Reasons

   This poem developed when I was thinking about reasons I like the girl I've been seeing as much as I already do. We met when she responded to a post I made on Craigslist, in which she was well spoken with complete sentences and paragraphs. Words. After a couple of weeks, we had our first date and it went well. Within the first couple of hours we had planned another and a day later, yet another. In three dates we've spent over 26 hours together. Time. And now, I find myself wanting to spend more and more time with her, to do more things, to talk more, to see where all this leads. Desire.

Reasons

In the beginning

there were words.

Handshakes were words;

smiles, words; chemistry, words.

When I asked the world for love

you gave me what I loved:

words. Words like paintings,

words that defied black and white,

words like a palette for creating life.

Next, in medias res,

there was time spent, freely

as though we are rich with time,

as though time well spent

was a spice to use liberally to add zest

to the days we seize together.

When I asked the world for love

you gave me what I loved:

time. Time on a clock

without a face or hands,

time given free reign,

given its reins, unbridled,

allowed to run.

Now, in this moment,

there is desire.

Like perfume, I breathe in

and my head is filled with desire,

desire defined and undefined

desire for the hourglass to be set on its side

or to ride in its sands

with you right beside me.

When I asked the world for love

you gave me what I loved:

desire. Desire to taste

your lips tasting the wine from mine,

desire to have you, to hold you

desire to want you, desire

to revel in you,

and finally, the desire

to revel in your desires.

Song for Her

     I had an amazing weekend. It was mostly one very, very long date with a four break for sleep in between. I met my date at 6:45 on Saturday night and we went to see Little Shop of Horrors at the local theatre. Afterward, we went to a wine bar and a pub. I got home at 2:30 in the morning and got up four hours later to get ready to meet her again for coffee at 8 before we went skiing/snowboarding at 9. We came down in time for lunch, then picked up her dog and I took her out to my parent's place. We hung out with my parents, talked, I played guitar for her and took her back to her car around 10 pm. While I was playing I started to write a song for her, but didn't get too far. The first line stuck in my head though, so in my spare time at work today, I came up with the following. I'll likely add a chorus before I call it complete. Also, it's a working title, but I kind of like it.

Song for Her

You kissed the wine from my lips

lost your way in my music

and never looked back

Your star flashed across the sky

down the road less traveled by

and straight into my life

If there was ever another path

these last few days washed it away

and we’ll never know the difference

I’m looking forward to a here and now

so tangled up in you

we’ll never unravel.

So here’s to seizing the day

and taking a leap of faith

if we fall, we’ll fall together

You kissed the wine from my lips

gave in to the music

and never looked back.

Tiny Buddha

    Tiny Buddha is one of the blogs I've taken to reading recently. (Along with Zen Habits and Goodlife Zen).

    The following article, "7 Vital Choices for Happy Relationships", is well worth reading for anyone, whether you're in a relationship or not. In fact, most good advice is worth reading, even if you're not in a situation to use it. My choir teacher in high school always taught us that practice makes permanent, and I think if you're going to be ready to seize Kairos by the beard when he goes by, you must always prepare. Whatever your goal or desire, if you're not ready for it when it arrives it will slip out of your hands. So practice and prepare, so that when the moment comes you don't even have to think to seize hold of it.

Let's Be - lyrics

Let's Be

I know a good thing when I see it

I’m not just chasing rainbows

I’m here for the now

how about we just enjoy it

instead of playing games

let’s give it all we’ve got

while we still have time to give it

I know the rules say

you shouldn’t go all in

on your first hand

only fools rush in

but I think maybe

I found a pot of gold

while I was admiring the rainbow

Don’t make the mistake

of thinking I’m in a hurry

I’m in this for the journey

I’m not in a race against the clock

It’s just clear to me

no matter how short or long the walk

I’ll enjoy spending my free time beside you

Don’t worry about things

like too much, too fast

or whether or not the good times last

This isn’t one of those stories

with a pre-determined plot

don’t worry about wearing a parachute

It’s a leap of faith not fate

I won’t tell you I’m not crazy

I don’t have a lot of faith in sanity

I believe in tangible things

like the joy in your smile

when you’re laughing at me

for laughing at me

I won’t ask you for anything

all I have is what I’m offering

I’ve a lot of time and a few ideas

and all I’m really saying is

if you want a share in what I’ve got

no matter what the future has in store

any quantity or quality of what’s mine is yours

A First rom-Antic

    Last night I went on a mostly-blind date. (I admit, I cheated. I’m a visual person.) My date and I “met” when I posted a personal ad on craigslist. Her first email contained coherent sentences and more than one paragraph, which is somewhat of a novelty in online dating. I was pleasantly surprised and we exchanged several more emails before finalizing plans to meet in person.

