Bunny on a Rainy Day

Dear Readers,

I am sadly lacking in the creativity necessary to polish up the next installment of "The Ring of Power," but here is a poor poem in its place.

Upon the grassy fields he lay,
A bunny on a rainy day
Upon his cheeks and pinky nose
Alit the petals of the rose
For up above him swayed they too
The volley of the rain at two-
O-clock assailing their fair petals.

And as he slept the afternoon
The rain would never end too soon,
blue skies would never come too fast
Surrend'ring warmth and dry at last.
Then he'd hop and bounce the field
Find the carrots that they yield
to after-storm-snack yearning bunnies.

Ears leaped and waved, thinking perhaps
That they were waves on distant maps
Rolling to a thundrous gale
The snore they heard they thought the wail
Of battering wind upon their shores
That every tossing wave adores
For ever to exclusion seekest it and nothing else.

But the ears remained upon the bunny's
head, and that, twas good, and funny'tis,
Earless, though it hopped and sniffled
It might as well be called a...'miffled.'
Twas sad this bunny counted not it's cause
for thankfulness, but twitched its little paws
And shivered in the cold of the rain.

Think not the dampened mammal ill
Dreamed it a bunny-daymare shrill,
That threatened in its evilness to overpower
Even the crashing of the falling shower,
Of Fair bunny maidens with blushing cheek
and Armored-ear bunnies to bravely seek,
The fluffy-tailed emperiled.

And deadly dragons, of the form of eagles,
who clutched with talons, fighting with the beagles
to be the first to tear the fair fur of the maiden.
But bunny-braves did dare arrive to lend their aid in
defeating the monsters, not a moment too soon,
consid'ri'n the grassy field 'twas three-past-noon,
and the rain was beginning to pass.

Rain-drop on pinky nose, the slumberer surprising,
One eye first op'ed slow, it's lid unbidden rising
To unveil It's deep and moist advance
On shining a world of wetted plants
One paw stretched, front-right, from beneath
its furry...grassy...rainy....petally...sheath,
The rear-left then its adventure now began.

When done its various waking exercises,
the bunny rose with a hop and, lending me a twist of its whiskers,
disappeared into the field.

The Feather Knight

Dear Readers,

I post today as I rest upon my battle-stained blade. For I have just slain the third of five giants which assail this fair land. Two days hence either the last two shall lie dead upon this ground, or I shall. In the meantime I thought I should give you a bit of a scheduling update, and some low-quality poetry.

I intend to post a lot over the summer. The following projects have already come to mind, and I shall list them in order of impending writtenness.
~"The Prayers of Benjamin Dobbs": This is mostly written, an odd tale of what happens when Benjamin challenges God and God accepts.
~IMHO: A discussion of why we find it necessary to relativize what we say by prefacing it with qualifiers such as "I think" or "in my opinion." Why does it offend people when we neglect these phrases? Should it?
~"Timothy and the Grenobles, Part III": I may be aiming too high, but I would like to actually finish a story properly. I might just do it with this one. There's a bit and a piece of this written.
~"Benjamin Dobbs and the Case of the Flying Dutchwoman" [working title]: It's up to Mac's finest private investigators to track down the muderer of a Halcyonite. The trail will lead them down the mountain into the darkest parts of Chattanooga, and end in the middle of a deadly ring of villains.
~"Benjamin Dobbs and the Ring of Power" [working title]: The discovery of a magic ring by a member of The Family prompts a series of disturbing ethical questions (is magic on-contract?) and leads to a deadly stuggle for power at Covenant.

There may be others, but those are the ones I've got in my head at present.
Now, on to that poetry. Watch for the "behind the scenes" afterwards. Oh, and there's some violent death entailed in this tale. Take care.

