Growing Up? I guess

Maybe it is just the mood I am in today but I feel like sharing some more of my writing. I am happy about this because I am usually afraid to share it with anyone. So if tomorrow this post is all of a sudden deleted it means that I have had a change of heart. So here are a couple in a few different styles.
__________________________________________________________________________________

"Questions" - J. Allen 7/2009

This one is a little bit e.e. cummings with the parentheses and grouping. But the subject matter is. . .I don't know exactly what. I guess a lot of what I write is impacted by love. I am very much a romantic but try to pretend like I am tough skinned and unfeeling a lot of the time as well. (Two very conflicting things). Here is number 1 hope it is enjoyable.

“there are days when i long to ask you questions but fear that i will drive you away.”

(a preponderance of questions was almost always bursting from her).

“Questions that maybe you can handle, maybe i am confusing you with people similar to you when i assume you can’t”… You’d motion as if i should go on or you’d open your entire soul to me (in a fully endearing way).

“Well,

they’re questions like ‘Just you and i, would you like that someday?’ or ‘Have you ever noticed that my feet like to slide across red satin oceans and find your feet to have some company in the night’ or ‘What do you think the shape of a child of ours’ nose would be like?’ or ‘What exactly do you see upon my unlined face? What does my eager smile say to you?’ ”


Our time hasn’t come. While at times we are almost unable to see this (due to the amount of blood boiling in front of our eyes) deep down inside our stubborn, inflexible, argumentative beings, we know it.


“ ‘Just you and i, would you like that someday?’

I would.”
_________________________
"What Else"- J. Allen 7/ 2009
I wrote this the same night that I wrote the previous poem. The mood is clearly similar. 


we both enjoy
a soft breeze
blowing across
our skin.


beyond that,
what else really matters?
___________________________

The last poem I will share is from July of 2007 i never actually gave it a title. 

the surgeon wielded his scalpel with

care- neither slicing the outer walls

,nor leaving residual growth

(he'd been given the task

of cutting away the twist

-ed, dying vines that had be

-en strangling my heart)

finally, as the pounding crimson

muscle of vitality was reveal

-ed, a wave of emotion to my being.

(i wouldn't mind drowning in this feel

-ing, for even as it filled my lungs

,i would only think of how

i could get more of it.) 

 

stop, look, listen, love

"Listen. sit back. open your eyes as you close your ears to the noises that wouldn't be here if it weren't for our species. The world was fine long before humans, maybe even better off. And it will be again long after you and I are gone.  How beautiful were our cities before we got to them? Before we moved mountains and filled in rivers and carved away the earth where it didn't suit us. We could have bathed in any of its waters we chose. Before our harsh toxins with unpronounceable names. We would live as the animals live, as we were meant to live (for we are simply animals, are we not?).

The slow, old, sick animals die. The animals living in places prone to drought die. But we make ourselves poor by giving aid to those who live in places where they wouldn't normally survive. We make the old poor by making them pay to live, then we force them to take on an $8.00 per hour Wal- Mart job in order to buy cat food and their grandkids' Christmas presents.

We shouldn't be like this. We weren't meant to be like this. We were put on this planet to live like animals, to have the sole purpose of our lives to be survival. How did we come this far with such a terrible attitude and no need to remember the valuable lessons of history?

I see so much wrong in the world and in humans, yet let's acknowledge and then dismiss all of the wrong that exists, (for only then can we begin to process it and possibly come up with solutions). How can we have solutions? By using what we have and animals don't. Our minds. Our memories of the fates of every society before ours that has fallen. And our memories of the great creations that these cultures, too, had.

Not by using our vices- our greed our hunger, our need to be better than our neighbors, but by using simple compassion. We have souls and hearts and the ability to make our actions better the lives of others in our species. We can make the world better only by love. By smiling at whoever you see walking down the street. By always holding the door for the person behind you even if it takes twenty seconds out of your day. Your life is already years longer than it would have been if humans had never met civilization. And you have already accomplished much more than you would ever have if our sole purpose in life were to carry on the species. So breathe. Stop. Look. Listen. Love.

How can you make someone's life better if you are too concerned about yourself? Look outside yourself. When someone asks you how you are don't just tell them. Ask how they are. Your coworkers, friends, family, the cashier at the store. If someone tells you to have a nice day tell them to have one as well. Again, we have time in life. Think about all the time you spend on the internet each day, often impacting no one but yourself. Take it upon yourself to find reason to care about even people you assume you wouldn't be able to care about. Hold the elevator door. Smile at the person in the elevator with you. Ask them how their day is going. This is compassion. This is love.