    She’d never been on a blind date before, so though I offered a picture, we/I decided not to send her one. Instead, I gave her a description of me, and what I was wearing that day. We met at a local wine bar at 5:30, after I got off work. I arrived early, as usual. I was taught through several jobs I held when I was younger that if you’re not 15 minutes early you’re late. While I waited for my date to show, I read about Beaujolais and the wines that come from the region in a wine atlas.

    Once she arrived, I guided her to the five-dollar-a-glass happy hour wine rack and we both settled on the same wine, a blend from the R Collection. Two glasses of wine apiece and a small buffalo chicken flatbread later, we decided to go play some ping pong at a pub down the street. I paid for our wine and food, which is as it should be if a man invites a woman out. We then made our way to the other place.

    Being me, I offered my arm on the way, which I think surprised her. I believe in what I call modern chivalry, which mostly translates to good manners. I’ll write about that another time.

    The pub we went to is two stories, with the bar downstairs and a game room with a false fireplace upstairs. They have a ping pong table, shuffleboard, and darts. (The ping pong table actually rests on a pool table.) We had the entire upstairs to ourselves, but it was a Tuesday. I think Tuesday is a great night for a first date. There’s less pressure, an easy escape if the date isn’t going well and it’s easy to make plans for the coming weekend if you decide you want to.

    Before we could start playing ping pong, she asked me if I was going to teach her to dance, so we spent some time with a quick lesson and a few dances. She had neither two left feet nor bad hand eye coordination as she claimed. Between the ping pong, the dancing and the conversation, we laughed a lot. Fair warning, don’t play ping pong with a cracked ping pong ball. It doesn’t work very well.

    Three games later, (I won all three), we settled in and talked for a while longer. The conversation turned from light hearted banter to more serious subjects. We talked about life philosophy, the state of marriage, the horrible names a family she knew had given their children. Can you believe someone named their 14^th child Aldon (all done) and then, when they had another the next year, they named her Su-prise. Awful.

    When I finally looked at the time, it was 10:11. We both had work in the morning and it was time to call it a night. I walked her to her car, (again arm in arm), and she gave me a hug in which it was apparent she actually wanted to hug me. I did not kiss her goodnight, nor did I try. I’ve never been much for kissing on the first date, and I’ve finally figured out why: it’s not special. There’s nothing interesting, magical, or memorable about a first kiss right before she gets in her car and leaves. If there’s cause to remember it, I don’t want the story to go, “and then he kissed me and I left.”

    It was a good ending to a great night. I’ll write more as more occurs. We’re going snowboarding/skiing on Sunday. It will be the first time I’ve done that as a date.

Au revoir,

M0RG4N

I Never Told You

I Never Told You

Every word leaves 
a thousand left unsaid.
Quietly they close the doors
behind them. They fade away,
riding the waves of sound
until they crash violently
on the shores of silence.
They leave suddenly

without a kiss goodbye,
without a kiss goodnight.
They echo in their absence
and the words in the echo 
are the never-born: the hopes,
the dreams, the truth.
They ring, resound between us,
the unsaid, unsatisfied meaning 

trapped in negative space. 

Listen. 

It's the sound of snow falling, 
your eyes closed. 
It's your breath, caught 
and held captive by beauty 
that can never be expressed. 
It's the question of the tree 
and whether it sang out 
its last breath in the forest
or died without a whisper, in peace.

Listen.


You may only hear one word, 
one voice, but it's a choir
that slips quietly into the night.

Full Circle

    I wrote this at the end of January. Out of the blue, a friend I hadn't talked to in two years found me on Facebook and we renewed our friendship almost like nothing had happened. I love that we can do that. I'd rather not do it again, of course, but it's great that we can walk in the door after being absent for so long and settle in as if we had never left.

Full Circle

There are red strings
there are knots
theories of small worlds
and songs and amusement park rides too
There are karmas and fates
lessons to learn
scenes we're doomed or destined
to repeat and repeat and repeat
There are lives we live
over and over
like that dream we have
between 8:50 and 9
with one hand on snooze
the curtain risen the curtain drawn
between each reawakening
There are comings and there are goings
there are movie scenes
and pages so humdrum we cut them from the novels
we don't write about our numbered days
encounters we define
by chapter or by interlude
whole passages of time
more like an intermission
before we have the chance for once
to do the right thing
or the right wrong thing
to make up for all those times
we did the wrong right thing
and walked away
alone

Cygnet

I don't really intend to post a new poem every day, or even post every day, but I suppose I can for a while. I'll signify whether a poem is new or taken from the rather significant volume I wrote when I was younger. I wrote this today. 

