F.E. Feeley Jr.'s Blog, page 22

It is memories not a paycheck, I seek (Poem)

 

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(Photo by: Dương Trần Quốc)

 

I’ve never been a reality man

A concrete man

A man of business

Practical things, though important I’m sure

Have never interested me more than a day

And when on the rare occasions I thought such things

I found myself tired easily

And bored rather quickly

My eyes finding the nearest cloud to gaze upon

I’m a dreamer man

Some rude persons would call me a flake

Our worlds too far apart to be understood

For as they count their hours by dollar signs

And dates for meetings, shaking hands in greeting

I’ve always counted moments as waypoints

This one down now onto the next

I live for the soft sighing of trees and the feel of Autumns first chill

For pleasure in the crescendo of a tenor voice of a well-loved song

The emotion of it all

The pleasure of passions first thrill

I’m irresponsible with money, I don’t like social gatherings although social graces come naturally to me

You may be rich, well endowed, with a fine home and linens Egyptian with thousands thread count

But if emotion isn’t there, if passion doesn’t burn you, what good are you, really, to me?

If you can taste what I taste and see what I see

My darling, if you could be so cavalier

Then perhaps your business would be simply a place you go to and not a person you think you ought to be

Yet perhaps I’m all wrong, and not being able to be more wrong, you hold the real meaning of life in your clockwork world

Yet as the world goes by I’ll count the moments not time

For its  memories not a paycheck, I seek

Summer ( The Second Sister) Poem

 

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(Photo by: Diana Simumpande)

 

 

Summer sister

Brown skinned beauty

With a dress as green as the emerald isles

Steadily walks in grasses waist high and flowering

Her bosom as full as the clouds

Summer sister, African wise

Woman of the earth and mother to all

Eases the world in mid-afternoon slumbers

And thundershowers late at night

Mother of the longest Solstice

She tells Mary Mary quite contrary

How that garden’s supposed to grow

And prepares her fields for her red haired sister

When June fields begin to grow

But it’s with her the children laugh and play through

As the swim in rivers warmed by her touch

It’s her they watch coming over the hill from schoolhouse windows

The time of the year they love so much

Summer sister, Ebony darling

A laugh as deep as the tree roots grow

The most generous of the four sisters seasons

Dancing under the late summers moon glow

Jesus Serves Jamison (Poem)

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(Photo by Tanja Heffner)

 

 

 

I have found salvation in Rock and Roll

My gospel in the rhythm and blues

when that drumline hits thump thump thump

I become the Angel Gabriel

When the trumpet sounds for me

it will be Janis singing Me and Bobby Mcgee

and as I lift up off the ground

the angels vocal arrangement will be by Barry Gordy

with the smooth sounds of Motown

Heaven will be an out of the way juke joint

where Jesus serves whiskey until two

who’ll light my cigarette and leave his bar

to slow dance with me, and sing harmony with me

when the juke plays “Chasing Cars”

See, what you didn’t know,

is that Jesus really loves Pat Benatar

and listened when she sang that hell was for children

and opened the bar, cause it’ll take a long time before

we can bear the golden streets of Religion’s hypocrisy.

So don’t you worry you hell cats and hip kitties

live your truth as best you can

because JEsus serves Jamison at the bar till two

and it’s ALWAYS midnight at The Lost and Found

Hallelujah!

The truth is…(Poem)

 

 

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(Photo: Matthew Henry )

We try to divine what we know

or what we think we know

in terms of people and places

and things

We tell ourselves these narratives

that only reinforce our prejudice

against others as well as ourselves

But the mile less trodden on

uncut in fields rarely visited

when the sun’s direct light

bakes they clay hard and fills

the surrounding sky with scent of sweet grass

and pungent dried earth

truth awaits us

In this field

where the blue dragonfly alights the Black Eyed Susan

it’s gossamer wings only a moment’s hesitation

before its dash back into the summer air

and in this field where the grasses make warm beds

for nursing deer

Truth awaits us

In this field

where the only sound breaking through the whisper

of wind running it’s fingers through the grasses

or the buzz of a worker bee diligent about

his duties

is the truth ready to be spoken to an ear willing to hear it

And that truth is sometimes the healing hurts as bad as the hurting did when the hurting first happened to us

So we fill our heads with static

whispers about neighbors, about ourselves

never thinking that pain doesn’t have to be

the destination

it can just be the journey

So you want to be a writer? Prepare for crippling doubt.

