Belief

It’s been a bit since I posted (I haven’t had ideas, plus it’s a crazy time of year).  I thought I’d share a poem I wrote.  I’ll warn you, though, that if you’re profoundly religious, you may not like it.  As for responses to this post, please don’t try to comment in the attempt to convince me of anything.  Please just take it as that it’s my blog, and I’m sharing my thoughts.

Belief                                                                 1/11/10

You ask me if I believe in God.

I do when I need to ask

why things are the way they are,

when I pray for loved ones

who are suffering,

even, I’m ashamed to say,

when I’M in crisis,

actual or perceived.

I need to feel there’s a God

when I question why there’s

so much hate,

why I have so much hate,

Why people do the Un-Godly

things they do to each other,

often in His name.

I want someone to be listening

when I wonder why we kill

for foolish things like jewelery,

shoes, money, and skin color,

act with cruelty to our peers,

disregard the needs of others,

even PRAY for harm to them.

I needed to pray for Joshua,

for Steph,

for Jacquie,

for Candy,

for my father,

and for many others

who needed aid I could not provide.

I need to have Him there

when I ask why there’s

a Michael Vick,

and others like him

who WON’T get caught,

why there are puppy mills

and dogs being tied to cars

and dragged.

I need to ask of Him,

why He gave us all this free will

to behave like monsters.

Why does he let Catholics

kill Protestants in Ireland

OVER BELIEF IN THE SAME GOD?

How come Muslims and Jews

are going to slaughter each other

until the apocalypse?

Why were thousands of people

allowed to die on 9/11,

millions to die in the Holocaust,

countless others only He knows

in all the wars in history?

Why have we enslaved others,

and still continue to do so?

How come people are hungry

while others can afford

to let food spoil?

Why do we stab each other

in the back,

metaphorically and literally?

Why?  How come?

I ask myself if I believe in God,

but if I only do

when I need these answers,

when I need help

or my loved ones do,

I can only then pray

to have that question

answered too.

Another Re-used Writing

This is another “prompted” piece from the past, and the prompt was actually a photo, which I posted at the end here.  I hadn’t gotten back to my usual lyric writing yet at that time (I was writers’ blocked for a few years), so my reactions to the prompts at this point were editorial-like writings.  I thought they might finally get to see the light of day in this forum, hence this and my previous entry.

The Reel Life 8/1/09

Life is a film. A movie, in fact. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end to it, just as any film has. There is even a back story to the beginning, often mysterious at that. There are supporting characters, antagonists, many settings and changes thereof. Life is even like the films that are a series of acts, a la “The Godfather”, “Star Wars”, even “Austin Powers”, though fortunately not as ludicrous.

Many plot twists will occur, ones that the viewers never saw coming, and there also are moments you could predict with your eyes closed and under water. Sometimes the plot develops so quickly you wonder, “How did I get from that scene to this one?” You will even question the meaning to the whole story.

Some of the life-films are epic in their length, while others are tragically short. These life-films don’t generally stick to a genre, rather they flit from comedy to drama, from tragedy to human interest piece, from romance to documentary, from mystery to satire.

There are political scenes, love scenes, revelations, soliloquies. There are monologues, dialogues, denouements, thrills, moments of violence, acts of kindness, and acts of forgiveness.

There are moments when you simply can not wait to get to the next scene. Some scenes are embarrassing, uncomfortable, or strike a chord that hits home. There are also boring moments you wish you could fast-forward.

My good friend Billy said the world’s a stage, and we are its players. Bill never got to see a film, but I think he’d agree with me in this comparison. There was much he understood before his time, before his own ending.

Unfortunately, these films do come to an end, and these endings can be funny, peaceful, sudden or drawn out, horrific, or, extremely rarely, just the way we want them to be. The endings are nearly always unpredictable, but we keep guessing anyway.

Ultimately, the director makes decisions without your consent as to content, duration, theme, and tone, but you can sometimes figure out where the story’s going. You just need to look at it frame by frame.