Category: self-discovery

Counted

I have come to depend upon you

More often than I’ve dared to admit

More so in the darkness and silence

When no other cared to remember me

When I may have been least deserving

When I’m filled with doubt about myself

In times when I hadn’t thought of you  

As waves of egocentric ran their deepest

Or my preference overpowered my heart      

Submitting to a majority instead of truth    

Because fear can still strangle my strength

Until I fall upon the foundation of faith

And lay in the nakedness of my humanity

Your blinding Light of Grace…clothes me  

. 

Poet of the Light © 2024

Photo by Artem Saranin on Pexels.com

Light and shadows

True bravery is rarely seen these days

With political divide and gnashing of teeth

Causing many of us to take sides or hide  

Many of us walk by it unnoticeably

Distracted and dumbfounded alike

But- every now and then

As I’m heading out my door

I run into my battered ego returning

Humbled, shaken, and hanging its head

Undefeated but changed by the world at large

Bleeding from new and old scars, and reddened eyes

Not because of any self-overinflation

But because my humbled ego dares to love

And as such, pays an eternal price … to forgive

.

Poet of the Light ©2024

Photo by Prajwal Madhwal on Pexels.com

Tempering

I’ve learned by trial and error- not to beg

For any attention, affirmation, or even love

Not from family nor my unreliable friendships

People and things are what they always were  

Time: nothing more than an intangible construct

That some blame or credit for all our changes

It’s tears, wounds, and brokenness that teaches

And the scars (hidden or otherwise) remind us

Of our latest encounter down those rabbit holes         

Whereby the grace of God, we found our way out   

Philosophies are now warped and sold online 

Ethics no longer resemble long-standing truths  

We weave our ways behind the facades of life              

Feeling distinctions… about wrongs and rights

. 

Poet of the Light © 2023

Photo from Pexel.com

Maladministration

I hear breezes pass through pine trees but lack any desire to know their direction

As a rising morning sun lightly repaints the skyline with blue hues

My days pass like hours but are aging more like months cognitively

As sporadic moments remain like lingering thoughts waiting to be connected

While I go through a litany of unmotivated motions for a quiet daily  

Tweets of birds outside my windows don’t resonate until hours later

Far too late to take real-time notice of their beautiful visits or sung message       

The old adage “life waits for no one” seems to be holding too true

But only if we contextualize “life” as actively living in their jeweled moments          

Ahh- to be so rich and poor simultaneously is a mind-boggling plight for many         

We seem to be burning out at both ends or imploding by faint devaluations

All in a fool’s errand to perfect our imperfectible traits, dreams, or talents      

We oft accept the flaws of others to avoid loneliness but disdain our own failures  

We’ve allowed life to become championed…by the wrong set of currencies

.

Poet of the Light © 2023

Photo by Norbert Kundrak on Pexels.com 

Floccinaucinihilipilification

Empty preserve jar and buttered grain toast sacrifices morning appetite

I hear the daily political rhetoric resonate across the screens

Both on video as well as outside on the sidewalk of passing people

And yet even today I remain numb about most of the subjects

Rarely do I engage or take any sides of additional growing disharmony

As if I’ve been snake bitten intellectually and lean shyer  

All this world learns from life is how to fight or profit for any reason

Having long forgotten those missing from our broken hearts

Making my palate for the sweeter things of life soured            

And I question what more or purpose will become of my time left here

As grains of lost time are converted into manufactured solar panels     

Surely, human intends to extend their colonial perversion into the whole universe

Trying to one-up one another or find satisfaction for an unquenchable thirst

It is truly my hope long before then… to ascend and miss all that mess

.

Poet of the Light © 2023

Silky petals

Could not the Odyssey spare me a Nightingale

Thereby offering me promising hope of warmth

Invite me to picture a rural sylvan of green tops

Colorful butterflies in flight and light hair girls

Chasing after without real intent to surrender

Oh, I could almost hear their echoing laughter

As I lay alone, reading somewhat sprawled out

Upon an inviting blanket where I offer them rest

Then, we would chat about the flowers and moon

And of course, love and lazy afternoons- all alone

Sisters or friends endeavoring to become women

And I- merely but lad desiring to become a man

Would only too happily feel obliged to them both

After all, what then is nature for if not to…bloom  

.

Poet of the Light © 2023

Photo by Maksim Goncharenok on Pexels.com

Missed

I stare easterly at a future dormant horizon that lays bare and ominous

That imaginary long thin line we notice cognitively in a pensive mind

Just as a northern breeze caresses my left cheek, invoking my childhood memories

Of when I stood offside of my mother, and she innately touched my face

As if saying without words, “Worry not about today my child, I am still here”

In that loving fashion only, mothers can do so affectionately without ridicule

When an impressionable lad’s head is filled with naive fleeting thoughts

Far removed from the dangers of life, love, and other immoral malice      

But time and life lessons overcome a parental effort when absent

And children become near adults with all life’s answers all wrapped up

As if bequeathed divine knowledge like chosen future saints of a church       

Reminding me in this sober moment, we’ve not enough time to learn          

How to openly communicate and respect one another’s differences

Let alone grasp a fuller understanding of what love really… is

.

Poet of the Light © 2023

Risky

I whispered to you so many times

But I’m only just discovering now

You never heard a word from my heart

And I’m really unsure which is worse

Simply too slow to know or feeling ignored

Love for me requires I attempt it

Even if I fail in my messages

Something inside myself was attracted

To someone that doesn’t know I’ve existed

Like a shadow of a suppressed whisper

Waiting to be coaxed into loves light  

I am all I ever been deep inside myself  

But my heart wanted expansion

In the arms of someone… attentive  

.

Poet of the Light © 2023

Photo by Chris Hillier on Pexels.com

Explication

There are just some things

We discover unexpectedly

That can summate so much

Speaking on behalf of our hearts

Or maybe our lingering thoughts

Morning was duller than normal

And coffee had infused the air        

Something felt off, yet still right

So, I sat at the table in my chair    

Staring out of the framed pane

I noticed a cloudy mist stalled

Directly over a meadow chasm

I thought to myself, how apropos

Mother has hung up…my portrait  

.

Poet of the Light © 2023

Photo by Maria Orlova on Pexels.com

Impulsively

I experienced far too many things

In my younger days of romanticism

So much so, I thought myself adroit

To all the free samplings I’d tasted

As honey-sweet as they were for me

I rarely revealed their bitter departing

More pensive reflection may have seen

The fallacy in my premised knowledge     

Observation has its special advantages

Just as first experiences behold their own        

Truth be told- steeping is timely learnt  

Where one savors the truest of flavors     

Only now am I ready to gently simmer

Purity of love and life… with a lover

.

Poet of the Light © 2023

Photo by Michael Burrows on Pexels.com