Remember

Sometimes we get caught up in family, cook outs, the day off work; that we forget about what today really means. A day to remember, cherish, and thank our service men and women who allow us to have and keep these freedoms. Now, since I have not served, I want to share some quotes of those who have.

A Veteran Is Someone Who, at one point, wrote a blank check made payable to ‘The United States of America’ for an amount of ‘up to and including their life.’ That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.

-Lt.Col George Goodson, USMC (Ret)

Image by © Matthew Cavanaugh/epa/Corbis

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

-George S. Patton

I don’t have to tell you how fragile this precious gift of freedom is. Every time we hear, watch, or read the news, we are reminded that liberty is a rare commodity in this world.

-Ronald Reagan

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
-Billy Graham

Old Friend

Old friend, I came to visit you a few days ago

I walked down the familiar, unforgotten halls

and I saw your face,

your smile,

to be exact.

We shared greeting of hugs and ‘Oh my, has it been long’

Pulled up chairs and chatted

Shared stories and excitedly dreamed of summer

Talked of theater and the future

Conversations vary from cultures to cranberries

Nothing is guarded,

nothing about my life is hidden away

I love how I am able to be so candid around you

I am open before you because of years

of smiles

and lessons,

conversations

and letters.

I am so glad we are friends,

old friend.

There is no one like you,

nor shall there ever be.

This,

right now,

is where I want to spend my time,

laughing, happy, content,

comforted by the words of my old friend.

I cannot imagine my life if we did not meet,

undoubtedly it would be worse.

I love how you know so much about me,

you know more than what I say,

but what I left unsaid,

and what I wish I could tell you.

You understand my pauses

and movements to express what cannot truly be put into words.

Thank you,

my dearest old friend.

Minutes climb up the walls

and soon it is time to leave.

We part ways with once again a hug

and you comment on how I am young, beautiful and happy,

every time.

Thank you,

my dearest old friend

for simply being yourself

and for every second we share

together.

 

Pixabay/user:Mary_L

Ground

People are so used stepping on her

that she becomes the ground.

Pixabay/user:Comfreak

Humans

Oh how fragile humans are

cut me and I bleed

starve me and I die

bite me and I scream

Oh how resilient humans are

cut me and I heal

starve me and I find food

bite me and I bite back

Pixabay/user:Pezibear

Can We Just Stop Life?

How can I miss you

How can I miss you when you are only two feet away?

How can I miss you when you never left

and neither did I

I spend most of my waking hours with you

yet I miss you

I miss your laugh

I miss your pleasant sighs

I miss watching your hand swim across a page while you are writing

I miss watching your eyes dance across a page while you are reading

I miss knowing exactly how you interlace your fingers

I miss knowing exactly how you bob your hand to music

I miss you

and yet I see you everyday

nothing between us changed

there was no fight

there was no outside tragedy

there was no one added to the equation

well except that invited guest called

Life

and Responsibility

and Growing Up.

I now know how I can miss you

because even when you are two feet away from me

my mind and I can be millions of miles away.

So can we just pause Life?

So can we just put Responsibility on hold?

So can we just tell Growing Up to take a chill pill?

So can we reign in our minds

And stop missing each other

and start finding each other?

---

“I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.”

-Henry David Thoreau

Pixabay/user:geralt

Hope?

Hope

it allows us to dream dreams

of heavens and royalty and love and other treasures

when we have nothing of the kind

when we have nothing

hope allows us to dream of having something

it can lift our spirits and guide our actions

hope allows for wonderful visions of the future

when the present is anything but wonderful

How glorious and empowering hope can be

***

Oh, but of dashed hopes

of false hope

of lost hope

of wrongful promises

of cracked dreams

of shattered faith

How disastrous that can be

How vengeful that can be

Of a man who had his trust, his faith, his everything

in his hope

and somehow, lost it all

How disastrous that can be

How vengeful that can be

He then sets his life mission to be

to thwart and reverse every action he had his hope in

Oh, to lose hope

How disastrous that can be

How vengeful that can be

one’s purpose seems to have vanished

one’s goal seems to be part of magician’s disappearing act

***

Hope

Hope is like a fire

it can create or it can destroy

it can give warmth and change things to a better state

or it can rip, rend, and sear its image on us.

Hope is like a fire

it can be the one thing between

life and death

sometimes the life giver

sometimes the death bringer

***

Hope seems to be able to bring us

to the highest heights

and yet the deepest depths

because power can work both ways

for and against us.

So is it right to hope at all?

***

To have shining, bright, up lifting hope

and yet to have

cracked, shattered, broken hope

Is it right to hope at all?

No

It is not right to have that kind of hope

hope that can be shattered like glass

is nothing to have hope in at all

something easily broken should not carry our dreams

for dreams are immense beings

that grow and change and have lives of their own

and a fragile container such as a glassy hope

is not fitting for dreams.

