“ Conformity is the most over-used method of suicide .” -Werner Franz Doerwaldt
Hello, everyone, my name is Daniel, though you are free to call me Dan, Bob, Joe, Phinnaeus, Cat, Dog, Bowling Shoes, Mergatroid, really, whatever, I don’t care. Names are funny things in that they’re one of the most unnecessary necessities the human race has devised.
"'What's your name?' Coraline asked the Cat.
The cat yawned slowly, carefully, revealing a mouth and tongue of astounding pinkness. 'Cats don't have names,' it said.
'No?' said Coraline.
'No,' said the cat. 'Now, you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.'"
-"Coraline" by Neil Gaiman
As of this writing I am sixteen years old. Though I cannot identify exactly when I started writing, regardless of when I started, I feel as if I always have been. I breathe poetry; it is, as Walt Whitman put it, the “song of my soul”. It is my air, my sustenance. Without it, I would surely be asphyxiated by the silence.
The poet is a man who, if given his way, would spend his afternoons sitting on a screened porch beneath trees, whose fleeting shadows beneath the sun’s light caress his face. There he would sit, with a pen and paper, writing whatever he wished as he wished. He could go for years in like estate with his pen never touching the paper, and then, in the sudden burst of glorious epiphany, he writes one word. But one word. And in that word he is content, setting his pen down once more, satisfied. He may never spill another drop of ink again for as long as he lives, closing his eyes amid the dreamy embrace of the day, or, perhaps, in an hour, a moment, a year, a century, a second, he writes again, and who knows what he shall then write? I don't think he himself knows what he shall write. The man least in control of what he writes is the poet. To write, my friends, is to relinquish all hold of ones boundaries; to let loose one's imagination; to unleash something that could change the world.
There is in me a major love for languages. I'm currently studying Spanish, and have been for five years. I next intend to learn German, followed by French or Italian, and from there, eventually, Greek, Latin, Russian, Hebrew, Gaelic, and an Asian language or two. Omniglotism is a goal of mine.
Linguistics, also, is a hobby of mine. I love reading anything and everything about languages, what makes them work, gramatically, vocabularily, so on. I could babble for hours (to the dismay of my friends) about the gramatical structure of the English language and how outdated our spelling system is (I've actually written an alternative phonetic alphabet, because I'm that much of a dork ) I'm working on figuring out as to whether or not I wish to be a graphic designer or an English teacher for a career.
I have no particular style of poetry that is for me etched in stone. As a general rule, I follow some sort of pattern or form. Ninety percent of my poems rhyme, or have some kind of meter or structure to them. I love form in poetry; I love that honed, razor sharp edge it allows you to turn your thoughts into. I believe in the power of words to change the world; form, for me, is the best avenue through which I may do this. I could be described more or less as a Neo-Romanticist; at least for now. Who knows what my writing will be like in twenty years?
By the way, I’m also a huge, huge fan of the band The Decemberists. Colin Meloy is an absolute genius. I just saw them in June in Richmond, and they were amazing; they performed "The Hazards of Love" all the way through as well as some of their older stuff. Simply spectacular. If you like the Decemberists, you're just awesome too, in my book. 
You will now be bombarded with an army of quotes, short stories, one or two poems, and any other miscellany I felt like putting on my page.
Orville was a man in his forties who worked in the mailroom of a company as a clerk, in the basement. Now, the mail clerk was the lowest position in the company and no one was lower than Orville. Orville didn't really like this lowly lot in life, and one day, as he was working for so many and receiving so little, he saw a bug scurry across the floor. Glad that there was at least one thing in the world he was bigger than, he moved to squish it. But then the bug said, "If you do not squish me, I shall grant you wishes." And so Orville spared the bug's life.
"Because you have done this, I will grant you as many wishes as you like," said the Bug.
"I wish to work on the first floor," replied Orville.
"As you wish," said the Bug.
And so it was. Orville enjoyed the new position, but he came to Bug once again and said, "I wish to work on the fifth floor."
"As you wish," answered the Bug.
And so it was. While on the fifth floor, Orville discovered that there were many floors in the building. So he came to the Bug again and said, "I wish to work on the twentieth floor."
"As you wish," said the Bug. And so it was.
Now, this continued for some time, until Orville wished his way to the president of the company. He saw the stairs that led to the rooftop garden of the building, above the 96th floor. "At last," said Orville, triumphantly. "I have reached the top, and no one is above me!" He went up to the garden and he saw a boy kneeling, resting his arms on the rail. "What are you doing?" Orville asked the boy.
"Why, I'm praying!" said the boy.
"To whom?" asked Orville.
"Why, God of course!" said the boy. "He's up there!" He pointed to the skies above.
At this, Orville was terrified. Someone is yet above me? There is someone at a higher position than me! I must see the Bug at once, for this will not do! So he went to the Bug.
