark of night, the clear of day

A soul that’s lost by what you say

Forgiveness please

For what I’ll do

Due to moral lines you drew

I’ll never be all you want

The devil’s host always taunts:

Dear Child

Please just go in

Do all you wish to win

Drink it down and breathe it in

All these chemicals of sin

Oh Savior

Why was I born to be

Just a pawn in a war for thee?

Though I am weak, you are strong

Yet now my faith in you is gone

Echoes

“If you can’t do what you love, fight against what you hate.” This was once said to me while I was on my first trip across Canada. Seeing one’s own country for the first time is a religious experience; you feel its winds, taste its seas, and bring yourself to a connection you never knew was possible. The people you meet are your people, and the words that are exchanged bind you to them like air in your lungs.

 The comment was said offhand by a fellow traveler in the back of a 40ft RV that sped across the vast expanse of trees and lakes. For the speaker, it must have seemed like a simple statement of sage wisdom or a conversation starter while the hours seemed to drag into one another. I remember sitting silently, my eyes out the window and my heart beating through my shirt as his words shook me. I didn't know what I wanted to be but I knew those words were more true than anything I had ever heard before. It haunts me and it echoes.

          There is no question in my mind that everyone has a purpose. We are all here to change the world we live in through action or inaction.  Though you may hide or try to blend into the background, your simple presence on earth reverberates through everything. Your first breath changed the life of everyone in that hospital room, from your mother or father to the doctor who had to reschedule due to your timely arrival. Every time your life touches another’s you send them on a path of unpredictability. You matter and have mattered since the beginning of your existence until the end (and, in many cases, long after). However, as we get older and develop a full view of ourselves we are given a choice to become passive or aggressive in our interactions with the world. We will always shape it, but we may get some say in how we are going to shape it. This can be from the most mundane of occurrences to those times when individuals change the world. So I ask the reader, when do you take a stand? When do you stop something that you feel is wrong or speak out about something you believe is right? How far must you be pushed till you speak out about what you love or what you hate? If you are one of those who are outspoken right from the get go, how do your words or actions produce tangible results? Do you feel that there is no reason to take a stand? If you are one of those who do not speak out but see the inequalities or problems with the world, at what point will you take action? I do not have these answers but I do think we must look inside ourselves. Well thought out action is one of the most beautiful abilities of humans, while thought without action can be one of the most destructive.  So easily can we fall into the pit of cynicism, where we speak out but enact no real change. The Greek word kunikos, which cynic comes from, was originally an adjective meaning "doglike". So I ask you, as I often ask myself, “Am I just a dog barking, spewing nothing but pointless sounds or am I a creature of action?”

Liebster award

So I was nominated for a Liebster Award and thought I’d pay it forward.

First, here are the instructions

1.Link back to ze person who nominated you

    2.Answer ze 11 questions given to you by ze nominee

   3.Pick 11 bloggers with under 200 followers to be nominated

   4. Come up wiz 11 questions for your nominees to answer

   5.Notify ze nominees

Step 1:

http://escapingnormal.blogspot.ca/   Leah Lotus

Step 2

1.How did you come up with your blog name? I have always just written stuff down on napkins, bits of garbage, body parts and almost anything I can in hopes to keep some record of my jumbled thoughts. Ideas seem to stream out of me without rhyme or reason so i thought my name summed it up nicely.

2. Dream Job? A travel writer.

3.What's the last movie you've seen? The place beyond the pines.

4.What was the most annoying song of the summer? Why? I only listen to radio documentaries, talk radio and the occasional folk… is aqua still happening?

5.Pancakes or Waffles? Im celiac so as long as they are gluten free ill eat the shit out of them with emensejoy.

6. Favorite superhero? Tossup between wolverine and iron man (and this is comic book versions we are talking about not movie ones…)

7.What color would you use to describe you as a person? Green and it’s not easy.

