gray fields

the land around me is flat

though over the corner of the highway there

slinks a gully into a ravine, which quietly grows

into a valley,

an arena for dirt devils to dance.

i quietly skirt the side of the hill, on

my right the fields naked of crops, barns empty

of years and of hay.

that dirt is gray - not brown with dry anticipation

nor yet black with the life that shoots out of death -

gray - not the loud green of the valley or the brash

browns of the hillsides but gray.

Gray with a quiet tired nod, gray as a

concession to overuse and abuse,

gray that knows no other life as it looks

bemused and puzzled at the valley where it

struggles to hold its grain down to earth as sun

pulls the gold - gray, i say, with quiet

shattered dreams of a single good harvest traded

for a dozen half-reapings and now gray with

baffled loss and denial and false cheer and an awful

resignation.

once i met a farmer with eyes brown with a longing

quiet and suppressed, as if he were Noah waiting on a flood.

"don't farm nothin," he said with a dark, quiet smile that did not

need me to understand, but "it's gonna take a while

for this land to come back.... maybe by the time your son

wants to farm." and i wonder about that when i

look up ahead at the corn harvest over land that

once was gray and wonder if rachel's

eyes will ever be green again.

and, by way of disclaiming, rachel does not exist. or rather, she's not named rachel. the story about the farmer is true, and the quotes are unedited.

st. thomas aquinas

Et ideo convenienter divina sapientia homini auxilia salutis confert sub quibusdam corporalibus et sensibilibus signis, quae sacramenta dicuntur.

my translation of aquinas

And therefore it is fitting that Divine wisdom gives the help of salvation to men through these various corporeal and sensual signs, which are called sacraments.

the newadvent.org translation, "literally translated by fathers of the english dominican province"

Divine wisdom, therefore, fittingly provides man with means of salvation, in the shape of corporeal and sensible signs that are called sacraments.

while i fully realize that it's my word here against the fathers of the dominican order, i've never seen auxilia used to denote anything other than an aid or help. while "means" could easily fall in this realm, "means" has an entirely different connotation with regards to salvation. i believe aquinas meant for the sacraments to be aids or helps of salvation, not vehicles, causes, or purveyors of it.

Rule #84

Opinions may differ, but if you're my son, you'll be giving the highlights tour.

Rule #85

Art speaks for itself. All it needs from you is an introduction.

my grandfather's skin is tired of trying

to clutch his bones together.

they are heavy with memories,

memories packed thick and weighty,

weightier, even, than the cancer.

his blood is threadbare and worn

out. it wants to get back to the earth

where it can quietly curl up

in ever-drying circles and rest,

and now his veins can't keep it back.

his portion of dust has spent

the length of its lease, and

wastes with homesickness

for the earth from which it came.

now, the blinder-scales have fallen off.

now, thrice-born, re-clothed, re-made, re-newed,

now re-knit from flesh without the smell of death,

he walks above, across a river we cannot pass.

to disappear from our still-blindered sight.

my grandfather eats with us no more, for now,

for he must supper with the Lamb.

may, 2010.

this.

some of which is what i've been up to recently. that and talking greek. οἴμοι.

we had an assignment to write the first and last paragraphs of a novel for two declamations. i don't have a name or even a real plot for this, but i knew the feel i wanted. something as dark as poe, as angsty as fitzgerald, as heart-wrenching as graham greene, as metaphor-rich as bradbury, as concise as o'connor. obviously i failed. the question is by how much. the feel of the second part is different because the only end i saw for the story at the beginning was a kiss or a bullet. when the time came, i wanted neither. anyhow. there it is.

first paragraph

The sky was the color of her coffee in the Seattle midnight. Streetlight trapped by clouds, pressed tight against the city’s dirty heaving bosom. I had my collar flipped up to keep the rain out; not that it mattered anyhow. I’d been walking for so many hours that my shirt was soaked beneath my pea coat. My socks sopped as I stepped through the puddles and raindrop curtains surrounding the awnings of lawyers and bail bondsmen. The cigarette I started five or six blocks ago was already burning my lips. I stopped to light another on the doorstep of an apartment complex, alluringly dubbed Bayview Manors in extravagant swoops of neon light. I wondered if any of them could even see the city, what with the newspaper and burglar bars. I stepped away from the flyer in the window that promised me the lifestyle I’d always wanted. I looked up into the downpour. The rain was thick, falling like sorrows on the heads of the just.

last paragraph

Does it ever stop raining in this city? One last cigarette and the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. Smoke is good thing; it gives you something to think about besides pain and at that point the cut on my head was still bleeding down my cheek. I tensed up when a couple sirens squealed and fishtailed around the corner, but they flew by. Should have known nobody would call the cops. Not in this neighborhood. A taxi pulled up next to me. The driver’s window slid down and her face caught the moonlight and spun it back at me in a tired smile. I smiled back – still not used to the idea of a woman taxi driver, much less her. I climbed in the passenger seat, and we wove through the dripping steel of the city. Stores and then lights faded behind as we drove. Now even the rusty clouds have disappeared in the west as we drive faster and faster, trying to make the daylight come sooner, trying to get out of the night.

