Friday, July 20, 2007

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

I have troubles being meek. Despite my youth underfoot, I find submission difficult now that my life is not under a set of knuckles. I spent so much of my life avoiding two beatings instead of the none I deserved that I just don't want to give up any of the carnal control I now see as my right. I was closer to The Lord in those old days. I could pray without interference, and I felt a small degree of empathy for the cross. Now, the voices take over during moments of concentration or self-attention; I'm also completely unwilling to return to any state of power under pain. Once again, my intellect calls me to go with God, but my life always seems to revolve around fights, arguments, arrogance, and a mortal refusal to submit to any man.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Intellectually, I don't believe capital punishment or vigilante action to be just. However, my temper often leads me to situations where my intellect cannot protect me from my frenzied bloodlust. When injustice is profound, I often become as unjustly motivated as the target of my outrage. Sometimes, I shudder to think what I could do while confronting an unjust situation. I don't think anything causes my temper to explode like abusive behavior to children. I know the difference between defense wounds and accidental scrapes and bruises. There are times when I see or hear the marks of abuse in public, and all I can think of is approaching the obvious abuser and pointing out his cowardice and cruelty with a direct threat. There are times when I hear about captial punishment in action and can only think good riddance.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Sometimes, I struggle with humility. I fumble around with poetry seldom worth reading, by Cicero's scale or any other systematic approach to time-wasting. I don't know why I feel the need to be understood; the pursuit of happiness has brought me none. Still, I write. As I put every popular song written for teardrops into my mental catalogue, each one makes me feel closer to that breakthrough I so readily covet. The songstress' name doesn't matter anymore: most of the songs sound the same to my weary ears. To a certain extent, the music industry, poetry, and the art world trade tears for tender. Most songs in my library are sad ballads whose authors could never know how perfectly their words reflect my feelings during any number of my psychotically-fed, dizzy moments, but that's not the point. That perfection is the foundation of my megalomania; still, I write. If a songstress can pull such profound emotions out of a song that has nothing to do with me, I can write a poem that does the same. So my lack of humility is threefold: I believe I can write well enough to be understood; I imagine that somewhere out there, someone will read one of my missives with the kind of perfection that lingers on my lips when I listen to Alison Krauss sing about a lucky one; finally, despite the intellectual and historical undeniability of the falsehoods in first two folds of my humility, I still deeply harbor the notion that I will be heard, understood, and loved peacefully in the same manner I imagine when I listen to my favorite love songs on radio stations brokering in unrequited affection turned commercial with a few songs from a silver disc. Still, I write.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

The Same Song

The Choir sings while the Scabbard Man follows the Many Armed Knight straight to me. I don't think I'd mind as much if the song isn't always the same.

Hello our old friend
You should know our names by now
He doesn't want your help
Or your love
He wants only our Mercy
Don't worry, we won't hurt him
And you'll never hear him scream

We have all been weighed and found wanting

Keat's Grecian Urn calmly says that truth is beauty. I must dissent. The truth is strong, but weaker than opinion. Facts don't lie, but people do. How many people have ever truly loved the ideal gas law? It brings not one truth, but three. All literary characters, by necessity, must resemble autobiography or biography while simultaneously being neither. How many can love truth? Few try, and far fewer still succeed. How many people have a favorite movie? How many have a personally beloved law of thermodynamics? We love movies, music that sings to a "you" several million times per day on everyone's cd player, ipod or radio, and we associate actors with their roles more than with themselves. I am no different. My poems and remarks I share here are all genuine, but in the end, we are not who we say we are. We have always been and will always continue to be the products of what others believe us to be. Thomas Jackson does not exist. I always tell the truth, and hold nothing back. Unfortunately, there are none close enough to confirm or deny anything for certain. Those of you who venture too close may only come away with bits and pieces of truths, all ugly. When all that's left of me are those verified morsels, and weary sets of thumbs passing by my words in print to seek a poem by Nii Parkes, only the thumbs will matter.