August 2011
1 post
Gelid
Cold between lines
Those vibrant, powder fed dreams
White-hot sand mines
Tearing away at reality seams
Hard, dry comatose eyes
Wait once again for starlight
That quiet moment of respite
Then synapse sparks
Like flint meeting stone
Torrid cerebellum blaze
Burns away as memories lay prone
Only ember and ash remains
Testaments of disrepair
Forever forgotten
Locked away behind...
December 2010
4 posts
Dreams of Del-Mar
Salty spray, cool against my sunburnt skin
Let me take you to a place
Where I have, more than once, been
Sand as white as snow,
Reflects like tiny shards of glass,
The incandescent solar glow,
Brilliant, blue waves sweep softly
Over tide-worn shores
Further down the coastline,
Magnificent green hills greet cloudless skies
Like nostalgic companions, never meaning to say good-bye
My...
November 2010
22 posts
Imagine losing 10 friends in a 4 day period →
Explanation of "This is Me"
I wrote a poem for a poetry journal awhile back and just now understood my own writing. The poem is one of transcendence, a passage of time. It describes transformation from youth to adulthood.
This is Me
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I am a little choir boy, sitting in the first row of pews
I am Mark Grace, smashing rubber ball off of black tee
I am a sharpshooter, sending composite orb through nylon
I am a nerd, square framed face, metal, wrap around headgear
I am a tree, blooming into something I have never been
I am a batter’s nightmare, elusive white and red sphere flying from...
Time
I was thinking about something tonight that really bothered me. Why is humanity so stuck in the past? We constantly let our past situations rule over us. These previous occurrences explode on us like grenades every time we pull that pin of the past. They haunt us incessantly, and we do nothing to rid ourselves of them. I think what really got me thinking about this was the song, “Belle...
johnnyminardi:
steveisthereason:
‘Finding...
““Soco Amaretto Lime”
Passed out on the overpass
Sunday best and...”
– Brand New
“So listen up. (So listen up)
I worked in daylight feeding fashion to...”
– The Academy Is… (Almost Here)
Monolith Memories
Rows and rows of old memories gone by, His stare, fixated, old tire eyes They see wounded beaches Scarred, grassy plains of battered France He blinks and remembers When life was but chance He still sees the wood of that old M-1 Recalls the feeling of extinguishing Those fierce, German sons He hears the cries of young warriors Their sacrifices heard in their blood-soaked screams The only...
Before you forget for 364 days...
Ode to the Warrior
Ode to the man who marches
Because others will not
Ode to the man who died
While he fought
Ode to the man in the Vietnam jungle
His worst enemy, his own aunt and uncle
Ode to the man who sprinted across Omaha shore
Ducked for cover but found death’s door
Ode to the man who fights the worst enemy
The combatant who is unseen
Ode to the man whose tears meet ink
...
“I watch how the moon sits in the sky in the dark night
Shining with the light...”
– Linkin Park
Composition in B(urning)-Minor
Music, a torrid fire that ravages within
Burning towards moon-lit spires
Imagination towers licked at by fearsome flame
Consumed by inspiration sound
Melodic inferno
Terrorizes the dark-winged spirits
That feast upon my mind
Leaving only ashen trails of stolen thoughts
Daybreak
Brought upon by bar and scale blaze
Sunlight crashes through creative haze
Revealing memory fields scorched...
“I’m under the assumption
that I’m gonna be the one thats leaving...”
– Taking Back Sunday (I am Fred Astaire)
October 2010
6 posts
“In this blackout, inertia will hold our thoughts…
And the exit sign...”
– Thursday (A Hole in the World)
Lyrics that are meaningful to me
I want to do something new with my blog, so I’m going to start posting lyrics that are meaningful to me. The bands that have helped inspire the way I write will get special attention. I’m going to keep posting poems every once in awhile, but I’m going to give a lot of the space to lyrics that help me write. I guess this will be a tribute area for the music that has helped me...
