Leaving for Africa

Hey!!!
So I am sort of taking a break from the poetry blog for 2 years to go serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
But before I go, I'll give you one last poem. entitled Simple


Simple
The course humid windiness hit him
With a million smells
A million new faces looking straight at him

Why?
Why would this kid drop everything
To go across the world?

He's so out of place,
Doesn't even know french
Doesn't even know how to teach...

Not afraid,
Not scared of foreign lands
Or his trembling hands

Relying wholly on the Savior,
Giving everything
So that people he meets
Can have a chance

To find the truth.
And help others find it.

Save the Art

A drop of water
Falls from the furthest reach
Onto modern art in the garden:
Flushing the angles of the sculpture
And moistening the gum
Someone had stuck
to the bottom of it.

Longing For

I can almost feel her touch

Delicate and soft, but meaningful

It screams to my idle soul that she exists

She is waiting somewhere to be found

I am longing for the path to find her.

I promise the world that I will go anywhere

But will I do that much?

Will I be strong enough to take that leap?

I have a thousand words that I can say

Without doing anything or saying anything

Just sitting in my chair looking at my words

Which almost jump out of my paper

They are saying: “Be free!”

They say: “Go find the girl you were made for!”

But I’m still seated here, stuck by some hope

That longing for someone hard enough

Will bring them to you

Time Flies

I looked at the television screen

In an absence of things to do

What can this extra time mean?

What if time flew?

I think that the meaning of life

Comes from us knowing what to do

When we are absent of strife

Life takes forever and a day to go through.

Heaven-Song

When without my window a bird called
Early in the morn before the wind stirred
The sun was yet to rise, and through tired eyes
I looked outside to see the source of heavenly music
I turned in my bed and placed my feet on the floor
Then put on my coat quickly and ran for the door.
I must take note of this lowly bird:
It deserves to be heard loud and clear
Its song shouted to the rooftops of the world

Finding Meaning

I wish that I had found my stumbling feet

I wish that I had left it more to chance

Left my thoughts written on the broken street

(Left the little things on a street in France)

My sanity could not come closer though

My brain cannot handle the strain unknown

That must come whenever I still must go

That held me bound in chains down to the bone

I cannot comprehend the final hour

So I write to try to see the new fate.

Alas, I see the new bloom’ed flower

And I see what humans have missed to date!

Simplistic messages of what to give

That people searching find the will to live          

        

More human

I feel the water running
Through my calloused hands

I feel the dirt run through
The indents of the scars

I feel such a closeness
To the simple earth.

I feel loss for those
Who are afraid to dig;

They feel afraid,
They are afraid to be
The humans they are.

What's Happening

I was told that I was not really a poet.
I just write in prose half the time.
I wasn't inventive
"[You're] no Robert Frost"

So I'm going to try to stop that
I'm going to write straight poetry
Just at least till I get bored.
It's amazing what people
Say when they have no bounds
Trolling on the internet

Germanwings 4U 9525

(Please play this music in the background while reading, and it makes a lot more sense)

It was sudden,
A shudder of metal:
The voice on the intercom:
     "This is your captain speaking,
       We are experiencing trouble
       And even with all my experience
       I can't keep the plane in the air.
       I am going to attempt a landing"
There was immediate chaos,
A couple screams of dismay
And frantic flight attendants,
Just as scared as the passengers
Yell for calm.

People looked at the ground,
A mountainous expanse of snow
Out of the small windows.
A man is still sleeping,
With his headphones on,
Window closed.

The teachers from the high school
Grasped for their precious cargo:
The students they had come to love.
They didn't know at the gate that they were
Going to more than one foreign land.

Mothers stood with their babies
In the isles, and the children,
Who didn't understand that
The falling of the plane
Couldn't be fixed by the pilot
Looked up at the tears
In their parents eyes.
"Hush, Hush, It will all be all right"
Is all the parents can say.

The air of clear knowledge
Overswept the cockpit,
In the middle of the Alps.

In the rushing wind beside,
The contralto sang a single note of harmony
With the baritone from her hometown.
Her husband, with sad eyes
Longingly looking at their baby.
Amidst the chaos.

An almost reverence envelopes.
People sit in their seats,
And latch their flimsy buckles.

The pilot opens the door to
The rest of the passengers
And manages to turn off
The blaring alarm system,
He attempts to make a distress call
One more time to air control,
Then sits back in his chair

As the plane descends.
His co-pilot cracks a joke
About the many flight hours
They were going to rack up soon.

The 148 clutch hands
In the spur of the moment:
A universal acknowledgement
That they were human.

Prayers in German,
Prayers in Spanish,
Looking to the One above.

The two in the cockpit aim for
The side of Trois évêchés
Trying to steer the broken metal
Somewhere safe

There was no terror,
As the seat belt lights pinged,
And the oxygen masks dropped

The Rain

The humble drops of water
Fall from the furthest reach
Onto modern art in the garden:
Flushing the angles of the sculpture
Of the gum wrapper inside
The crevice in the middle.

The litter inside
Loosening slowly,
With a rainstorm:
Another attempt of nature
To save art.

The gum wrapper:
Placed weeks before when
Some college kids couldn't
Walk forty feet to a trash can.

