Journey to Ixtlan

Poem - Could Love Me

2016-10-05T13:35:56Z

The poem “Could Love Me” is about the struggle that the depressed face and the healing touch of those who seek to bridge to the suffering soul.

Could Love Me

If you could love me
would I know the truth
would I get a note
to span this gap in between?
perhaps I know you in passing
one of many in my world
invisible in my meager sight
phantoms in my misery.

Silence is my constant mate
escort of a thousands slights
so loud as to drown the world
in the vacuum of nothingness
in this swirl of outside hush
the inside screams you do not hear
echo within to fill my ears.

The lack of touch is too much
heavy hand where none persists
pressing down like the limb
missing yet still needing feel
hunger prompts the memories
of the meals within past arms
sup’d desire spun to feed
the beast that lives inside of me.

If you could love me I should know
shared to break the walls of my mind
feel the touch from an outside world
hear the voice of someone else
while the pain may still remain
torment me as I find my way
I’ll embrace my place in the world
no longer phantom to the ones that care.

2016, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved, 20161005.

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Poem - Flowers Near At Hand

2016-02-01T03:41:54Z

Life can be a tormented mix of triumphs, failures, joys, and agonies. I attended a dance during which I met all of these. The dances I did were near ecstatic. Debilitating self-doubt removed from me from the free-form dancing. I felt distant from some people I very much wanted to connect with, and I had a delightful one-on-one encounter that was not expected. A truly mixed bag, positive on balance. The majority of the pain is connected to my inability / unwillingness to reach out to people. The rest is perhaps due to differences in age / social status / generations. Both of these are too much at times.

Flowers Near At Hand

Loneliness is the place,
part of God's greatest plan
for learning the consequence
of looking for another soul.
False trails are the start
when a life is measured wrong.
Survival is the detriment
to happiness in life's heartbeat.

Is it enough to be well known,
links of a life expressed
through artifacts of achievement
forgotten in swell of time?
Dust passes from the colors,
the clock's iron will imposed.
True life is beyond the gulf
that lays between our lives.

How do I become immune
to the pain of discovery,
losing parts of myself,
when I don't know what I seek?
To stumble becomes the norm,
moving beyond what could be.
Turning back is incomplete
when life to death is the path.

Glimpses of serenity
just beyond my hesitant grasp,
I'm too slow to grab the joy
when you appear in my life.
Do I seek what I could be
in the shade of fading day?
The night will come at the last
while I dream of flowers near at hand.

© 2016, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved, 20160131.

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Poem - Raise a Drink

2016-01-29T21:38:38Z

Inspiration is a funny thing. The poem “Raise a Drink” was inspired first by a pictorial meme. The author published a series of photos his perfect girlfriend. He ended it with the acknowledgement that she was now an ex, and he did not realize what he had during the relationship. This got me thinking about a life situation in which my best friend is also a near stranger. I tried to express this dichotomy, but I ended up writing a poem about a person who was drowning their sorrows because of a lost love, perhaps lost because of a wrong the drinker performed. This isn’t what I do, but that’s where the poem went.

Raise a Drink

Here's to one I do not know,
long companion cast away,
gone forever from my world.
Even now I'd hold them close,
cry to heaven with shut doors
if my memories were more than smoke.

Raise a drink to the mystery,
acknowledge my sins are many,
why life unwinds in ways oblique.
The eyes are closed, heart is broke,
life unseen as tears collide
in my glass more clear than life.

Beverage will cloud my thoughts,
welcomed thief of my sight,
impure savior of dubious plots.
Devil's brew makes past obscure,
present mired in deep gloom
while future departs from my view.

Salute the dark corridors,
paths I'll walk when I rise
from this seat of suffering.
Melancholy will have its way,
in time I'm damned to replay
when the bottles lose their sway.

A last toast to time's deceit,
damn not the ghost I expose,
the wrong was mine to commit.
To say otherwise is conceit
the cursed change I rail against
was mine to stop or to commit.

© 2016, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved, 20160129.

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Poem - Looking for True Love

2015-09-15T01:40:43Z

A FB friend posted a short expression of true love. I wondered if there was more. My love expert shared her thoughts on the topic. I next took my question to my lovely spouse. She shared the wisdom of a lifetime. The culmination of these, with poetic license that only I can take credit for, is the poem “Looking for True Love”.

Looking for True Love
Poem for Day 256 – 20150914

Looking for the true love,
the stuff of legends made
but seldom found they say.
So many paths of illusion,
some of our making within,
the others of society's shell game.

Look not to the romantic,
soul partners of ego's lure,
these are the fool's destiny.
Turn from the path of sin,
meaning separation from unity,
desertion from our fellow man.

