As a civilization, or as individuals, the decisions we make to fulfill our wants and wishes continue to control our attitudes about the world and its resources. Our 12,000-year history of Kingdoms and Dynasties prevailing has not changed human nature. When Democracy was re-invented 250 years ago, rooted in Capitalism, it introduced the false narrative of equality for all. Ignoring women and ethnicity, individual freedoms took on a new description that merely admonished slavery, and gave sanction to the relentless pursuit of more of everything. We have been caught up in the perpetual pursuit of happiness ever since.
Governments have not evolved beyond the "me first" mentality that previous civilizations have drummed into us in order to ensure their survival. Now the norms have shifted away from existing as separated groups of self-seeking individuals, and toward the collective wellbeing of all the members of modern societies, the world over.
These poems explain some of that shift of conscience, from the ruthless beginnings of man's glorification of himself, to now. Not very many individuals can afford to own a piece of the world, or take responsibility for carrying that weight. The ways in which we conduct ourselves as individuals, showing generosity and forgiveness to all, has as much to say about our collective wellbeing as our social status, or our individual net worth.
The world is ready for a change toward true equality. A change that patiently waits as more of us begin to examine our hearts.
As a civilization, or as individuals, the decisions we make to fulfill our wants and wishes continue to control our attitudes about the world and its resources. Our 12,000-year history of Kingdoms and Dynasties prevailing has not changed human nature. When Democracy was re-invented 250 years ago, rooted in Capitalism, it introduced the false narrative of equality for all. Ignoring women and ethnicity, individual freedoms took on a new description that merely admonished slavery, and gave sanction to the relentless pursuit of more of everything. We have been caught up in the perpetual pursuit of happiness ever since.
Governments have not evolved beyond the "me first" mentality that previous civilizations have drummed into us in order to ensure their survival. Now the norms have shifted away from existing as separated groups of self-seeking individuals, and toward the collective wellbeing of all the members of modern societies, the world over.
These poems explain some of that shift of conscience, from the ruthless beginnings of man's glorification of himself, to now. Not very many individuals can afford to own a piece of the world, or take responsibility for carrying that weight. The ways in which we conduct ourselves as individuals, showing generosity and forgiveness to all, has as much to say about our collective wellbeing as our social status, or our individual net worth.
The world is ready for a change toward true equality. A change that patiently waits as more of us begin to examine our hearts.
My Short List
If my list of all that is important to me
includes nothing spiritual,
except for a few precisely loved
human beings, or my minions,
such as my puppy dog, my cats, my grandchildren,
or the good steak-on-the-hoof
that is busy trimming my pasture,
then my life must be very shallow, indeed.
Nothing I have obtained in life was
gotten strictly by my own efforts.
That which is spiritual defies my interference,
laughs at my objections, and reflects back to me
those things which I really ought to care about,
but somehow forgot.
Mainly, love for my fellow man, and for paying forward,
what I have been so generously given by the grace of a loving God.
The Grander Schemes of Love
There is no sorrow left in me,
or time to waste wondering
what if, if only, or what have I left undone?
I have no more patience for endless regrets, or for
blaming myself for each, unfortunate event I could not avoid.
I have become completely willing to pour out all my brokenness
and dream about the future with reckless abandon.
I refuse to waste my precious time imagining
what I might have done to make things different,
or what I might have changed to make others like me more.
The strain isn’t worth all the doubt and indecision.
I can still enjoy my own company when no one else is present.
I am getting to know that person who writes in my diary.
Who patiently waits to comfort me when I am worried.
Despite any bleak mood I might stubbornly entertain,
the day remains brilliant and beckoning,
shimmering with shiny promises.
Each new day affectionately asks me to come away with it,
in the same manner I might ask a dear companion,
to accompany me on a short walk, down an unfamiliar,
though sunnier trace.
The grander scheme of things no longer distracts me.
This journey is reserved for inquisitive dreamers.
I am being led toward a long-sought fulfilment of sorts.
Each day, I am called to renew a pledge of love to myself,
to take care of myself, to make peace with myself.
A reflective now reminds me that nothing is more important
than the daily showering of one’s soul with self-love.
Love Is Climbing the Mountain
A little farther now, Miha, said the coyote.
We have to get to the top and rest.
In the beginning, there was danger everywhere.
Strangers got all your money—it’s gone.
Now, fear is falling fast, and deeply,
like the sudden dimness that arrives at sunset.
How good it feels to be moving on, hey?
