I Dream in Diamonds - A Conceit

I haven't updated this blog since I used it for advanced expos last semester. And I rarely post poems. Except for my last post. So this happens to be an odd coincidence. But I wrote this poem for Genres class this semester, and thus I send it out into the world.
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Pretty, but useless, thoughtless.
Cubic zirconia,
I hated my April birthday because diamonds
Have no color
And I was never given a necklace with a real diamond.

I watched darkness swallow the dusk in a moment.
The night is a bracelet of black pearls,
Uneven but smooth,
Unending and circular.
It shines sometimes, when the moon flirts with the trees,
Clouds playing a paper fan over the eyes of the coquette.
I prefer black pearls,
Especially over diamonds.

I wanted to wear that night like a vintage gown,
With glass beads and cream pearls for stars,
Metal and stone.
The sand, the oyster, the alloys, the rocks,
All natural things.
I held a paper fan over my eyes and flirted through a dream.
A boy, his eyes like sapphires.
He wore that grey pinstripe suit like the foggy pre-dawn hour.
He threw stones onto my fingers, circular and hollow,
And he lavished my arms with amulets of moonstones,
And we were happy, I think.
Because I couldn’t sleep,
Because I couldn’t dream,
Outside of the rocky waves he made behind my eyes and outside my window.

His eyes were rubies.
I needn’t be scared, he said,
His voice wrapping around my throat as a diamond necklace for an April birthday,
As real diamonds, hard enough to scratch out his ruby eyes,
Hard enough also to cut the night which I was wearing away from my opal skin.
He glimmered red light then,
The red light of a garnet red planet,
And I wanted the sapphires back, as brooches to pin the dark onyx around my shoulders once again,
Stripped bare, stripped blank, no prongs of gold or silver or rose gold to hold it in place.
The pearls scattered, a sinew chain snapping, when they fell to the ground,
Slipping into corners
Chased by the glassy, starry beads,
And I was the bold, agate moon again,
His eyes deep violet amethysts that burned crevasses into my bald surface.

As the dawn rose then,
His grey suit turned copper,
The setting for the hard purple gems.
He moved a stone cold hand over my bleached face,
Swiping the fading light from behind my cloudy paper fan, stealing it away from me
As he rode into his rightful place
In the sky.
Nightless then, lightless,
I awoke with only a necklace to show for it, an April birthday’s real diamond,
A dream.

The Mail Service

If postage could send my heart to you, I would ship it now, overnight, as fast as can be.

You are stranded in a raft on the ocean. My heart will help you.

My heart knows the way home.

Through rain or sleet or dark of night or ocean breezes, the Postal Service always delivers,

And I never wanted you to be alone.

I don’t know where you are, because you didn’t leave a map or a constellation chart or bread crumbs,

But post codes always find their way, and if they don’t…it’s the sad tragedy of life,

When even the mail service fails.

I’ll address it:

Dear One
Stranded Raft
Ocean 1 of 4
The World

And I’m sure that will be specific enough.
The universe will make it find its way, with the post man’s help, unless there are other stranded rafts with other flags of address, or other such aspects I have not made allowances for, but I trust that you will recognize my heart when you see it. It’s the one in the brown paper roll with the plastic end caps. It’s the one addressed to you.

Which Comes First, Speech or Thought?

I stared at a terrifyingly blank computer screen for too long, having both too many thoughts and too few simultaneously. I didn’t want to tell a story from my time in Europe or share my thoughts about the current world situation or point out the duplicity within society as a whole. I didn’t really want to write anything at all.
That sentiment above could have been true at many points in my life, but actually it refers to about ten minutes ago. I, frankly, just don’t have anything to say.
But then again, maybe I do. Maybe I want to say that we all talk far too much. If we shut up about needing to plaster our own unique perspective across every available blank wall, then that oh-so-precious perspective might matter more. We would focus on developing that outlook, making it better, making it worth a damn, instead of forcing it to be known and understood by others. Prodding someone into acknowledging that I have a perspective on life worth the recognition does far less for me when I’m no longer in the spotlight than using those same efforts to craft thoughts actually worth expressing.
John Andrew Holmes said, “Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.” Maybe if we as individuals worked on the bookends of that process, the thought and the action, then the speech element would be more effective at expressing our thoughts accurately and at promoting the action we desire. Speech without thought is meaningless, and thought well-developed is worth speaking.

The Libertarian Ethic

If I could change the world, I don’t think I would. Because one change wouldn’t really make a difference. Because change in the world is rarely ever permanent. Because there is intrinsic value in the way we live now.
Once change takes hold, consequences always happen. Without proof by which to know that change, any change, would be truly positive, despite the optimism of the goal itself, there is no reason to assume that the change would actually, well, change anything. It is just as valid to assume that change might even make the state of the world worse.
Although this may seem pessimistic, to not want anything to be different, I’m really advocating a libertarian approach to life. If I don’t mess with you, then you shouldn’t mess with me. Perhaps the change in the world we should be aiming for is less people trying to make changes. Then maybe the world could find the equilibrium by which to change itself, without our interference.

