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I must be

One may be able to infer from these words the nature of an inner struggle. It is a struggle that has endured in one form or another since childhood. Now that I’m a father, now that I look every day on my baby son and experience the wild array of emotions that come with watching him coalesce and evolve, this struggle has become all at once completely inane and yet all the more intense. It is winter. My one method of preference is exposure. Yet I have a powerful new reason to cope with the fears and uncertainties that have plagued my being for as long as I can remember.

I must be

I must be more than memory,
   more than just a name,
more than faded echoes cast
      from pictures in a frame.

I must be more than faint suspicions
   coiled in the heart,
smoke-like apparitions drifting
      through a starless dark.

I must be more than supposition,
   more than just a guess,
fashioned from a dust that fell
      through years of emptiness.

I must be more than stories told
   by uncles, aunts and kin,
anecdotes of vague recall
      from time beyond your ken.

I must be more than fantasies
   of how things might have been,
conjured up to fill a void
      that widened in my stead.

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Loss

Two of my wife’s uncles have recently passed away. The first after suffering a series of debilitating strokes, the first of which occurred around five years ago. The second about a year after discovering stage four cancer in his throat and enduring debilitating surgeries. I plan eventually to write memorial poems for each of them.

As I reflected on what it must have been like for the families of these men, a metaphor formed in mind and I found myself writing this.

Loss

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This is my 10th Petrarchan sonnet.

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the resting place

Imagery and metaphor do not express ideas and emotion; they evoke ideas and emotion. What’s interesting about this is that those who read rarely even realize that these thoughts and feelings have been evoked from—not transmitted to—them through this process. As a poet, I’ll sometimes look for imagery and metaphor that evoke from me feelings and ideas similar enough to the original inspiration to consider it worth sharing.

But, I also recognize that what each reader will experience from my words will be unique to them. So, while the poem may be “mine” from the standpoint of having authored it, the poem is also yours from the vantage point of reading and experiencing all it evokes.

the resting place

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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Falter

When I play with a poetic form that I want get to know for its own sake and hopefully gain some insights from, I’ll often first explore the form in its strictest expression, following its “rules” exactly. Then after I’ve done this a few times, I’ll begin to deviate and explore variations on its structural theme. The ten Shakespearean, or English, sonnets I’ve written are all in strict iambic pentameters, but now that I’m moving through the ten Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnets that I want to write, I’m experimenting much more broadly. I have for a long time not considered rhyme essential to a form’s success, often opting instead to explore various alternatives. Instead of rhyme, this poem uses partial reverse rhyme, assonance, and alliteration in place of the end-line rhyme pattern used by the Petrarchan sonnet.

Falter

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This is my 4th Petrarchan sonnet.

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Refraction

Hermenegilda Cabrera, lovingly called Tiya Emmy by nearly everyone who knew her, passed away during the first week of March this year. She is my wife’s aunt, her mother’s sister. As she fell ill, I would find my wife crying uncontrollably as she read updates on her condition. And after she got the news that her suffering was over, she cried on and off for weeks. Even now I’ll sometimes find her crying.

Refraction

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

I know that Tiya Emmy’s passing has affected my wife at the deepest levels. But I also know there is more to it than this. Her mother and father are around the same age, and she feels that growing sense of dread all children must endure as their parents age. They are in good health, however, and we are thankful for this.

This is my 3rd Petrarchan sonnet. Still a bit challenging for me.

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Aftermath

One more in time for the second anniversary of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. There’s not much more to say.

Aftermath

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This is my 10th Shakespearean sonnet. The other poem written on this subject a couple of weeks ago was “Stirrings”, also a sonnet.

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Stirrings

The first four lines came to me in a flash the same day I learned of the terrible destruction and loss of life wrought in Japan on March 11, 2011 by one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded and its subsequent tsunami. Then nothing. Perhaps I was just stunned by the magnitude of it all, even from the relative comfort of 5000 plus miles away. But I’m trying to wrap up old ideas right now, so I figured it was time to do something with those four lines, for better or worse.

And so here we are, my 9th Shakespearean sonnet.

Stirrings

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Nai No Kami is the name of the Japanese god (kami) of the earthquake, or at least one of them. Watatsumi, respectfully referred to as Ōwatatsumi, is one of the great kami of the sea.

There are actually four more seed lines inspired by this same tragic event. I was later able to flush them out into another sonnet form poem, which I titled “Aftermath”.

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One for Each

After learning about the mass killings in Newtown, CT, we are keeping vigil tonight. I think we all are.

One for Each

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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The Early Cherry Blossom

The idea for this poem came to me about two weeks ago, which I thought could really blossom with a little patience and care. So I put the other poem down that I’ve been picking at for a few years and got to work. This poem represents what I think of as an “open metaphor”, in that what is depicted here should bear different meanings for different people.

The Early Cherry Blossom

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.
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Tryst

Sometimes, when love is lost, it never comes again. Or perhaps more accurately, it never fades enough for another to take its place. So, my third Shakespearean sonnet.

Tryst

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.
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The Distant Self

Lately I have been pondering the nature of death, what it really is. Is it closing your eyes one last time never to wake up? Or is it something more subtle, more unnerving—something much closer to home? When I look back through time to the teenager I once was, that person is not here. He is dead, and he has been dead for a very long time. But because I am still strong and somewhat clear of mind, I can forget that death and focus on the present life as if it now unfolds. But the reality is, there are moments, days, circumstances that I would hold onto for eons if it were possible—but they have long since passed and are dead.

The Distant Self

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Perhaps the movement between carnal death and birth is much the same. Even after that point of presence jumps from our last breath to some unfathomable new context, there is a recognition somewhere in our newly manifest being that something has been lost—a past and fully developed identity. Perhaps this death occurs on a lesser scale over and over throughout the experience of living. And those who see this most clearly are those who still live after everything else has been lost, and all they have left is to struggle for moments of clarity while wasting away in a nursing home.