And what if we all teach our children to do this, and they teach their children? And children are taught to love their planet and love their neighbors? And understand that there is one spiritual element to this world, though people around the world may regard it slightly differently. And get that this spirit is the reason scientists haven't fully developed a way to measure raw human emotion. And know that there are beautiful nuances to each and every language that give insights  into culture. And by learning a language we can understand our fellow man.

Let us all become citizens of the world and refuse to accept cruelty in any form!" The girl yelled this from the highest mountain, for she was frustrated with the people she saw daily complaining about their world but never trying to change it. She waited for a minute almost hoping she would get an instantaneous response or a resounding cry of agreement heard round the world. She heard only the sound of a chip bag being blown by the breeze. She sighed wondering what she alone could do for the world.

Nearby a young man left a coffee shop and paused slightly before he crossed the street. He casually was checking his email on his mobile phone while also checking his reflection in the glass of the store front (assuring that every bit of his designer clothing was in place). He turned his head slightly before he crossed, making sure that his face was at just the right angle to be viewed by the young woman who was about to cross the street also.  Meeting her gaze and holding it for a moment  while giving her a slight grin, he finished crossing the street, drank the last of his coffee, and threw his cup that read "please recycle" straight into the trash.

I love a good story

Well, who doesn't love a good story? Whether it's eavesdropping stealthily on the people behind me while I wait for Starbucks, a good read, or that trashy tv series I find myself catching up with online I love getting trapped in a good story. I say trapped because that is fully how I feel when reading a book, watching a movie, even listening to a friend's tale of a recent occurrence. Oftentimes, I will find myself emulating a certain character's plight- almost projecting their circumstance onto my life. Other times I am reduced to a type of addict, burning through page after page to get resolution.

There is a certain reassurance, though, in a story because no matter what genre it is or how suspenseful it is there is always some sort of predictability. Two characters so perfectly infatuated that they will clearly be together even if they are put through numerous trials to do so. A dictator that has ruled unfairly their whole life will eventually be overthrown. I find myself wishing on many an occasion that life could be more like the stories which I obsess over. That I could read the back cover and know that it would all turn out a certain way. Or when times were getting rough I could flip to the epilogue and have some idea of how things would end up. 

The problem I have with life is that I know exactly what I want from it. I'm sure many people have the exact opposite problem. It becomes a problem because I am a little bit of a perfectionist and push myself way too hard and freak out when I don't get better at something instantly. In other words a little reassurance that my life will end up near where I'd like it to would be amazing. Of course there's foreshadow like in any story, but a lot of times that can just be to add suspense, right? And there's always irony when something you are doing blows up in your face or goes exactly the way you don't want it to, but I have come to terms with that in recent days. . . 

Here is the second part of Mona Van Duyn's "Endings" I find her description of a story quite applicable to my present predicament. In her words:

 disabled in mind and feeling, I flail and shout,

"I can't bear it! I have to see how it comes out!"

For what is story if not relief from the pain

of the inconclusive, from dread of the meaningless?

Attached to this is a link to Mona Van Duyn reading both parts of this poem

Endings Part 2

Setting the V.C.R. when we go to bed
to record a night owl movie, some charmer we missed
we always allow, for unprogrammed unforeseen,
an extra half hour. (Night gods of the small screen 
are ruthless with watchers trapped in their piety.)
We watch next evening, and having slowly found
the start of the film, meet the minors and leads,
enter their time and place, their wills and needs,
hear in our chests the click of empathy's padlock,
watch the forces gather, unyielding world
against the unyielding heart, one longing's minefield
laid for another longing, which may yield.
Tears will salt the left-over salad I seize
during ads, or laughter slow my hurry to pee.
But as clot melts toward clearness a black fate
may fall on the screen; the movie started too late.
Torn from the backward-shining of an end
that lights up the meaning of the whole work,
disabled in mind and feeling, I flail and shout,
"I can't bear it! I have to see how it comes out!"
For what is story if not relief from the pain
of the inconclusive, from dread of the meaningless?
Minds in their silent blast-offs search through space--
how often I've followed yours!--for a resting-place.
And I'll follow, past each universe in its spangled
ballgown who waits for the slow-dance of life to start,
past vacancies of darkness whose vainglory
is endless as death's, to find the end of the story.