I Wish I Was a Wordsmith

I wish I was a Wordsmith,

Wonderfully weaving words with ease,

I wish I had a talent

For verbally contorting thoughts to words

And words then into images

And images into themes,

That find a happy home within their reader’s dreams.

I wish I was a Wordsmith,

Hammering away at ideas

Like a blacksmith creating his masterpiece,

Passing my words through the refiner's fire

And pounding and beating them

Until they are stronger and better

And beautiful to the reader’s eye.

I wish I was a Wordsmith,

A master of language,

A powerful king

And words my obedient subjects,

Commanding them to my pleasure

And to the praise and awe

Of all the readers whose eyes behold them.

I wish I was a Wordsmith,

Wowing those that read my writing,

Causing them to clap and cheer "hoorah",

With such elation and joy at my mastery

Over the powerful medium of words

And how delightful they can seem

When combined coherently and correctly.

I wish I was a Wordsmith,

I wish I had perfect rhythmic control,

Like a brilliant master of metre

All my words marching to a drummer’s beat

Step by step they move across the pages

Rising and falling with such grace and poise,

Leading the reader in a fluid dance.

I wish I was a Wordsmith,

A master of form and style,

Touching on every thinkable tone

And in turn touching the hearts of my readers

Their emotions rising and falling with the inflection of my words,

I wish I was a prolific writer,

A producer of ballads, odes and sonnets.

I wish I was a Wordsmith,

A Wordsmith is all I wish to be,

So that I could truly express myself

And be in every essence a storyteller

Telling tales of love and hate, joy and pain,

Of peace and war and life and death

And every other facet of this world we live in.

For if I was a Wordsmith I’d find that happy peace

That comes when thoughts form language and find the right release

A Warm Sun

A brilliant burst of beautiful sunshine,

All fire and energy, that lights up the entire room

Gorgeous golden shimmering waves of joy

And in its warmth the spectacular spark of life,

So strong and so sure;

This is life:

Magnificent and mysterious moments filled with subtle little glimpses of magic and majesty.

It is warm and welcoming.

It arrives as a flurry of fluttering emotions, Flickering flirtations that flash and bang,

A wave of gentle glowing peace.

A light that cracks the clouds in a series of rippling, radiant rays,

A brightness burning; 

An inviting blanket of comfort that wraps itself around you like warm loving arms. 

Shining hopefulness in vivid colours,

A rainbow sparkling after summer showers. 

It lights the daytime with delight and anticipation.

It makes the world a better place.

The Life Not Lived

Two roads diverged in a foreign land

And like a fool I tried to walk both,

Moving away with nowhere to stand,

Planning on things that cannot be planned,

Going nowhere but calling it growth.

Little changes as the days slip by,

Despite the paths seeming so diverse

There's always the same stars in the sky,

And it's nothing but the same old lie;

That the way you choose to go matters,

But having choice is key to this life;

Choice leads to choice and doesn't relent,

Some lead to joy, some lead to strife,

The ups and downs of which life is rife

Make you wonder where the time went,

As it moves on you can't stay still

And you can't just sit on the fence,

But bend life as best to your own will,

And feast on it till you've had your fill

And that will make all the difference.

Frame by Frame

I live my life just like it’s a movie

But I’m the only one watching the scenes,

I see each shot in the windows I pass;

Murky reflections of reality,

Memory is a faulty camera

And it never quite captures the whole truth,

Our eyes are lenses that always distort,

Whether through a glass clearly or darkly,

Flickering moments of shadow and light,

Briefly dancing across life’s silver screen,

As much as I might pull for clarity,

More often than not my focus is soft,

I am an actor poorly playing parts;

Depending on what the scene requires,

While I am still figuring out my role,

Characters enter and exit on cue,

And the music that’s playing in my ears

Is a soundtrack to compliment my mood,

I try to storyboard but plans crumble,

So you just take whatever shots you can,

I certainly have a story in mind,

But life’s plot twists tend to keep me busy,

It passes by quicker and quicker now,

A montage of moments meshed together,

A stop-start muddle, a disjointed mess,

The cuts coming in peculiar places,

The framing is all wrong; nothing looks right

And no panning or tilting will fix it,

It is a continuity nightmare,

With nothing ever falling into place,

Life only comes to us in single takes,

With no chance for even some rough edits,

And though I'm pretty sure that it’s my life;

I feel like I am not the director,

And the reviews don’t look too good for me.