"I wish to be God!" he exclaimed. "I wish to be at the position only God would fill!"
"As you wish," said the Bug.
So Orville worked in the mailroom.
"Færie tales do not tell us that dragons do not exist; rather, they teach us that dragons can be killed."
-G.K. Chesterton
“…And how it whispered:
‘O, adhere to me,
for we are bound by symmetry.’”
-C.P.H. Meloy, "Red Right Ankle"
A word was secretly brought to me,
my ears caught a whisper of it...
Amid disquieting dreams in the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,
fear and trembling seized me,
and made all my bones shake...
A spirit glided past my face,
and the hair on my body stood on end.
It stopped,
but I could not tell what it was.
A form stood before my eyes,
and I heard a hushed voice...
-Job 4:12-16
Please catch for us the foxes;
the little foxes in our vineyards,
our vineyards that are in BLOOM...
"People are often unreliable, illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are successful,
You will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank,
People may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
When you spend years building,
Someone may destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
The good you do today,
People will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have
And it may just not be enough;
Give the world the best you have anyway.
You see, in the final analysis,
It is all between you and God.
It was never between you and them
Anyway."
-Mother Teresa
"An 'impersonal God'-- well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads -- better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap -- best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps, approaching an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband -- that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('Man's search for God!') suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?"
-C.S. Lewis
Gandhi stepped off the boat upon his return from his journey. A man asked him, "So, what do you think of Modern Civilization, sir?" to which Gandhi replied,
"When I see it, I will tell you..."
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
-Friedrich Nietzshe
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing had happened.”
-Winston Churchill
“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘ darkness ’ on the walls of his cell.”
-C.S. Lewis
“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils ; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable .”
-G.K. Chesterton
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else .”
-C.S. Lewis
“Some people complain to God because He puts thorns on roses, while others praise Him for putting roses among thorns .”
-Unknown
“If God were small enough to be understood, he would not be big enough to be worshipped .”
-Evelyn Underhill
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried .”
-G.K. Chesterton
“When life gives you oranges , make lemonade and leave everyone wondering how you did it.”
-Justin Elliott
~LIVE FREE OR DIE … DEATH IS NOT THE WORST OF EVILS…~
-General John Stark
“And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything you risk even more .”
-Erica Jong
Six humans trapped by happenstance
In bleak and bitter cold;
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story’s told.
Their dying fire in need of logs,
The first woman held hers back,
For on the faces ‘round the fire,
She noticed one was black.
The next man looking cross the way,
Saw one not of his church,
And couldn’t bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.
The third one sat in tattered clothes;
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?
The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.
The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.
And the last man of this forlorn group
Did naught except for gain;
Giving to those who gave to him
Was how he played the game.
The logs held in death’s still hands
Was proof of human sin;
They didn’t die from the cold without,
But from the cold within.
-George Kirby
There's an island hidden in the sound...
Lapping currents lay your boat aground...
Fix your barb and bayonets;
the curlews carve their arabesques,
and sorrow fills the silence all around:
Come and see...
There's a harbor lost within the reeds,
a jetty caught in overhanging trees.
Among the bones of cornorants,
no bootmark here nor fingerprints;
the rivers roll down to a soundless sea:
Come and see.
Come and see...
The tides all come and go,
witnessed by no waking eye!
The willows mark the wind,
and all we know for sure
amidst this fading light:
we'll not go home again.
Come and see...
In the lowlands nestled in the heath,
a briar cradle rocks its babe to sleep,
its contents watched by Sycorax,
and Patagon in parallax.
A foretold rumbling sounds below the deep:
Come and see.
Come and see...
The tides all come and go,
witnessed by no waking eye!
The willows mark the wind,
and all we know for sure
amidst this fading light:
we'll not go home again.
Come and see......
-The Decemberists, "The Island"
“Don’t be afraid to be what you say and say what you are, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”
-Dr. Suess
Hello, everyone, my name is Daniel, though you are free to call me Dan, Bob, Joe, Phinnaeus, Cat, Dog, Bowling Shoes, Mergatroid, really, whatever, I don’t care. Names are funny things in that they’re one of the most unnecessary necessities the human race has devised.
"'What's your name?' Coraline asked the Cat.
The cat yawned slowly, carefully, revealing a mouth and tongue of astounding pinkness. 'Cats don't have names,' it said.
'No?' said Coraline.
'No,' said the cat. 'Now, you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.'"
-"Coraline" by Neil Gaiman
As of this writing I am sixteen years old. Though I cannot identify exactly when I started writing, regardless of when I started, I feel as if I always have been. I breathe poetry; it is, as Walt Whitman put it, the “song of my soul”. It is my air, my sustenance. Without it, I would surely be asphyxiated by the silence.