C'est Moi: The Outcast of the Hundred Acre Wood

I wonder sometimes if it is easier to describe myself as I am right now or in terms of who I have been. Then I wonder if there is really ever a difference.
I loved Eeyore as a child. The gloomy, melancholy figure perpetually on the outskirts of the Hundred Acre Wood in-group, Eeyore made me happy because he made me sad. I had a dozen stuffed variations of him, old-gen, new-gen, Christmas, cowboy, etc., hoping subconsciously that if I could love his plush form, maybe he wouldn’t be so sad in ‘real’ life. Because his story was real to me. Such stories are always real.
I know I never really abandoned my perspective on the reality of Eeyore’s plight, because I still have all my stuffed donkeys. I saw then, and I continue to see, too much of the pensive part of myself in his brooding character to outgrow him, since I could never outgrow that aspect of me. Eeyore is made up of the same stuff(ing) I am. I was never ashamed to relate quite personally to a blue-grey donkey with a defective tail who ate thistles and thanked Pooh for noticing him. Sometimes we don’t change. The Eeyore in me doesn’t change. And so, Eeyore and I will always have each other.

Alignment with Truth

I have a tattoo on my wrist. I also have one on my foot. The one on my wrist is the Greek word for divine, unconditional love, the one on my foot a line from an old hymn, asking for the blessing of God. If my self became wholly aligned with Truth, it would be the culmination of these two ideas: the love of God first, and the seeking for and outpouring of God's blessing second.
Before I knew it consciously, before I tattooed it, I was marked with God's love, unending, without reservation, for me. And then I loved Him, and I made that love a permanent black symbol on my arm. Because He first loved me.
Then came my supplication, my asking for blessing from the altar of that Love, my begging to be blessed in a kind of ever-present song of praise. Come Thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing.
When these two concepts clash, there Truth is. When I embrace them together, then am I aligned with Truth, and then does Truth take hold of me. I become wholly devoted.

The Death of a Good Intention

As I survey the present state of my room, it looks something like a place where well-intentioned hobbies go to die. Or perhaps not die. Maybe more like reside indefinitely. On one side of the room, in front of the heavily loaded bookshelf, the black hard case housing the beautiful guitar stands. I got it for Christmas, at first intending to teach myself. And I did, a few chords at least, from the master chord sheet my mother had the wisdom to purchase in addition to the instrument. Last week we had an informal worship session around our backyard firepit. One of the high school boys, whom I know well, wished aloud that he had brought his guitar. I offered mine. His face lit up as he asked me if I was sure. I went upstairs to get it, knowing it deserved to be played by someone, even if it wasn’t me. At Christmas, he had tuned it for me, and had kept remarking about its sound quality. He took it in his hands, and I heard for the first time what my Takemine could sound like under worthier skill than I possessed. It sang like butter, smooth and tonal, and for an instant my conviction to learn burnt brightly again. That was a week ago. I haven’t touched it since.

At the other end of my room, leaning vertically against the wall endcap, stands my newly acquired snowboard. Our two-year resident, Hannah, moved out yesterday, and instead of forcing the snowboard into her tiny car just so that she could donate it, she asked if I wanted it. I have been meaning, for the past five winters, to hit the slopes, and release my inner Shawn White. I haven’t gone even once. I was busy; rentals were too much; who would teach me. But now that I have mine own board, miraculously the perfect size (thank heavens Hannah is the same height as me), and boots, which she will drop off as soon she unpacks them, I really am hoping to go with my cousins sometime this winter. Until then, the snowboard will make like the guitar, perpetually in a corner of hope and unreleased potential.

These are not the only examples of my lack of self-discipline. My desk holds more empty notebooks than full ones, pretty books with neatly lined pages in which I meant to record “the great secrets of my life,” as Cecily would say, but never quite got around to keeping the lovely schedules I had worked out. The short stack of Japanese fiction on top of the giant stack of theology books reminds me that I meant to have read them all by now, in my self-imposed “preparation for Japan” regime (in my defense on that point, I have eaten much sushi since I have been home…which is perhaps just another failure in that budget which I fully intended to keep but didn’t). The dumbbells buried under a mountain of clothes on my chair remind me that I meant to lift them every day, get in shape, exercise, as do the athletic sneakers strewn among the Converse, flats, and kitten heels on my floor.

So like I said, the place where the passion for hobbies ignites and then is extinguished. Maybe someday I will learn the guitar. Go snowboarding. Keep the budget. Master Japanese culture. Or maybe I won’t. But I always meant to. But do you really get kudos for trying?