Be exalted

Perfect Is Two

I don't expect anyone to understand this poem. It's written in imitation of a famous (and favorite) poem by e.e. Cummings. You kind find that here:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Poems/onetimesone.html
This is to mimic his poem in a way that uses the same rhythm, meter, rhyme scheme, and often language, in order to portray the same idea, which I hope you'll figure out. :)
---
when someone once told me there’s no such thing
(and I didn’t think they
could say
it so)
even the unbelieving would laugh
(at their lack
doubt
misconduct of math)
there’s nothing as felt as pain

there became you and suddenly me
(and unbelievers
will try
to know)
the reason for tears when such is found
(we’re perfect
up
down and around)
it’s harder than one, two, three

there’s never entire without some gone
(to those who believe
and say
it’s true)
with you and with empty I’m finally complete
(where the yes
no
will once again meet)
a wait if its real is for long

love is the thing that is mentioned in books
(and the unbelieving
will nod
and away)
but black and pages cannot recite
(take a guess
wrong
again and rewrite)
the way that we must not look

the someone they said wasn’t real will be you
(and I will know
we’re right
at last)
and the unbelieving will laugh at their own
(look at love
run
leading to home)
perfect is something like two.

Lincoln (Poem Required for Class)

The city was small, the kind they often say is embedded
in another and still they gave it a name of its own,
and no one can tell you why.

I left the place I forever called home, or sometimes
heaven,
with nothing
but my favorite shirt on my back and a silver canteen
filled half way with day-old water
that would force me to stop someplace.

The folded paper left on the desk beside
my mother’s rocking chair read:
“escaping from it all”-
a cliche I must have picked up
from a book I forgot I read once,
and it must have been enough because she didn’t come after me
like every boy’s mother would if her baby left.

Sometimes I can still see that amber horizon, glowing
like thin fire in a photograph, the picture still etched
on my mind, there to remind me
of that little town with its own name, that humbled village
founded by someone lonely
like me...
and maybe that’s why it found me.
Call it chance; I didn’t mean to become acquainted.

It became the escape I only saw in foggy dreams
and whimsical wishes every young man must have, to see
something outside his own world, often
his own prison.
But I wasn’t a captive here. I was free.

Passing over the sometimes quiet, sometimes loud
place where trains continued their journeys, and where
the orchard rows stopped and gave way to blue forests,
I paused to gaze upon the length of the railroad tracks, stretching
northbound and southbound, and that’s where I met him-
the little boy at my feet who was playing
in the powdery gravel alone.

I inquired his name and he said, under his still
baby breath, he didn’t have one but sometimes they called him
Lincoln, and I could call him that, too.
Before I could wonder
the reason he didn’t have a name of his own, when the
hidden city that accidentally found me did,
he shoved his little hand into the pocket of his patched overalls
and found a penny, its once lustrous, copper finish aged with time,
no longer reflecting sunlight, or seen from a distance
as a sparkle on the black ground.

Flipping the penny from his dirt-stained thumb, he threw me
a glance that said, “watch this” but without any words, and I did
because I had nowhere else to go, no one else to see unless
fate and chance were introduced and delivered me something new,
something beautiful.

He knelt beside the silver track that was becoming red,
the color of rust that time had rubbed along its surface, much like
the penny in his hand
and he placed the coin tails up on the steel run in front of him, looking
up at me again with chocolate eyes to make sure
I was still watching, and I know I was because I wondered
at the sound of the roaring engine in the distance, the train that boomed
along the railroad tracks, gears clinking and clanging, shifting
up
and down,
up
and down along the rattling wooded way.

With increasing speed, the black train approached the place
where he remained kneeling and placing the old pennies from his pocket
in a row along the silver track; the great monster thundered
with anger in its speed,
and wailed with a mighty blow at the small boy who seemed to ignore
its desperate warning, while I shot
my eyes back and forth as the gap between the two lessened.

With one more glance to assure himself I was still watching him,
and I was, most intently,
he tumbled away from the track just as the train bellowed past, coughing
with inhalation of steam, smoke,
rock, and exhilaration,
and when its last cart had gone,
he approached the tracks again and gathered the pennies, feeling
their weight in the dusty palm of his hand and admiring their new form,
which he presented to me with great pride-
flattened and smooth like untouched water; no longer were they
merely coins, but perfect, copper beauties.
Lincoln smiled.

“I didn’t come here to see a couple of flat pennies, kid” I said
and he looked up at me with those big, chocolate eyes again- eyes that said,
before his voice, “well, then what did you come here for?” And I couldn’t
give him a sufficient answer.

