Saturday, August 26, 2017

It struck me that some of my favorite poets hated those works of theirs which touched me most. There's nothing intrinsically bad about the last poem in the collection, which I intended not to post. In my previous post I said I "probably" wouldn't post this.... I'm going to go ahead and post it. This one is actually the last item in the collection written by me. The collection included one poem written by someone else; I definitely won't be posting that one here, unless maybe I find out who wrote it. It was a good poem, though -- I liked it.

Here it is. It's called "goodbye mockingbird".

---------------------
scattered like dry leaves from an opening door
piled into a circle, to watch a newborn traveler

yesterday feels like a dream and it is apparent
that today will be more real than ever

this isn't the first time, and it won't be the last
my feet leave the ground, but are firmly planted
in the imaginings of a faithful engineer, long dead

there is a God, and he floats over the world
much like this, i wonder if he sees what I see
brilliantly fading landscape, horizons blue and red

all i hear is your voice

i haven't heard it in so long

my dim memory

reading this letter

over
and over
again

the song of the seagull. this place was never home
---------------------

It's about leaving Texas to go to Utah (home from school). I moved a lot because my dad was military. Every place I've ever lived felt like home except for Utah. In Alabama, where I spent 7th-9th grade, I had a lot of friends who were into bad stuff (for example, one of my close friends, a girl I liked back then, missed the fourth quarter of our freshman year because she was in juvenile detention. Her dad was beating her, and she got hold of a baseball bat and seriously tried to kill him. I guess the neighbors stopped her and called the cops or something. The dad was sent to the hospital, and I never heard the end of the story because I never got to talk to her again. That's just an example. I still sometimes think she would have been better off if she succeeded). Those people and their problems never bothered me, because they cared openly about me and were kind to me even while others at the same school were literally pushing me down. They were legitimately doing whatever they knew how to do to cope with their extreme circumstances. They did drugs and had sex and did other bad stuff sometimes, but I understood, and I loved them.

In Utah, I met a behaviorally analogous group who had literally no discernible difficulties in life, and I hated them. I knew their parents and their LDS church. I knew how they spent their spare change and their lazy days, etc.. They were basically upper-middle class kids in a small town who were just bored and unruly. I couldn't stand being around them; I couldn't stand hearing them joke about the drugs they might do after school; I couldn't stand seeing them in the hallway boldly insisting to their female classmates that they allow them to touch their breasts, while the teachers were somehow completely oblivious. When Gavin moved away and left me there alone for my senior year, my world turned totally grey. I hung out with Dylan, Tommy, and Tyler, but Tyler super easily angered and was constantly being falsely accused of causing trouble and receiving penalties for it; Tommy kept making the same exact jokes over and over, and telling us about the good feelings that Mormon Jesus gives him, and Dylan was so reasonable that I felt ashamed of myself whenever I was around him. My brother and sister were both away in college, and my parents were broken enough that they got divorced almost as soon as I went to college, and dad ran off with some LDS woman (lips dripping honey, I'm sure). I remember 10-12 grade as the period in my life where I felt most lonely, but also as the period in my life where I was most judgmental and prideful. What an ass I was.

Maybe the reason I don't like this poem is because my family made me read it at a family reunion once, but I was sick and had no voice, so I couldn't read it and my mom read it instead of me. I was so upset about how I couldn't give it the intonation I wanted, that I teared up a little while she read, and my little cousin said loudly to everyone "He's crying! He's crying!" (not to make fun, but to accent how emotional he thought I was about the poem itself). I was so so so so embarrassed about it, and I can't read this poem without remembering that moment.

I've always cried easily. Not like bawling and moaning and sniffling, but my eyes get watery almost every time I'm backed into a corner or forced to be 100% transparent/sincere... Also pretty much any time I'm angry. If I am who I want to be, then it's because I have a lot of things I wish I could do in those emotionally intense moments, but restraining myself forces my thoughts out of my eyes. Realistically, I think I really just have weak tear ducts. Maybe I'm a wimp.

Come to think of it, a lot of my behavior is characteristic of wimpiness. I debate atheists online, cry easily, and write angsty poems.... but I debate in person, too! and I'm rarely incapable of admitting when someone has soundly shown me I'm wrong. There's evidence of that in my YouTube videos, where I conceded a debate openly after the first time I was rebutted. What a shame! But I can tolerate it and learn from it. I'm better every time I fail. What is it to be a man? I think manliness is characterized by conviction and humility -- a balance of stubborn adherence to what we believe is right and pliable willingness to admit when we're wrong, requiring wisdom, self control, patience, and self-awareness. 

"Who are we?"

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