I can hear music

Can you hear the whispers of music in the wind?
The air is vibrating with potential;
I feel the blood within me dart back and forth
    Like newborn tadpoles in a sun-drenched stream.

Rejoice!
Cry gladness!
And leap into the sky while laughing;

Today and now,
    All things begin anew,
    And can be done better this time;
    And can be done right this time.

For no reason
    Other than,
    This is the day the Lord has made,

Let us be glad
And rejoice.

- Rand McRanderson

Doom - The Poem

Doom
Doom isn't just a word
Nor just a poem
Doom is a way of life
 Laugh in the face of death
Laugh in the face of life as well

Discard your fears
And throw away your security

Shout to the rooftops the madness of it all
And insist till the bitter end the essential sanity beneath

Sling upon your back the burdens of the ancestors
And toss off your loads as a man created from the void

Embrace everything
And hold onto nothing


Stare deep into the cold abyss of enthropy
And listen to the roaring inferno of the passionate soul
 Understand your own insignifance
And realize the glories of the human spirit within yourself

And know that even doom is not enough

-Rand

(Not perfect, but doom doesn't come just once)

If I should be lost, will your songs lead me home

I'm still off. I dunno, my mind is a bit away from well, relative to my worst I'm still doing quite outstandingly, so things aren't bad, I'm just a little unwell.

But perhaps all I really want is someone to sing me to sleep:

Sing me to sleep

Sing me to sleep
For I am tired.

I shall seize the day nobly,
Pursue my ambition,
But with justice as my guide.
I will write the greatest novel,
I will write the greatest play,
I will write the world a new point of view,
New values and ideals.
I will save us all
And keep us all safe.
I will recreate the Earth and make it better.

And this day was an effort towards those goals,
And it has drained all the energy from me
Each and every drop.
Is it foolish to pursue my hopes until my body is weary and broken?
Is it idiotic?
Dangerous?
Suicidal?
Perhaps it is correct at least for me,
perhaps I do not know,
But I cannot make the effort to ponder such weighty matters at this hour.
Tomorrow I can,
But tonight I cannot.

So sing me to sleep
For it is time for me to rest.

-Rand

Patience

If I wait
For my hope to return
I will lack the time to carve out a future,
and I will curse the present.
So even with despair nestled in my skull,
I must prepare
to be born again,
Just as when living
I must prepare to die again.


With the cyclical disease
granting depression and ecstasy,
I die and am born again and again.
I do not reincarnate,
But when my feelings run low
I destroy my life,
I rush myself towards death,
and if I recover
I pull myself together,
I force myself to move towards life.


If I try to understand
why I am this way
and what exactly is wrong,
I will wonder for a lifetime
and I will one day look back
and I will see that my disease has spent my human moment.
I have to move,
I must bring energy to my limbs,
I must force blood into my brain,
I have to restore my soul to my body,
I must make myself hope now and forever.

- Rand

Exile

As I am feeling out of sorts and out of place, perpetually, this seems appropriate, is it perfect ready? Perhaps not quite, but it has come along and fits my feelings well, and I AM RAND!

Exile

It doesn't really matter
My thoughts, my feelings, my fantasies
They are divergent from reality
Never resting on solid ground
My actions are feeble
Constrained by fear and impotence
Like breath against a hurricane
The mechanics of fate overwhelm me

Perhaps I should travel in exile
To a foreign land
Where my skills are rare and my talents novel
Where my actions are exotic and my faults mysteriously
To a place where I can be king and dictate the fate of others

But that is but a thought, a feeling, a fantasy
Divergent from reality
And it doesn't matter
Not at all

-Rand McRanderson

Circles, Dots, Squares

Circles, dots and squares

Circles, dots and squares

Circles smiles intertwined

Spinning round you always shine

Smiles for me smiles for you

Smiles for all spinning round they're true

Dots� I'll get to them later

But squares is first right now

Squares, oh the lines

So solid and strong the lines of your life

Then the perpendiculars kick in

And crazy you're cool

Circles, dots and squares

Circles, dots and squares

Circles, dots and squares

Well dots, oh dots

The dots of your eyes

Points of light

Points of might

Like pretty little kites

Flying away into the sky

You make me remember to try

Circles, dots and squares

Circles, dots and squares

Circles, dots and squares

Oh your hair is so colorful

-Rand

Beastia Viri

Bestia Viri

If the animal dwells in man

Why should woman tame it

Certainly an animal dwells in woman

But it is a different beast

And that justifies nothing

Why should woman be the one

To calm man when he is feral

Simply because

Women are most capable for the task

-Rand

Excuse me, please miss

I'm sorry
Excuse me
Just a moment
Please miss
I simply want to say
You have the most beautiful arch of the neck
I have ever seen

