An Unfolding - Poetry Collection #1

This is Frontier Verse - poems on the search to rediscover lost emotional lands.

The post today is a mini-collection of all the poems I’ve posted here over the last two months - first steps into the Emotional Frontier. It was the most obvious way for me to start off this experiment of poetry and prose on the exploration of my emotional life and journey through the Frontier. Please share, and thank you for letting me know what you think (really - I’d like to improve), & enjoy.

The journey continues in a less meta sense from here on out, with emotions not as the object of the poem, but the filter. Next, a new series begins: ‘Blood Ties’.

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An Unfolding - Poetry Collection #1

Contents:

1. Scavenger

2. To Sit and Think

3. The Envelope

4. Why Am I So?

5. Crying I

6. Crying II

7. A Lament (For Carolyn)

8. I Join That Long & Storied Line

9. Ploughshare

All images are open source.

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1 - Scavenger

I found Words in the road today
Down by the side near the curb
Huddled, waiting there to be seen
And patiently, before I gathered them
They spoke themselves to me
 
The garbage-heap has been a place
Where Stories languish in dirt
Outcast, or fallen out of love.
But willingly, they offer themselves up
For me to scavenge verses from.

Visions pass through minds in dreams
Of new Turns Of Phrase to come.
Alight with joy at being found
And shuddering: their prophecy foretold
We’d find eachother now.

Tomorrow I shall chance a glimpse
Of a Couplet in the air
Waltzing; to otherworldly songs
And gracefully, through cold-clouds of my breath
They hum the world along.

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2 - To Sit and Think

I so rarely sit and think now
Unless I’ve been told to do
By school, or work, but my own Head
Almost never chooses to. 

The girl who sits across from me
In the coffee-shop downtown;
I think she may not own a phone
Or at least her discipline’s profound. 

I am a slave to my device
Could I ever do without
It’s been an aching hour in here
Sitting only in my doubt

Give me the strength O Lord my God
To cast down the idol in my hands
Lift my eyes to the hills from the screen’s lonely light
To see you and feel life again

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3 - The Envelope

There’s been an Envelope
down by the front door
I’ve just noticed; but it’s gathered dust
Crumpled – (maybe I did see it before)
In my hand now, I already know 
what it must contain

Pages to read and learn and weep 
in foggy remembrance and regret
over ignorance of what the 
fullness of real Feeling could have been like
during moments long gone.

The archaeologist pores over ancient cave-damp scrolls
comparing spellings of transcendent words and wishing
if only they were there–
there when It was written.
And I Was.

The Envelope holds blank pages too
calling me forth to a new Age Of Exploration
on tall ships with grand names:
The Resolution, His Fortitude, Indefatigable, Perseverance
One, or some, shall carry me on
as new frontiers beckon, promising
not happiness, but Feeling.

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4 - Why Am I So?

Aren’t we all, men, scared
To speak of the ills that ail us?
Thus forswearing all that could avail us
Of how we might be cured?

There could soon come a moment where 
I descend to the cellar floor
I pick a bottle off the shelf, uncork
Real rage, hurt, lust or fear

I shudder at what I might find
Spilling such old wine on the stones;
Would it break me like the king, cursed, alone
Turned mute with beastly mind?

So pay me then the coward’s wage
If I shrink from this task at hand
If I stop in the road I am no man
On path from Scared to Brave.

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5 - Crying I: Having Forgotten How

I went from crying not at all to tears
That flow like cold Northwestern autumn rain
I rediscovered in an instant, years
Of pent up grief and sadness aches and pains
I cried until my tears were gone to waste
We bore the grief together over weeks
The Christmas spirit crushed and poison-laced
Gifts given and received beyond death’s reach
Rough nights did burn the stinging tears in eye
The twilight sings her songs and keeps us down
Admit I must that she who made me died
To start the journey through this tear-soaked ground
As family we united in goodbye;
It took her death to teach me how to cry.

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6 - Crying II: Between Friends

A walk between two friends should be a joy
So often we had done this in the past
To talk, to laugh, recalling times gone by
I think back now as they fade mem’ry’s grasp
My mother dies in sudden circumstance
Sobs wrack my body and I fall to feel
A shame which is not given half a chance
To wound as brothers carry me to heal
I’ll not forget the open way I wept
And won’t dismiss the strength they gave to me
In all my days they’ll be in honour kept
My boys and girls will know how friends should be
I test the bound’ries of fraternal bonds
And find the ties that bind together strong

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7 - A Lament (For Carolyn)

I know now that I felt then
The threads of my warm mind snap
As my father spoke to me
Words that drowned me in chaos
And carried her body
As the Anduin to Rauros

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8 - I Join That Long And Storied Line

I understand my mother now
That you are here and she is gone
I share with her our parent’s loss
I deeply wish that you will not

You would have loved her son I know
But we will never get to see
Her pick you up and hold you close
Both looking back to laugh at me

This dark cold wind remembrance blows
Through the corners of my dreams
Then I wake to see you smiling up
So I drink it, bittersweet.

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9 - Ploughshare

The first fist made by Cain
Was made again by me today;
For I am a son of Adam!
Crouched in unlit corners of my mind
I clench my hands I rage and whine
But there may yet be beasts deeper.

While ugly thoughts flash through my brain,
I grit my teeth with guilty shame
And hold fast against these urges.
While praying for excuse to fight
To let off steam into the night
The demon on my shoulder leaves me.

So do not count me with the men
who won’t admit it may strike them
Sometimes to do violence -
Yet also do not cast my lot
With those who are more like than not
To be quick— jump first to anger.

I’ll bring this all before the Lord;
Now offer ploughshare ‘stead of sword.
Thankful for forgiveness.

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Thank you for sharing your thoughts!