Dr. W.: Each red blood cell can hold a billion O2 molecules – 250 million oxygen on each of the four hemoglobin "seats."

trotter – it’s like a Mexican bus!

tank – it’s a white truck.

found this today while going through science notes. i'm [in general] not [particularly] racist, but this is at least a little funny.

something i wrote on the road between Wenatchee and Moscow. while watching one of the more stunning sunsets i've seen. on a Sunday.

to write, one must have been loved. to write well, one must be a lover.

writing about life, now, in the 21st century, is to write about things that have been written about, at best, a dozen times. the better bits of life: the sunsets, the sunrises, the lovers' kisses over morning coffee, they have all been written about too many times to even think about, much less count. but boredom is only done by the bored. it's the trivializing, the quick-to-look-away, the all-too-easily-pleased-by-flashing-things, in short, the cool teenage boys among us, who are the only ones to think that a sunset is a sunset is a sunset.

it's easy to know in your head that each sunset is different. every night a different ray of light hits different water particles at different angles. seems like a ridiculous waste of creative energy and time.

many girls have good legs. it took the wisdom of Solomon to see that the Shulamite's were unlike others girls' because they were carved out of ivory. it took him several chapters to describe them. and you get the feeling that he never really was satisfied with his attempts. he kept going back to the legs with different approaches. and then he gave it up all together. vanity of vanities, indeed.

if you love, you will see. if you want to love, you must see. it's one of those vicious cycles life seems to be full of. if you want to appreciate sunsets, you must watch them. again and again. and to truly watch them, you must appreciate them. you can watch them one way, the way you usually do, or you can watch and choose to appreciate. and, after a few weeks or perhaps, if your soul is still delicate, a few days, you will realize that the sky wasn't quite that shade of pink yesterday, that the clouds weren't fiery like that last week, and that the sun looks more like a drop of God's blood tonight than it did on Monday. when you choose to love something, you get acquainted with it, you understand it, and in the end you know it. even, no, especially in the King James sense of the word.

my father knows my mother well. he knows her like a connoisseur knows his favorite wine, like a student knows his favorite painting, like Adam knew Eve in that time full of blinding wonder and incredulity before he ate the fruit. there is between them all the familiarity of more than half a lifetime spent together and all the nervous joy of newlyweds. my mother once told me that a detective looking for counterfeit currency said, "i look at the real bills all day long so that when i see the false stuff, i know it's different right away." my father knows his wife like that. he's watched her so much, stared so often, lost himself so many times, that when anything changes, he knows.

my Father knows His bride like that, only more. my Father knows His spoken world like that, only more. my Father knows me like that, only more.

if you love it, it will become lovely. but you have to love every good thing about it. every little detail that changes day by day, every little bit that stays constant. and if you do, the whole thing becomes beautiful. that's why our Father is going to win.

winter's blood

this is a quickly written work in progress. any suggestions are welcome. i just jotted it down this weekend and my brother Kanaan kind of liked it, so i figured it couldn't be all that bad. he's got some taste in such things. anyhow, as far as the last little triplet, i couldn't let it go by without giving props to Big Ty Antkowiak for telling me that Aslan is on the move while i shoveled snow early thursday morning. kinda made my day, and definitely made this poem. 

i am an undertaker, shoveling away the dead. 

our enemy, our lawless queen of ice and cold

is falling fast, and falling faster into the pit I dig. 

Her icy east wind cannot stop my work

our king has come, though he is not here yet, 

his breath melts the ice, his eyes warm the sun

i scrape away her minions' bones, i toss them 

under the saplings that eat them and grow strong. 

i stand ankle deep in my enemies' blood, 

and wonder if my hands will ever be warm again. 

the king will warm them when he comes, when he

drives away usurpers and warms us all again. 

i am a feeble man, i only shovel snow. weak in body, 

weak in mind, small in heart, and small in grace, 

yet such as i do contend with spirits, giants, 

drakes, and monsters and bury the Enemy Death. 

our King will come, has come, is now coming, 

and in His mouth a sword to strike down the evil one. 

these things i think when, while i shovel winter 

off the sidewalks, one of our giants picks me up,

and roars with joy that aslan is on the move.  

the ocean

wrote this a few weeks ago. one of the big things i miss about home is the water. but that's not entirely what this poem is about. i tried to use the meter to convey some of the meaning, so if you get to the end of a line wondering why you want to keep talking that's why. it's also a little chiastic.

you know i always miss the ocean
on stormy days i miss its waves
and on the clear days too
cause three thousand miles are just
too many for my toes to trip
when we've just got a weekend.


i know the gut-punching sickness
that comes on darker nights
when i wake up and there you
aren't.
and how i've wished to weep
for now i know how it is to be alone


the slap of water in the sink,
any mirrored flash of light,
the frozen fountain in
-
the frozen square below
they all remind me of the ocean
and of the suns embrace


and loneliness loves to gnaw at my guts
its chewed all through my
heart
for you are gone so i'm not here;
pray God someday
that all of that will change


is this what earth feels like to heav'n
(now am i not absurd?)
but i say sometime in the sunlight
when on the highest crest of hills
when dancing with our life's true love
we long for what we do not know.

i'm the soul-less type

scribbled out. hardly edited. this is me raw, off the cuff, uncut. boom.


oh for a soul not brow-beaten
not dragged for miles behind a bandwagon,
a soul quiet and peace-full,
a soul that can weep at Mozart

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.