No that would be creepy
But I could say
You have the most amazing eyes
Make sure to mention the color
Maybe that's too cliché
But maybe it's worth a try
I've got to say something
Before the moment is gone
She steps out of the train
And though I saw her four times on this route
I can't parse her face from the crowd anymore

And so it goes
Life moves on

Cause all is poetry... even the web

Because poetry is awesome... and I am sleepy...

A collection of poems by Anna Akhmatova - Poetry Lover's Page
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/akhmatova/akhmatova_ind.html

The Poetry of Robert Frost - The Ketzles
http://www.ketzle.com/frost/

Poet: Rabindranath Tagore - Poem Hunter
http://www.poemhunter.com/rabindranath-tagore/

Poet: Anne Sexton - Poem Hunter
http://www.poemhunter.com/anne-sexton/

Emily Dickinson - Complete Poems
http://www.bartleby.com/113/

Catullus Translations - Rudy Negenborn
http://www.negenborn.net/catullus/

Virgil Resources - Virgil.org
http://virgil.org/

Horace: Poems - Poetry Archive
http://www.poetry-archive.com/h/horace.html

Pindar - Perseus
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/vor?x=0&y=0&lookup=Pindar

Homer - Library Thinkquest
http://library.thinkquest.org/19300/data/homer.htm

Poet: Ovid - Poem Hunter
http://www.poemhunter.com/ovid/

Poe - Poetry
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/poe/poe_ind.html

Just a little lonely

I'm okay.
I'm just a little lonely.
He said with something approaching a smile on his face,
And something approaching bitterness in his voice.

Is it so taxing?
Are you so needy?
Is it so much to wish for?

When alone, I find company is something I can do without,
But it is hard to close your eyes after a day lived in silence,
Without admitting that while
A companion may not be something you need,
It is something you want,
Which is to say you might not always get it.

And I wonder on how to weigh this,
And I dismiss my ponderings as irrelevant,
But I must admit, that there is a part of me that is less than well,
When I am even a little lonely.

Even in defeat, one can reap the dividends of peace

Let me now not speak for current times but for the future,
And for the past,
But not for the present,
For that would be reckless,
Careless
And I have sworn off such ways

If you do not understand me
That's not unusual
We are humans are we not?
At least on the inside
At least for now

Even if we speak in the same language
Do we really use the same words
Each sentence, each body movement, each thought
Is enveloped in connotations, denotations, emotions and assumptions
Till the common syntax is an obscurer of the truth rather than an aide

And that is without getting to the intangibles

And what is life without the intangibles

And what is life without that most misunderstood intangible
We bear to each other
And we do not understand the other
Nor their understanding of us
But what is life without that dream of understanding

And so we try to impose a bridge upon this chaos
We try to force an understanding to bring down the truth
Of that feeling we have for another
That feeling that it is so essential that we give without misunderstanding
That feeling that we so desperately want to understand in the others' eyes

And so it comes to war
We misunderstanding
Take advantage of the fog of our mutual fiction of communication
To bring down what we wish were the feelings that are being misunderstood
That we might be able to understand
But without agreement
And how can their be agreement
And in such conflict

Yet to understand is not always to triumph
Your conception may not be conveyable
It might not even exist
Even in your mind
And if what you wanted to understand
Is worth understanding
Then can it be worth understanding even if it is only the others' definition
That remains

And so it comes to failure
To defeat
Both dismal and deep
But we emerge a little closer
Not understanding still
But a little closer

And in that we advance the longer triumph
Far down the road

These are the songs we sing

Not because it brings us happiness, but because it is who we are.

Happiness seems to be elusive of late. I've never had a great trust in happiness to begin with, but it's resilient defiance of my will is irritating. Ah, but so it is, so it is, and so...

