Below is a light, content-orientated analysis of my poem "A Fool's Orison."
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This poem is an emptied heart. An "orison" is a prayer, so this poem also is this. It is a prayer of repentance and return and renewal, and of the humility required for all three of those. The poem begins as the ultimate surrender: "take me." You can have my life. Do what you will with it. I am yours to use. This is a prayer which welcomes so many sinners into the fold. Somehow we Christians still tend to use it for the rest of our lives. Because we forget. This poem is a poem of remembrance and regeneration. I hope it blesses and encourages you. Prelude to Redemption A Fool's Orison Take me. I tally every misstep on the wall I weave tapestries Fantasizing into errant epics every falter: Deriving volumes out of every foreign Errand into which I fall. Forlorn, Faithless am I, faceless. Fester faith in me, do not (who am I to offer voice) Forsake me. Forgive me every mindless phoneme Every careless motif which I make Thee. overwhelm the murmuring with symphonies, with dousing waters drown the wayward dreams which drowse the dales and heightened dells, every sunken swale – within my inscape, swallowed By devastation’s drought. Seed within me streams. – to pour out songs begotten by my soul, To pour out psalms – As sunlight o’er this shadowed shoal and saturate this fool’s ephemeral doubt. An line-by-line explanation of this poem will follow in a later post... This is a poem about cherishing Thanksgiving, which is a holiday we Americans so often dismiss or do not appreciate enough. No one sees a goldfinch next to a scarlet macaw. In the same way, so many people pass over Thanksgiving as a bridge from "just autumn" into "the Holidays" or as a really large appetizer for Christmas dinner. A friend noted this to me this (dare I - a city kid - use the term) Harvest (oh yeah) and it caught me attention. Today, on Thanksgiving Day (Turkey Day is the next week of eating leftovers), I wrote this poem in my favorite journal (which has like one empty page left in it) and hastily typed it up onto the computer. So this is it. I hope you enjoy - not only this poem - but your thanksgiving and your Holidays. (Hint: this probably will mark the beginning of a series of Christmas posts............................................) Two Skies Harken to the Christmas bells, Which ring beyond tomorrow’s rise And linger in tomorrow’s dells. But dwell upon the memories Which are reflected in your eyes Before the feeling of them flees And fades into the snow white skies To fall upon the earth, Shattered memories you may yet memorize. Receive the heat of the hearth’s high fire, before the heartsong of it dies. So you may hum its gentle tunes Long after discord calls it vague and Disbelief and vanity recall it as a senile ruse. (They say) It desecrates tomorrow’s dells And resonates beyond tomorrow’s rise Solely to deceive tomorrows bells And deem them not lovely in the dreamer’s eyes. Harken to the memories And memorize the harmonies To harmonize the melodies Which saturate two heavy-laden skies; That when the second melts the eastern trees Dawn may also of the first comprise. This song is NOT about getting drunk, contrary to what my brother tells me. I wrote this poem, CreationScribe; I wrote this poem. This poem is about the first few weeks of autumn. Lines 1-4 are about finally making it to and tasting autumn, which is my favorite season. (This is also echoed in line 13.) Lines 5-8 basically repeat this, using the images of the beautiful music of a celeste, the sea, and the dawn. Lines 9-11 describe summer's falling away into nothingness. Line 12 is my first feeling those elements of Autumn which, after Summer, may be unpleasant. Line 13-15 say that, despite the cold of winter which always seems to steal away some of autumn, this season is still worth it and lovely in all of the senses. Enjoy! First Impressions I trod across the distance, And slipped into the wine. I flew above the instance, Ate of my father’s vine. The celeste we dreamt of My hands now dream upon. The seas of our long-slept love, Flow deeply from the dawn. And while the summer fire Descends into a tone Beyond the range of any lyre, I feel the cold awaken in my bones. It’s all that we desired it to be - still, it is the mind behind our moans. - And worth every shiver. This is a quick bright poem written on an index card. Syrupy with images, it describes an albatross ivory colored in a sunset, of which it is part. It is in first person, and it is an image of a Christian's reflection of God. "Then I am dross/A streak of it descending from the mold" implies that while we are beautiful (lines 2-5) it is God's love that makes us beautiful and really His beauty we see. Enjoy this poem. Albatross.
