Poem: Resolution

A follow-up to yesterday's poem. Enjoy. :-)

Each day is new, but my dejection’s pull

Maintains a stony grip, I know not how.

Each day my senses grow more blunt and dull,

And each day I am forced to humbly bow

Before an altar of lewd conjurings,

Passions and thoughts that I would not permit

In any other case; each mornings brings

Unholy cravings, which alone are fit

To run like maddened animals through a field

Of fog and failure. Thus, dejection seeps

Each hour and day through where my heart is sealed,

And rots away that which my spirit keeps

Pure and above all stain. Yet here’s some hope:

I wonder in my sadness, though I’m shut

Away like hunchbacks or like maddened wives,

Will writing poems help? Perhaps they’ll cut

Away the rotted vines and Gordian rope

That seal my spirits. Maybe other lives

Can be released from this same circumstance

Should I release these poems, and by chance

They read them. There’s a thought that could dispel

Shades from my spirit, now and yet to be.

Ergo, if stanzas like these can impel

Spirits to shake off their dejection, so

It shall be my intent and purpose. Know

That poems can soothe, advise, and set one free.

Poem: "Dejection"

This is a short poem that occurred to me earlier today. Please let me know what you think in the comments. :-)

Dejection:

My spirit is a mirror: if the day

Is fair and breezy, then I feel at ease

And nothing’s wrong. But if the sky is grey

My feelings blacken, and I start to seize

As though a demon had me in his hand,

Had bound me to a chair inside a room

Where sound and light can never venture, and

Where souls are sent to writhe in unjust doom.

And there I stay, and there my spirit rots.

The hours and days traverse their course, and I

Am stuck with an eternity that blots

Sun from my soul and passion from my eye.

This is dejection: not a proclamation,

But one long lack of things that charge the mind

With feeling; it is not an incarnation

Of meaning; but instead it leaves me blind

Within the gutted cavern of the soul,

Where I can hear dark echoes, close but faint,

Of desperation and depression’s toll,

And that which gives my speech a foreign taint.

It makes me utter words that aren’t my own,

It makes me conjure foreign sentiments

And passions that I’d otherwise outgrown,

And places pain in lieu of common sense.

Little Things

The other day I was rushing to finish a paper for a class. I had totally slept on it because I had several other tasks that needed finishing. Try though I might, I couldn't get it done. As of right now it remains in Word, half-written.

In the aftermath of missing the deadline on Friday, I felt absolutely awful. It felt totally emasculating to sit there in the aftermath of such a failure. It felt like all the work I had done to get my grades back up last semester had come to nothing. I felt paralyzed, stuck in the same moment for a half-hour before I had to meet with my Pathfinder group.

I sat there, and somehow it hit me: this too shall pass. I took a breath and thought about this whole thing. "It's just a paper," I thought. "It's important but not so important that you ought to lose yourself over it."

Little things like that are the toughest things to get over. Big things at least give you the full scope of the problem. When something big happens--you lose your job, a loved one dies, etc--you can at least understand the gravity of the issue. Once you understand that, you can move on and start to adapt to living with the aftermath. Something little happens and you either think you can overcome it with ease (only to find out you can't), or you subconsciously let it spiral into something big. It's like the creation of a pearl of problems: one little problem gets into the works, then more problems compound on top of it, till you have a solid ball of issues that seem impossible to resolve or dismiss.

I don't normally make posts like this, but I feel good writing all this out. This blog is an outlet for me, a means of getting my say out there even if nobody else wants to listen to it. I can post poems, rambles, and maybe some stories in the near future, and it feels like I'm still putting stuff out in the world even if nobody at present inclines their ear or their eye to what I have to share.

To anyone who might be reading this, thanks. Thanks very, very much. You, dear reader, whoever you are, you're a good man. I don't ask much, but I'm still thankful for your readership. I'll start updating this blog more regularly with stories or poems or rambles. Let me know what you want to see, and I'll do my best. :-)