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Do you have that novel in your mind that you’ve always wanted to write?

Do you have that great storyline you think should be made into a screenplay?

Do you have that autobiography you’ve been thinking about sitting down and hammering out now that you’ve reached a place in your life where you have the time?

Good.

That’s step one.

Now comes step two.

Fear of failure.

I have a quarter written manuscript that I have poured my heart and soul into for the past several months sitting open on this very computer right now. I’ve had people read over it. I’ve had my publisher read over it. I’ve read over it a number of times.

And, not to toot my own horn, but I love it.

And so did everyone else.

But today as I was reading back over it once more to capture the feeling of the story I am trying to tell I found – before I knew it – in the midst of a black hole of despair.

Nothing triggered it.

I was happy all day today.

I got up, kissed my husband goodbye, walked the dog, had breakfast, worked out, caught up on social media, sat down to read and get to work –

and BANG!

There it was.

Doubt. Self doubt.

I have been published multiple times. I get some pretty good reviews. While I am not the biggest seller out there – I know that at the end of the day – I can tell a story. And a good one at that.

And most days that’s more than enough to keep me going.

But today, I felt like a fraud. A poser. A no good craptastic punk who couldn’t string two coherent sentences together.

When my husband came in, and we had dinner, he noticed I was upset and inquired about it like a good spouse does.

“You go through this every time you write,” he said shaking his head and looking upon me with a gentle gaze of patience.

He’s right. I do go through this and so will you. Over and over and over again.

It is the loneliest feeling in the world to try and create something you’re not 100 percent sure the world wants or will treat well once you’ve handed it over.

I am not going to give you a pep talk, espouse one of those OBNOXIOUS one liners on those OBNOXIOUS motivational posters in offices the nation over. You know which one’s I’m talking about. Those posters that, when you’re having a bad day makes you want to punch someone….yup, them.

I am not going to tell you that what you’re working on is important, that it will be well received, that you will make a million dollars, and your work will one day be taught in universities.

Because all of that may not be true. Hell, it most likely won’t be.

But I will tell you , that feeling you get when you’re up late at night hovering over your laptop, sitting at your desktop, or scrawling through a notebook curled up on the couch – when that moment of terrifying self doubt washing over you – is completely normal.

I’ll also advise you not to finish it for the enjoyment of the world. Finish it for the satisfaction of saying, “I did that.”

That’ll mean more than anything.

I did that.

And if you still don’t feel better go burn one of those fucking posters in effigy.

 

Old Friend (Poem)

 

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(Photo by: Ben White)

April is National Poetry Month and this one I’d written several months, maybe over a year or so ago. And I wrote it when I got to missing someone in my life who’s – a friend, brother, drinking buddy, just….

I suffer from what Cordelia suffered from in King Lear when she tried to describe her love for her father when she said, “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.”

I empathize because even though I am a writer – nothing in the English language encompasses that familial blood/not blood connection we find with certain people. But anyway – enough about that. Here’s my poem:

Old Friend 

I miss you

Old friend

Heart of my heart

Fondest memories when

Mornings lasted until sundown

The air a Sweet summertime song

Our wisdom was shared between glasses of Amber coloured discontent

Bitter enough on the tongue

To coax a sweet melody

Well into an evening

I miss the old when

Ghosts sailing on the breeze

Thick with heavy songs and worry and humidity

When the mood struck our fancy

We’d sing down stars from the heavens

Or leaves from the trees

We were brilliant then, not so much now

Now, were grown up

But the faint notes I hear

Tinkling beyond the sunset

The ghost still ramble and the whisky’s still warm

Although time and distance and days and doings rob us

And give us grey in our hair, in our beards, in our eyes

They can’t steal the youthful sound of our voices

Old friend

Closer than my shadow

Thicker blood hasn’t run between two souls

Or maybe that was the liquor, or our Irish dispositions?

