A Poem That Caught My Ear : For My Son, Reading Harry Potter by Michael Blumenthal

This was read poem on NPR's morning edition yesterday 10/13/2014.  It is a slice of humanity, sweet and bitter, true in experience yet perhaps not fully true in reality.  Please forgive my brevity.  I rather enjoy avoiding analysis paralysis.  I much prefer a silent nod to a universal truth.  Yet even more so, what I relish, is breaking the boundary of human obsolescence; which is an ongoing process for those who seek it.  

For My Son, Reading Harry Potter

by Michael Blumenthal

How lovely, to be lost
as you are now
in someone else's thoughts
an imagined world
of witchcraft, wizardry and clans
that takes you in so utterly
all the ceaseless background noise
of life's insistent pull and drag soon fades
and you are left, a young boy
captured in attention's undivided daze,
as I was once
when books defined a world
no trouble could yet penetrate
or others spoil, or regret stain,
when, between covers, under covers,
all is safe and sure
and each Odysseus makes it home again
and every transformation is to bird or bush
or to a star atwinkle in some firmament of light,
or to a club that lets you, and all others, in.
Oh, how I wish for you
that life may let you turn and turn
these pages, in whose spell
time is frozen, as is pain and fright and loss
before you're destined to be lost again
in that disordered and distressing book
your life will write for you and cannot change.

Credits:  I copied this poem from the following website: writersalmanac.publicradio.org

Today Is A Decision

Today is a decision that will go unmade

Today is an opportunity that gets put in the freezer

for some reason unsaid
                                                                  unthought                                       

                             unbred

Today was a lifetime that should have been lived...Instead it's a Joke, and only I'm laughing.

Today was moments that slipped though my fingers, filling my heart with debt to the brim

inverting my conscience through junk soaked sin

yet; a step I take..

-backwards, from myself
I decide I will be different
I decide to choose life
I decide to stop struggling in vain and in strife

I decide to let light be the goal

so step by step I leave the cob-webs behind
safe in the darkness for old demons to pine

small footsteps at first
but strides later on

I tell you today

that my old life is gone.

we should know this by now

When Some-Body Loves you
They don't let you go
Not for your struggle
And not for your pleads
Not for your pain-soaked desireful needs-
That are really merely overgrown wants acting like weeds
Bitter passion seeds
Stray leading wise godly through enigmatic means and cryptic paths
Paths straightened because one beholds

Love swears truth
It beckons to be real
It is slow to impose
for real love is a rare stone
Forgotten by the world
Remembered by a remnant
He wishes for only one

What We Really Want

I am writing this because I want to

Sometimes things can be that simple

But frequent occasions would seem to say

it is simply not this way

Oh to bring death to these cognitive holiday's

plaguing a person through the mind

making one not so kind

making you much less dumb

though still consulting ones own thumb...

...To whom you say

"You are my best friend"

"I will overlook all of your faults"

"We will keep them in vaults"

"And drive fancy Renaults"

"And know absolutely nobody for who they really are including YOU...Precious little thumb of mine."

For I am the focus of my life

I seek to please me more than any man woman or child

See that my love for all else is laughably mild

If i could I would marry myself

Rejecting any discomfort that might haphazardly cross my path

Avoiding some wise fools costly wrath

Because I believe the lie that I am enough for me

Sometimes the only medicine for our ego is time and tragedy

Neither of which is cheap

Sooner or later we will meet the end of ourselves

Whether behind young tears or aged old on hospital sheets

In ourselves we have no way out

But there is a way

And the way is a person

The way is a name

The way is a living

Free from all shame

The way is a family

A divine community

A domain where the difference between self and spirit

Is as clear as the waters you are washed in

It is life

It is love

It is true transcending happiness that only comes from struggling against your own control

Control that only brings you to your knees in despair

I used to hate when one's would say
"let go and let God" as I thought it so numbingly cliche

But at the end of myself I can see it is the only working way

...there is grace for my arrogance

I won't be condemned a crimial for hiding these riches

neither will I waste this deposit bought by wound laden stitches

So I follow Jesus.