Sunlight, making white-wine stains; Upon my wings. Sunlight, gold as grain; The gold of kings, upon my feathered mane, I am the albatross. If sun upon the sea is gold, then I Then I am dross; A streak of it descending from the mold, And lost above the line Where sunset and sea cross. This poem addresses abortion. It is from the omniscient perspective of an aborted fetus. It is the fetus speaking the whole time, speaking to his or her mother and, in a way, haunting her. The first section is not addressing an actual world which the fetus saw, because its eyes were never opened. It is a metaphor of the beauty of the child and the beauty it would have witnessed - something the mother never saw "at all" or never admitted to having seen. Beginning at the second stanza is an acrostic which spells "death". This is by no means a happy poem, and do not read it if you want something which will fill you with joy. My hope is that it will fill you with the desire for change, for that is always the beginning. You Never Saw It At All I lived - I was alive. I saw The wildflowers thrive - I saw the icicles of winter thaw. I saw The snow flurries and the butterflies Full of life against the western sun. You never saw it at all. I saw the candy red of harvest leaves, The scarlet gloss of apples In the autumn eaves, I saw the crimson burning oaks Extended over land like patchwork Tapestries of amber seas. I saw the sun sink into its depths, Into its ruby waves I saw it fall. All this I saw. You never saw it at all. Dare you remember me? Day after day you shall find me, Do you dare reveal every Dream you deserted? Ever my shadow shall Ever reseal the armada, the Ensemble of memory within you. Ah, you shall remember me. Age upon age shall my Arrows pursue you, until At last you receive, or recede. No Aerie or nest shall beneath you be still. All the earth will be wild – All the earth will be wild and you will be Adam, you once with no sin, destroyed by its glimmer; A choice. All the earth will be wild; The wind shall be strange and The world shall be silent to you. The sky will be foreign; The stars shall be disarranged and The sun will be brutal, violent. Though you tread through the thorns and the thicket with Threadbare garments and pass yet unscratched, the Thistles are catching. You will not be unscathed. The thread of your tale is unsatiated, it Hungers for something, hunting, hunting like a snake. How you hated the thought of me, How you looked upon me, and did not love, How you hated my heel against your side, my gentle Heel as I kicked. You hated my Heart, though you hinted at less. You hid as though inside a tomb The fear which hidden fights within you still; You set it deep within your womb – This one you cannot kill. I saw the sunrise pierce the melted dawn, – and shatter all across the newborn sky; I saw the sunlight kiss the spotted fawn, – and saw the fledgling fly. I lived. I was alive – I saw The flowers bloom and thrive – I saw The hidden garden answer Heaven’s call, – You never saw it at all. Now please read this article published by Crossway. This poem is way more "modern"-styled than I usually write, and this is because I wanted to write a poem but was too lazy to work on rhymes or rhythm or anything... I simply wrote what came most naturally (or easily). This poem addresses falsehood as it attempts to sneak into my writing and falsify my words. I have always wanted to not only be my best but be myself (e.g. not writing a love song until I have a reason to) in my writing; this is a stand for that. Enjoy. hey don't guide my pen or guarantee the flowing of my ink in any chosen shape you have no rock between my lines you have no rock above them you have a tomb This poem is about the beauty in even a "simple" tree. Each noun is capitalized for no other reason than I thought it would be artistic (reason enough?). This is the last poem in a series of ten that I posted in the last 10 weeks (actually that got messed up a little and it became "11 poems in 10 weeks"), and because of this I wanted it to be one of my favorites. So that's what it is. I wrote a good amount of this in my favorite cafe with some of my favorite people with my favorite pen and favorite journal. So I hope you enjoy it. Tree
Tree A Honeycomb of Lights Hidden all among the Leaves, The Sunlight of a thousand Sunrises, And Sunsets of a thousand Eves, A Kaleidoscope of Memory And Mystery that interweaves All Memory into Secrecy And blossoms for the Eye that still believes. A Tree, a Glimpse for Minds of Men, And for the Eye a Sea. This poem is more about the form than the content. With a strict stress/syllable pattern and pattern of punctuation, it is composed in triplets whose three lines alliterate with each other. In each triplet, the first line rhymes with the third line, and the third line adds a consonant to the end of the rhyming word - except for the seventh and last triplet where the third line takes away a consonant. This is also part of the form-follows-function or meaning-through-form of the poem. This poem is about the falling away of sadness - the thawing of the ice. For most of the poem the sadness does not deteriorate. But in the end, with the "May it thaw", there is finally some melting hinted at and the lack of a completing consonant is meant to symbolize the sadness falling away. Tell me what you think in the comments below, and I hope you enjoy! The Thawing Selfish goal Soulless sight - Selfish gold. Sightless soul Soundless heart - Sightless sold. Cold as coal Cannot burn - Coal as cold. Hunger's hole Hidden in - Hunger's hold. Thirsty throw Thorns to thrill - Thirsting throat. Thorns to grow Thrashing vine - Thistles grown. Morbid thought Midwinter - May it thaw. This is a short poem, expressive of the writer's attachment to his work and the idea that the pen is an extension - or a key part - of the writer's body. Enjoy this brief stanza. My fingers weaken from want of pen, And cry out once and once again If water has no place to pour, And there no space to swing a door Then I shall cry out once and once more For I am no longer man. |