Do not be afraid of letting go of my hand,
of hitting bottom and getting hurt.
I will always be here to catch you.
The climb is difficult.
It will take all our effort and flexibility,
to get you to freedom.
I will help you all the way.
We must struggle, hand over hand,
eagerly grasping at life,
while bound to one another by
this single thread of trust.
Let us rest here on this ledge, Miha.
That narrow crevice over there is the way,
That we will climb down off this mountain.
Have another sip of agua pura.
Su abuelo will be waiting for you in Tempe,
said the coyote.
Just a little farther now.
I see someone has placed Saint Christopher
around your neck, and he is watching closely, Miha.
They have given you to God, so you won’t
be skinned and bruised on this long journey.
More will be revealed along the way.
A little death must come to all of us in order
to obtain a new life, Miha.
As She Lies Sleeping
My love peacefully slumbers,
as dawn makes its wake-up call.
Before her world arrives to rouse her,
with lures of work and money.
I creep from under the tangle of blankets,
on these special mornings and try to be quiet.
She stirs slightly, and I regret my clumsiness.
Her ageless beauty is never at rest,
even with her brown eyes closed.
Our creaky bedstead lets loose a startled groan.
Her passive eyelids flutter slightly, but remain shut.
Her lips form a quizzical smile, to my delight.
Things she doesn’t know she does remind me of why I love her.
Awake, she hops around like a house wren,
arranging, doing chores, paying bills, planning,
washing laundry, folding towels and sheets, cooking.
All that energy comes cloaked in a slight, agile frame.
I rarely notice her looking flustered or her hair out of place.
I admire her tremendous drive and passion.
Her work seems perpetual and redundant; not my style.
With a capacity for laboring well into the evening,
clarity of purpose seems to captivate her waking life.
So rarely does she sleep in, I try to let her be.
Water waits in the kettle, ready to boil,
after she dons her old housecoat and slippers.
A fresh packet of tea is deposited in her favorite cup.
The cats are still sleeping, and all the creaky doors are muted,
while she harmlessly wanders through her silent dreams.
As if to safeguard her sweet repose,
even the raucous morning traffic has taken a break.
Pesky Memories
Memories of happy got compressed, stowed in
the squishy, squiggly, soft hills and valleys
of my corrugated brain, before the thought of you
was forever banished from my life.
Your smile became hopelessly lost in the rippled mazes,
too far for me to hike across its rolling expanse.
As I tried to measure the distance around my disappointment,
my crinkled, crepe paper feet wandered through a bloody mudpuddle
and melted away.
The crease you were stowed in got stomped down
into the gray matter grooves of my memory, only to become just another
smoothly folded convolution among many,
like the ariel view of a terraced, Chinese rice farm.
Some harsher memories of you tenaciously held on,
like fat ticks that sucked out all of the anger,
then purged my recollections of pain, while they deadened the sting
of your departure with cold powerlessness.
After a while, your non-presence became comfortable again.
Or, more likely, I just became inured to
the lack of your irritant nature.
My wishes have become substitutes for weightier memories,
which prove to be massively unbearable at times.
My wishes of us together again have no substance to weigh them down,
or bind them to the present, like my memories do.
They possess no mass to attract gravity,
to drag me down again like reminders of a lost past do.
Wishes leave behind no vivid, lasting residues.
They don’t splash indelible stains onto my mental laundry,
which won’t come out in the next load of wash.
Bagels and Honey
Marisol, I think I like bagels and honey!
What luck that the tortillas ran out.
In the morning, I want them
toasted till crispy,
on the verge
of burning
up.
Like the short, unfulfilled life we dangerously live,
walking through deserts with very little water,
about to instantaneously erupt
into bright flames.
Like the campfire that licks
at our paper
plates.
I want my bagels slathered with fresh, wild honey
from happy jars of generosity, so illusive
that no one seems to know about them, to sweeten
all the delicious failures that life brought
to our door not so long ago,
that still haunt us
today.
Pour on the honey, Marisol—pour it slowly and make it last.
We shall enjoy it this fine morning together,
with the last of the coffee before we walk,
on our complaining feet, hoping that
this does not become
our final
meal.
Climbing Into My Life Again
I don’t remember how we met, anymore.
We must have already been acquainted.
Perhaps we had an old connection,
that we unplugged a long time ago.
Our former closeness, as I remember it,
hung in shabby uselessness at the end.
Love did not have the stamina to traverse
the cold distance that expanded over time.
A distance that somehow placed itself
squarely between you and I.
