I awaken to the dew of nothingness;
Beyond the seas of tragedy,
I enter the plane of refuge;
No longer chased by the steads of chaos,
I am still as I ride onto the carpet of the winds;
Currents subdued by chance,
I dive in solitude,
But not from a movement of aloneness,
But of gratitude.
Photo credit: Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash
Support my work: Buy Me A Coffee
I hold the mountains if they were my own,
Losing a part of myself in the sunrise;
The cresting warmth against the moody cliffs,
Hugs the snow-capped peaks;
So high they could shake the hand of God,
I sink into the forgetfulness of urban life,
As I fall in love with places,
That I’ve never been.
The blue birds came,
And I wept for the tulips,
For their bloom died with serenity.
When I first began my mindfulness journey it was one of confusion and frustration. I was thinking, “you want me to sit here and just breathe and try not let my thoughts overwhelm me!?” That was my simplistic view of what Mindfulness was at the time. As a child I’ve had diagnosed ADD, which meant my mind raced and wandered all the time. The combination of childhood trauma also added a layer of difficulty when it comes to regulating my thoughts and emotions. I thought it was normal having these anxiety infused thoughts racing through my head every second. Since I could remember I had an anxiety about death. At any moment I thought I was going to die. It haunted me daily. I didn’t think this was abnormal, it was just the way it was. My mind was a labyrinth of different catastrophic thoughts and situations. Reflecting, it’s a miracle that I could function as highly as I could.
What mindfulness taught me was to observe my thoughts as thoughts. I could be curious with them, play around with them, observed how they began and ended, but most importantly I didn’t have to act on them nor did I have to believe these thoughts were reality. It allowed me to be an observer of my thoughts and feelings and not a participant. It gave me space. Space to evaluate, and act when it was necessary to act. I wasn’t driven so much by emotional impulse, but by observation and mindfulness.
I check the tone of my voice to see
If I’ve become a man, like Odysseus,
If my gait stood strong like a Trojan horse,
Deceptive, but a well planned opulence,
Lured by the sirens of my own perfection.
Before puberty, the squeak of my voice
Haunted me tirelessly and unafraid,
Longing to escape the burden of boyhood,
Masked by the tyranny of expectations,
Cursed by a conscious vanity:
When would I become a man?
My frailness became it’s own enemy,
Locked in a chasm of regret and allure,
Running towards validation,
Like a good infantryman towards gunfire,
The blaze of contempt for my own manhood,
Reduced me to a giant without the strength, might, or height,
As the sirens of conformity,
Drifted me to the shores of complacency.
As winter has gone on for far too long,
And the spring winds foreign from rusted chimes,
I check the tone of my voice to see
If I’ve become a man, like Odysseus.
I loved things that made my heart break,
Like annuals that bathe in the sun,
And withered away at the first frost,
I peeked my head outside the window,
To see if my friend would come back,
But dead leaves and snow marks its place,
I think of war as it has the same grace,
Those alluring moments that scares the hell out of us,
But continue to chase without a catch,
My lungs will never breath that deep again,
The sweat of my palms will never soak my gloves,
As metal meditation lulls the empty
Reservoir of youthful stupidity,
It’s cruel you know, to give young men that much life,
And cut it short with a plane ride home.
Hurry up and wait,
While she flies overhead;
Our chariot to the promise land,
Sand shocked,
Tired eyes,
Feather laughter conceals
Our eternity…
Drink more water,
Stomachs lust for temptations,
Backs to backs,
Brothers,
Different mothers,
Same DNA,
All waiting…
Boots approved,
Like a scab once removed;
A tank dances on pavement,
Click-clink Click-clink,
A pirouette of massive grace,
Click-clack Click-clack,
Metal and asphalt,
Commune in a torrent love affair,
Young and despondent,
An adolescent praise,
I thought I’d miss it,
The way youth burned my hands,
Our hearts fell in love with a cure,
That normalcy couldn’t endure,
Would write to you with inexbriant praises,
Between the Arabian desolation,
You’d forget my name,
Through western chaos,
Things changed…
Boots approved,
I was once removed,
And came back with someone
I never knew.
How many men did he see,
Come beaten down after a tussle with insanity,
Who took refuge from love coming undone,
And the unwebbing of tightly coiled ego,
Frayed and twisted in a such a way,
That a prayer to God couldn’t save his fate,
Such a day laid in wait,
Where blues and golds sprung to stifle his gait,
An assault of conscience,
A ruse of pain,
A bitter sword
Left to strike its bane,
Streams whispering of currents anew,
As the battered soul trudges on with a betrayal
Of taunt and sinew,
And there he laughs glee as the spring’s morn;
The stillness as it quakes under the light’s dawn,
Grooves encroaches his brow,
Sweat nourishes his belly of solitude,
Leaves that have fallen a long time ago,
Brings warmth to concessions only he knows,
As one goes many will come,
To be held by the noon’s sun,
Before coming undone.
Support Me
A world taken by iron and eagles,
With boys as young as 12,
Could I have stomached the grit of sand and blood at Normandy?
Or enraged frost of Stalingrad?
Lullabied by the rumblings of the Panzer,
And bouncing like a kid on the legs of his grandfather,
It must’ve been hell,
But who am I to know?
We shared the same oath,
And scoured the same earth,
Finding manhood,
In no man’s land,
But I dug no foxholes,
No rancorous winters at Bastogne,
When nights grew distilled,
We both drunk from an initiation
Only a few ever tasted,
As the sun snuggles into a blanket of horizon,
Silence heals our reprisals,
And it’s only you and me.
War Poems 