Poems

To my dismay, blogs are often where poetry's long-dead corpse is dissected, spat upon and betrayed by abysmal representations of what was once a genuine art-form. But, eh, mise well post some any way, I've given up bothering with trying to sell it. Hopefully, you find some small enjoyment in it.


"in a midwestern graveyard"

Watching as the rain turns to snow

Fading, grey to black,

As the cold white night falls,

The stone faces stare

At time passing by—

"love in an instant"

There's a time to share, hold and own

The thousand moments you let go—

But it is hard to find the time

In the bustle of our busy lives

And all the moments that go by—

Those are the ones we’d rather try

To own but missing we have to take we can give

And find a second to claim in this only life we get.

"edward and bella"

Into the night we fly

On strong whispering wing

My memory touching yours

But never here—

We are always some other where—

Where they cannot come

We are together, you and I,

In the russet-clad evening sky,

The morning coming but the night still young,

Making music with the moment

You grab and hold it and I struggle not to let go

But I cannot hold on though we fly so high above everything

We fly with thick, heavy, lead-filled wings

Burdened by the brevity of the past and the longevity of the future—

We cannot be together while we are held apart

By the force of ten thousand parting words

So we fall back down to Earth—

Two soaring, yet, Icarian, birds.

"sitting on the shore in a park beneath two hills"

The quiet murmur of the streams

Entwining, rushing by

The flutter of a thousand wings

At once taking the sky

And all the mutters

And whispered words

Cease at once to speak

In the twilight gnawing sleep—

Memories at dawn all the while wait

No hesitation in their slumber

Til you at last awake

And greet you with their cacophony

Of trills and piercing shrieks

Reminders of all the reasons you are in no way unique.

"abed"

Around me the mirrored world only seems—

My mind escapes the world in dreams

In burning reds and blazing golds

In blooming spring and winter cold—

In a world that never ceases changing

My mind is always rearranging

Falling into a maze amazed by

All the works of hands and days

And all the mistakes that I’ve made

Without ever changing in my ways

Though my dreams swirl all around me—

How might I, so self-contained,

Acknowledge that the summer fades

And the snows fall down across the plains

Of my heartland home?

How do I see myself so clearly

In burning reds and blazing golds

Without ever really seeing

What it means to finally grow old?

My mind besieged, all lost in dreams

A mirror, unreflecting, seems

To be the truth but always lies

And makes the world where I reside

A fanciful kind of suicide.

Go see the Lego Movie now

No seriously. Right now. If you've found time to browse a relatively non-descript blog, you probably have the two hours you need to make the Lego Movie part of your life. It'll settle in as a non-trivial part, too. Once the waves of nostalgia stop crashing over your eyelids spilling tears of happiness down on your childhood, you'll realize that it doesn't have to be over. There's a pretentious Lego Architecture set at the local Barnes and Noble just waiting to be half-assembled on your kitchen table. That's the insidious part of the film, and the only bad thing you'll read about it. It really does kinda make you want to play with some fucking Legos again and screw the glue.

I'm avoiding spoilers in this first post so that, despite outrageous box office success predicted for its open weekend, those of you who might not have seen it yet won't dispatch disturbing emails or crayon-scribbled missives on parchment.

Chris Pratt, Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Alison Brie, Will Ferrell, Charlie Day, and Morgan fucking Freeman (whose dulcet tones you'll also likely hear in a trailer for one of the most bizarre films I've ever encountered--a movie about lemurs that allegedly features dinosaurs, wacky monkeys, primatologists in the most stereotypical outfits you can imagine--and whose voice you still pretending is reading your favorite book on tape). The cast list reads like one of those terrible ensemble Valentine's films, but even Liam "the best part in Love Actually purely by process of elimination" Neeson's extended cameo is brilliant.

From the childhood-invoking cries of "SPACESHIP!!!!" to the undulating foam of Lego ocean, the script by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller is subtly inspired. I'll get into it in a later post, but the sheer mindcrunching genius of the story rivals Frozen for pure artistry.

Regardless of your own history with the building blocks of children's dreams, you'll find something to love over the movie's runtime. Will Arnett's camp Batman is a better portrayal of the world's greatest detective than we've seen since Adam West hung up the cowl. Alison Brie dazzles in her performance, as does the immortal Freeman. With more cameos than the latest Muppets adventure, the Lego Movie rewards the cinephile with a feast of famous faces, although they are, technically, voices in this case.

So go on then. I'll be here when you get back. Everything is awesome.