The Observer

Writers are one part observers. We watch and absorb. Drinking in experiences, moments and storing them for later use.

Another part of the writer's make up is that of documentarian. Recording the past between dotted i's and crossed t's. Making sense of events that have transpired, bringing order to chaotic memory.

The best part of a writer though is that of the storyteller. For those of us who tend to the craft of the written word, be we professional or plucky novice, it is in the end the story that matters most. Conveying in our own unique way our vision, our observations, our comments on the world as we see, experience, and live in it.

I've always enjoyed writing. Since I was a boy, I would make up stories and regale my family and friends with them. Common notes to be found on my earliest report cards from my instructors included "vivid imagination" and "full of ideas".

Not much has changed.

One of my most common writing devices is poetry. I've always enjoyed conjuring images of orphic legend, and mystical whimsy. Poetry lends its self well to that end.

This though, this free form writing style has not always been easy for me. The mechanics are simple enough. Both time and training have brought out in me a skill and deftness in writing style that I have come to be proud of.

No the difficulty for me has always been being honest when I write. It is far too easy to to take license with a past recollection. To not be totally truthful, and to modify or reorder events so that the "story" I tell sounds better.

For this reason, I spent most of my time writing poems. In that medium, the words "truth" and "lie" mean nothing. The work simply is.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to my free formed writing. Much of the poetry I've written over the past several years has taken on a totally different aire. The truth of things I tried to avoid within my free formed writing crept into my poetry.

There is credibility in the old maxum "truth will out".

So I am going to post some of the poems I have written, since many of them share truths about me I still have a hard time expressing in free form writing. Some of the poems will have commentary from me, and others will not. If you are reading my blog I charge you with the reponsibility to draw your own conclusions. Fill in your own gaps. Take up the 1st role of a writer. Watch. See.

Observe.

I'll start with the poem where this blog draws it's name from.

Shards of Self

This mirror is broken.
Angry shards glare from the bottom of the tub.
Red rain falls on cold porcelain.
Dead glass glitters at me.
Truthful facets revealed,
In silver paper
peeling away
from paste.

In this room where no daystar enters, This gaping maw of sterile white oblivion,

Reversed reflection is reality.
For mirrors know no fidelity.
A false gem too late discovered.
This ancient need and newborn ignorance, caused a warp
In the weft of my weave.

Cruel fate, my Demigod does not defend.
Penelope must take the Implacable Suitors' hand.
Crimson red I drip away.
Upon fragments of sharp,
silver backed,
glass.

For Walt, Oscar and Alan

Listen!
Listen to a voice that echoes out
And back again!
Listen to my elegy of
Sophistry!

Gone is naieve faith.
Eye Sockets gape.
Ripped open by the cruel Hands of men in cassocks.

Evil was Taught me by women in habits.
Raw my Wicked flesh was laid.
My wounds salted With a callow Catechism, infused with
Puritan past steeped in parched tradition
Like so many Hebrew scrolls.

Black robed Pipers
led me to their earth bound
Perdition.

Fallible hands from Levitican Words
artfully fashioned my stained glass
Prison.

They reviled me, with self-righteous
Gazes of disdain.
With these silent stones
They cast in malice my soul was shattered.

For I dared to Love Unnatural.

Still
I yearn.
For my Messianic Percivle's body
and his Blood tinged grail that cups
my salvation.

Rice Paddy Legacy

He was 19 when called.
The dropout drafted by
Family first, country second.
Birthed from Huey's belly,
Into wet green squares of
Afterbirth.

Home he bore His nightmares and loosed
Them on my youth.

He
Medicated with pale Horse
And bankrupt Spirits.
I hated this rice paddy
Soldier.
My childhood stolen
By a greedy Uncle Sam.

The warrior awoke to answer
The cries of younger siblings.
His chemical haze lifted by
Track meets and football games.

And I was forgotten.
Here alone.
In muted green anguish I circle.
Orbiting my Scorpion star
In frozen
Plutonian rage.