Lanced Hearts of Lovers & Martyrs
I'm Eric, a young poet who seems to have been swept away in the Romantic Spirit of Beethoven's Symphonies, struck by the philosophies of Plato & the Poets' lyrics, burned for love like the martyrs of Rome, and can see an honest beauty in love & faith.
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White smoke rises as the world burns.
& up from the ashes of the Suicide of our century’s World,
a phoenix to our souls cries “Peace” against the War.
But not a sound breaks the thunder or the shells,
Or the deaf-tone cheers of olden hearts,
set for glory no further than our external shore.
Tribute to Benedict XV, Vicar elct. 1914.
Fun-fact of my life: For the past 2 years I’ve styled my beard after Tzar Nicholas II. And for no other reason than the fact that I like his parenting style.
Somewhere deep down inside,— although I don’t really run too big a risk of getting shot in the head by Bolshevik revolutionaries any time soon—-, I’ve felt that I’m gonna be a father, a husband, and a man, a lot like Nicky was someday. For better or for worse.
Here in the cross-roads town of Port Huron, MI where I call home, and where the dying auto-industry and economy’s left without a pretty penny, there’s a tiny little shop that’s sprung up against the storefronts of our downtown. It’s called Art for Good, and it’s been my stomping grounds since the first day I stumbled in on a winter day when they were preparing their grand opening. Been a part of their work and efforts to brighten the dwindling city ever since.
Art for Good’s a non-profit pretty much held together by a man and his wife with one heart set on art and the city we live in. It’s an art shop, a cafe, a hopeful sanctuary for all starvings artists. They sell art supplies, handmade crafts, and showcase local artists, as well as offer Fair-Trade coffee and goods made from around the globe, from places as diverse as the Congo, Honduras, and Thailand, all made by good hands and honest labour (that’s more than can be said of Folgers, Hershey’s and the like, if you do your homework). All-in-all, it’s just a good place to hang out.
I’m heading a poet’s club within their cafe. We’re so-far one member strong, beside myself (we got room to grow, at least…) Just picture it like the Dead Poets’ Society, except just a college kid blogger and a middle-aged alcoholic who’s been writing half a long as he’s been drinking, and still been writing longer than I’ve been alive…. makes for some good times.
If you’re ever in the neighborhood, feel free to stop by.
A midnight drive with Beethoven’s 9th.
In regards to the shooting last night in Aurora, Colorado, it’s a sombre reminder of the frailty and sacredness of life. My prayers go out to the vicims, their families, and to the culprit.
These tragedies, for me, hit home pretty deeply. To think, if I only grew up in the same place I was born, not only might I have attended Columbine (though far after the shooting; I was only a child then), but I’d have been only minutes away from the gunshots of last night. And not only that, through my life I’ve considered a lot joining the ministry YWAM in Denver (the sight of another, more forgotten, tragic shooting that took place between those two, involving a gunman targeting Christians). All of these, would have occurred all around me.
Perhaps it’s foolish to even ponder, but every time these tragedies hit, I can’t help but think, had only my parents made different life choices when living in Denver, I or someone I’d have come to know, could have easily been present at one of these. It all kind of leaves me with a sense of a sharper bond to the victims involved that I can’t often shake; “had life gone diferently, could one of them been a friend of mine?” Makes me think of the lines of John Donne’s ’For Whom the Bell Tolls’;
“No man is an Island, entire of himself.
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,…
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.”
I picked up reading Les Misérables earlier in the year. I wrote this half-way through as a personal reflection, but it’s just been collecting dust in my drafts box ever since. Every time I’d work on it, it’d get too personal and I’d be overcome with anxiety to post it. But with the growth and transformation I’ve had in the past half year, a lot of these words and thoughts have lost their sensitivity, and I have little reserves of holding back.
Reading through Les Misérables, a book I adored in my adolescence, I was remembered all over again how big an impression that novel had on me growing up.
The first time reading Hugo’s novel, I was 15, back in high school. I only got a quarter through— never even saw the barricades rise. But that was fine by me. Back then, the whole epic tale of a thousand-so-pages all dissolved and faded behind nothing more than the beautiful tale between Valjean and Cossette. That was the center; everything else was relative. Marius I cared nothing for, a minor role; his love with Cossette a mere side-plot, or conclusion, to that of her and Valjean. The barricades, the revolutionaries, Javert and the social commentaries; all of it was all just added color drowned behind the relationship of the kind convict and his little orphan. The rest was all just to show what a father would go through for love of his daughter.
And I realized now this sheds a little light into the life I had as a kid.
