POETRY (Vanity)

I always long to compose poetry to condense my love into most beautiful expressions for God, but time after time, I threw my poem and writing away right after I finished. It is impossible to describe how I love Him because He only knows, already knows, and knows more than myself. How can I describe my beating heart of which all motions are only magical vibrations from its Maker’s. I love Him because He first loves me with unconditional and boundless love. I truly believe my poetry, even never materially written, is constantly recited by Him, Him alone, for it is written in my heart for His view alone; my most secret and gentlest thoughts which are shared to no one but Him. They are the simple thoughts of a child who walks hand in hand with his father in a glorified flower garden; his smile is glistened with happiness; his gaze is full of loving adoration; his being is totally captured. And everything he says is treasured, beatified, and eternalized by the love of his Father God.

Here ya go:

Why Preachers Pray

Was it Cassandra's crimes made her ignored?
Rejecting light, rebuffing reason's sun,
Torn and raving, she saw what had begun
To spoil, stir up, distress, to bring the sword.

The startled chorus flinched at her raw word,
Attended in diffident respect as one,
Hearing madness and knowing all peace gone,
Still listens to anguish from broken beauty poured.

What hard deafness our sordid sins have sown!
  They see our crimes. When we commend
Cool virtue, they see all our lives have shown
  And, knowing us, suspect that we pretend.
What's left to us, but living to make known
  The Love alone which deafened ears may mend?

I feel stupid giving advice. But here's what I do. I just think and pray and study and life as usual. Then a line comes to me, usually with a thought or a question.

Then I write the line and live with the thought and question. Then after a while, like maybe five minutes or five weeks, I confront the blank page.

The octet above came in maybe 2 hours. The sestet came the next day.

May God bless your efforts to give Him glory and praise!

Seriously,

(Okay, I'm a Catholic and, worse, a Dominican. So put in a large correction factor if necessary.)

Don't think about the audience/reader. Think about expressing accurately what you hold to be true and what MATTERS to you.

It's TERRIBLE to explain a poem — it's worse than explaining a joke.

First, it's a sonnet, because that's almost all I ever write.

It arose because I was thinking FIRST about how the sins of, say, Newt Gingrich make a bunch of people just stop listening. And he's got some good ideas.

THEN my mind shifted to how MY sins keep people from believing me when I talk about the Joy of Jesus.

Even if I speak the truth, I am not believed.

In the Greek myth Cassandra spurned Apollo's love. So he cursed her so that though she would prophecy truly, she would never be believed. Apollo is the god of the sun and of reason and prophecy.

She was the second most beautiful woman in the world, the daughter of Priam, King of Troy. When Troy fell, she was raped and made part of Agamemnon's booty, his concubine.

When they return to Mycenae, Agamemnon is murdered (off stage) while she describes the murder — and nobody believes her. Then she says, “I'm next.” And nobody believes her.

So sometimes I feel a little like Cassandra, and I am convicted and repent, because it is my rejection of God that makes me incredible. And when I'm done with the pity-party, I rededicate myself to God, in hopes that His Love shown through me will open ears.

All this is REAL to me. So the poem, while not my easiest, was REAL.

I'm just grateful if I can be real.

Wow!! A lot goes into your poem. Thanks for taking time to explain. I will study again. If you don’t mind, I like to read another of your poems and you can explain it to me. you and I are on the same page as you said not to think of audience or readers. I do express my own true feeling to the Lord, and just hope it touches one more soul as it does to mine.

Thanks,

Well, that’s my first and only “Holy Sonnet”.

Here’s a not very good one I wrote to a friend when her dog died. I hold with Lewis that some animals get to heaven. God ennobles us with his company, and the essence of divine nobility is to share (in the deepest sense.) So I think that the ‘saints’ can ennoble animals, and that animals can teach us about goodness.

One thing I learned was: Don’t try to rhyme with ‘-ation’ words; it sound weird.

Anyway, for what it’s worth:

They will tell you: The brutish beasts are less.
For, lacking mind and will and speculation,
They cannot share our high, exalted station,
That of thinkers, choosers, those who confess.

And so, they claim, as something more than guess,
That dogs cannot enjoy the exaltation
Of heaven, nor can have the expectation
Of honor, bliss, content, of things which bless.

They err. The “esse” of nobility,
Eludes them. The loving praise, the “Good boy!”
Confuse them. They think that humility
Abases. Blind, they miss the gift of joy,
Th’ ennobling, and the great tranquility,
Which makes a Prince of him some thought a toy.

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