I Know What a Rejection Feels Like

Yes, I know what a rejection feels like:

Thank you for your time, wasted as it was,

Yes, I know what a rejection feels like:

You’re so great but let’s focus on your flaws,

Oh I know what a rejection feels like:

You’re struggling for words, trying to be kind,

Yes, I know what a rejection feels like:

You believe there’s someone better to find,

And that is what a rejection feels like:

The kick that makes you question your self worth,

So I know what a rejection feels like:

Frustration, fear, self pity, doubt, and hurt

Trust me; I’m familiar with the feeling

And how it will always leave you reeling.

What Lonely Fate May Come

Fix this damn machine so that it might work;

Seventeen years of no change and no luck

And all these fires only burn for so long,

Strong winds sweep in and then the flames are gone.

The silence shattered every hope I held

On to, like some naive child's fairy tales.

A wasted wanting, a pointless dream of

Some fool errand and how the world might turn,

The sun, the light, the brighter way,

Long dimmed from my vision, drifting further

Ever farther away towards the vast

Shadowy, forgotten realm of things lost.

It is but a ship on the horizon

Vanishing over the edge of the world,

Gone, an empty space, an endless void that

Never fills, never is made whole again.

The night calls but sleep and I are no more

Companions on this journey. I have left

The dreaming world to those who still believe

That dreams are worth pursuing; That one day

They might see their dream as something so real,

So tangible; a living breathing truth,

A hopeful whisper of the possible

But fighting the good fight just leaves me bruised,

Tired of the losses, the empty words

Of those few who would be the source of joy;

Those glimmering glistening ghosts of hope,

Whose siren calls are nought but empty wails

That ring hollow in the night, where I alone

Alone decide what lonely fate may come

There Was a Star

There was a Girl

Standing at the edge of the world,

Catching the stars as they unfurled

Who then strung them all together

To wear as pearls.

There was a Boy

Sitting all alone in the night,

Looking for a certain light

Hoping that the stars would align

To make things right.

There was a Star

Meant for him but snatched up by her,

She wore it right at her centre

And the boy just stared at the girl

Who wore his star.

If you want it

You need to get up and take it,

She said as she smiled at the boy

So he reached out his hand to hers

Joining the light.

There was a Boy

Who realised that the stars fell

Only to those who reached and dared

And

There was a Girl

Who realised, stars shone brightest

Only at times when they are shared.

How All Occasions Do Inform Against Me

A good friend of mine repeatedly tells me, with regard to my general lack of action that "If you really want something, you'll go and get it."

It's a nice idea. If I really want it I'll go and get it, so if I haven't gone after it with everything then I must not really want... It's a comforting thought and serves to justify a lot but at the end of the day I don't know how I really feel about it because it means that there are a lot of things in my life that I guess I never really wanted.

If I really want it, I'd go get it. I wish this were true. I wish I could say about all the things I never got that I never really wanted them but unfortunately I don't think it's the case. I wish I was that sort of person who went after what they wanted, tooth and nail. That if I didn't get it I could at least say I tried my all to get it and it just wasn't meant to be but ultimately when I look back over my life, there are plenty of things I know I could have put more effort into, plenty of things I could have tried harder to get but didn't, so to say I didn't get them because I didn't really want them seems like the biggest cop out possible. I did want them. Hell there are a lot of instances where I still want them and yet what am I doing about them? Nothing!

Here I am met by another statement made to be by someone else very close to me. When I was a teenager one of my best friends (and the girl I was madly in love with) turned to me one day and told me that one of my big problems was that I lacked passion...

That's got to sting right when the girl you're in love with tells you, you lack passion.

Anyway, it stuck with me. It wasn't just who said it to me that caused it to stick but I've always been slightly haunted by the fear that it was true and my general lack of action seems to validate that fear. If I really want something, I'll go and get it but what if I don't know how to really want something because I am passionless? What if I don't know how to have that drive and passion to go after the things I want with all my heart?

I've managed to coast through most of my life on the bare minimum of effort. That is not to say I've never accomplished anything or that I haven't pursued goals in my life, I've just found that even in the pursuit of those goals I've been able to get by with a lot less effort than I probably should admit. I'm a smart guy, I was able to get through school and even my many years of college with a modicum of success but very little effort. The downside to that is that I knew I could have done so much better with a just a little more effort but I always seem to do just enough. I have enough confidence in my own abilities that I could do well in any job I might have to do and up until recently I had been quite lucky with my employment opportunities but then again I am faced with the question of whether or not my career path would have been more secure had I excelled at work rather than just doing well?

I know this is a long one, so I'll just finish with this school story that I think sums up my approach to life quite well: When I was in school at about the age of 16 we were made take a serious of aptitude tests, which we were informed would let us know where our strengths and weakness lay and thus show us what potential careers we would be best suited for. I didn't like this. Why should I listen to what a test said I should do? Surely if I wanted to do something I should just go for it (There has to be some truth to the idea of going after the things you want).

