The Life I've Lived
- Faith – I am a Trinitarian Christian believer. I believe the grace of God is made available only through Christ’s atonement for sin and the transformation of the human spirit by the Holy Spirit. Having said that, I also believe it’s not for me but only God to say to which persons of any faith his grace applies.
- Heritage – A Texan born and raised, I wandered off in my youth. I don’t love Texas less for having left her, but I love all of our United States a little more. I wish everyone might have the same love for his or her native land.
- Orientation – I’m a man who’s attracted to women. It seems only right and natural to me that grown up men and women should find comfort and happiness with one another. That conviction makes no allowance for me or anyone to disrespect or attempt to disenfranchise persons who are oriented somewhat differently regarding adult relationships.
- Relationships – I’ve loved and been loved, just not as deeply, well or long as I should have. A generation ago I married a good woman to our sorrow, but we were divorced to my deep regret. She was a treasure then, has been for the intervening twenty odd years, and still is for everyone who knows her now. Our son and daughter are well regarded young adults who seem to have married well with happier results than their parents. We share a clear affection, but I’d like to know them better especially as their ages close on mine.
- Temperament – My life has been a lonesome path, not a hard or empty one. I get along with nearly everyone, and people seem to like me just fine. The women I’ve cherished and held I’ll always love, and there are men whose time it’s been my pride to share. By and large, though, it’s easier for me to be alone than to spend time in social settings where I’ve never been comfortable.
- Expression – I’ve learned to live with every sense and breath, and that’s the way I write. I do my best to show respect for others’ living, sensing and breathing. The life I’ve lived is not my poetry or prose. Writing’s just the overflow inspired by all that’s crossed my path or mind.
The great American plains with their vast horizons have not been far from my door for most of my life. I love their llanos, rolling hills and grasslands green or gold depending on the season. I have been to sea surrounded by blue above, below and on every side, but with no single color at my feet or to the farthest edge of sight. It has been my good fortune to enjoy the stillness of marshy glens and deep forests, the magnificence of breath-taking mountains and the stark grace of desert canyons.
My heritage is American, with the blood of British, Cherokee and Choctaw nations mixed in my veins, surging from my heart. My extended family of marriage and blood includes the genetic legacy of Africa, Europe, Southeast Asia and the peoples of America. I have heard voices I could not understand but thrilled to hear with their cadences from lips, tongue and throat unheard in my own native English. The hands and arms of love and good will which have touched mine have been of every hue from ivory white to ebon black.
I cannot judge beauty, but I will love it.
The Time We Spend Together
Posted items are from my point of view with my understanding and assumptions. However, readers respond from their own backgrounds; they may comprehend my intentions or not. Their impressions represent how my words struck them, and my intention may not leave the hoped for impression. Likewise, I may or may not understand your intentions for what you post. Just as you do, I read through the filter of my capacity for comprehension. As individuals we rarely experience or perceive in the same way anything offered or received.
Deliberate offensiveness is often the only art or commentary which leaves the impression intended, but it encourages a spiral of escalating retaliation rather than energetic debate. For some such disagreeable behavior seems to be enjoyable, or somehow self-vindicating. To me it just seems like petulant childishness.
For a vigorous and intelligent exchange of ideas, enthusiasm and passion should be tempered with civility. Criticism based on taste alone, personal recriminations or refusal to engage with diverse points of view merely confirm us in our ignorance and ensure intellectual insulation from the flow of thought, knowledge and greater wisdom. Our discussions should lead toward understanding and effective communication of our diverse perspectives and perceptions.
- Comments and Messages: I may occasionally present or defend a controversial position on art or a forum topic, but usually I just try to be supportive and truthful with folks who post their creative efforts and personal views here.
- Religion and Politics: I am a Christian libertarian of no affiliation. I am willing to share my personal religious, spiritual, political, social and economic views, but only with positive statements. I like to hear the views of others on these, but only if they have positive theses to present. Please check your negativity at the door!
- Sensual and Erotica: I post poems and comments on these, but with reserve. For me human sexuality should always be enriching and joyful in experience and memory. I wish it never involved guilt or disrespect, or was a source of pain or grief. For discussion, my poetry and comments are based on my personal experience, but only as it is relevant to general human experience. There is no invitation for more personal discussions of sensuality with people I have never met.
- Stars and Applause: For comments I give or receive these have little value. Every poem on which I comment gets 3 applause. I try to award 5 stars to every first comment someone enters on my postings. This is to be polite and encourage folks to post their work and comments.
- Last seen 11 hours ago. Member since May 26.
- I'm a lapisLazuli dream poet for 381 comments.
- My mood is
, and quote is light extends forever: darkness can but flee from it. - I am a 54 year old man (United States)
- When I'm not writing, I'm imagining beyond probability and perhaps even possibility.
- I support the site as a gold member
(26)- I have 381 comments, 5 contests
My Lists
Poems I'm focused on
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Their grace I may admire but not begrudge:
The trees were never made for me to judge. -
A figure unwieldy and awkwardly framed,
His body was fragile but only a shell. -
I thought to walk where paths would not be found
Without a journey’s end or course in mind, -
A tree fell in the forest with a crash,
But none was there to hear the sound it made. -
Our reason starts and ends with data sensed,
But things not sensed exist no less for that.
Active Contests
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Submit a Miltonian or Italian sonnet - but with a challenge for your skill with meter!1500 points, ends October 8, 7 entries In Big points, Options
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Submit one or two free verse or conventional poems of at least 4 words & 2 lines, up to 480 words & 60 lines.1500 points, ends October 8, 18 entries In Big points, Contest
My Poetry
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If someone said, “I always lie,”
The words, of course, would not be true.25 lines, 2 comments, September 27. In Thoughts -
Your life is the course, along which you race,
And time makes you run its own killing pace.14 lines, 1 comment, September 27 -
I won’t deny the universe
Or what my spirit knows, -