We once enjoyed each other’s company.
Perhaps it was only a truce of sorts to get us by.
Perhaps love just hung around a while,
biding its time, till it was certain,
we would not reconcile.
Love got bored and left,
looking for another empty nest to fill.
How our pillows must have gossiped,
back and forth about those steamy nights,
spent blissfully suffused with wonton fulfillment.
Then, the years left us stranded in older bodies,
unappealing, redundant, and dulled.
Tired eyes and unrequited wishes
superseded all our joy.
Tonight, when you crawled into my bed,
and casually brushed against me,
you didn’t realize the ache you caused.
This kettle full of warm love
could have melted the icicles
hanging from your frozen heart,
if only you would have
invited me back in.
Infinity Eyes
Her eyes were the color of infinity,
of need and perpetual loneliness.
At dawn, I willingly sailed out to drown
in their cerulean depths.
Wide open stood the port holes of my soul.
I cringed at every mountainous crest and canyon trough.
Her soft hands steadied mine on the wheel.
I gave in to an emptiness of thought that led us by design.
Emotional engines droned, stoked by powerful boilers.
With my head full of steam, she steadily steered me onward.
Through the dire straits of my psyche, she charted our course.
I threw away my sextant and compass, and let her take the helm.
In the first, magnificent harbor we found our shelter,
an exotic port-o-call full of intrigues, deceptively alluring.
As soon as we docked, we claimed our safe haven,
revisiting our vague destinies with each uninterrupted kiss.
She and I were the luckiest of sailors,
on holiday forever when we held each other close.
The weather was always sunny and mild,
in the deep blue oceans of her eyes.
I Love You More
Mi Muchachos, I love you so much more than I love my life.
More than I ever dreamed possible, without regard for my confinement.
Having stumbled, uninvited into this harsh, alien world,
it is vain and meaningless to wish for a different outcome.
To wish for my freedom.
Do not pay attention to my powerless screams.
I practice patience while faced with storms of intolerance that greet me daily.
I attempt forgiveness when ignorant words wound me.
My captors hold no humility in their clenched fists.
They harbor no love for me in their cold hearts.
If they ever free me to roam this Earth, wherever I find myself standing,
I shall strive to practice the same open mindedness, that they so obviously loathe.
I remain willing to change my point of view about them, and their strange ways,
even though they refuse to do the same for me.
When I admitted my faults to you, mi muchachos,
you did not hurl them back at me like insults.
When my beliefs conflicted with your own,
you didn’t banish me like I had the plague.
I continue to seek spiritual solutions to my earthly problems,
which I am forced to face, regardless of the cultural hinderances
others attempt to impose upon me.
My moral convictions still steady me, even in the face of their vil depravacion.
I shall continue to try to love them even more than I love myself.
Some Other Place to Play
I need another place to play today, not this one,
as cold and indifferent as an undertaker’s slab.
I want to live in another world that loves me,
or, at least makes believe it loves me.
A world that will hold me up till I can catch my breath.
That world would treat me better than this one has.
Love put forth tender shoots from its dying stump and flowered.
Someone stole the sun, and the cold, heartless night prevailed.
Left behind were seedbeds of fragmented remorse,
which quietly germinated in my heart and sprouted overgrown doubts.
All the tender slips of love I had patiently propagated,
were carelessly choked out.
Love’s fresh fragrance has been robbed from my hopeful blossoms.
I need a kinder world that won’t heartlessly chide the hopeless ones,
who have made a mockery of their lives, unable to find
firm footing as they slip and fall, in and out of love.
I need a proactive world that refuses to promote more futile,
inadequate solutions to my perpetual loneliness.
A world that will prevent false hope from taking over
my tiny plot of momentary happiness.
I need a watchful hope that won’t encourage crazy weeds
to take firm root along the borders of my consciousness,
boundaries which I have been hard pressed to give my attention.
Hope won’t propagate weird ideas like strange flora, which supplant
all the sensible thoughts trying to sprout, unaided
inside my reeling head.
I need another place to sit, and try to smile.
A place where I can laugh at my foibles and make a temporary truce
with my life, for a short spell, while I naively pretend
that things will work out for the best.
I want someone to hold me and my umbrella,
while they catch my tears with their shoulder,
and whisper, Baby, I’m here for you, I’m here.
Memorial to a Girl I Knew
Red ribbons held back her auburn hair in her old photographs,
poignant reminders of her lost innocence.
Her faded loveliness graced the white pages of my class annual.
