Category Archives: Poetry

Extracting Wisdom

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Stooges

They sat me in a chair today
My wisdom teeth they pulled away
And though my jaw may swollen be
The wisdom it remains with me
 
For pulling teeth is a painful thing
But extracting wisdom has far more sting
Lying deep within its sheltering host
And to pull it out one creates a ghost
 
And yet there is another way
To bring wisdom to the light of day
To take the time to lend an ear
As wisdom is shared by mouth to hear
 
To listen close to stories told
To things once learned, to lessons old
To ask the questions that bring out
The wisdom we cannot live without

Neil White, 2015

Have to have a little fun with the experience.

Banished Monsters

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Old Tree Wallpaper by Deligaris@deviantart.com

Old Tree Wallpaper by Deligaris@deviantart.com

Maybe there was once a time when magic ruled the world
When wizards and witches cast their spells upon their watchers
Where dragons flew beyond the mountains and wild children lived in the forest
Giants and trolls and goblins inhabited the wilderness beyond the safety of town
And brace heroes marched out into the wild lands to defend our boundaries
But no longer, the dragons are gone, the giants of old are dead,
and the children of the forest forgotten
Lost to the fog of some long forgotten time
beyond the shade of our parents’ or our parents parents’ memory
The demons that once dwelled in the wilderness now have only our minds to haunt
And the devils live among us wearing our own skins
For in arming ourselves to conquer the dangerous world of monsters
We became that which we sought to banish, the reflection of our nightmares
For where else will the monster roar if not within the heart of man?

Neil White, 2015

The Limit of Words

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Sometimes in the deep wounds of the world
Those places where the spirit is reduced to groans
Where words only have the power to inflame and incite
And the cry of lament is still unspeakable
Living in the shock of the brutality of reality
Seeing the pain that you cannot stop
Or reeling from the hole that resides in your soul
Where the limit of words are reached
And tears speak a language of their own.
Those places where logic fails and poetry perishes
Where death steals away life too soon
And violence destroys the beauty of the ages
Where trust is overcome in betrayal
The deep wounds of the world that cry out
In sobs that surpass the limit of words

Minding the Flow

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Trinity River in Texas

Trinity River in Texas

There was a time when the words flowed from the pen
Like rivers of inky thought rushing toward the paper sea
And the flow revealed the gems and minerals buried
Within the rumbling currents of thought.
One day the waters stopped flowing
Dammed up by the constraints of time and productivity
Caught up behind the logjams of life
Too long untended and they quickly grew stagnant
But I’m learning to mind the flow again
Clearing away the detritus that prevented the flow
Slowly finding the silence to hear the water’s song
To prospect again in the sediment deposited on the shore
Rather than acting as if the waters need to be contained
Shutting them inside as if mindful of a drought
Instead to let the flow down and fill up the vacant pages
Not expecting that every exploration will yield up new surprises
Learning to merely enjoy the rhythm of the river again
Minding the flow, mining the shore, swimming in the shallows
Diving into the depths and sharing in the experience
Letting the words flow again and take their own course
As the paper seas begin once again to be filled with images

Neil White, 2015

Father Forgive Them…A Poem for Good Friday

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El Greco, Christ on the Cross (1588)

El Greco, Christ on the Cross (1588)

Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing
Your people chose to listen to the voices that fill the air of this noisy world
The calls of the gods of violence and might they have answered
And in the kiln of conflict the green wood is drying awaiting the spark
Of these angry gods of war and rebellion that are never satiated
Though rivers of blood and the screams of the innocent stream out
Poured out as a libation making the profane sacred and the sacred profane
In the days to come they will cry to the hills to cover them in their terror
Calling the barren blessed and the ones lost in natural disasters lucky
Because of the wrath of their gods that rejoice in the conflict of the nations

Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing
Dividing the world into the righteous and unrighteous, the holy and the mundane
Those who are blessed and those who are cursed, offering to gods of privilege
Those who can be excluded and kept out by their blood and their birth
By the language they speak, the hue of skin or hair, who they love or how they act
They bear the projected fear of the mob by sickness or disease or demonization
Confined to the outskirts of the city, to the graveyards, the asylums and prisons
They are prevented from having a place at the table and the temple
The very outcasts that I once rescued from their sojourn as pariahs
The poor who received good news and the captives that were set free
Now instead of the favor of the Lord receiving the scorn of these tribal gods

Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing
They may be full and laughing and rich now but they live in spiritual destitution
The concerns of the world and the lure of wealth have choked the seed
God’s kingdom came among them and they never saw it snatched away
They have offered their lives to the cruel gods of mammon and security
Offering their lives in to quench the unending thirst for acquisition
Joining house to house, starving the widows and the orphans and yet
Their appetites only yearn to consume more for that is what they are
They are consumers whose lives are built upon the things that in turn consume
I have yearned to gather them together under my wings as a hen
But they would not come for their lives were built around shrines of their own making
Fouling their own nests and poisoning the waters of their children
In their hunger to feed these insatiable gods that delight in their indentured servitude

Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing
Their fathers and mothers didn’t have ears to hear the prophets you sent
And they have not the eyes to see the Son in their midst, and so they cast me out
They rejected the cornerstone and crafted idols of stone and ideology to offer their lives to
Instead of peace they chose war, instead of love they chose hate
They believe they have never been slaves to anyone as they ignore their yoke
Locked into the world of their fears and isolation, cursing what they do not know
They mock me to ‘save myself’ but it is their lives I cry out to save
It is their world that has the sun blotted out; their veils which are torn in two
They and their children will bear the burden of appeasing the gods they chose
Conflict and alienation and slavery may be the path that they have chosen for their own
Yet, Father it is you who pull light from darkness and life from the maw of death
Whose rejected kingdom is at hand and who breathes the life into the new creation
It is into your hand that I commend my spirit and their shattered world as well
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Give unto the righteous and the unrighteous their daily bread
And forgive them their trespasses for they do not know what they are doing

Neil White, 2015

Uninspired- A Playful Poem

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I want to be productive and there is plenty I could do
It’s just that I don’t have the drive to start on something new
It’s not that I feel bad or sad or depressed or anything like that
But everything for this week is done and my inspiration is flat
The week’s tasks are through and my mind it wants to play
And yet the weekends is not here yet and so I try to work away
Perhaps the poem is a waste of time, perhaps a little fun
But nothing else is getting done until its path has run
I sure my inspiration will be back and perhaps sometime soon
Perhaps it only needs a little break and will be back this afternoon
Or perhaps it took a holiday, a little flight to sea
Wherever it went, the trip it took, I wish it would take me

 Neil White, 2015

Clocks by Azoz7 on Deviantart.com

Clocks by Azoz7 on Deviantart.com

Snow Day    

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Snow day

The snow and the ice bring the wheels of civilization creaking to a halt
And for a day the factories and the machines enjoy a Sabbath
Yet, I in my imagined self-importance somehow feel propelled
To continue to work while others rest, to labor while others play
To allow that the snow and the ice afford an opportunity for others
Except me, that somehow I convince myself that there is no day of rest

And perhaps there is wisdom that one can only enter the mystery of the kingdom
If one can approach it as a child, one who can learn again to play where others see obstruction
To learn to delight in the world as it is and not to continually try to bend it to one’s will
Perhaps on these days where the roads are empty and sidewalks covered
We can learn again to rest and play, to restore and renew
And perhaps for myself somehow I can convince myself that there is a day of rest

Neil White, 2015

Meaning and Metrics

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William Blake, The Ancient of Days: The Division of Light and Darkness (1794)

William Blake, The Ancient of Days: The Division of Light and Darkness (1794)

We often act if the only things that matter are the things that we can measure
Equating quantifiability with quality and metrics for meaning
In a scientific world we like to measure and enumerate
Statistically straining our lives into sets of data to be examined
Living for our curricula vita rather than the unmeasurable moments of meaning
And perhaps someday we will describe the mathematics of love and passion
But lives that are lived seek the meaning that defies the metrics
We live not for numbers but for stories, for feelings and values
Our impact is felt in the quality of connections we cultivate
Rather than the quantity of work we manufacture
Numbers have their necessity and their place in our world
And metrics cannot give us the meaning that our lives seek

Neil White, 2015

Reverie

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There are songs to be sung whose words I don’t yet know
There are novels to be written and stories to be told
Journeys to be made, battles to be won,
Hearts broken and mended in these ballads left unsung.
Perhaps, one day, they’ll find their way from my mind onto a page
Until that day they grow in my thoughts and in my dreams they rage
Most will be lost and forgotten never seen
Except in their brilliant flashes upon my mind’s own screen
So many times I wish that there was a way that I could share
The ones who dance beyond my reach and vanish in thin air
So if someday you see me and you ask what’s on my mind
And I simply tell you nothing, I don’t mean to be unkind
Perhaps there simply aren’t the words to describe the things I see
Or maybe, I fear, the magic that I invest them with won’t translate unto thee
So there are novels that may never be written and stories left untold
And songs whose words and melodies the world will never know.

Paul Cesar Helleu, Daydream (1901)

Paul Cesar Helleu, Daydream (1901)

300 Thoughts

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Folded Dreams by PORG at Deviantart.com

Folded Dreams by PORG at Deviantart.com

Three hundred thoughts from a cluttered and curious minds confined to print and digital text
Poetry and prose, history and religion, philosophy and psychology all clamoring to be heard
An external wrestling of an introspective mind playing with ideas and experimenting with words
Three hundred thoughts over the span of a couple years that bear some connection in my mind
Yet are not the ordered and methodical story of a novel, not even some convoluted collection of shorts
But somehow they fit together as a part of the web of thoughts that my mind seems to spin

Perhaps I thought this electronic place might serve as some mechanical pensieve
Some collection place where thoughts can be stored and later looked upon with detached fascination
But even once committed to pen and paper or keystroke and bytes the thoughts become impressed
The act of scribing them inscribes them all the more keenly on the pages of my mind
And yet in the process of writing the thoughts become clearer and connections unseen appear
And somehow in the midst of the poetry and prose and reflections I change and I grow
Not in some methodical and measurable way and yet as time plods its slow march
Things begin to make sense and new questions and curiosities rise to the surface

To you my reader who stand on the outside looking at what must at times seem a tangled mess
I thank you for your time and your patience and I hope that in these random thoughts
Some piece of wonder or wisdom has perhaps touched your journey as well
For these simple words we wield are powerful things and you never know what their impact may be

Neil White, 2015

This is the 300th post on sign of the rose and more are coming but it was a fun way to reflect on the process and posts of the last couple years.