Here's some poetry:

I will always be insane

I will always be insane

You will always be a bitch

I will always be insane

You will always be a jerk

I will always be insane

You will always have that hairy little growth on the back of your neck

These things we can pick at and try to remove

And we can succeed

But the damage has already been done

The imprint is final

These flaws have been buried deep within our pysche

Left there to twist our thoughts for all the years to come

Thus I will always be insane

And you will always be my friend

-Rand

Sometimes not knowing is okay, Not this time though

Ah, but what if knowing is not showing then what I ask you then what?
Still I remain perplexed on an emotion.
Unable to grasp it in my hand
Slim and slip away
Shimmer
Don't it?

Vaguarity is an issue, or not, since it's not a word
But the big matter
Is a matter of time
And space
The here and the now being the obstacles
To reflection and reorientation
Or overcoming

But what then is there to overcome
And what is

What then

What

Ah, beautiful chaos

Even more beautiful were it not in my head

A little poetry for the emotionary

Since I'm near using an oft-imagined though never yet appropriate line ("I am a flexible person, I am many things to many people, but I am nothing to you").

And so I might as well give some extra usage from what is soon becoming but another annoying bad incident in my life. And so here's a poem which I think now suggests the situation which I am now dealing with:

The Physics of It

One expects sparks from your finger tips

Why should ordinary matter not tremble at your presence

That electricity holds its bonds despite your movements

Is a demonstration that physics is frozen in awe of you

And the gait of your step defies walking

And the cadence of your words defies speaking

And your every look is enough to bring a grizzly bear to its knees

Any you wear your aura of sincerity so casually

You breathe in and out generosity of spirit

As if it were only natural

I imagine that must be the case

But

You defy nature

Like a quantum singularity

Who gives mercy to the light

-Rand

The Fox and the Moon

The Fox cries at the moon:

“I want to believe!”

And dead midnight meets his cry,

but I hear it,

and I listen for any answer,

because I too want to believe.



But silence prevails.

Are you there in the silence?

Are you there in the calm after the earthquake and the gale?

Why can’t I see you?

Why can’t I feel you?

Is it simply because my screams shatter the silence

in which you dwell?



But that is wrong,

and I am wrong,

and you are waiting.

Waiting for me.

And I want to believe!

I want that faith the size of a mustard seed

even that I don’t have!

I cannot throw the mulberry tree into the sea

that is not what I want

but I want to know!

But even more than that,

I want to believe!



And when my frenzy is done,

Exhausted I am silent.

Are you there in that silence?



I strive to believe.

by Rand

History is a mess, but I love it

I do apologize for the major break in my schedule, but circumstances do intervene.

Still let me wax poetic a little about history.

Or rather I would if there was a strong tradition of history poems nowadays. It's sad that this noble tradition seems in decline or if found in disarray.

Alack, alack, alack.

And what of poetic history plays? Whatever happened to those? Are they just a memory of history?

Just a momentary aberration?

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

But let me call at least for a revisiting of great history poems and plays.

For when history stirs your soul,

What magnificence shall emerge?

Poets or mullets, or can you have both

Yes you can. It's actually getting harder and harder for me to think of good post titles, but I'm pretty good with that one, even if it has only highly tangential relation to my actual post.

Anywho, for a while I've debated back and forth between putting poems up on my site. Ultimately I think it's a good thing. If a poetry magazine what's exclusive publishing, I can take it down, but honestly, I'm not spending that much time (if any) sending work out to magazines, so might as well put it up on the web. Hopefully that will keep me writing.

Because honestly, I haven't been writing that much. Now I've been doing some posting, and some decent posts have come out, but even though I insist that blogging is a creative work, and sometimes I get a nice thunderstrike and make something totally awesome for my blog, fiction and poetry... now they too often come from reality, but still need more work for the ideas to be teased out to something concrete. Taking away my distress at not spending that much time writing (even the posts are in between stuff and without that much discipline), I've also got a good deal of distress that my creativity's leaking a little. Now that might just be stress, that might just be overreaction, that might just be busy-ness, but there might be a gem of truth there, even if it just means I have writer's block. And that's, that's a bit scary for me.

I actually have a poem for that, but I have another poem that I'm pretty damn proud of. I always think of my writing as working for the Lord through making something high-quality. But this is more direct. However, let me withdraw the pretty damn proud, at least tentatively, because I'm a little unsure of the quality here. I've worked on this, but I can never be sure of quality immediately after something's written. And yet... and yet this is something important to me, and ah, aren't you here to understand the inner-workings of the Rand-ish mind?

Or something like that.