I remember her in ponytails, with a flash of pearly teeth,
she eagerly bared for the voracious camera.
Her timeless image still causes me to reflect on her interrupted life.
Pouting, sultry lips complemented her perfect brow,
made to hopelessly mesmerize those of us,
who stared too long.
Rosy cheeks graced her sparsely freckled face,
punctuated by a matched set of cute dimples,
she always liked to share,
with anyone who paid attention to her.
Double-takes and leering eyes overlooked the wholesomeness she exuded.
She hid away her true self inside a graceful frame,
warped onto her troubled, tortured soul.
Her exquisite features immensely pleased all of us, and we vainly
tried to guess where she buried all her darkest treasures.
I never told her that I loved her—it was a schoolboy’s crush.
That would have been too hard for me to admit.
Even a passing, romantic thought brought me embarrassment.
I was a nobody she smiled at every day; her smile melted any resolve I made to win her.
I wonder if an I love you, from a nobody, might have made a difference to her.
I vainly imagine that wherever she is, she smiles at me in her same loving way.
I resisted the thought that I could have made her mine, even after
her sudden death shook my faith in a benevolent God.
As I sifted through the dust and fragments of the past,
trying to comprehend her suicide, I found remnants of a love for her,
I never knew I had.
Guilty Pleasures
There is nothing I can do to restore your damaged dignity.
No magical amend I might make to reconstruct your shattered ego,
no solemn vow I might desperately pledge to appease you—I am sorry.
Your fervent offers to free me from my insidious boredom,
I eagerly accepted, and I have atoned for my frivolous sins.
It was fun while it lasted, but it had to end sometime.
My lover, I was your personal possession, your obsessed plaything.
My virulent pride would not let me separate my fickle heart from my cunning brain.
We had both agreed there would be no regrets, but there were.
A tool of your will, I became a brute in service to you.
Like a thief whom you stealthily sent forth at your whim,
I stole our time together from another and abandoned my vows.
I temporarily silenced my nagging regrets, for your sake, then was
dutifully dispatched by my cruelly determined conscience.
What a shame, and a pity, to have dismissed my guilt entirely.
Left alone, I have developed my own concise conclusions about
my selfish motives, which neither prove me righteous in all challenges,
nor valiant in outward appearance.
If you love me, free me, completely, so that I may avoid the guilty pleasure
of doing what is no longer acceptable to me, full knowing
that as long as I am bound to you, I can do no good for myself.
Behind His Eyes
I came to visit Marc at the nursing home and waited in the portico for him to arrive.
I heard his wheel chair softly squeaking along before I saw him roll by me.
I did not call out to him, and I decided to follow him instead, and see where he was going.
He slowly rolled through the automatic doors and scooted down the long, concrete sidewalk,
pulling himself forward with worn-out house shoes that rhythmically shuffled and scraped
in syncopation, as his two feet measured the rough surface.
I trailed along behind him as he dutifully dragged himself toward his outpost
at the corner of a grungy, wooden, picnic table.
He parked his self-propelled chariot and sat there, proudly perched in pin-striped pajamas,
sheltered beneath a rusting, overhead awning festooned with hundreds of dirty spiders’ webs.
He acted more like a visiting general than a resident, approvingly saluting all the other unfortunates sitting there, who proudly saluted back like a platoon of wounded war veterans.
They acted like a band of comrades who, as a reward for their bravery, had gathered together
to inhale their smoldering tobacco with rich abandon.
A carpet of stubbed-out cigarette butts littered the ground like spent ammo casings.
Smoking cigarettes was one of the only things that Marc could still do, unassisted.
I did not have the heart to chastise him.
At fifty years old, Marc had been marooned inside an almost useless body.
Despite his physical challenges, he remained well aware of his circumstances.
Fate had doomed him to be an inmate in the only, nearby, nursing home,
that would agree to admit him, while he impatiently awaited the end of his life.
Something slow and sinister was consuming his brain.
Like an invisible mouse, it furtively nibbled at his cerebellum,
as if it was a tasty chunk of Havarti cheese.
I stood back, silently watching him for a couple of minutes as he bummed a cigarette,
and a light, and inhaled his tobacco with gusto.
His eyes lit up the moment he realized I was standing there behind him.
His toothless grin came out from behind a mask of hurt and want he wore most days.
I tried to reassure him and smiled back, then bent down to give him a hug,
painfully aware that this might be the last time I got to see him alive.
He croaked a hello, but the twinkle in his eyes said more than his throat could manage.