***

So dream dreams

and hope everyday

for things of risk

are things of reward

---

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Matthew 6:19-21

Be

Be the Mount Everest

Or be the Marianas Trench

Be the brightest star

Or be the darkest black hole

Be the cheetah

Or be the sloth

Be the point of fusion

Or be the absolute zero

Be the warrior

Or be the pacifist

Be the Planck time

Or be the Super-eon

Be the flood

Or be the drought

Be the knife

Or be the womb

Be the crown jewel

Or be the feces

Be the gigaparsec

Or be the Planck length

Be the life

Or be the death

But choose and be,

Be the something

Or the other

but choose,

Choose Heaven

or Hell

and be ready to defend your position

because you will have to on judgement day.

Yes, this is harsh

because that is what I am choosing to be.

Apathy and lukewarm-ness

has become the norm

but great things are not done

by the norm.

Choose and be.

---

“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

-Revelation 3:15-16

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“I feel as if I had been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied the rest. It is worse than not to have tasted it at all.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

It Was Written In the Sky

On a long bus ride, I was reading Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 over again. I can tell how good of a book it is by how much it has impacted me. This is going to be my fourth post inspired by it. Few books do that, where you read it and instead of wanting to just devour more of its glorious ink marks on tree pulp that was inspired by life itself, you want to compile the building thoughts from the novel and write about it.

But this time instead of applying a truth learned, I wish to write how I came upon the truth.

So there I was on the ten hour bus ride with 33 high school students who smelled like peanut butter and too much cologne. Did I mention that it was a ten hour bus ride? I think I did, but I’ll say it again, a ten hour bus ride . . .

With a book in my face and head phones (or should I say “Seashells”?) turned up loud playing Beethoven, I tried to block out the rap music and the girly-girl talk.

Across the country we went, mile after mile, page after page, song after song.

I was looking for wisdom and wonder in between the lines of a 63 year old book. Trying to block out the youthful folly around me.

Coming to one of the quotes from other books, I search for the quote on Google. While it loads, I look up.

So focused I had been on the book and on the teenagers that I tried to block out, that I had blocked out what had been transforming around me. Winter dreariness with bald trees and fallow fields, had been transformed to spring animation with blooming trees and sowed fields.

So focused on the inside, I had not looked outside. I had only seen one option, and by my lack of observation, I had deprived myself of choice.

In trying to find wisdom I originally looked to a book, and forgot the world.

What I was trying to find in a book was already written in the sky, all I had to do was look. Wisdom and wonder and life was written in the sky. No ink or graphite or typewriter or digital “little black box” needed. Only eyes or ears or hands or mouth or nose needed, to understand what was written in the sky.

Oh, how precious are books, yet even more precious are the things that inspire them.

After marveling at what had been out my window all those hours and miles and pages and songs, I looked back at my phone, and of course it was still loading.

I looked back out the window and wanted my phone to keep loading so that I would never have to look away.

---

“‘It’s not books you need, it’s some the things that once were in books . . . No, no it’s not books at all you’re looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.'”

-Page 79 in Fahrenheit 451

Quiet Girl

This is a song that I wrote for my novel, Varietal. Enjoy! 🙂

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Sitting on the side of the road

A little girl with her brow farrowed

Clothes a ragged mess

Cuts and slashes her cheeks and dress

Her body shakes, tears stains

There is brokenness pumpin’ through her veins

 

Quiet girl, quiet girl

No one wants to see you cry

Hush little darling, hush little darling

Don’t you whimper now

 

Leaving the words and yelling behind

She decides not to wait for the stars to align

Prince Charmings don’t come to this part of town

She’s going to have to stitch her own gown

Found out fairy tales aren’t real

So she went to the devil and made a deal

 

Quiet girl, quiet girl

No one wants to see you cry

Hush little darling, hush little darling

Don’t you whimper now

 

She’s made something of all those tears

It took many many years

Gave away some things she shan’t

But got what she wanted, that helps can’t?

But those words still haunt her

She feels them though the gold and myrrh

 

Quiet girl, quiet girl

No one wants to see you cry

Hush little darling, hush little darling

Don’t you whimper now

 

She’s still that same little girl

But now she’s got some pearls

But nothin’s good enough to dry her eyes

Quiet girl, quiet girl

No one wants to see you cry

Hush little darling, hush little darling

Don’t you whimper now

Don’t you whimper now

 

Pixabay/user:Counselling

The Chameleon: A Triolet

The Chameleon, a life spent to hide the man

A mask so thick he does not want to find who he was once

With his masks, clothes, and skills he could be anyone from your doctor to your fireman

The Chameleon, a life spent to hide the man

Hired as spy and impostor, even if there is not a personal identity, he is a wanted man

With seven billion people in the world, he can find an identity in abundance

The Chameleon, a life spent to hide the man

A mask so thick he does not want to find who he was once