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Remembering the past...and ah...the poetry of youth.
While watching the news tonight, I find myself thankful that I have not lost anyone close to me in a war. I know many people who have. Currently reading a book about two boys growing up in a war torn country - the book is called "The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini" -it was one of those books my parents foisted upon me. I had finished the Terry Pratchett novel and was hunting a book from their extensive library to read on the ride home. Out came the Kite Runner, which both had read and raved about it. And 50 pages into it, I can see why.
A beautifully written novel about two boys growing up in Afganistan in the 1970s, one boy Pashtun, and one Hazara. One is the boy of wealth, one is the servant. It takes place both in the past and the present, and concerns a man living in San Franscico dealing with his boyhood in Afganistan. Brutal and beautiful book about the crimes, upheavels, and pangs of boyhood in another land and in another religion.
Home now from my five day vacation in Hilton Head, rested, happy, and less cranky. Was a beautiful visit - during which I went kayaking, soaked up a little too much sun on the beach resulting in a bit of a patch-marked burn (basically every place that didn't get enough sunscreen), and revisiting bits and pieces of my childhood - which often happens when I go back home. Home now being Hilton Head, South Carolina. Home for me was never a place, so much as the people who raised me. My parents, who seem to cart the remains of my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood wherever they go. Mother remembers everything - regardless of what it was, in detail and she keeps the mementos, much like the rat-packer her own mother is.
While there - I unearthed the Star Wars movies I'd taped in Kansas City way back in the early 90s - when the letterbox edition was first introduced. Watching them I realized that with the exception of Star Wars, that George Lucas did not write or direct much of them. Actually he only directed Star Wars, and co-wrote Star Wars and Jedi. Lawrence Kasdan co-wrote all three. Explains a lot.
I also unearthed a book of my college poetry - poems that I wrote and read in front of hundreds of people approximately 16 years ago. And submitted to numerous publications. Looking over the prose I'm struck by how young and niave I was. And how incredibly brave.
Here's three that I wrote in 1987-88 - I'll let you judge for yourselves how horrid they were, assuming you decide to read them that is, if not, no worries, trust me - I skip over poems online myself, hence the cutting away. I write them here for myself as much as for anyone else, I guess:
The English Major
Dreams like half finished sentences
Cloud my mind and spiritus
With paragraphs of weariness
As I start to lust for past tenses
Verbs conquer nouns and adjectives
Grammar fails when you touch me
With arms like parenthesis
And I wonder how active
They must be to cause an interim-
Blocking me, yet, not making sense
As you part, not end, our sentence
Leaving me with a semicolon;
Hanging in space, dear letter head
What happened to the period?
(written on Jan 22, 1987)
Rebirth
In a cemetry grove
grows a lovely rose
small, barely there
a patch of pink pushing through the
snow, petals cold
A lone survivor
reborn from a field of fire
Your cancerous growth burned
just dust now, as you lay
Your flower, small, barely there
pushes through with care
your life recycled, as you rest
beneath the ground.
What is death?
but dirt and hard earth?
Every death becoming a birth
as a flower pushes up from your body
of resting earth.
(written February 3, 1988 - around the time my grandfather died of brain cancer)
The third is called Study Break - and it's about a bottle of beer, yearning for something and writers block.
You know death sleeps in a lager bottle
Wadding across the see-through letters
highlighted by a child's marker.
Heinken staring at you,
Piercing your drunken stupor, with
bright flourescent yellow.
An empty milkshake, white crumbled paper
A half full salt shaker sitting idle on our table
My green ink scratches across blank paper
Limp fingers form meaningless letters
Mint smoke clouds my thoughts
You cough
Purple chairs and spotted tables
white lights and yellow lables, and behind my eyes
I continue to smile at a flourescent yellow
Heinken lable
(written November 3, 1988).
The last poem isn't written by me at all but by a dear lost friend, lost in time, one of those people you cross paths with briefly but never see again. Oh you know they are in the world and all that. But your paths just never re-cross. This friend wrote a poem for me one cold night in Colorado, the snow was falling, three -feet deep, and everyone but me seemed to be in love. It was written in 1988 as well, yet oddly still hits a chord in me from time to time.
I've referred to this poem in other posts. But until now, did not have access to it. I thought I'd lost it, along with many other keepsakes from my past. But this morning, my parents unearthed the journal containing it. So on a whim, I've decided to post it in my journal tonight - to share with others. Is it a great poem? I don't know. I'm no longer a fan of poetry to be honest, have little patience for most of it - the intricate rhyme schemes, the sappy sentimentality (even though I wrote quite a bit of those myself and this may very well be one of those). All I can tell you is it touched me. Course I also happened to like Spike's poem in Not Fade Away. So there you go.
I honestly think the value of any art is in the eye of the beholder at the moment they behold it, read it, see it, devour it. One woman's piece of coal is another's diamond so to speak.
Love in Winter
There are whispers of a secret spirit alive within the snowfall
they speak of celebrations and miracles.
For what redemption might be offered to a child?
A soul whose head is weary from watching through the glass, watching snowflakes harmonize in flight and upon the accepting earth.
A crow flies behind the pines, white crystals clinging to his wings.
We listened only long enough to hear
the precious rainy rhythm of our hearts and cried:
"My dance is not a sacred one.
For listen, there is only one beat against the stillness and it is mine."
But the sun shall be our angel, and the angel walks the sky.
And we give her love a place to go and in return she gives us life.
