To the surprise of absolutely no one

I was a prolific sonuvabitch as a kid. I shared some college stuff last time, but here's work from even earlier, high school and junior high, in particular. Some fragments in this bunch, but the prosody is surprisingly solid. Might be worth revisiting and editing. Soontm. Oh yeah, and also, prose poems. Hell fucking yes, I actually wrote prose poems. And they are like astoundingly religious. I tell people how close I came to becoming a priest, but I've apparently blocked out most of the memories of my piety. This is like discovering a thousand shares of some tech stock if only that wasn't nothing at all like this. Lastly, ellipsises are used to indicate fragments. And yes, I'm aware that isn't a word.

"enthroned"

stretches a cat before the fire
  his eyes rolled back reclined
no sight in nature so deceives
  as the languid lion thus defined

the king upon a velvet throne
sipping bloodred wine refined
his tyranny veiled in tears of gold
his ruthlessness denied...

"eventide"

the sun falls from the sky
a dropping diamond from on high
brilliant with the brilliance of forgotten years
burning with the fire flame ablaze in stolen tears
whisked away by the wind at dawn and dusk
scattered to the morrow in rain and dust
the sun is only just as bright
as all the stars shining at night

"mimsy in the barrowgroves"

a witty man once told me
the toucan knows--

i asked the man just what he meant,
he said it just goes to show
i cannot guarantee you anything
that birds all swim or fish have wings
they might, who knows,
what the future brings
or what might come with tied shoestrings
and long nights of Paris flings
everything that might with reindeer ring
these are all the sorts of things
of which a poet often sings

"a rocking chair"

It's the autumn afternoons I miss the most. Just sitting in a chair, surrounded by nothing and everything, by morning and by evening, by all my fears -- which were few -- and all my hopes -- which were so many. Innocence, I remember. I didn't know but I didn't care and it was the second that was the more important.

I would watch the smoke from the tar fire, burning illegally but I didn't know. Watching birds fly fleeing from the smoke--I might have guessed but didn't care.

Then I looked into the smoke and saw a dream--and I smiled. Now I look into the wispy screen I see a dream and cry.

The quiet fear of suspicion. The brief, furtive longing of kindled hope.

See the smoke roll across the lawn, on wheels turning as inexorable as time. In the tendrils of burning leaves are the ashes of forgotten dreams, scattering to the four corners of an ever-collapsing globe, scattered by the wind that wears away mountains into valleys. A complement to passing time, the breath of her exhalation as her indrawn breath summons storms to suck away years so does her wind wipe away any hope of a future.

What can be built to survive time? Our hands are not so able as the fists of our creator. No, man cannot create save God destroy. Only one aspect of our person can endure. It is that which concerns ourselves, the cog in the machine of our story. It is that which permits one of us to live and threatens another with untimely death. What can be made, can be unmade. But what we feel can never be taken away.

A thing to survive centuries, in songs, poems and memories. An emotion that endures beyond reason.

"gardening"

A flower, an ancient flower. An eternal flower, like the rose in our hearts it does not wilt. In our hearts the flowers still grow, in an everlasting spring. They do not know winter but for the cold chill that brushes them when we stray. They know only spring, which, though the wind blows, is always bright and green. The flowers in our heart are blooming, waiting for the day you come to claim them. Until that day the sun of your smile beams down on us from afar. Like this flower, the pink everlasting, the rose in our heart will never die. So it waits, that you might pluck it, and wear it as you will that our love joins you, bound to the flower in our hearts and this gift of an eternal flower we give you now.

"love poetry for christians"

i'm wasting my time
    trying to find other ways to heaven
while there are a thousand ways to fly
all of the best ones linger in your eyes

"that's a hell of a volta"

do not follow the lilied path
there is no rose in the garden;
only the petals of dead blooms
with the brown dirty ground around them

there is no water in the fountain;
only the tears of those who walk by
and cannot see the sky above them--
do not fall in the drowning pool

in your arms are the memories
of warm summer days at your home
where we wrestled in the piles of leaves
and never left the other alone

"where"

only in the mirrormere
is your reflection truly pure--
peerless, gazing in the waters of your soul--
there's an artistry to your face
a vaulted beauty held in no other place...

"before it's where"

before Thumenicledes breathes northern air
before the pillowed sky falls down
it is in the grass whispering there
where the earth curls close around

before the truculent sun rises in the east
before her palette spills across the page
it is in the thunderous breast of the priest
where commanded to the stage

before the morbid dawn of uneasy summer
before the flowers begin to bloom
it is in the eyes of a mighty gardener
where he sinks slow in gloom

before the birds begin to sing
before all the world shakes off its sleep
it is in the moment of dancing
where for a season we forget to weep

Without considering popular demand at all

What follows are a few poems from my college years. That comes off as an apology no matter how I phrase it. It's not. Despite being as puerile as baby powder, there's something intriguing in the haphazard assemblage of a painfully adolescent mind. Then again, I'm not including the absolute worst offenders. Eh.