Cygnet

Someone told her

when her tale was newly hatched

ducklings never become swans

A thousand pages later

the echo ripples still

across the mirror of her pond

For you and I, it is hard to see

why the story left stains

in the feathers of her wings

But she’s convinced she’s grown

into ugly duck

from ugly duckling

She heard that twist on fantasy

so many times

from where she sat on a heartless knee

she refuses to believe

anyone might have written

a different sort of ending

But I want her to know

when it comes to what I behold

I tell in every tale of her I’ve told

I’ve never seen a swan so lovely

Speaking of the Romantics

     One of my favorite poems was written by Lord Byron. If you don't know, Byron was one of the Romantic poets, and though this poem is a romantic poem, the term refers to the era in which it was written. Other poets of the Romantic era include Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, and Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote his entire autobiography in verse. Personally, I think he can go stuff himself.

She Walks in Beauty



SHE walks in beauty, like the night 
  Of cloudless climes and starry skies; 
And all that 's best of dark and bright 
  Meet in her aspect and her eyes: 
Thus mellow'd to that tender light         5
  Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 
One shade the more, one ray the less, 
  Had half impair'd the nameless grace 
Which waves in every raven tress, 
  Or softly lightens o'er her face;  10
Where thoughts serenely sweet express 
  How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 
 
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, 
  So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,  15
  But tell of days in goodness spent, 
A mind at peace with all below, 
  A heart whose love is innocent!

-Byron

Stella

Someone I care about very much once told me that she liked it better when poems used "she" or "her" instead of "you". Somehow, she could never believe that she could be the person referred to when someone used "you," and could easily imagine the poem was about her when it used the other pronouns.

Stella

This is for her,

so she might look up

into the night sky of this poem

and imagine her name

spelled out above its horizon.

The letters become stars,

making constellations of pronouns;

a celestial game of connect-the-dots.

This is for her,

a tiny rocket of words

with just enough escape velocity

to bring her beyond

the second star to the right

and straight on to my world.

This is for her,

so she might hear her name

whispered in the song of the universe.

It chimes softly each time a star twinkles

in the collection of pronouns

this poem has written for her

across its endless white sky.

A Dream to Wake to

    One thing about me, I'm an amateur singer/songwriter. Very amateur, I've never played in public. I'm a self-taught guitar player and its one of the many hobbies I love and want to get better at. My influences include but are hardly limited Rob Thomas, Jason Mraz, and Joshua Radin. If you ask my mother, she's always hearing Jimmy Buffet in my songs.

    These are lyrics I wrote today but have not put to music yet. I sometimes dream of selling my songs to people who could perform them far better than I ever will.

A Dream to Wake to

Girl, you know I love you

I'd face an army for you

I'd be Orpheus to your Eurydice

I'll never look back

but I admit

I'm scared as hell

after all this time it'd be a dream come true

to finally have and hold you

And I don’t want to wake up

until I can’t tell where the dream ends

and the waking world begins

I don’t want to wake up

until every day I open my eyes

to waking up beside you.

It’s been a long time coming

though it hasn’t yet, in truth

I want you to know

I’m here, I’m ready, my arms are open

Love, I want to be with you

And I don’t want to wake up

until I can’t tell where the dream ends

and the waking world begins

I don’t want to wake up

until every day I open my eyes

to waking up beside you

Girl, you know I love you

I’d face forever with you

I’d be your Disney Hercules

I’ll never look back

but I admit

I’m scared as hell

after all this time it’d be a dream come true

to finally have and hold you

Copyright Morgan Douglas 2011

Time Enough for Love

    You would call me a hopeless romantic. I don’t. I don’t believe that romance is hopeless. As a 28 year old man, I’ve had my share of heartbreak and broken my share of hearts. I am not innocent, nor naïve. I simply believe in love. I believe in platonic and romantic love. I believe in eros, agape, philia. My favorite word for love is caritas. The dictionary says it’s “Christian love, charity.” Wikipedia says it is “distinguished by its origin, being Divinely infused into the soul.” To which I have two things to say: Corinthians: 13:1-13 and. . . thou art. To me, caritas simply means “I love you for you.”

    This blog is meant to be an outlet for that side of me. In particular, I like to write romantic poetry and song lyrics. But I imagine you’ll find anecdotes, philosophies, and other thoughts here as well. From time to time I’ll probably write about Zen living, which is very much about love, compassion and opening your heart. There are a lot of things and people I love, and this will be a place for all of them.

     The title, Time Enough for Love, is in honor of the book by Robert A. Heinlein. His novel of the same name is one of the many places I learned to love. (I’ll mention that Stranger in a Strange Land had an equal part.)

     I believe in love. Now I share that faith with you.