Silent as a morning flower
who knows not she will die
We raise our glass to paradise
and drink the teardrops from her eyes.
by Sand Sheff, written January 1988.
Tomorrow I venture back into the hustle and bustle of the city. The frantic phone calls, the bone-crushing boredom, the harried paper-work. Feeling somewhat refreshed from my vacation away from it, yet at the same time oddly jarred by the contrast between this world and the one I just left.
Home now from my five day vacation in Hilton Head, rested, happy, and less cranky. Was a beautiful visit - during which I went kayaking, soaked up a little too much sun on the beach resulting in a bit of a patch-marked burn (basically every place that didn't get enough sunscreen), and revisiting bits and pieces of my childhood - which often happens when I go back home. Home now being Hilton Head, South Carolina. Home for me was never a place, so much as the people who raised me. My parents, who seem to cart the remains of my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood wherever they go. Mother remembers everything - regardless of what it was, in detail and she keeps the mementos, much like the rat-packer her own mother is.
While there - I unearthed the Star Wars movies I'd taped in Kansas City way back in the early 90s - when the letterbox edition was first introduced. Watching them I realized that with the exception of Star Wars, that George Lucas did not write or direct much of them. Actually he only directed Star Wars, and co-wrote Star Wars and Jedi. Lawrence Kasdan co-wrote all three. Explains a lot.
I also unearthed a book of my college poetry - poems that I wrote and read in front of hundreds of people approximately 16 years ago. And submitted to numerous publications. Looking over the prose I'm struck by how young and niave I was. And how incredibly brave.
Here's three that I wrote in 1987-88 - I'll let you judge for yourselves how horrid they were, assuming you decide to read them that is, if not, no worries, trust me - I skip over poems online myself, hence the cutting away. I write them here for myself as much as for anyone else, I guess:
The English Major
Dreams like half finished sentences
Cloud my mind and spiritus
With paragraphs of weariness
As I start to lust for past tenses
Verbs conquer nouns and adjectives
Grammar fails when you touch me
With arms like parenthesis
And I wonder how active
They must be to cause an interim-
Blocking me, yet, not making sense
As you part, not end, our sentence
Leaving me with a semicolon;
Hanging in space, dear letter head
What happened to the period?
(written on Jan 22, 1987)
Rebirth
In a cemetry grove
grows a lovely rose
small, barely there
a patch of pink pushing through the
snow, petals cold
A lone survivor
reborn from a field of fire
Your cancerous growth burned
just dust now, as you lay
Your flower, small, barely there
pushes through with care
your life recycled, as you rest
beneath the ground.
What is death?
but dirt and hard earth?
Every death becoming a birth
as a flower pushes up from your body
of resting earth.
(written February 3, 1988 - around the time my grandfather died of brain cancer)
The third is called Study Break - and it's about a bottle of beer, yearning for something and writers block.
You know death sleeps in a lager bottle
Wadding across the see-through letters
highlighted by a child's marker.
Heinken staring at you,
Piercing your drunken stupor, with
bright flourescent yellow.
An empty milkshake, white crumbled paper
A half full salt shaker sitting idle on our table
My green ink scratches across blank paper
Limp fingers form meaningless letters
Mint smoke clouds my thoughts
You cough
Purple chairs and spotted tables
white lights and yellow lables, and behind my eyes
I continue to smile at a flourescent yellow
Heinken lable
(written November 3, 1988).
The last poem isn't written by me at all but by a dear lost friend, lost in time, one of those people you cross paths with briefly but never see again. Oh you know they are in the world and all that. But your paths just never re-cross. This friend wrote a poem for me one cold night in Colorado, the snow was falling, three -feet deep, and everyone but me seemed to be in love. It was written in 1988 as well, yet oddly still hits a chord in me from time to time.
I've referred to this poem in other posts. But until now, did not have access to it. I thought I'd lost it, along with many other keepsakes from my past. But this morning, my parents unearthed the journal containing it. So on a whim, I've decided to post it in my journal tonight - to share with others. Is it a great poem? I don't know. I'm no longer a fan of poetry to be honest, have little patience for most of it - the intricate rhyme schemes, the sappy sentimentality (even though I wrote quite a bit of those myself and this may very well be one of those). All I can tell you is it touched me. Course I also happened to like Spike's poem in Not Fade Away. So there you go.
I honestly think the value of any art is in the eye of the beholder at the moment they behold it, read it, see it, devour it. One woman's piece of coal is another's diamond so to speak.
Love in Winter
There are whispers of a secret spirit alive within the snowfall
they speak of celebrations and miracles.
For what redemption might be offered to a child?
A soul whose head is weary from watching through the glass, watching snowflakes harmonize in flight and upon the accepting earth.
A crow flies behind the pines, white crystals clinging to his wings.
We listened only long enough to hear
the precious rainy rhythm of our hearts and cried:
"My dance is not a sacred one.
For listen, there is only one beat against the stillness and it is mine."
But the sun shall be our angel, and the angel walks the sky.
And we give her love a place to go and in return she gives us life.
Silent as a morning flower
who knows not she will die
We raise our glass to paradise
and drink the teardrops from her eyes.
by Sand Sheff, written January 1988.
Tomorrow I venture back into the hustle and bustle of the city. The frantic phone calls, the bone-crushing boredom, the harried paper-work. Feeling somewhat refreshed from my vacation away from it, yet at the same time oddly jarred by the contrast between this world and the one I just left.