"When I feel alive"

This is when I feel alive--
   when the Sun is going down
and the clouds have donned their fiery caps
ablaze with the pinks and purples of clowns--

with her right by my side
and no one else around
  I hear the sounds, the songs,
I see something as the sunlight
crooks a finger towards the night--

here now, just before all the colors fray
before the green is just another shade of gray
when the sky is blue and bleeding pleas to stay
that is when I feel alive--
just before I fade

"Lonely silent"

in the darkness I sit
and murmur at the wind whistling
in from out my window

i tell it my dreams and wishes
to be carried far from where
i sit worrying about the sunrise

the wind grows silent as my voice
quiets and the moon swallows
the air in a giant breath

i sit alone in darkness
and in silence ponder fear--
the fear of lingering, lonely silent death

Bonus -- An Essay

You can call it style, or voice or the finger of god but every person has his or her own way of saying something. The trick to writing is that not everyone is saying anything in a way worth paying attention. A writer is not only someone who knows himself better than others know themselves, he knows them just as well.

Poem of the Day #4: Also, #5 and #6

A trip away from the pleasant glow of computer screens, accompanied only by an sadly wireless-less iPad and a growing sense of ennui left me unable to update for entirely too many hours.  Fortunately, no one seems to read these poems.  Still, 30 poems were promised, and 30 poems will be delivered.


#4

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies

Exists as a pleasant yet spiteful lie—

A smear on a window—

Fog on the sea—

Unchanged but always changing

Like a lie

Evolves in telling—

Always rearranging—

Until the truth at last resides—

Only in the

Honesty

Of fading, at last, to die.

#5

I take no sordid story with—

No tales of woe shall pass these lips—

When any ask who did I kiss

I shall speak only of fleeting bliss—

And tell them that I did love thee true

For that is all that I could do—

Though thou didst injure me

I would cause thee no injury.

Nor would I slander thy lovely name

Or spill ash over thy lonely grave—

When they ask who, I shall say 

That she is the beautiful Annabel Lee—

So, from now till the last break of day

Men and women whose hearts will fall

Can know the truth: love conquers all.

#6

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 young,

Making music with the moment

You grab and hold it

I struggle not to let go

But I cannot hold because 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.

Poem of the Day #3: "Butterflies"

The heart of poetry is in the universality of its imagery.  We understand, now, that a globalized world means that culture will eventually become homogenized.  (If you don't believe this, get lost in 9GAG or reddit for a few hours)  Because of this, the only truly successful poetry will be written by those who are willing to dig deeper into the core of their conceits.  

A fox ran through a

Meadow—his coat

And face aglow—

Chasing riches I could not see—

Perhaps could never know—

Yet well do I recognize

The joy in his toothy smile—

A feeling like seeing you again

When it has been awhile—

Poem of the Day #2: "Endlessly Rocking"

Poetry is powerful emotion recollected in tranquility, certainly.  As the world continues its inexorable evolution, and poetry dies for the millionth time since humanity first scribbled words on clay, the shifting definitions must allow that Wordsworth's is entirely true.  The all-inclusive descriptions of "what makes a poem" are fantastic for their democratic nature, but useless in defining an art form.  I recognize the authenticity of the attempt, but I reject the utility of it.  For me, poetry is like pornography, you know it when you see it, and the vast majority of what we now see would have been better left rotting in the corner of its author's mind.

I saw a face deep in the crowd—

A face without a name

A face that—time ignoring—

Might—in my mind—not change—

And though oft I swear I can forget

It is true I never do—

Though that moment has long since passed—

I swear that face was you.

Poem of the Day #1: "Cold Eyes"

The "Poem of the Day" is a new feature that will appear, you guessed it, daily.  All are original works and may be accompanied by short essays or random thoughts about either the poem itself or the nature of poetry.  This one isn't, because you get this instead.  Whoohoo.  Aren't you excited?  I know I am.

And the men--

All shrouded grey--

Did through the mist appear.

And though the fog hangs heavy there

Their forms seemed all too clear—

The memory of faces

Shrouded cold

And those grim visaged eyes

Strike terror

In my bones

Their frozen laugh still makes me cry.

Though many years have passed since

Last I saw that host

I shall, I fear, never forget

The time I saw those

Wicked ghosts.

©2003 by Benjamin Snyder