Anyway, I began begrudgingly taking the first test. I was sitting next to the window slowly going through the test and at some point for some reason I held the paper up and noticed as the light shone through the multiple choice sheet that one of the circles on each question was a little darker than the rest. So I checked off the answers and lo and behold the correct answer for each question was a marked by a darker circle. So that's how I did the test. I made sure I got a few wrong on purpose so as not to draw attention and when I was called in to talk to the guidance counsellor about my results she raved about how I had scored so well and could do pretty much anything I wanted. I walked out and laughed but at the end of the day all I had discovered was that I was good at finding the easiest way possible at getting through something that had to be done. This was the height of coasting, these tests didn't really matter and I could have just done them and probably done quite well anyway but I had found the way the get through them that required the least effort, would bring about the best result and would mean I didn't have to deal with anyone analysing or talking over my results with me.

So if you really want something, you'll go and get it but what happens when you lack passion and don't know how to want something at that level? What happens when you are so used to coasting through life that you don't know what to do any more, when you can't see a possible way of coasting, when you can't hold life up to the light to see the correct answers? What am I supposed to do now? There are things I really want but I don't think I know how to go get them...

The Abyss

I find myself faced with the great unknown again and I really wasn't expecting it.

I thought I had finally reached a point where the road ahead of me was sure and clear and yet I turned an unexpected corner and find myself faced with a great nothingness.

There has always been aspects of my life that I never really felt I had much of a handle on or rather there were elements in my life that due to either a sense inability or a general lack of desire to progress them, I pushed them to the back, mostly out of sight. They of course niggled away but I had enough moving forward that I could convince myself that those particular issues had time since I was busy moving my life forward in other ways.

Then it all fell apart.

My best laid plans and goals laid strewn in front of me. The one aspect of my life I thought I had under control, the part of my life that I used to justify not thinking about the other background niggles, the part of my life I said was sorting itself out nicely and once that was done I'd think about the rest; well that all just went to hell.

So what do I do now?

It's been a couple of weeks, I don't think I could have written about it when it first happened. I hated myself a little for my reaction; I was somewhat distraught and felt like breaking down, I fought it because I felt a little pathetic for wanting to break down but even now thinking about it is hard and it hurts, even now as I realise how minor an issue it was/is. Sure I'm faced with a big unexpected blank slate in front of me, sure it's scary but it also means opportunity.

I think however that my concern is not solely based on my frustration at feeling like I'm facing starting all over again from scratch but is a multitude of things; my life not being where I expected it to be a this stage, the feeling of rejection (especially from what I thought was a sure thing), the fact that I loved that part of my life, it made me happy and now it's gone and on top of all this is the fact that this was the part of my life I thought I was on top of and it turns out I wasn't so what does that mean for all the other parts? The ones I was getting to later? Where am I with them so?

It is scary and frankly I don't know what I'm doing about anything any more but despite that I am trying to stay positive. "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you" I can't let myself get lost in it. I need to be brave and move forward, take those steps out into the darkness and hope that a way lights up in front of me...

I just hope I can actually do it.

Let's Get This Show Back on the Road

So.... It's been a while... and I know, no one really cares cause no one actually reads this but still I feel bad. I got tired and lazy from a long trip to Canada for Christmas and missed a couple of weeks and once you've missed a couple of weeks, it's easy for it to turn into a lot more

So my blog that no one reads and was meant to keep me actively writing has sat dormant for far too long but what better way for it to be restarted than by another trip to Canada? This time I'm here for the summer, checking out life over here, seeing if I might like to stay.

It's been good, reinvigorating. I had some really crappy job news just before I left that kind of spun me for ten and it's been good to get away and get a fresh perspective and maybe consider doing something different or even just the same thing but somewhere different.

So that's what I'm doing: Considering...

One of the things I wanted to use my time away to focus on was my writing and actually getting a good bit of writing done, hence if I'm going to write, why not write my blog again?

Exactly, thank you non existent readers, besides your constant cries for my return to this forum, I should go back to my original credo that; if I want to be a writer in any way, shape or form I need to write. It's as simple as that. Writers write and so here I am again putting words out there for the world to see. (Yes world you are invited to read, stop being so shy already)

So anyway this marks my return to using this space, at least weekly to express myself in some form, be it rants, ideas, quandaries, things that are happening in my life, poetry or just expression of the written form or as I like to say it will be a bunch of "Words, words, words"

Make of them what you will.