Dad's Gifts (With Added Monologue!)

-Dad's Gifts-

I've not the foggiest idea of where my life would be
if it weren't for the set of tools that Dad gave to me.
I was very small when he brought me into his old shed.
Too young to fully grasp his plan or motives in my head.
He sized me up, looked in my eyes, and examined my hand,
then handed me a box so heavy I could barely stand.

I opened it excitedly, then frowned at what I saw.
The tools seemed unimpressive. Still, I quickly set my jaw.
I thanked my Father for the box, and he smiled knowingly,
then said, "You don't yet realize, son, what you're supposed to be.
I chose this particular box for you specifically.
Just use the contents as you should, and one day you will see."

I've gotten stronger since that day, the box seems somewhat light.
I've found that I enjoy Dad's gifts more than you'd think I might.
Sometimes I wish to exchange my tool set for another
with perhaps a brighter sheen, to show off to a brother.
Even so, I take great joy in using what Father gave.
I'm thankful for the help they give, the many roads they pave,
and hope that soon I'll know what I'm meant to use them to do.
Thanks Dad, for giving me your box.  I owe all this to you.

-Monologue!-

The purpose behind this one is to swallow my pride and give credit where I believe it's due.  I'm not good at very many things, so when it comes to something that I actually do have any amount of skill in, I claim it, treasure it, and hold it in a death grip. This being so, I take credit for the things I've written and posted when really, every scrap of the credit goes to God. He gave me this ability, he keeps this ability from dying out, and if He deems it necessary He'll take it away for the sake of my much-lacking humility.

There are many times when I wish I weren't a writer.  I usually want to be something else.  I love to write, and I love to read what others write, but I can't escape the feeling that I've scraped the bottom of the talent pool. To be frank, being good at putting words in particular formation really isn't all that impressive.  But it was God's will that I be given a certain amount of skill in this regard (exactly how much skill is entirely up to your own opinion), and I am darn well going to do my best to treat it right.  I wasn't meant to be impressive, but I know He doesn't want me to be incompetent.

But I love it.  I love what I do, what I feel when I write in my notebook, what I feel when I post my stuff on the internet and when I come up with characters and places and plot threads.  So I figure, maybe it's more important to God that I be happy than that I be impressive.  I'm cool with that.  I'm grateful for that.

Thanks Dad.  You wanted me to write, and I hope you like what I've written.

Black and White

Baa baa, Black Sheep, what's wrong with your wool?
Come now, Black Sheep, whatcha' tryna' pull?
Stand very still and let us make you White.
Don't fear, Black Sheep, family doesn't bite.

Oh dear, Black Sheep! Though we've tried our best,
poor Black Sheep still isn't like the rest.
Even now, he doesn't shine as brightly as his kin.
Soon he will revert and be black as he's ever been!

Bye bye Black Sheep, clearly you can't stay.
There isn't any purpose for your blackness anyway.
You should have changed your wool, but you just never understood.
Your defections were bitter....but your pain tastes really good.

A Day in Camelot with the Little Elf

Little Elf

The little elf-child who sleeps on the stone;
what she may dream of or why is not known.
Who knows why she growls if you nudge her awake?
(If she's even sleeping; it could all be fake.)
Few stranger or prettier things have been shown
than the little elf-child who sleeps on the stone.

-----------------------------------------------

.......Heh.  So yeah, before you scratch your puzzled head, let me give you the headscratchingly puzzling story behind this one.

You guys remember my last post, wherein I told you about the Extremely Fantastic Brownings I toured the Gettysburg battlefield with?  Well, they have a young daughter, whom I ran around making up many playground games with and giving many piggybacks to.  One of the games we played was of such bizarrity that I decided to write a poem about it.

Okay, so my Dear Little Friend, she would slide down the long metal slide until she reached the end, at which point she would leap directly into my arms.  I would then proceed to twirl her around, dip her, and then put her back on the end of the slide.  She'd spider-climb up, reach the top, slide down, and we'd repeat the whole process over again, and all was well and extremely weird in the world even before she decided to change it up.

Without warning, when I had placed her back on the end of the slide for perhaps the fifth time, she promptly began imitating a sleeping person.  I watched her for a little bit, and when it was clear she was showing no signs of 'waking up' anytime soon, I decided to take my chances and see what a nudge on the shoulder would do.  What it did was cause her to 'wake up', growl like a little feral gremlin in my direction, race back up to the top of the slide, growl once more, slide down, and lather, rinse, repeat.

Get it?  I sure as heck don't.  But that little girl certainly did, and that was good enough for me.  Love and miss you, kiddo!