The poet is a man who, if given his way, would spend his afternoons sitting on a screened porch beneath trees, whose fleeting shadows beneath the sun’s light caress his face. There he would sit, with a pen and paper, writing whatever he wished as he wished. He could go for years in like estate with his pen never touching the paper, and then, in the sudden burst of glorious epiphany, he writes one word. But one word. And in that word he is content, setting his pen down once more, satisfied. He may never spill another drop of ink again for as long as he lives, closing his eyes amid the dreamy embrace of the day, or, perhaps, in an hour, a moment, a year, a century, a second, he writes again, and who knows what he shall then write? I don't think he himself knows what he shall write. The man least in control of what he writes is the poet. To write, my friends, is to relinquish all hold of ones boundaries; to let loose one's imagination; to unleash something that could change the world.
There is in me a major love for languages. I'm currently studying Spanish, and have been for five years. I next intend to learn German, followed by French or Italian, and from there, eventually, Greek, Latin, Russian, Hebrew, Gaelic, and an Asian language or two. Omniglotism is a goal of mine.
Linguistics, also, is a hobby of mine. I love reading anything and everything about languages, what makes them work, gramatically, vocabularily, so on. I could babble for hours (to the dismay of my friends) about the gramatical structure of the English language and how outdated our spelling system is (I've actually written an alternative phonetic alphabet, because I'm that much of a dork ) I'm working on figuring out as to whether or not I wish to be a graphic designer or an English teacher for a career.I have no particular style of poetry that is for me etched in stone. As a general rule, I follow some sort of pattern or form. Ninety percent of my poems rhyme, or have some kind of meter or structure to them. I love form in poetry; I love that honed, razor sharp edge it allows you to turn your thoughts into. I believe in the power of words to change the world; form, for me, is the best avenue through which I may do this. I could be described more or less as a Neo-Romanticist; at least for now. Who knows what my writing will be like in twenty years?
By the way, I’m also a huge, huge fan of the band The Decemberists. Colin Meloy is an absolute genius. I just saw them in June in Richmond, and they were amazing; they performed "The Hazards of Love" all the way through as well as some of their older stuff. Simply spectacular. If you like the Decemberists, you're just awesome too, in my book.
You will now be bombarded with an army of quotes, short stories, one or two poems, and any other miscellany I felt like putting on my page.
Orville was a man in his forties who worked in the mailroom of a company as a clerk, in the basement. Now, the mail clerk was the lowest position in the company and no one was lower than Orville. Orville didn't really like this lowly lot in life, and one day, as he was working for so many and receiving so little, he saw a bug scurry across the floor. Glad that there was at least one thing in the world he was bigger than, he moved to squish it. But then the bug said, "If you do not squish me, I shall grant you wishes." And so Orville spared the bug's life.
"Because you have done this, I will grant you as many wishes as you like," said the Bug.
"I wish to work on the first floor," replied Orville.
"As you wish," said the Bug.
And so it was. Orville enjoyed the new position, but he came to Bug once again and said, "I wish to work on the fifth floor."
"As you wish," answered the Bug.
And so it was. While on the fifth floor, Orville discovered that there were many floors in the building. So he came to the Bug again and said, "I wish to work on the twentieth floor."
"As you wish," said the Bug. And so it was.
Now, this continued for some time, until Orville wished his way to the president of the company. He saw the stairs that led to the rooftop garden of the building, above the 96th floor. "At last," said Orville, triumphantly. "I have reached the top, and no one is above me!" He went up to the garden and he saw a boy kneeling, resting his arms on the rail. "What are you doing?" Orville asked the boy.
"Why, I'm praying!" said the boy.
"To whom?" asked Orville.
"Why, God of course!" said the boy. "He's up there!" He pointed to the skies above.
At this, Orville was terrified. Someone is yet above me? There is someone at a higher position than me! I must see the Bug at once, for this will not do! So he went to the Bug.
"I wish to be God!" he exclaimed. "I wish to be at the position only God would fill!"
"As you wish," said the Bug.
So Orville worked in the mailroom.
"Færie tales do not tell us that dragons do not exist; rather, they teach us that dragons can be killed."
-G.K. Chesterton
“…And how it whispered:
‘O, adhere to me,
for we are bound by symmetry.’”
-C.P.H. Meloy, "Red Right Ankle"
A word was secretly brought to me,
my ears caught a whisper of it...
Amid disquieting dreams in the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,
fear and trembling seized me,
and made all my bones shake...
A spirit glided past my face,
and the hair on my body stood on end.
It stopped,
but I could not tell what it was.
A form stood before my eyes,
and I heard a hushed voice...
-Job 4:12-16
Please catch for us the foxes;
the little foxes in our vineyards,
our vineyards that are in BLOOM...
"People are often unreliable, illogical and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are successful,
You will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank,
People may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
When you spend years building,
Someone may destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
The good you do today,
People will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have
And it may just not be enough;
Give the world the best you have anyway.