The knight waited
Crest feather flapping in the breeze
Gauntlet, buckle, emblem still.
A roaming sailing light, afloat
On hilltop heather
For but a moment sailed ore his
Breastplate, laughing as it played upon
His emblem and made the feather glow.
It had not left him when he let
His lance fall
Forward to couch back beneath his breast,
Tip angled up but a little
Probing the air, thick, steady.
Metal gauntlet on wooden staff holding
Let not even the knight's heart throb it.
His helm followed the lance - tilt
A greeting between knights - the feather bobbed.
Steed, enchanted, uttered not a sound,
Till with a jab of silver heels
The armored beast burst up, forward, down,
And down the hill they sped.
Another sailing light between the clouds
Marked the meeting of the two men
At the lowest point, beneath two hills,
Each descending to condescend to send
The other to his end.
Two steel heads alight with noonday fire all their own,
Bowed to each other as they passed, then
Leapt up, long wood necks straining
Each to cross armored finish-line first.
Each horse-head rippling, damp, bespangled
Lit in the light and strained forward again.
Into the light came two crests,
One feather, shadows falling
From the helms of obscured bright
Eyes - lies of lives that did not know
Their worth, their dearth to soon
Upon them.
One lance upon its mark
Could not cross it,
Clattered, shattered on the shoulder plate,
Concussion thrilling, excitement failing
As the truth of death came close,
Scored the knight as the lance had scored his coat.
His own shaft through tattered
Garment ran and ran and caught
The feathered knight through breastplaste,
Heart, and lung.
And the young man was flung down,
Lance - like tree rising from his breast.
His beast stumbled and ran on;
His breath pitched headlong
One great gasp!
Amazed, perhaps, or agonized;
Yet could it be satisfied? Done its
Work of keeping life,
Done its work of endless strife:
Ever going, ever returning.
Now it fled, blue skies yearning,
Following up the hill the vessel
Of light.
The knight rested
Crest feather flapping in the breeze.

I wrote this a few weeks back, about an hour before taking a Calculus exam, in the middle of studying. I rather suprised myself that I had that much creativity in the middle of studying, but not that I had so little meter or rhyme. I'm not really a fan of free-form poetry myself; I prefer to think of this as a choppy story. Until next time.

Haiku's Do Not Have Titles

Posts do.

Justin Johns and I had fun in Calculus class today. Heather's haiku started us off.

Justin is not happy about our last test. Considering the class average grade was something like a 41%, and no one got above a C, I think that describes most of us:

I understand this
I just can't do it on tests
Stupid Calculus...

Dr. Schaffers, our Calculus professor, is 79, and we all love him. He loves making fun of us, and we've started getting into the mix ourselves. This one is based off of a comment John Davis made in class.

Schaffers tells his class
They think they live forever
They reply "you have!"

Justin replied:

Math haikus are fun
But you must see we are nerds
To the nth degree.

I chuckled and pulled out a proof:

A math nerd is in love
Says he's dependant on her
"I'm her f of x"

Later in class, Peter raised his hand with a question about the final.
"If for some reason you wanted to ruin our lives..."
"Oh, I love it," Schaffers cut him off jovially. "I'm a sadist."

The best news we got today was that we aren't meeting on Friday as previously expected.
"On the ninteenth day of Christmas, dear Schaffers gave to me...No Calculus class!"

Tidings of comfort and joy, ya'll -- no, seriously.

When You Hear the Buzzer Sounding

There is a sign on the wall in the gym at Covenant, which depicts a floorplan and emergency exits. Above this sign is ensribed the phrase "When you hear the buzzer." This has caused me to wonder, shouldn't they have said "if you hear the buzzer?" I still haven't heard it. But, in the meantime, since it is such a lovely phrase, and I must walk past it so many times, it has come to have a musical quality in my mind. Today I found that you can fit it to the tune "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain."
When you hear the buzzer soundin'
When you hear the buzzer soundin'
When you hear the buzzer soundin'
it's time to run...

Here by Popular Demand: A Short Poem

A wooden frame a picture frame.
Every eye a connoisseur.
From ice to mist to wind to flame,
Each one observed from bedroom floor.

Outside this room full of angles
The fallen world I don't see.
Though sin and Satan would strangle,
Your creation shows You to me.

Because of You

Because of You Lyrics

The first time I heard this song I understood it perfectly. Since that time, however, it has come to my attention that is has been misinterpreted and romanticized to a point which is somewhat nauseating to me. This is a grimy, tough, song of love for the sake of love, of eternal devotion, and eternal tragedy. It is the story of a poor helpless guy who turned out to be a jerk but may have come around in the end, and a sweet, loving girl filled with fear and heartache after loving him.

Allow me to extrapolate. Our story begins on a cheerful sunny afternoon when Lucy and her guy Bob are walking downtown together for an ice cream soda. Imagine downtown Fayetteville, if you would. Well, they are crossing the westbound branch of 54, and are almost to the big mural, when this insanely reckless driver runs the light and mows Bob down. The driver takes off, and is never heard from again. Bob is not dead, contrary to the idea you'd get from Lucy's reaction. Unfortunately, emergency personel from the nearby fire and rescue station cannot reach Bob where he lies bleeding out, because a baker's dozen automobiles collided as a result of the red-light runner, and have completely blocked off 85 and 54 westbound. Since everybody else is running around screaming, Bob suggests from the ground that Lucy stop wailing and get him out of the middle of the road and past the pileup to the rescue station, where he intends to plug his wounds and prepare for life as a paralytic. Lucy drags his bleeding heart (and hers) through the carnage, and eventually, scarred for life, they both arrive at the station, where Bob is stabilized and sent to the hospital in an ambulance, leaving Lucy swooning and blood-stained in the arms of a rather unnatractive fireman, who would much rather be finishing his game of chess.
At this point it would be fair to mention that the pileup resulted in three fatalities, but the rapid response of Fayetteville's fire and rescue department saved several others from death, including Bob.

