Challenge Poem

Hey Everyone...thanks for hanging in there with me. I am trying hard to get back to writing more...I am hoping that with the holidays upon us, I will get more time and inspiration. Today's poem is a Challenge poem from a dear friend of mine from Georgia. Dee G. wanted something inspiring. I hope this passes muster, Dee!   Let me know what you (all of you) think.



Of What Can Be…



He should have been blind.
20/20 hindsight stole away his vision
For a better life.
Doubting all he heard (about love)
He played it dumb & deaf.
Better off (by far) to stay unconnected to the world.
He knew only that:

despair is empty/cold/dark.
when it defines our lives it frightens us less
(as we starve slowly and burn to a cinder).

He was burned raw and brittle by hope.
Saw it all around him and how others were warmed by its light.
He languished in the smoke-choked shadows of loss and hurt.
Running for his life when the beams of dawn touched his skin,
He heard someone say (from somewhere near himself)
That there was no hope to be found anywhere out in the world.

At last someone understood his life of ashes!
Stumbling to a stop, he listened so hard he didn’t notice
That sunrise had kissed away his fears and was waiting on his hug.
Someone continued:

Hope is made from within, not found from without.
The only place you can “take hope” is from your heart.
It cannot be taken from the tables of others
Like leftover scraps of a feast.
Place your hope on the table of life,
Feast with others in the sunshine
And unwrap the world’s tomorrows in warmth.
Then you will not be soul-hungry (or life-burnt).
Now he understands that:

Hope is the fire of every star in the night.
When it defines our lives it fills us with the courage
Of what can be..

______________________________________________________

orn b.
24 Nov 2012

May you feast every day on the best of tomorrows. Let me know your thoughts.

Has been a long time since I published anything. Sorry about that. Will try and do better. So....today is a poem I wrote in April this year. It is for a friend of mine that went through a tough time and came out the other side better and happier. He never had a tatoo before, and when he got his first one, it was of a Phoenix. It was HUGE, and covered his entire back! I thought about the fact that he was a fireman at one point in his life, and how the metaphor of fire and rebirth plays in his life. He gave permission to print this poem, and for that I am grateful. I also have a challenge poem I am working on from a friend and reader in Atlanta, GA (thanks Dee!)

Phoenix Rising

Myth would have it born anew

From it’s own ashes.

Flying to the sun,

Awoken from death

To live again.

Brighter than the fire of life.

Legend would have it become

Like man.

Passion ablaze,

Consuming all it touches with

It’s first breath of sky and wing.

But I know it is a fireman.

Smoldering from the burns

Of his older, other life.

Glowing with embers of a slowly

Realized future.

Bursting from his burdens like

The blazing symbol on his back,

He rises to the challenge of

The dawn on his horizon.

Becomes like his dreams,

Immortal.

______________________________

Let me know your thoughts...

orn b.

From the Psychologist's Office

Hi Everyone! This poem was inspired by accounts of my soldiers telling different stories the same way. So often, soldiers feel guilty about surviving combat when a friend did not. The guilt haunts them in their sleep. This is a dark poem, but I want to let others know that for so many, the war doesn't end when our men and women leave the combat zone.

Survivor’s Guilt

In a resurrection
As sweet as the smell
Of pine trees on the
Hillsides of my innocence,
I laugh with you
While all about us darkens.

We start running to
Bunkers that shrink and fade
With each slow-motion stride I can muster.
Concussions (purple-white) rack my sleep.
I flatten
Clutching my sweat-soaked mattress
Shielding myself from murder.
Moaning awake (screams from my dreams)
You die again.
A victim of jagged shrapnel
(My survivor’s guilt).

Awake and dead again
I edge from room to room
In a security sweep.
Check my locks for violation.
Scanning my lawn for
Shadow craters in moonlight.
I stay awake in silence
Wondering when both of us will stay dead.
______________________________

Let me know your thoughts.
b