Anyways, I'm going to post up a nice little poem I call, "The Lord remains"

Zebras eat Fruit

Here's a revamp of my poem Zebras eat Fruit:

Zebras eat fruit too





Don't they? I think they do,

That's probably true

But I'm not sure to whom the to refers to





Still fruit is very yummy in my tummy,

So I imagine Zebras like it too,

But whether Zebras like fruit or not is not the matter...





The matter is...

Well I forget the matter,

And I can't remember why I starting this to begin with.





But if you smile at my poem,

Ah, that's the sunshine.

And that's enough for me

-Rand

Poetry, oh sweet poetry

So for some time now I have been pretty shy about using my poems for posts. There are a couple reasons for this.

• Firstly, I haven't been spending too much effort on perfecting my poems lately and I like to only put out finish products of my writings outside of blog posts (which I feel to some degree are finished in the posting).



• Secondly, I've been worried that if I put my stuff out there people might steal bits, ie. copyright issues and such.



• Thirdly, I've been concerned that magazines and such might frown on me putting my stuff online.



• Fourthly, I've been trying to keep this essentially a blog (although for a long time I tried to argue the term webpost was better) and so I didn't want it to just become a poetry collection or for me to use poetry posting as a crutch.

Well all of those concerns now seem like unfounded and relatively silly fears, so I've decided to start putting some poetry online again and if it comes to be a problem, I can always take it off.

So it has been said, so let it be done!

Quotes! Boats! And more of the Rand you love!

So it's been a while since I've done a quotes session. Too "a while," "too a while" indeed.

So then BRING ON THE QUOTES!!! (And now with boats too!)

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." - Churchill after the Battle of El Alameinin. (The battle that signaled the beginning of the defeat of the German North Africa campaign and the beginning of the end of the North Africa front in World War II)

"Every beginning contains the seeds of an end." - Rand

"I do believe in the power of stuff." - Saka, Avatar: The Last Airbender (Episode: Avatar Day)

"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas." - G. H. Hardy (a pretty interesting early 20th c. mathematician, he was one of the most eloquent speakers on the art of abstract mathematics. Notably he wrote The Mathematician's Apology, explaining math as art, and especially the beauty of math that's absolutely useless. He is also notable for discovering our next quotee)

"An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God." - Srinivasa Ramanujan (one of the great mathematicians of the early 20th century, largely self-taught (although his mother MIGHT have been versed in traditions of Indian mathematics) he stunned the world with revolutionary theorems in abstract fields of mathematics. Yet, to the probable chagrin of Hardy, he was a highly religious Hindu (Hardy, a well-known aethist/agnostic, said after Ramanujan's death that Ramanujan's religiosity was overstated, but based on other people's accounts, quotes like this, and most biographers, I imagine it's just a matter of the father-figure sad that his son-figure is less like him). He was brought to England by Hardy and while being highly productive, Ramanujan became ill and died soon after arriving there, leaving the world to wonder about what feats of math he could have accomplished had he lived a full life.)

And as promised here's a boat... of the stars!!!

"Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror." -
Rabindranath Tagore (Definitely in my top 3 most absolutely awesome poets)

"Wild honey has the scent of freedom" - Anna Akhmatova (Definitely also in the three)

"But I have promises to keep,/ And miles to go before I sleep," - Robert Frost (And that would round off the three)

"Facts are many, but the truth is one." - Rabindranath Tagore

"“A journey was undertaken/ and it was not the destination/ but it was in good faith!” - Hajj, NHB

"Look our forefathers died for the pursuit of happiness, okay, not the sit around and wait of happiness. Now if you want you can go to the same bar, drink the same beer, talk to the same people every day or you can lick the liberty bell. You can grab life by the crack and lick the crap out of it." - Barney, How I Met Your Mother, Episode: The Taste of Liberty)

"Writing is like swallowing a precious gem, to get it out you need to sort through tons and tons of crap, but if you try hard you can get that precious gem." - Rand

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." - Samuel Johnson

"Whenever the private sector introduces an innovation that makes the poor better off than they would have been without it, or that offers benefits or terms that no one else is prepared to offer them, someone—in the name of helping the poor—will call for curbing or abolishing it." - Thomas Woods, Woods's Law

"Never follow a hippie to a second location." - John Francis "Jack" Donaghy, 30 Rock, Episode: Rosemary's Baby

"Everyone specializes in what he is worst at." - Rothbard's Law