8. Guilty Pleasure?( Something you love but you kind of feel embarrassed or bad about. i.e, my guilty pleasure is phineas and pherb) Cheese wiz

9. Who inspires you? Anyone I see act out a selfless act of kindness.

10. If any, what quote or saying do you live by? I love quotes and that’s hard to narrow down…can I say two quotes, is that ok? Hell, ill do it anyways:

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

-Albert Einstein

US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”

― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

Step 3: Yeah I don’t know 11 blogs so here is a few I have enjoyed reading…

http://iwriteexpress.blogspot.ca/

http://inthewordsofcarysjones.blogspot.ca/

http://shirscloset.blogspot.ca/

http://moacws.blogspot.ca/

http://notsosecretlifeoftheaverageperson.blogspot.ca/

Step 4:

1.What animal combination would you like to exist? (eg. Duckbit = a rabbit duck)

2. What 4 word sentence best describes you?

3. If you could travel anywhere right now where would you go and why?

4. If you could make anything have the ability of human speech, what would it be?

5. What is your favorite book?

6. What do think more people would enjoy if they just gave it a shot?

7. Are you the kind of person who presses the elevator floor numbers multiple times or just once?

8. If you could make one thing disappear from the world what would it be?

9. How would you like the world to end?

10. What is your perfect Sunday?

11. How long can you hold your breath, starting…now!

Sacrifice

Personal growth is a thing of unpredictability. There are moments when we choose to grow and there are moments when we are forced to.  We challenge ourselves and are challenged by others. We jump head first into the great unknown or the unknown rushes towards us like a wave.  Though all of us will have to mature and become the men and women we are meant to be, the times when we ourselves choose to grow will change us more deeply than anything life could ever throw at us. These are often moments brought upon by self-sacrifice.  

After I had left High school I lost touch with all of my friends for a long time.  When they went to college and university I decided to travel. We never called or wrote and it was a strange parting now that I think of it. We had been close, spending nights drinking and talking of the future, but I always knew that as soon as school ended my time with them was finished. We had different views on life and religion and the cracks in our friendship had begun to widen into chasms. By the time I heard from them again, two had already been married and one, my once best friend, was having his stag party. They had heard I was in town, back from where I had been living in Ottawa, and thought they’d send me an invite. I was so happy and asked where and when.  They said that it was at a friend’s house and that I could bring my girlfriend as it was a stag/stagette party. So we got into my 86’ Celica and after a bit found the house they had described. I remember telling my girlfriend how good these guys had been and how much I regretted not seeing them after so long. I rang the door-bell and they welcomed us in. They were all there and we fell into conversation. I felt welcomed if not a little overwhelmed by their questions. What have you been doing? Traveling, working,  blah blah blah. Have you been to school? I tried but blah blah blah. How did you two meet… and so on and so on as questions often go with friends who have become strangers.  By the end of night we were sitting around the living room as they filled me in on their lives when I realized that we had to go. We said our goodbyes and walked out the door into the night. I looked at my girlfriend in the car and can remember telling her how good it was to see them and that it felt like old times. Moments later I could hear my cell phone ringing. I picked it up and I heard the voice of one of my friends on the other end of the line. Had we forgotten something? No. They began to ask me why I had acted so strangely with them. I was confused and said that I had had a great time but they said that I had not been myself. They told me that the girl I was seeing was strange, that it was strange how I still wasn't going to church and that I wasn't the person they remembered. I realized that I was on speaker phone and that they were all listening, having some sort of intervention for me. I couldn't believe it. I hung up the phone. We rode back to our hotel room in silence. 

Fear

 Christianity is a religion that is littered with the idea of death. The Old Testament is filled with murder, war and even a little genocide. The New Testament is martyrs, death upon the cross, and the Day of Atonement. As a child, the good book would leave me awake at nights, thinking of the enormity of what death meant and I would call out to my mother for comfort. This was often triggered by my fear of Hell. There was nothing more frightening to me as a little boy then the concept of Hell. Hell was a place where you would be tormented forever if the life you chose to live on earth did not meet the celestial requirements. Hell was forever and forever was a long time and the torture that awaited me there, if I made the wrong choices, hung over me like an unfathomable weight. Each day in church and school our elders would remind us that when we died we would be held accountable for our actions. Others may have ignored this or grown desensitized to their warnings but I focused on it like a tic burrowing through my skin. Why should a child be faced with his own mortality on a daily basis? How is this way to make someone believe?

                I recently had a conversation with my father where I told him this. He told me that he always raised us to believe that God is love and that he wants us to go to heaven. I can hear him say, "Christianity is a religion of eternal life through Jesus not death". This is fine because I heard these same words before and after each discussion of hell and our immortal soul. However, that was not what my little brain focused on. Death was a scary word. My faith was built upon fear and not upon love no matter how many people told me I was going to heaven and no matter how many told me God loved me. For a child, love is an easy concept to receive and to dismiss. Our parents love us unquestioning and we love them back. We love our homes and all we have. But love is always there and so we take it for granted when it is given and received. Fear, on the other hand, rears its ugly head and leaves a lasting mark; once burned by the boiling pot you never grab hold again. Fear is a strong motivation for a child. I loved God as a child because not loving him meant that I was damned and the fear of that was unimaginable.  My father would say that if I believed in God I should have nothing to fear, but when doubt filled my mind fear was always standing right behind it.

