Tag Archives: Poems

Yesterday I got a rare and exciting surprise – an e-mail from a reader!

She wanted to know if I had written this poem:

I’d like to ride the silver wind
And leave the planet in my wake
The heavens all around me bend
I’d like to ride the silver wind
By stellar pools that never end
Above the wide uncharted lake
I’d like to ride the silver wind
And leave the planet in my wake.

I didn’t recognize it at first, so I asked Google for help. Sure enough, I wrote it almost ten years ago, shortly after I graduated high school, as part of a guide to poetic forms on the art website Elfwood.

This particular form is called the triolet, which I had never heard of before I did my research, and promptly forgot all about afterward. Its distinguishing feature is a strict rhyme scheme of ABaAabAB, where the capital letters represent lines that repeat, and the lower case letters represent lines that rhyme. Wikipedia says they also tend to be in iambic tetrameter, which my example is.

Anyway, this woman wrote that my work “is one of the most beautiful poems I have ever read,” which put a smile on my face.

Last week was a bad week, but so far this week has been excellent.

What’s made you happy lately?

it
begins
with a spark
a single focused shining point of glorious chaotic unbounded potential
that skyrockets luminously, whirling and twirling
until, gradually, the long, slow, patient pull of Gravity
exerts its ponderous effect
as life and vision intersect
and to the heroes now it seems
That their fine nucleus of dreams
Suspended oddly in the air
Requires work to keep it there –
So (thoughtlessly at first) they play the game
And place their stellar burst within a frame
Which, for some slight expenses here and there
Will place convenient fences at the bare
Chaotic darkened borders of the net.
They try, between their orders, to forget –
But paying for the fee, some bits were trimmed
And imperceptibly the light is dimmed
And something, neither black nor filled with fire
Tugs innocently backward toward the mire
Until at last, one day the gleaming rise
Is seen the ancient way through youthful eyes –
With nothing new to say, the glimmer dies –
With nothing new to say, the glimmer dies –
With nothing new to say, the glimmer dies –
And so comes an ending that is decidedly unpoetic.

I wrote this in November of 2005. It may not make a lot of sense without some interpretation. I wanted to show what it’s like to pursue a dream: the initial burst of excitement, the gradual introduction of structure and organization to keep the dream going, the way parts of the dream may be sacrificed for pragmatism along the journey, and the way the initial spark sometimes gets finally buried in a mire of logistics. The structure of the poem (rhyme, meter, punctuation, capitalization, repetition) was deliberate and carefully chosen to reflect the content.

Of course, other interpretations are possible as well.

It’s been a pretty serious week so far on the Buckley blog, so I thought we’d lighten the mood a little. Here’s something I wrote this morning for no particular reason.

Sing to the tune of “My Favorite Things,” from The Sound of Music.

Vulcan and Hoth, Z’ha’dum and Arrakis
Louis C.K. and Zach Galifianakis
Hitchhiker’s Guide and The Lord of the Rings
These are a few of my favorite things.

Gödel and Escher and Bach and the Beatles
Thumbing my nose at my phobia of needles
Robots that hover on bumblebee wings
These are a few of my favorite things.

C++, Anki, Mozilla, and Blizzard
Gandalf, and Turing, and all other wizards
John Stuart Mill and the Mandelbrot Set
Vincent van Gogh (and I’m not finished yet!)

Braid and the Triforce and Geno and Moogles
Trying out new applications of Google’s
Browsing on Wiki and laughing at Bing
These are a few of my favorite things!

When the news sucks
When the code breaks
When I feel like shit
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I get ohhhh…ver it!

I’m sick today, so here’s a poem I wrote in college.

Two-thirds
Of a knight
Sits unmoving under burnished steel;
His sword, or someone’s, extends vertically
From a nearby shadow, pitted brick-red,
Similarly lifeless.
There are others –
Just as, on first sighting two leaves in the forest
So too are there “others.”
But the leaves, early fallen
From a blood-red autumn,
Are scarcely discernible through the surge of crows
Ebbing and roiling, black on black on black
In the lengthening twilight.

The vision dims halfway to reality.
The prophet is yet new;
Her eyes, still white with shock,
Have not yet faded into numbness
From a hundred such visions.
Presently she looks forward,
Sees again the eager boy – the soldier,
Registers his repeated question:
“Will we have victory today?”
– Victory. She does not immediately know this word,
This “victory.”
Which portion of the massacre
Corresponds to his query?
– But eventually, dutifully,
She picks out the banner
That has not yet been trampled by horse hooves
And compares with the boy’s insignia
To see if they match.

The snow has not yet fallen. Our intertwined
fingers find needful solace
in the tightness of affection;
and delaying the kiss
that will end it, I perceive
that love is like sleeping.
My dreams glide into yours
and meet in the halo of our intertwined
vision – I am sleeping,
and though I know that December
apart is livable (for I have breathed
the icy air before, and found it
non-toxic) – though I know this, I delay,
clinging to the melting moments of our intertwined
whispers – for, like any sleeper,
what I fear is not consciousness, but
waking.