Africa #1

I had a dream that I was there
Like I will be very soon
It started with a small boy
Holding a small pail of
Dirty water.
He gestured to me
To drink from the grime
To gain sustenance from
This simple gesture of life.
He needed the way,
He needed the truth.
But I needed the way
And I needed the truth.
More than I could ever say
I tried to communicate
And he laughed.
"Yeye"
New.

The Motorcycle

He looks up from the black faceless
Expanse of road in front of him.
A foam plastic shell obstructs his vision
Enough to just bother him.
He lifts the helmet off his head
Leaving his balance to practice.
The cold molded steel under his body
Grumbling softly in response.

The leather seat
A friend eager for the wind
The handlebars
A path to glory.

The smell of pine
From the lumber mill
As it saws and saws
Under the night glow

The brush of cool air
On the flickering eyes
Now seeing the full expanse

The motor
A gesture of freedom
The body
A metal knife through the air

Haiku #33

Blow on the embers
Your heart needs to feel again
Before the fire dies

Days of Change

A month has passed by
None of my many thoughts
Have run from my lips

New Title, new thoughts

When there is something holding you back
You change it, modify it completely
As to almost forget it exists.
Or totally make it yours to own.

Names

What if everybody used people's names
Instead of the word, "Hello"
Or the constant "How are you doing?"
And put what they actually wanted to mean
In the words they speak,
Rather than just speaking
without meaning.
Those who know you
Speak your name.
There is a certain power
Behind the echos behind
Your flexible ears.

Uneven

A little to the left,

Up a little

No too far, down.

Perfect. 

A camera clicks.

Beautiful eyes look

Back at the pixelated screen.

"Your eyes are uneven again"

A slumped head.

"You'll get it this time"

She tells me sweetly.

And I do it yet again

The perfect picture 

Of an imperfect man,

To get the perfect girl.

Colder

Please can

(Or rather)

Will you

Take off

The lines

Of ice

From the

Flowing 

Water.

It needs

More space

To freeze

To my

Frozen

Blue hands.

The Golden Serpent

I am stumbling upwards through the air

Dumbstruck at the lack of connection

The man at the end of the street

With the walker rubs his glasses,

Blaming it on the fog.

The girl in the pink dress on the sidewalk

Is too busy staring at her phone

To even care about gravity.

The father holding his son's hand,

Says it is some stunt that I'm pulling.

"Look for wires above him" 

The businessman holds his head,

In the graffitied bus stop 

And looks down at his suitcase

Wondering if I'm holding up traffic 

A determined face grimacing in exertion,

Sprints towards the rising figure he sees,

Howling with desperation

Madman's eyes looking determinedly

Upward to the understander.

He launches his feet off the ground,

And looks at me in the eyes.

A piece of paper in his trembling hand.

"Give this to her"

He seems to defy gravity for long enough 

To let me grab the paper 

In my ascension.

And then falls to the ground,

Sweat dripping from his hands.

He sits and watches the figure rise

While the sirens come to take him

Huddled into the white tidy cars:

Going back to the hospital he ran from.

I watch the scene skyward,

Invisible to the people that won't

Even bother to look up.

The Water

In the run down library,
Full of half torn novels
One working drinking fountain,
In the back corner by the bathrooms.

A child holds his mothers hand
As he steps up on the white plastic stool
"Careful, you don't want to slip!"
His mother says.

The kid behind them waits,
Licks his chapped lips,

He looks desperately at the cold
Flowing water from the fountain.

His water at home had been
Turned off because the bill
Was way too high.

His mother told him to be polite,
Show love to everyone around.
He followed what she had said to him,
Even though it was just him now.

The child on the stool
Takes huge gulps, one after the other
And the caring mother is blind
To the the kid shaking in desperation
Right behind them.

For minutes on end,
Stars in front of vision,
The waiting outlasts the hope.

Mannered to the end.
Tears run from his dehydrated body
As empty, he collapses.

Concluded

My eagerness overtakes the truth,
Blandness covers the rich detail.
The elaborate background of red
Overshadowed by the unthinking.

When your bitter heart has no feeling,
Your reset mind knows no bounds.
The shadow of trouble looming
Bathing the night sky in fluid darkness

Don't sweat the small things,
She whispered.

Dit Dah

Cafe mirrors look back at me,
Tapping in morse code on the table:
.. / .-- .. ... .... / -.-- --- ..- /
 .-- . .-. . / .... . .-. .

The letters don't work in my head
The words fall out in dots and dashes
A dashed heart would follow,
If it could understand itself.

Heartbreak never hits so hard,
As someone who is here to stay,
Once yours, then changed
Now only a shadow remains.

Will you remember when you come
Back from the coma you are in
From the car you were so scared to drive
Over the mountain?

Or will I sit on my chair,
Tapping morse code like an idiot
Or a budding musician
With only a hint of rhythm
On the cafe table.

Gravity

Don't try to justify anything
I don't need an answer,
You don't need to tell me.

I may have hurt you
You may have hurt me,
But now is the new before.

I am linking myself hopelessly
To a falling wall,
Blind hope leads upward.

Longing

The bitter feeling of regret
For something done
Another another pen's ink run dry

And I realize that she and me
Will most likely never be

Waiting for the first,
Jealous to the last

I give up the game,
I lose
I lose!