Oh yeah, and I also wrote a stupid poem about Camelot.

----------------------------------------------------------

A Day in Camelot

Sir Galahad and Sir Gawaine
were fighting dragons on the plain.
Sir Lancelot and old Sir Cai
were out to catch Morgan le Fay.

Sir Lional and Sir Bedevere
were...wait a minute, now see here!
In our fair town of Camelot
it seems like Sirs are all we've got,
so where have all the Maidens gone?

Let us now go on the lawn.
There sit Guinevere and Elaine,
picking some berries in the rain.
Arthur is with them, our brave King!

What is he doing?  Not a thing
(But that's okay, 'cause he's the King).

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!

-----------------------------------------------------

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

Friend

It's a Friday afternoon (sort of), and I have so much I should be doing, but instead I'm blogging.  When I tell people that I live on the internet, they think I'm kidding.  I'm not.

But I *like* blogging.  I actually just realized that I genuinely enjoy it.  This is kind of blowing to my mind, I never really thought of myself as a blogger, but hey, hopefully my enjoyment will actually give me the motivation needed to continue this until people start actually reading it. XD

Happy Friday ya'll, have a poem!  It's homemade!

---------------------------------------------------

Friend

There used to be a man (Although he really was a boy),
who had a sanctuary and it was his pride and joy.
He knew to visit this place whenever he fell in strife,
and told his sanctuary, "Friend, I love you more than life."

Through times of good and times of ill, he never felt alone.
His place would vanquish all concerns and warm him to the bone.
But a day came when the life that they'd always shared was through.
He said to it amidst tears, "Friend, I don't know what I'll do."

Somehow he managed on his own, things changed, years went and came,
until the day that he returned to find his place the same.
It offered him protection as it always had before.
He smiled and said, "Friend, you're where I'll stay forevermore."

There used to be a boy (I guess he could have been a man),
who never had a secret or a talent or a plan.
He never did find riches, renown, power, or a wife.

He found a sanctuary though, and loved it more than life.

Super Invited

Sweet Summer Child!  You guys, I have a blog!  Ha ha!  I'd nearly forgotten.  Apparently I post my poetry on this blog.  Cool, I guess!  Let's see what I have....

Invited

Please don't answer the door, sir,
please don't answer the door.
There's not anyone here, sir,
who's not been here before.
They came into your house, sir,
they smashed your finest things,
they struck you to the floor, sir,
and hacked away your wings.

You can see for yourself, sir,
look through the tiny hole.
They're crouching on the steps, sir,
clutching the life they stole.
Remember their past deeds, sir,
remember what they take,
and now remember why, sir!
Your house is now at stake.

You've just answered the door, sir,
I wish that you had not.
For look at the destruction
the invited have wrought.
But I speak out of turn, sir,
I won't say any more.
You must know what you're doing,
when you answer the door.
---------------------------

As one can easily tell, this poem is grimdark, and highly metaphorical.  That's a nice way of saying, "The writer is very disturbed so he wrote a disturbing poem that nobody but him can possibly understand".  And another nice way of saying that is to say that this poem is open to interpretation.  Whatever you take out of it though, I have to admit that there's a lot of cheating in there.  By cheating, I mean using the word 'sir' at the end of every other line to make it seem like the poem has way more rhyme than it does, and at the beginning I use one line twice in a row.  So yeah, cheating.

......Hey look!  Another one!  These things are everywhere!

Super

The superman watches from his throne on high.
He's scanning the people who gaze at the sky,
yet never can see him, or realize or care
that someone is sighing in sadness up there.

He wishes their flaws weren't so apparent,
or that a companion could perhaps be sent,
whose mind was on on par with his own, for somewhere
there exists a kindred spirit....Doesn't there?

The superman looks down at you and at me,
all alone in his superiority.
From his mighty face there falls many a tear,
for his life is secretly man's greatest fear.

----------------------------------------

Heh.  You're probably thinking, "Tom, why so serious?  Don't you ever write down your whimsical thoughts?"  Well yeah, I did in the last blog post.  Pay attention.  In truth though, yeah, this is another one that I was very seriously minded while writing.  And no, it is not about Superman from DC comics.  I mean, it can be, if you want, but that's not what I wrote it as.

Anyway, I made a marvelous and rather shocking discovery recently.  Apparently, people exist who actually read this blog.  WHOA, right?  So, to those people (all two of you, likely as not), I feel inclined to say that I will be heading out of state with my family for about two weeks, and as such no updates will be posted for a while.  Considering my normal update schedule, this will not feel like a huge change.

Signing off, ya'll.