19/05/2015

H,

There is a sour note in the air today. I do not know why. It is probably not one thing. What would I do if I could not write? I think it is an amalgamation of failures, fears and fever dreams. I have to note that on the worst days of waking up I usually get the best days of living, in a sense. It does not get darker than my imagination.

Anyway, the poem, here is “this fallen love”:

Specter, ghost, ogbanje

You haunt me

And never let up

I am an instrument of sorts

You are an unfilled cup

I feel you in words

You forget me in a day

I feel that deep love

You disregard the embers

I felt off and unchallenged

You were worn and not without malice

You refuse to be a character in my book

In anarchy you rise

Always

Out of form

To become real

You refuse to be a talisman

I can steal

Out of imagination you always leap

Into some other thing

I have loved you for more

Than half my life

You idiot

Stop with the carrot and stick

Come with me

I love you, you are safe

Idiot, stop with the carrot and stick

Come to me

I cannot honestly tell you what all that means. It is a story, like any tale retold, full of exaggerations and enough fiction not to be a documentary account of any real person or state.

I always feel the best expressions of expected love are just cries in the dark for God. We do not really expect fallible people like us to practice anything other than fallen love? Even when we say we love people “just the way they are” with “warts and all” the small print of the offered contract is that they love us back something fierce, un-wielding and picture perfect. As long as the flaw is not infidelity, as long as the quirk is small, as long as they do not embarrass us too much when we take love out for a stroll. Yet, well, none of that is fail-safe. We are not able to love in the real sense until we first address our love to God.

18/05/2015

H,

The early morning birds of Monday. I hope you had a weekend of weekends. I was a little ill but nothing that could kill me. It put me in one place long enough to read and watch and listen. I also began to write poetry again. I thought I would share some of them with you during the week.

Here goes, this is “the silent art of selflessness”:

If you could imagine this,

You are a tree

Or a rock

Or a boulder

Or a group of things

All undefined

If you could taste this

Know this

Be this and conquer

Find solace knowing you are not

Black, white, purple or green

There is something else going on here

Would you be so selfish?

If you knew that you were free

Or something like that. I tried to be a teenager again discovering the inevitability of writing for me. I thought I would run out of words at some point. That kept me from writing for a while. I was over thinking it. I was afraid of being myself. I wanted to be normal in the sense in which no one is. I wanted to have no story and no way to explain myself. That was the moment of surrender for me. When I discovered it was not only acceptable to be yourself before God but it was mandatory. Now, since we have crossed that almighty bridge, it may be useful now to learn to be ourselves before the world.

Monday morning…

15/05/2015

Aweikinin

15/05/2015

            

H,

It is funny how days come with a particular brand of exhaustion. I have spent my week in between books, reports, laws and I can honestly say that writing anything now feels like quite the uphill task. I still have this operational manual to deal with and then one of those meetings you know I dread so well. The premier league season is almost over and, as you used to so subtly put it, “our lives have come to an end”. I have all these things in my mind and heart but that is the good stuff, work I want to do and ideas I want to support.

If I am truly tired it is just my ego hacking away again. It is the thing that tells me that I am not quite up to spec or down to task. It is that overly sentimental inner judge that causes inertia but you keep around because we often mistake being impatient and unkind with being real and loving. And of course as soon as I am done hacking at myself I will turn my attentions to what others do and how they do it. I will convince myself that since I am brutal with myself then I can be brutal with others. If I do not have the courage to be overtly critical I will do it covertly, in my mind and to anyone but the brunt of my judgement. It is clear that no one changes by the hammer. They just grow more determined to avoid the hammer and the wielder. Only pride breaks by the hammer. Only God can lift it. Please no puns about Norse gods. 

Well, that is my Friday rant. I expect I will hear from you soon. I have this thing called today to live in and it is all I have. Perhaps, it is time to kneel and pray. As the poet says, to think about forever.

14/05/2015

From Mathew 6:8-12

           

H,

Today is that terrible day when I remember someone who died a bit too soon. It is not the anniversary of his death but of his birth. It has been on my mind all week and a cloud hung over me. I did not know why until the thing hit me hard. I had to resurrect my old letters to you.

I do not think I have yet broken down over the event. It is still in stealth mode: this pain I ought to feel. For I have lost something. A friendship, and everything has to be a friendship to truly work, has gone to places I do not know. The “ever after” is a strange concept to an earth walker. What does it do for me in the now? All the good stuff has this warranty in tiny print that says you cannot touch it or live it out fully until you cross over to that other side. Well, I do not know how I feel about that today.

The thing that stings the most is how much you take for granted the moments that should be termed eternal. Male camaraderie is full of all this “e go be” and “later” and “sup”. It is full of feckless criticism and hard looks at pointless things and then death comes and the bottom of the thing gives way. I am rambling on but I think I am trying to say I should have been kinder to him. I am trying to say I miss him desperately.

It was the first thought in my head today. I mumbled on in prayer but the verse above hit me in new ways. Do we ever truly know what we need? Do we know what will fulfill and what will frustrate? We are in the dark and a light comes and tells us this and then we wander into the light and then we compete to be “mature” and to know the words so we can sing the song. The song is for the tone deaf and melody free. It is for the open hearts and empty heads that cannot remember the words anymore but want to be filled daily with something new. It is for those who are not afraid to be clueless in a world of fake clues and answers. Not forever, just for a bit. Until He comes and breaks into song with us and we learn to learn it all in the flow of eternal love.