Ask what could have been given
by others to save your immortal soul,
consider where you could do the same.
Turn to the trenches within,
walk where the heart may bleed,
drops of red where roses could be.

Show true love to the outsiders,
strangely different by circumstance,
nationality or disease's consequence.
Show true love to the unresponsive,
immobile by age's cruel hand or accident,
unable to return the thing they most need.

Most of all and by far most hard,
show true love to the ones rebelling,
able to only return syllables of hate.
The truest love, most compassionate,
painful in its desire to heal the separate,
is shown to those unable to reciprocate.

Looking for the true love,
external mirroring of our sentiments,
will satisfy the dreams of romantics.
Truer love is much more than this,
of virtues found in self, spirit, and God,
extended to the fallen ones.

© 2015, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved.

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Poem - Crossroads

2015-07-05T17:42:28Z

I had an opportunity to think about lives divided. For a time lives are shared. Life happens, fate intervenes, choices are made, and two roads are taken. The outcome of these thoughts was the poem “Crossroads”.

Crossroads
Bonus Poem for Day 186 – 20150705

Two roads taken,
by choice and by fate,
two roads walked,
separated at the crossroads.
There is a tale to be told of roads,
they run long and hard through life,
partners on the journey temporary
when the crossroads are met.

The road ran in a single thread,
two lives marched in loving step.
Give and take, fight and embrace,
still the path was shared by both.
Divergence came one fateful day,
the single road met two connected,
the journey could continue in singular,
just as likely to split apart.

Listen to me young ones,
adults make the hard choices,
the ones that last a lifetime,
the ones that define destiny.
You'll never understand the choices
until your walk in their shoes.
Footprints in the path seem clear,
the reasons you'll truly never know.

Making the commitments,
setting the intentions,
seeking the pleasure,
finding the salvation.
It's not easy, its not fair,
but sadly it was meant to be.
Two roads taken at the crossroads,
two lives separated at the crossroads.

© 2015, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved.

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Poem - Shade of Memory Past

2015-01-16T01:57:39Z

Social dancing, and the relationships that spring from it, are a momentary blessing. Unfortunately life goes on, people move on with life, and we lose the treasured dancers of today. The poem “Shade of Memory Past” is about the unfortunate transitional qualities of dancing, and life in general.

Shade of Memory Past
Poem for Day 015 – 20150115

We were natural dancers,
borne to play the part,
our dance was closer than arm's length,
bodies matched to the task.
Where I ended, and you began,
blurred as we found our beat.
The music of the band started
our syncopation of the heart.

The dancing mellowed,
matured as we found our place,
it should have lasted forever,
but by villainous time we were betrayed.
Time once marked our dancing in hours,
the recesses between in days.
Now it uses the calendar
to mark the months I've not seen your face.

Our season passed, the wheel turned on,
I have your company no more,
my arms once held you close,
and now they hold another in your place.
I dance with others,
they play their part,
but their dance is poor copy
to the ways our bodies did embrace.

Father Time, you've had your trick.
return my dancer to their place.
Bring them to my side post haste
and I will forgive your rude surprise.
I had found a partner, more than that,
with whom I was destined to dance.
It seemed we were to be partners evermore,
but now I dance with a shade of memory past.

© 2015. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved.

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Poem - You Human

2014-11-22T20:14:11Z

I have my own set of experiences. For good, bad, or ugly, they color my understanding the world. There are others in the world with incredibly different life experiences. These differences can come in the form of age, race, religion, community, or society. Sometimes there are more differences than similarities between myself and the people I encounter. While we call this normal, this gives me zero permission to make harsh assumptions about their life. Too often human kind reacts in fear to the unknown, and this reaction extends to other people. The fear presents dark visions instead of bright possibilities. Diversity becomes danger. Wisdom becomes madness. Why? Ah! That is grist for another poem. Now it is enough to state that fear or righteousness are not the vehicle for reconciling our life experiences with another person's.

You Human
Bonus Poem for Day 060 – 20141122

Through the hazy window
I see your world in shadow.
I see only the maligned,
little do I know of your kind.
I see you as less than human.
Lack of empathy is illusion.
You have the tears of joy,
you have the scars of pain.

Can I understand your way
within the breadth of my Lord's Day?
Moral high ground laid low,
poor substitute for knowing.
I cannot speak honestly,
I have no authority.
An intellectual slum,
to speak would show me dumb.

A disconnect exists here,
Your way of life is what I fear.
Can I live your private life,
if I only see there strife?
Please forgive my ignorance,
my fear is the hindrance.
You deserve recognition,
this has become my mission.

No more this war of hate,
the discord must abate.
My own I must defy,
you are as human as I.

© 2014. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved.

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