(I wrote this November 29, 2006.)

It is a tale as old as history itself: two young lovers, one mortal, one immortal, drawn together by the strands of Fate. But ah, amorous youth! – the journey is not an easy one. Let us gaze upon one such scene, even now in progress, and witness the tragic tragedy of a romance that was never meant to be…

BARD:
O splendid Queen, to mine own heart so dear
Whose eyes, twin suns, twin lanterns, gleam sublime
Thy subjects dot the vast celestial sphere
Thy praises, ranks of cherubs constant chime
Thy face, like Helen, launched a thousand hearts
Though Helen never spoke as fair as thee,
Whose dulcet voice in graceful notes imparts
Thy wisdom, keen as Hell’s severest darts!

ELF GIRL:
Were thou but mute, I might still be asleep!
Pray write some tale of unrequited love
And take it somewhere far away, and weep
Where bards perhaps are thought more highly of.
Mere time, ’tis said, the broken heart repairs
And might I add, that silence wouldn’t hurt –
‘Twere best, keep private all thy heart’s affairs,
And ride away, and tell someone who cares!

BARD:
O wretched Chance! My fate is ever such:
My blushing rose doth prick me with her thorns –
Yet do I love the sting – nay, thrice so much
Because of that perfection it adorns.
Less faithful beaus, ’tis true, might be dismayed
And founder, as a bark amid the storm –
But guided by thy star, I’ll not be swayed –
Remember me, the constant bard who stayed!

ELF GIRL:
Yea, how could I forget? Thy nightly pleas
Incessant ’til the very crack of dawn
Have all the charm of drunken bumblebees
Who, lacking honey, heedless bumble on –
O unwashed hair! O stench! O chin so cleft!
Remember thee, the constant bard who stayed?
The trick would be, I’d wager, far more deft
Could thou but be the constant bard who left!

BARD:
Were I to leave, thy face would haunt me still
Thy velvet lips, lush gardens of desire
Thy supple skin, whose light, against my will
Doth alternately tempt me, and inspire;
O elven race! Like silk, thy raven hair
How slim thy curves! How sheer thy pedestal!
Thy soul divine! In form, how passing rare!
‘Twould be unjust to call thee merely fair!

ELF GIRL:
Wilt thou shut up! I’ll give it to thee straight:
Thy face into a castle wall be rammed –
Thy tongue be tied – O sweet poetic fate –
Iambic verse, and thee, alike be damned –
Is this my curse, for being born an elf?
Eternally to live, inspiring fools?
Put back thy pointless passions on the shelf –
Forsooth! I’ll come and take thee out myself!

BARD:
Yet verily –

It was at this moment that the elven sylph hurled a clock down upon the hapless bard, who, already Smitten With Love, was subsequently Smitten With One of Her Family Heirlooms. Not every tale can have a happy ending – but it’s nice to see that this one did.

I wrote this back in January 2006, during my junior year of college.

The witching hour
dribbles nightmares from her maw:
toddlers’ nightmares, gleaming onyx
draped in shards of shadow,
but also
nightmares the color of
empty Saturday afternoons,
crushed by the terror
of nothing in particular.
What would it be
to see these creatures?
Not to surrender, nor yet
to charge, brandishing creeds
and anthems:
but to meet them with open sail,
a Beagle among their Galápagos,
making notes and sketches –
and later,
stories for your daughters,
and maps to guide them
home?

Familiar cloud-embellished flame
Spills over dark Horizon’s girth
As Nature’s resurrection rocks
The icy cradle of the Earth.
While poets sing, astronomers
Take different music with their notes
And physicists arrange the spheres
To peer at microscopic motes.
The sun, for all her majesty
Abides and reigns, but does not rise;
It falls to microscopic Earth
To turn and meet those burning eyes.

I wrote this sonnet on July 17, 2008, then promptly forgot all about it. I happened across it again this morning. My journal entry for that date informs me that I wrote it for Betsy (my wife), though I’d long since forgotten that detail, too. Thinking about it now, I vaguely recall that she asked me to write a poem about the changing seasons – maybe? Not sure.

Anyway, here it is, on the Internet for the first time:

Four Seasons in Exile

Deep August branches lend their swaying shade
To children singing unfamiliar words
And playing games that I have never played
And tossing stones at unfamiliar birds.
But chilly autumn sharpens lazy dreams
Of autumns past, and cottages, and home –
Of young mistakes that only pain redeems,
And crimson leaves caught spinning by the foam.
But white shrouds every color, and the feet
Of now-familiar birds leave winding trails
That sometimes circle backward and repeat,
And sometimes break away to other tales.
And now I contemplate the end of spring
Which once I wanted more than anything.