You see, in the final analysis,
It is all between you and God.
It was never between you and them
Anyway."
-Mother Teresa
"An 'impersonal God'-- well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads -- better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap -- best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps, approaching an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband -- that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ('Man's search for God!') suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?"
-C.S. Lewis
Gandhi stepped off the boat upon his return from his journey. A man asked him, "So, what do you think of Modern Civilization, sir?" to which Gandhi replied,
"When I see it, I will tell you..."
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
-Friedrich Nietzshe
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing had happened.”
-Winston Churchill
“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘ darkness ’ on the walls of his cell.”
-C.S. Lewis
“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils ; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable .”
-G.K. Chesterton
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else .”
-C.S. Lewis
“Some people complain to God because He puts thorns on roses, while others praise Him for putting roses among thorns .”
-Unknown
“If God were small enough to be understood, he would not be big enough to be worshipped .”
-Evelyn Underhill
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried .”
-G.K. Chesterton
“When life gives you oranges , make lemonade and leave everyone wondering how you did it.”
-Justin Elliott
~LIVE FREE OR DIE … DEATH IS NOT THE WORST OF EVILS…~
-General John Stark
“And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything you risk even more .”
-Erica Jong
Six humans trapped by happenstance
In bleak and bitter cold;
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story’s told.
Their dying fire in need of logs,
The first woman held hers back,
For on the faces ‘round the fire,
She noticed one was black.
The next man looking cross the way,
Saw one not of his church,
And couldn’t bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.
The third one sat in tattered clothes;
He gave his coat a hitch.
Why should his log be put to use
To warm the idle rich?
The rich man just sat back and thought
Of the wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned
From the lazy, shiftless poor.
The black man’s face bespoke revenge
As the fire passed from sight,
For all he saw in his stick of wood
Was a chance to spite the white.
And the last man of this forlorn group
Did naught except for gain;
Giving to those who gave to him
Was how he played the game.
The logs held in death’s still hands
Was proof of human sin;
They didn’t die from the cold without,
But from the cold within.
-George Kirby
There's an island hidden in the sound...
Lapping currents lay your boat aground...
Fix your barb and bayonets;
the curlews carve their arabesques,
and sorrow fills the silence all around:
Come and see...
There's a harbor lost within the reeds,
a jetty caught in overhanging trees.
Among the bones of cornorants,
no bootmark here nor fingerprints;
the rivers roll down to a soundless sea:
Come and see.
Come and see...
The tides all come and go,
witnessed by no waking eye!
The willows mark the wind,
and all we know for sure
amidst this fading light:
we'll not go home again.
Come and see...
In the lowlands nestled in the heath,
a briar cradle rocks its babe to sleep,
its contents watched by Sycorax,
and Patagon in parallax.
A foretold rumbling sounds below the deep:
Come and see.
Come and see...
The tides all come and go,
witnessed by no waking eye!
The willows mark the wind,
and all we know for sure
amidst this fading light:
we'll not go home again.
Come and see......
-The Decemberists, "The Island"
“Don’t be afraid to be what you say and say what you are, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”
-Dr. Suess
- Last seen 11 hours ago. Member since April 25, 2006.
- I'm a obsidian idea poet for 562 comments.
- My mood is , and quote is "Omnis est nihilum sine amor.".
- I am a 16 year old guy from Virginia (United States)
- When I'm not writing, I'm A dreamer, dreaming of dreaming a dream in which you dream of dreaming...
- Visit my homepage at www.allpoetry.com/poets/Xelgaroth
- I am in the groups Biblical and Christian Conversation, The Loaf That Loves You
- I have 562 comments, 3 contests, 165 poems, 2 stories, 4 philosophies
My Poetry
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326 lines, 2 comments, November 2. In Fantasy
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My Stories
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903 lines, December 24, 2006. In 600-2000 words, Philisophical, Something to ponder (if you can, Theological
Guest Book
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Asabouros. on August 10You seem very, very cool.
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Sky Prince Ireland : HELLO DANNY BOY!!! on June 29Hey Dan! I happened to stumble upon your author page and it looks like you haven't left. All this time I thought you had. I think about you all the time and hope you're well with your writing. Know that I'm still your friend and you can still talk to me. Big hugs
from your buddy Brian -
adios muchachos : Dan on April 14It appears you have become a member of the growing number of people who do not acknowledge comments on their poems.
I do not care for this practice and find it would be better to take you off my favorites so I might not mistakenly comment on your things since it appears you would much rather be alone. -
Purrsanthema : Hi! on April 9I'm going to take another quick look at your poetry: quick because I'm packing to move and living in a renovation and things are nuts here and I won't be able to be on AP much for a while. Boy can you write prose! I mean REALLY write prose! You've also discovered the secret: no one becomes a poet. They're born one and have to refine it. Sixteen!? OMG!
