Where Do Poems Come From?
You MIGHT ask that question from time to time: where do poets and authors get the ideas/inspiration for their work? And every poet or student of poetry will tell you that just about any situation, emotion, or circumstance might wake the Muse and make her tell you to SIDDOWN, SHADDUP, and put pen to paper. The “places” from which poems come from are almost as numerous as the number of poems out there (I say almost because every teenage angst poem pretty much comes from the same place).
I thought it’d be interesting to share with you the etiology of one of my poems. It’s called ‘Create Me Again’, and here’s where it came from:
Strangely, I came up with the title first. You see, I used to pass time when I was bored in class coming up with what I thought were cool titles for songs that didn’t exist. I never wrote an actual song, but I organized the track listings for a whole lotta albums released by imaginary bands. You laugh. Whatever.
Anyway, several of those titles to songs which didn’t exist actually resonated with me; they were bits of poetry in and of themselves - wordplays that, were they expanded on successfully, might have meant something. ‘Create Me Again’ was one such title. Think about it: it has a fairly resonating implication to it, doesn’t it?
Then, sometime in the early to mid nineties, I had a crisis of faith - I didn’t so much begin to wonder if God existed (I don’t think THAT happened until I was in my 30s) as I began to wonder if God had died or gone on vacation or written us off as unsalvageable and gone off to reinvent Moses as a four-armed blue-skinned alien on some faraway planet in a different galaxy. So, with that I had the theme of a poem which I wanted to write. All I needed was something to solidly tie it all together and give me the solid ground I needed to build from.
And then, somewhere in there, I recalled the story in the book of Daniel about Nebudchadnezzar’s dream of the statue made of precious metals but with feet of clay.
Everything clicked, and I had a poem. One day I wrote the whole thing in a single sitting, and several years later the Snake Nation Review published it. At the center of it is that multi-metaled statue, standing as a symbol of… what? Me? The nation? The planet?
However you want to apply it, you can. That’s what poetry’s for, if you ask me.
Finally, here’s the poem in question. Thanks for reading:
Create Me Again
The little multi-metalled statue
With baby soft clay feet
Stood on his tiny pedestal
And cried:
“Create me again
Oh Lord
In the likeness of another image
For if what I am is what you are
Then one of us is falling short
Of every expectation.”
A tear ran down his golden cheek
Along his silver belly
Splashed erosively in a hole
That was forming in the clay.
(Image from http://blackinkdesigns.com/diagrams.htm)
And… BTW, the crisis of faith is over. (God exists. Neener neener.)
What I’m Thinking About, 3rd Edition
This is always good for a laugh. Or a cry, depending on your perspective. As the months go by, I write this stuff down and when I feel like I have enough to entertain you for a few minutes, I post them. I’m no Mark Twain or Ben Franklin, but hopefully I’m pithy enough to satisfy your low standards.
- Of course, if you have high standards, then I’m glad you’re here.
- Begging is for people who don’t have Plan Bs.
- Don’t post political stuff on social media sites and then claim we’re gonna “agree to disagree” when people challenge you. YOU’RE the one who posted it. YOU’RE the one who’s drawing the line in the sand. If you want to agree to disagree, then don’t post that shit.
- Modern Christianity is the result of a series of misunderstandings.
- I’m working on a poem called The Keanu Factor. Guess what it’s about.
- One does not speak of chubby in public.
- I’ve already expressed my disdain for speed traps. Well, tickets for rolling stops are even more bullshitty. If an intersection is sooo dangerous that rolling through the stop sign after looking all ways isn’t enough, then it ought to have a stop LIGHT there.
- New haiku: Two thousand and nine || So many icons have died ||Now we have Kanye
- I am always impressed by the tenacity of soap operas, rabies, and religion. Of course, Guiding Light is going off the air and there’s a vaccine for rabies….
- I say “I love you, but…” way too much.
- Playing devil’s advocate WILL make people stop and think twice about the generalizations they make. Do it too much, though, and they’ll stop and think twice about talking to you.
- There should be a standard for how much the tooth fairy gives. All it takes is ONE parent giving away $10 a tooth to ruin it for the rest of us.
- I find a certain irony in the fact that this guy who thinks it’s funny to make fun of my writing on Facebook is reading and enjoying The Lost Symbol.
- I probably would have killed Gollum first chance I got, which means that Gollum wouldn’t have been around to bite Frodo’s finger off at the end, which means Middle Earth would have likely fallen into a second darkness. So I, too, could have …been guilty of a “preemptive strike” that actually screwed everything up.
- Buzzed driving is NOT the same as drunk driving.