This, however, is not the end of the story.

Bob was indeed paralyzed permenantly, but managed to recover from his other injuries. Returning home, and unable to continue to work his way through college, he found Lucy always at his bedside. As a matter of course, he would not let her mourn the demise of his life's plans -- including marrying her, since he no longer possessed the means to support a family, or his own body, for that matter. As time passed, Lucy found Bob's sickbed more of a prison than he did. The memories of dragging his broken body through downtown Fayetteville, and looking on as he remembered that day in his nightmares, slowly wore her down until she fell terribly ill.
Lying in her bed at home, she realizes that she had not done anything but watch by Bob's bedside for the past six months. Her classes are all W-F, her acquaintances whisper about her behind her back; her close friends call her on the phone and try to get her to go shopping, and cry when she hangs up on them. Then, one fateful day, as she is almost recovered, Bob neglects to call. Horribly upset and apprehensive, Lucy drives herself over to his house (almost causing a repeat of the hit-and-run incident), only to find that, for once in her life, her girlish assumption that if a a friend neglects to call, every terrible thing imaginable has happened, was correct. Bob has given up the ghost, complications of his spinal injuries leading to a sudden lack of autonomic activity. Lucy is distrought, and joins Bob's mom in weeping on Bob's dad's shoulder.
Two days after the funeral (which was, indeed, touching), as Lucy prepares to write a tearful love song and get over it, Bob's parents deliver a sealed letter Bob wrote for her a few days before he died. The contents are as follows:
Dearest Lu,
I have no more strength in me. My soul has been beaten down by your love for me, and now I must tell you everything so that you will waste no more of your life. I do not love you. I never have. I am sorry! How can I ever hope to hear you forgive me for making you cry as you must be doing now? [here Lucy had to pause for a moment to absorb the horror and weep and blow her nose] The horror you feel has been in my heart since the accident. I know who hit me...her name was Betty, and I broke her heart too. I think she was trying to hit you, not me, but I suppose it was justice that I got it instead. See, I'm a jerk, really. I just have girlfriends to satisfy my pride. Yes! My selfish pride! Now I've been payed for it, and my life is ruined just like all those girls'. Well, there is the truth. But all the other girls were easy to dump, because they didn't really love me either. Betty just cared about her own reputation. Anyway, you were just so great and wonderful and...[here Bob pours on the complements for five pages or so]...and so good at impersonating Elvis, and so wonderful at cooking hamburgers...that I had to tell you. So now you know. I'm sorry. Go, forget about me lying in this bed with my punishment, and live your life! Don't waste any more time on me!
Goodbye now!
Sincerly,
Bob

Needless to say, by the time Lucy recovered from this additional shock, she was a changed person, unsure of whether she should still love Bob, for having told the truth, feel sorry for him for having died, or just be mad at him for being a jerk. She revised her song into the form it is in today, and became a famous star. But she always bears the pain of that day...and she still doesn't stray too far from the sidewalk. After all, Betty may still be out there.

The Girl and the Ghostly Knight

(Her Salvation, Fortress, and Shield)

"Now we see in a mirror dimly,
Then we shall see face to face."
~I Corinthians 13:12~
~1~
Salvation

"He was wounded for our transgressions;
He was crushed for our iniquities;
Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace.
And by His stripes we were healed."~Isaiah 53:5~
From the castle rang the trumpets;
Watchmen hailed the Prince.
Calling-birds away did flit
From the opening fence.

No hooves well shod ranked through the gate,
No valiant crowd of men,
But a single Son, over-late,
His visage worn and thin.

From deep within the castle keep
Peered out a mighty host,
Awake in what some might call sleep,
To see what was not a ghost.

Their hearts were cheered, they gave a shout!
Peasants in the fields
Looked up to see what was about
To them, be revealed.

The wakeful sleepers saw the Prince.
The peasants looked in vain,
To see who carried through the fence
A bundle, with His pain.