“They never come here for anything,” his smallness continued, rubbing
the newly created treasures in between his fingers, “except just to see
something new,
and that’s why
I like making these pennies flat like this. It’s something new
to look at, and that’s why you came here, I think.”
And I marveled silently at his young wisdom, wisdom
that was too ripe to come from him.

So I forced a smile and broadened by shoulders, too ambitious,
too prideful
to glean a lesson from a boy that I once was, and would never
be again, and I didn’t care to take notice then
of the extent some dreamers go to when they just want
something new to look at.
By chance, my something new found me on railroad tracks-
neglecting.

The headlines in the first page were bold, and bold meant
something unheard of, and something most folks wouldn’t care to read
for fear of falling another step away from perfection
in a small town with its own name.
“Boy Killed Beside Railroad Tracks”
So I filled my canteen all the way to its brim, decided
not to dream anymore
and left for home where there would be nothing new to look at.

Grass (Or Something Like It)

they are not very tall now,
pointed blades of grass,
growing dreams called
something,
whose sharpened peaks reach toward skies
upholding tumbling, breaking clouds
of nothing, nothing like
the nothing I’m feeling when I write today and
search desperately for what isn’t there,
new words...
nothing is a new word, brand new
nothing
like something empty and void, waiting
without sound to hear what isn’t speaking
what isn’t even whispering when
I’m finally patient, nothing
like
what can’t be touched when I try
to lead my fingers some place new
and someplace filled, whole... but there is
still nothing,
nothing
like undefined words used by hasty, and anxious,
envious lips taking in
mortal breath and not caring to explain,
and that feeling
...nothing
that trying
...nothing
that meaning
...nothing, nothing like
broken clouds reached for by
trying blades.

Like a Story

Please, if you can,
... try not to say too many words
this time.
For once, we will exchange our
places and you’ll be uncomfortable for just
a while- forbidden to speak
when you want to, and you always do. And
there you’ll stand or sit with
your back against the wall- marked with my shadow
and your hands...
folded like mine always are. And you’ll know it
helps me listen,
like when children pray.
This time
I’ll talk, because a pure and blank page is not
enough sometimes, not the only refuge for my words-
sheltered, I know
because I’ve let them be
for too long. But the words are not made
of insignificant matter that is only tossed
into the invisible wind to blow away, lacking
importance ... lacking meaning. And if you
only listen...
...
to me
you’ll see that I have a voice too. You’ll see
that when I am silent, there is a mighty storm of
thoughts going through my head...
like a story
that hasn’t been read before, like
a letter to a faraway someone, still
sealed
with a voice that forgot how to make itself heard.
Please, if you can,
...try not to say too many words.
Let me speak this time, if only just once,
listen...
because it may be the only chance you have
to know.

My Intent on You

how can there be anyone but you, Lord?
I keep falling desperately in love with
your quenching grace, and your undying mercy
lavished on my insignificant life when
I was hopeless, and you let me see you.
And now my eyes search no longer, for they
are satisfied with gazing on your, your splendor,
and fearing to blink for fear of a moment I would be
robbed of beholding you, the unseen
ever present.
How can my heart be held in any other hands?
For it is fragile like spun glass, perfectly
crafted by the only hands gentle enough to adore intricacy,
to hold it, the hands pierced and scared with love
for its sake
that could not turn me away in my sin, and
love that breathed life into my humanness
for sake of the race, that we might be together
again and forever,
but as for now I wait patiently and
marvel at your delicate hold on my heart.
How can I love anyone like I do you, Lord?
I am blind and assuming o this life, and
somehow, unable to devote any part of me
to something that is not you. You’ve shown
me love unconditional and boundless, so I might go
and love
but I am afraid they would take it as something it is not,
abusing my intent on you, to be
like you, Jesus.
Help me to love as you have first loved
a hungry world drowning in sin, and
let me see their need that is you.

Ostia (-16 Days-)

Even the air will taste different in our mouths,
and feel different as it plays with our hair along
the coast of the Mediterranean, with its thin
shore lines, wide only as a cobblestone path way, created
by a proud sea that desires the space
reserved for dry sand, and broken seashells, and
rescued bottles with messages of deep salt,
worn glass.
The sun will feel different on our bare arms
and kiss our brows more gently, leaving faint
traces of its touch, and painless color like
sand, like the old copper pennies
along our American skin that is stained with rush,
haste, not enough time. When here,
they have more than enough hours offered in a single
day, as each one slips slowly by, with leisure,
with gratitude for the undemanding.