Or sappy drunkenness? Ha!

Who cares

We were young,

Old friend

And right there in those moments

We always will be.

 

(Love ya, pal. It’ll be alright, I promise)

The Day is Done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Poem)

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(Photo by: Jeroen Andel)

 

Today I would like to share with you my favorite poem, The Day is Done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

To me, this is one of the most beautiful poems ever written, and if recited correctly, can bring me to tears.

There’s something about it that calls to the weariness in me and the hopefulness of rest.

I hope you enjoy it.

The day is done, and the darkness
      Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
      From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
      Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
      That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
      That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
      As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
      Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
      And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
      Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
      Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
      Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavor;
      And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
      Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
      Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
      And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
      Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
      The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
      That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
      The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
      The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
      And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
      And as silently steal away.

 

Persephone’s Feast

Brava

Be But Little

Get up, because the draught has woken you again, make a thin, weak instant coffee and listen to the absolute feathery white static silence of the night. Try to be positive; think how lovely this breeze will be in the summer, as you rub the blood back into your feet. Check the cupboards and nibble a slice of hardening bread.

Back in bed, with the covers wrapped cocoon-like around you, wonder if today’s the day you can have a hot shower, or a bath without boiling the kettle seven times, because maybe by some miracle the plumbing your landlord won’t fix is better now. Wonder how many calories there are in the bread you’ve just eaten, tell yourself to relish the cold night because shivering burns fat. Wonder what you’ve become.

There’s an ethereal quality to the hours just before dawn, when the night is over but the day not…

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Confessions and regrets (Poem)

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(Photo by Soren Astrup Jorgenson)

I used to love you

God, I used to love you

when I was starving myself

and craving affection

I can’t even list the names of

the men i took to bed

wishing it had been you

Or maybe I remember more

than I’m letting on, maybe I

should give the world your number

so’s they can ask you what in the world

were you thinking being so cavalier

with a hungry heart lying prostrate at your feet

I used to pretend that once

the veil was lifted from your eyes and

for the first time see me as I was

and you’d say

“Oh, there you are, I’ve loved you forever.”

and time would lay down and be still

as you loved the feeling of other men’s

hands off my thighs

There was that time once in a restaurant

when the man you were talking to

what you thought was behind my back

came and sat caddie corner from our table

and that place where I used to pretend you loved me

died tragically between Hors Devours and

our main course

and I swallowed all of it down

I used to love you

God, I don’t think you can understand

how thirsty my soul was for the taste

of what contentment would feel like

you used to think you were so slick

but you weren’t – it was me, afterall,

sleeping with your best friend.

Michigan Summers (poem)

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(Photo: Andrew Montgomery )

 

I miss Michigan summers

When the lakes were filled to spilling

On the shores of lake erie

In n the parks of green

I miss the path passed the lakeside

Between the pool and tennis courts

Where my blades cut paths unyielding

Pushed back only by the wind

I miss the path as it dashed into the woods

Three miles out and three miles in

Where by now sweat dripped freely down my back

And the breeze dried it upon my skin

I can smell that place a thousand miles away

See the people walk in groups as I turn the corner

Earth, water, and air and me burning

I miss those summers that looking back

Though those times were wrought with care

I was a single gooses feather floating

Loving pushed by a scented fresh ocean air.

I miss those summertime places

Summertime spaces of my youth

When I was hell on wheels with earbuds racing

Faster and faster to my truth

I miss those Michigan summers

When I was younger and the sun was warm

As a ghost I go back to those spaces

Where the wind was cool

When all that chased me was my shadow

And even that wasn’t as dark, and I the fool

Oh to be the fool once more

On the path beside the lake

Those Michigan summers

Beside lake Erie’s shores….