- Garth Brooks came out of retirement. I find it hard to believe that any true artist - one with a muse on his shoulder bugging him to CREATE - could ever really retire.
Join The New Effort to Lift The Stupid Sunday Alcohol Sales Ban in Georgia
During the last Georgia legislative session (back in February, to be precise), a bill came before committee which would lift the statewide ban on alcohol sales on Sunday. The bill failed. While in the state of Georgia we are finally allowed to purchase alcohol in bars and restaurants on Sunday, alas, we cannot go to our local grocery or liquor store to purchase something we can enjoy in the privacy of our own homes.
Yeah... not open on Sunday. WTF?
Now a new effort has begun to lift the ban, and grant the decision to allow alcohol sales to individual municipalities. While the original effort focused on lobbyist efforts, this one will focus more on publicity and public awareness. In a sense, that is one of the purposes of this post – to let readers know what has happened, and what they can do to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
According to Zak Koffler of the Young Democrats of Georgia, during the presentation of the bill earlier this year, “Members of our state legislature decided to pander to the religious extreme to gain support for their campaigns for higher office. Among those leaders are names that you will be hearing a lot of in the near future: David Shafer, Casey Cagle and Eric Johnson.” Indeed, Shafer, Johnson and Cagle are considering running for either the state governorship or lieutenant governorship in the future, and the money and influence of the powerful fundamentalist lobby is an important political consideration.
Some points for you to consider as you explore further:
- I am biased, and shamelessly so. In some articles I wrote elsewhere, I covered the details of why the ban makes little sense: the first one is here, the second here, and the final one here.
- Support for this bill is bi-partisan. Politicians on both sides of the aisle recognize that “safety” concerns are mostly bogeymen, that revenue from Sunday sales will help area businesses, national businesses, as well as government coffers, and that the ban on Sunday specifically is a direct violation of the separation of church and state.
- Everyone involved recognizes that religious extremists are not the only people who oppose the bill. Some other businesses do as well – but they are a small and not nearly as “persuasive” group. Also, and yeah this is kind of callous on my part, their losses would be minimal compared to the gains everywhere else.
- This is not an “attack” against religion. The truth is, this is a blow for personal freedoms. What you do on Sunday should be up to you: if you want to spend the day interacting with your God, then you should be allowed to do so. By the same token, if you want to get a six pack and watch the game at home then… you should be allowed to do so.
All this said, if you want to get involved, either visit the Young Democrats of Georgia web site, or message Zak Koffler himself on Facebook.
Not a Christian Nation. Never Were.
“Whatever we once were, we’re no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers….” – Barack Obama
This caused quite a stir when Obama said it during a recent speech in Turkey. I’ve heard a lot of reactions from Christian friends I have – many of them flat out saying that he’s wrong, that we are indeed a Christian nation.
Well, guess what. We ARE NOT a Christian nation, and I don’t honestly believe we ever were or were meant to be.
What HE said.
What we are, and what we should be proud of as Americans is that we are a free nation, where Christians are free to be whatever they want to be with very little fear (notice that I didn’t say non-existent fear) of persecution or retribution.
The reason it may seem to some people that we are a Christian nation is because many of the principles of essential Christianity – that which is the least encumbered by denominational dogma – also happen to be at the core of capitalistic democracy and/or republicanism: ideals like self control, self reliance and determination, generosity, acceptance, hard work, patience, perseverance in the face of adversity, and a belief in the possible achievements of common man.
I don’t think there was ever a conscious effort on the part of our forefathers to create a Christian nation. It just so happened that the founding fathers were at least intellectually familiar with the ideals of Christianity and recognized them as strong ones – strong enough that you could imitate them and base a nation on them. But those ideals are not exclusive to Christianity, not by a long shot.
Now, I have to acknowledge that indeed, many of the people who immigrated to the British colonies in America came to escape religious persecution, and the majority of those were Christian. But I think that, rather than making us inherently Christian, the main effect this had was to make us sensitive to such persecution – and adverse to it as well. (Some may say there are growing exceptions nowadays to this sensitivity and aversion to religious intolerance. Ironically, here in the U.S. most of this insensitivity seems to actually come from the Christian right.)
I also have to say that what’s true of American Christians today – that they can exist in our nation (mostly) unhindered – now holds true for people of other religions as well, be they Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, even atheist.
And that was the point of Obama’s speech – that we are NOT strictly a Christian nation, which would imply that other religions would not be tolerated. Instead, we are something that I think is much more vital and powerful: we are a nation whose citizens need not fear because they believe in a different version of God than their neighbors.