His fingers signed, asking me to give him something.
He wanted a cigarette, forgetting that I did not smoke.
His voice was a gurgle of disappointment when I told him I didn’t have any cigarettes.
Then, he abruptly changed into the same old Marc I knew, animated and happy,
gesturing his gratitude to see me, without using all the superfluous words of a conversation.
Signing had taken the place of most of his garbled language.
Words only served to shore up the disappointing image of his permanently broken body.
Speaking aloud was among the last things he had grudgingly surrendered to his disease.
He didn’t need to speak, anyway—I knew what he was trying to say.
We communicated for a while, and I filled him in about events he
had missed out on, and all the people he wanted to know about.
His family had mostly abandoned him, so we didn’t approach that sore subject.
We talked about our crazy friends and the interesting things we had in common.
We laughed about the places we used to go, and happy things we used to enjoy doing together.
Those were pleasures I knew he would never again experience, firsthand.
Much later, it occurred to me that I had wasted some of his precious time,
trying to keep him abreast of current events.
I realized that my kind words and attentiveness were only filler for the dead spots
in a pleasant, lively dialog we had been sharing for the last ten years, since we had met.
What more than, I love you, do you really need to tell an old friend who is dying?
In a short while, came that awkward silence that settled into our conversations,
after all the interesting topics I could think of were covered.
We just sat there for a few minutes, facing each other and smiling.
I decided that it was time to go, so I hugged him again, and we both teared up a bit.
I took a step to leave and turned for one more, last look.
Occupying that space was not the broken man that I had seen when I arrived.
Behind those eyes, I could still glimpse his essence valiantly struggling to rise.
Then, I watched a blank sadness spread across Marc’s face.
I saw a tiny flicker of light sink deep into the black shadows of his pupils, then vanish.
I quickly turned my head and walked away, before he saw me cry.
Wild Honey
Marisol, is there any honey left?
I love the taste of wild honey,
taken from a hidden cache,
patiently stored in the secret recesses
of the giver’s thriving hive.
The source does not put me off.
Marisol, please, bring me some more wild honey?
Some say it tastes too strong
for their soft palates.
No honey is bad honey:
honey never goes bad.
Honey is liquid love, ripening,
stockpiled by the giver,
patiently waiting
to be harvested by the lovers of life.
I like to pour it over
the many small pleasures,
that I take for granted
on any given day.
Marisol, please, hand me another sopapilla.
My fingers are sticky, and I have to
lick them clean.
I don’t want to waste any
of this delicious honey.
The harder to get at,
when it is ready to flow,
the sweeter it becomes.
How I love the taste of wild honey.
Bearing the Weight of Our Wishes: Poems for a New Humanity is a new poetry collection from American poet Jerry Lovelady. At just under two hundred pages in length, the collection focuses on contemporary themes including war, capitalism, and the urgent need for reader introspection in an increasingly volatile world. The collection is split into four sections, with distinctively titled poems including "Some Other Place to Play," "Ukrainian Mud Pies," "Bell Concerts on My Patio," and "Wild Honey." Generally speaking, the poems vary from upbeat and optimistic to direct commentaries on challenging topics.
Bearing the Weight of Our Wishes often dips into the political sphere, with poems that tackle warfare in Ukraine and the Gaza region of Palestine. In the interest of providing a fair and balanced review, I will not comment on the views expressed by Lovelady, but prospective readers should be aware that the author holds an anti-war stance on international conflict.
There is merit to this collection. It is clear that Lovelady has a passion for writing poetry, and does not suffer at the hands of writer's block. There are instances where Lovelady uses nice turns of phrase or visualization to add further depth to the subject matter. From these, you can see the author has a strong grasp on the basics of poetry as an art form. However, it is in looking at this poetry collection holistically that it becomes debatable as to what this collection aims to do, and what messages it strives to leave the reader with once they have read the final page. The whiplash from reading a poem recounting an invisible narrator reconciling with a lover ("Climbing Into My Life Again"), to another on the harshness of war (e.g. "Erecting Barbed Wire" and others), can all feel quite jarring. The cover of this book also adds to the confusion, with the use of dark grays and war imagery feeling more relevant to the darkness of certain poems.
This is a pleasant collection of poems. Personally, the war-focused poems feel like an interesting springboard for further exploration within short, or even novel-length, fiction. Having some of the impactful poems limited to just a few short stanzas does not do service to what could be something incredibly powerful if explored in more detail.
AEB Reviews