                As I have grown older I realize this is not the belief of most Christians and most will and do say that I had a miss guided view or feel sad I thought this way, but as a child this was my reality and not a far stretch for Christians to understand. I believe that all ways of life, be it religion, philosophy or lifestyle, are a personal adventure and that no one knows 100% what will come. Being afraid of things we have no control over (like the afterlife if it exists) is crippling and does not lead to a productive life. However, we do have the power to make these lives we live as joyous as possible. I agree with Christians that we should focus on love and not fear. Fear is often thrust upon from outside ideas or events but love is something that we must give. Love is an action where fear is a response. But here is where we may part ways: I think that we must try to make a world where love is an action only used to affect the world we live in. Love should be used to abolish stereotypes, racism and bigotry. Love should be used to bring people together, to heal wounds and to give comfort to those who live in fear. Love should be used to change the world we live in and not to save our immortal souls for one that may follow. 

Music

When I was first traveling on my own I struggled to meet people. I would sit at a hostel dining table, wondering what to say as conversations flowed around me. By the end of the night I would be the one sitting by myself with a book while other’s sat in circles with guitars or wandered into an evening of possibilities.  I made a decision one day: I would learn three songs.

Music is communication. It breaks all barriers and ties us all together. A single song can make us feel so many emotions and these emotions are the words that form a conversation with our soul. It is an inner dialogue that each individual may experience but that all of understand.  We may not always feel passion, love, anger or those emotions that cannot possibly put to words, but through music we experience these feelings as the artist reaches out with each note.  When we share music with others, that music we listen to in our rooms or behind headphones, we show others that inner dialogue that is so personal and intimate.  

If we take the leap ourselves, to create our own music, we begin to find a new way to express ourselves. No matter what language we speak we being to speak a language that all may understand.  Music and the passion it brings is the chord that ties humanity together. It is the voice of change. It is the voice of community. It is the voice of one. It is the voice of many. And if we allow ourselves to create music, we allow others to realize that they are not alone in the world. It doesn’t matter how well you sing, or what instrument you can play. It is something that must first be done for our own soul and then naturally it becomes for the soul of others.

Lyrics from a song I once wrote:

Wrote your epitaph on the window pane

They said you wouldn’t get better but I loved you all the same

Pictures of you, quiet letters to me

Sideways glances all the words that fall between

Spoke to your father about when you were alive

Spoke to your brother, couldn’t look him in the eye

We laid you to rest in your mother’s dress

I could love anyone, but all I want is you

Anxiety

There are times when my brain begins to race. I think of things that must be done or things that happened in the past and they lead from one thought to another. Soon I find myself smothered in the thoughts of things that worry me or leave me with regret. I am so distant from the current moment that I hardly know what is going on around me. John Lennon once said, “Life is what’s happening when we’re busy making plans.”  When we are busy making these plans the world goes on and we miss so many things and our lives begin to slip away.  I have to remind myself constantly that whatever I am worried about for the future, like work or relationships, will be there when I actually have to face them and that things of the past are impossible for me to change.  What is most important is inner peace in every action we do and learning to recognize those things that disrupt it. This takes mental training, that I am in no way a master of, but I have been trying to stop myself when thoughts that cause anxiety in me emerge. They grow and grow and grow till they are bigger than anything I could possibly handle. So I tell myself to stop. I remember that there are always people that love me (even if I don’t really know who they are) and that when I die there will still be things that I have left undone.  Life is constant and unyielding and we will never control it.  Tomorrow will always come and if it doesn't then what is there to worry about? I recommend imagining yourself at your own funeral. How will others see you? Will they have an image of a stressed out individual that did nothing but worry? No one will care that you didn't Ace that last assignment. No one will care that you made some small social mistakes. All they will be left with is the memories of the moments where you were truly in the moment with them: the laughter and the tears that you shared together. Think of the kind of stories you want people to tell about you and start living them. Yes, stress will always be with us but we will never receive more than what we can take. If that ever does happen we won’t be able to handle it, there will be a rough patch, but eventually we will return to a place where we can function. Life has a way of leveling out and storms don’t last forever…nothing on earth or in the universe does. Have faith in yourself that life won’t always be this hard and that everything will be ok; though it may rain for weeks the sun will someday shine.