“The lights go down, outside
Before our cars collide
So we silhouette ourselves...”
– Thursday
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man...”
– Teddy Roosevelt
Anything
Your heart is a porthole view
On an Arctic night
I’m left feeling frozen
From merely the sight
I am a memory that was never
No ties exist to sever
I live to be a wishful thought
To once be sought after
How can I be forgotten?
If I never was there
I am an empty stare
I do desire
To be simply a shadow
That falls in the back of your mind
I don’t care, even if you have to...
May 2010
1 post
Disconnect
I’m writing this because I’ve made a realization within the past couple weeks. I hadn’t made this realization, because I had never been deployed. There is a huge disconnect between soldiers and civilians. This disconnect has made the transition from soldier to civilian extremely rough, even traumatic, in many ways. I leave the military in January because it has always been my...
March 2010
2 posts
“As I sit here all alone,
I wonder how I’m suppose to carry on when...”
– The Ataris (The Hero Dies in this One)
Man's Seed
Our shadows scream like six million sirens, awake, we find ourselves shackled by our own irons, not-so-blameless victims, cry out in terror, at our own funeral, we, the pall bearers, quiet are our steps on life’s final march, in perfect time we step, in horrific harmony, black is all we see, black is all we see, quiet are we, but our actions speak louder than words, poison spills from our...
February 2010
5 posts
Machine
Explosion in my mind…fright, one billion buzzing lights, washed away by the frailties of my own sight, lenses everywhere, catchers of my fear, controlled at every cognitive turn, feeling my skin slowly burn, it watches me, the machine, hypnotic are its deceitful ways, always seeking my tired gaze…sounds of a cosmic society, their signals based in impropriety, a whirlwind of live wire,...
“Between the footsteps I hear crickets in the trees,
a silent army marching with...”
– Geoff Rickly (Thursday)
“Is this what you call tact?
I swear you’re as subtle as a brick in the...”
– Taking Back Sunday
MAD
Today I was thinking about the blog that I posted recently and realized that I unintentionally hit on the subject of mental attitude. I just finished a book by the late Robert Thieme Jr. called Mental Attitude Dynamics. In it, he talks about the direct correlation between physiological and psychological condition. Mental attitude effects everything we do in life. Attitude can even effect...
“Blood hardens in the sand
Cold metal in my hand
Hope you understand the way...”
– Trent Reznor (NIN)
January 2010
13 posts
A Little Thing Called Honor
I had to get this off of my chest because it was about to burn a hole through my brain. I never suppress an idea when it comes to me. Its about 5:30 a.m. here on the other side of the world, and despite being tired, I couldn’t shake these thoughts. Lately, a lot of my buds in the unit have talked a lot about the reasoning behind our conflicts on this side of the world. I watched two...
“Bright lights and butterflies
We drink to my demise
I’ve got this...”
– Daniel Young (This Providence)
Lyricists
I’ve been reading a lot of lyrics lately, mainly to incite some inspiration for my writing. I feel that many of these clever lines fail to get recognized, so I’m making it my mission to place some of my favorite lyrics up on the blog. Hope you enjoy!
“It’s strange to be lost, stranger still to be lone
In the strings of a...”
– Chris Carrabba
“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France,...”
– Sir Winston Churchill
Temporaryism
Let me preempt this blog by saying, I hate forcing things. If I don’t feel like writing about something I won’t write about it. Forced writing is a disservice to the writer and the reader, in that it creates a precarious situation. The writer puts forth a message in which he may or may not be whole-heartedly into, while the reader is subject to this unmotivated passage. That...
“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are”
– Kurt Cobain
Top Ten Things I Miss About Home
1. Family
2. Friends
3. School
4. Baseball
5. Being able to go where I want, when I want
6. Concerts
7. My car
8. My pets
9. ESPN
10. No helicopters flying overhead at night, no weapons discharging, no calls for outgoing artillery
Weezer is Weezer is Weezer… The Los...