Shane Browning's 'The Wheatfield'

You should go to the battlefield at Gettysburg, like right now.  Seriously.  It's an amazing experience.  Actually, just vacation there.  Pack a suitcase, find a rustic hotel so you can delude yourself into thinking you're capable of roughing it, and spend a few days checking out the battlefield.  It's fascinating, moving, and the landscape itself is actually beautiful if you don't think about what was actually going on there at one time.

I happened to be given a chance to tour around the battlefield by a trio of extremely fantastic people.  'Extremely' and 'fantastic' are two extremely fantastic words, and if you use them directly alongside each other you had better be serious.  I am so serious right now.  They are extremely fantastic people, and one of them is named Shane Browning.

Now, Shane Browning is very very good at a very very large amount of things (public speaking being one of them, and to emphasize that fact I will not hesitate to shamelessly plug his company's website within these parenthesis: www.shanebrowningspeaks.com .  Check it out, ya'll.  It's extremely fantastic).  Poetry is something he is very very VERY good at, and after visiting Gettysburg he, being greatly moved by the experience, proceeded to write a poem about the Wheatfield.

The Wheatfield was exactly what it implies itself to be: a wheatfield.  However, it is capitalized because it was the location of perhaps the most intense, casualty-ridden scenes of the three-day battle at Gettysburg, which was in turn perhaps the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.  Since I'm pretty bad at describing these sorts of things, I'll let Wikipedia handle the rest of this one.  Take it away, Wikipedia!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheatfield#Wheatfield

Thanks Wikipedia!  What a gent.  Now that you've completely ignored that link, go back and click on it and start appreciating the things Wikipedia does for you.  It works hard, ya'll.  Now that you've clicked the link and read at least a little of the info (come on, you only have to read a little.  Do it for the children), sit back, relax, grab a Kleenex or three, and enjoy Mr. Shane Browning's

The Wheatfield

The land changed hands 6 times that day
Under violent clash of Blue and Grey
Orders given by both commands
Four thousand drop across the land
One by one brave soldiers fell
Some dead – some dying – some waiting hell
Yet Blue and Grey both so soon retreat
From the hallowed field of broken wheat
The burden of battle the wheat must bare
Crushed stalks no longer waving there
Battered and bloodied by Blue and Grey
The Wheatfield died but once that day.

We're All Mad Here

This blog has now officially gone beyond five posts, and hence surpassed the expectations I had when I typed up the original introduction.  This milestone means absolutely nothing.  But I am sharing it with you anyway, because I'm mad, and honestly,

We're All Mad Here

You all call me crazy, and maybe it’s true.
Either way, I’m too lazy to argue with you.
If you call me insane, it means little to me.
Take a look in my brain and who knows what you’ll see?

Maybe I think YOU’RE crazy, I can’t understand
how a madman like you knows his foot from his hand.
Who’s correct in this case, who has lost a few screws?
You can search throughout space, but you’re going to lose
if you bet you can find anyone not a nutter.
You think I’m unkind?  Do my words make you shudder?

Face it my friend, everyone’s mad to someone.
Every woman and child, each young man or old one.
We all know someone crazy, you know this is true.
Now imagine what crazy folk must think of you!

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This one is kinda'.....below my expectations.  I go for a certain rhyme scheme, forget about it at the beginning of the second verse, and then completely abandon it by the time the third rolls around.  And I use the word 'crazy' way too many times.  O NOEZ DIS POEM IS NOT PC