helen

i wrote this my senior year of high school while waiting for my dad to get out of a board meeting. it's a sonnet of sorts; with iambic meter. and no, helen isn't supposed to be anyone at all.

how can these women know of trust and faith
when they have never touched its ivory face?
how can these women speak of faith and trust,
who think that all desire must needs be lust?
they tell us (almost gladly) time will come,
that our warm hearts will all too soon grow numb,
that we'll no longer see with eyes of love,
and crow we shall perceive where once was dove.
i say they may be right; of what concern is that?
for you are there, though the body be old and fat,
i shall remember you e'er as you are tonight,
when in your glance my entire soul delights,
when my heart dances at the lightest touch of my belov'd,
when my soul cries in the ecstatic agony that is our love.

while wearing white flannel trousers i cry out

so. sometime in a humid January night
(it was, after all, Florida) a child was born.
he made his father miss the championship,
though the crimson tide were, in fact, defeated.

the earth danced its merry way around the sun 19 times.
something like 1,075,343,646 people died, and
something like 2,660,000,000 people were born.
and that one child got skinny and grew arm hair.

some plastic, some copper, some melted dirt,
a little bottled-up lightning,
and now you're reading that kid's mind,
whether you're 3,000 miles away or 3 arms-lengths away.

this blog is about poetry. the title comes from the love song of j. alfred prufrock by t. s. eliot, one of the great modern poems and, incidentally, one of my favorite. as i was saying, though, this little cobwebbed corner of cyberspace is going to be a collecting ground of quotes, art, and poems that i say, write, or come across. feel free to go haywire in the comments. dissect, destroy, discourage. no holds are henceforth barred. the telos, the goal, the point of this whole grammarless mess is to shine light on facets of Christ's creation. anything else is accident.

a few caveats ...
- i don't do capitals while writing. i'll put them in if i quote something (unless it's by ee cummings), or if something's important. sorry. you oh so totally signed up for that the moment you entered this slackwater of a blog.
- there might be some language. i reserve the right to say what i want to. as someone said, "there aren't bad words, only bad places for words." if the word isn't necessary, feel free to tell me in the comments. public sins deserve public rebuke. i will try to keep it clean.
- some of the art that i post pictures of might be nude. not naked, nude. there's a difference.