For not pale by nature was He.
Lo, He bears five wounds!
Behind His feet, footprints of blood.
Again the trumpet sounds.

What wonder this? His people cheer,
Though half see not His form.
They know the bundle held so near
Was plucked from raging storm.

He brings His prize, held tenderly,
Clasped to armored chest.
Gaze at the scene familiarly
Those within, at rest.

For each of them rode in those arms
Held close with wounded hands.
For another saved sound forth alarms,
The living dead will dance!

Engauntleted arms hold close one
Who never'd seen the light.
For this child He'd battled and won,
Though wounded in the fight.

Oh little girl, awake, and see
The Knight who gave His life for thee!

Brotherly arms then held her close.
Fear within her died.
She rested on the Loving Ghost,
And to see Him, sighed.

Saw she not who held her to His chest,
Who told her not to fear.
On the arm that held, a shield did rest,
And in His hand, a spear.


~2~
Fortress

"The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed,
A stronghold in times of trouble."
~Psalm 9:9~

"He has bent and readied His bow."
~Psalm 7:12~
The Prince released her from His arms
To the old man Grentz.
"Safe you shall keep her on your farm,
From all without the fence."

She lived within the outer fence
In the castle's shade.
She laughed and played and helped dear Grentz
Plant seeds with her spade.

She grew in joy, was loved by all,
Worked hard in happiness,
But never passed the castle wall,
Thought its turrets useless.

She longed her Savior to embrace
For what He did for her.
Feared, for she could not see His face,
Through castle gate to stir.

One dawning morn, once years had passed
The little girl worked on,
Little knowing that foes amassed
Outside the bright new dawn.

They came with stealth to breach the fence
But the watchmen spied them.
At the alarm the old man Grentz
Left for the battle grim.

Alone in the farmhouse she crouched.
Clash and thunder! Battle's wonder
Drew her out to see the men march,
The Prince's banner under.

Came bolts of flame with ghastly fume
Crashing upon the field,
From whence she fled, and not too soon!
To flame the wheat did yield.

Terror like a hunter drove her
To the castle wall.
She fled beneath its turrets sure,
Up upon the wall

Gaze'd she out upon the good men
Standing 'gainst the foe.
Saw fell, fleet shafts flying towards her,
Sent to bring her low.

Turning to flee she saw His bow bent,
From highest turret His shafts He sent.

Familiar arms then held her close,
Fear within her died.
She rested on the Knightly Ghost,
And to see Him, sighed.

Her hair fell tangled o'er His chest,
He spoke, peace to her flowed.
On arm that held, a shield did rest,
And on His back, a bow.


~3~
Shield

"You, O Lord, are a shield about me,
My glory, and the lifter of my head."
~Psalm 3:3~

"Blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see God."
~Matthew 5:8~
For years she lived with joyous face,
Servant of the King.
She grew in stature, beauty, grace,
Skilled in every thing.

She rested in the castle's wall,
Worked gladly in the fields,
Watched each day for the Prince to call,
Bringing another healed.

For each day He strode forth armed
From the fence's door,
Returned to bring another unharmed,
Safe forevermore.

Just as these, she in Him rested,
Loved His loving grace,
Praised Him, clung to Him when tested,
Ever sought His face.

One night when all was darkest gloom,
Evil slithered in
Through the window of her room,
Its face a sickly grin.

She woke as its presence spread out
Into the darkness.
She sat up with a stifled shout.
It whispered, "Highness,

"You are beauteous, regal, fair,
Venture out with me
Into a land of open air.
Live as ruler, free."

"Fly away from Him who saved me
From your kingdom empty?
Much rather would I die, and see,
His face in its glory!"

It reached for her to take her hence,
But she fled its grasp,
Leaped it after her, loosing lance,
Poisoned as an asp.

Outside her door she glimpsed His face,
Dim yet full of glory!
Flew to her Knight, winning the race
With the lance so gory.

He embraced her with His shielded arm.
The lance struck it, shattered, caused no harm!

The Enemy fled as He held her close.
Fear within her died.
She leaned on Him who loved her most
And to see Him, sighed.

Her hair fell light upon His chest.
He spoke a soothing word.
On arm that held, a shield did rest,
And in its sheath, a sword.

"But let all who take refuge in You rejoice;
Let them ever sing for joy,
And spread Your protection over them,
That those who love You Name may exult in You."
~Psalm 5:11~

"To the King of ages, immortal, invisible,
The only God, be honor and glory forever and ever,
Amen."
~I Timothy 1:17~