I Use to be a Poet

I use to be poet, I use to have a song

A bardful heart full of melody

Would express with ink and quill

The heart replaced divulge of poetry

The melody remaining ever still

I use to be a poet, but business now remains

To many things need to be done

While light grows shorter every day

The written work amounts to none

As the poet ever fades

I use to be a poet, but birds no longer sing

The daffodils have lost their yellow

The sky now seems less blue

Smiling faces no longer saying hello

The fear of growing up come true

I use to be a poet, but life is running out

My time no longer occupied

With lyric, verse and rhyme

Now work and deb control the mind

And the poet dies with benign

I use to be a poet, but onto one thing I hold

The chance the thought of yesterday

Are hidden within the lines

Of poetry long stacked away

The poet still alive

The Legend of Smelly Mell

I am a person who enjoys all types of movies, but there are certain films I get excited about. For the past two weeks I have been so excited about premiering movies I have gone to midnight showings. Last week the movie, Iron Man 2, live up to my expectations and provided a fun evening with a high budget action movie. This week the movie was Robin Hood. After hearing that Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe were making another action movie I was thrilled. When I heard to movie would be Robin Hood, I became ecstatic. So as Thursday night rolled closer to Friday morning I eagerly awaited to beginning of the film.

With ten minutes until the previews an older man walked to our aisle of seating. The man was in his sixties or seventies, wore an old leather jacket, a Navy hat ordained with multiple pins, radio headphones (the kind you would see in the early 90's), and around his neck was an inhaler of sorts that was connected by a wire to a battery pack. When he asked if one of the two seats next to me were taken, we hesitantly told him they were not, and as he walked past a smell that simultaneously punched my face, nose, stomach and gag reflex. The result of the assault was an attempt not to vomit, and to not let the man see the reaction on my face. The barrage of texts messages from my three friends sitting on my other sides lit up my phone with snide comments, mockery, and exhalations of how glad they were that they were not me. Sticking my nose as far into my bag of sour candy as possible I proceeded to watch the movie while trying to ignore Smelly Mel.

Within 5 minutes of the movie beginning Smell Mell's phone rang (he did not listen to the young man who came into our theater to tell us to turn off our phones) and instead of ignoring the calls Smelly Mell answered the call. With his call lasting only a short amount of time I again tried to ignore my odorous, audacious, occupant to the left. An hour into the movie his phone rang again and again he answered it. I can somewhat (but not really) understand answering a phone call at the very beginning of a movie and then turning it off, and I honestly expected Smelly Mel to ignore the second call...he did not. After hanging up I again proceeded an attempt to ignore Smelly Mel.

While watching the movie, and trying to keep as much of my back (an nose) away from Smelly Mel as possible while still seeing the screen, I noticed that a row bellow me to the left a phone illuminated. The young man who had received a soundless text message (that if replied too would also be soundless) had no sooner looked at his phone when Smelly Mel sprang into action, whipping out a flashlight and spot-lighting the delinquent, calling the attention of the rest of the theater to the row and seat right next to mine. "You want to put damn thing up," my mouth literally fell open in shock. At this point Mel's smell again violently assaulted me and I immediately became aware of the need to close my mouth before vomiting. The man in the row below me put his phone up and except for the occasional whiff of stench the remainder of the movie was uneventful. While there was a debatable sighting of Smelly Mel the next day but without proof we are unsure if it was him. The mediocre movie couple with the horrible experience of sitting next to Smelly Mel may make for an interesting blog post but it made for an awful movie experience.

The Last Piece of Cake.

Monday night 11:00 PM, I have just finished a weekly meeting in the Connally Missions Center on the Hardin-Simmons campus when I get the phone call,

We think your Grandmother has had a stroke, she is on her way to the hospital in Mobile, we will call you when we know more.

I want to get in my car and immediately drive to Alabama but my father advises against it, his voice seemes reassuring but also concerned.

I am on my way home from the Hendrix Medical Center ER, where Ashley works. I had driven there to see her after the first call so I could update her on my Grandmother's situation. My cell phone rings again, my mother tells me they are going to take her into surgery to try to drain some of the blood in her head.

Keep praying, and we will keep you updated.

At 3:00 AM I happen to glance at my cell phone and realize it is dead, I quickly plug it in bringing it back to life with chimes that alert me of voicemails and text messages, after hearing the urgency in the messages I ignore the clock and call my parent's house, my mother answers,

Hey buddy. She's not going to make it.

What,

my voice sounds strange and foreign. I can't believe what I am hearing.

Tuesday at 11:50 PM is when I got the last phone call. Through my mother's tears I hear her say

She's gone.

The next two days are a blur: packing, crying, trying to get a few hours of sleep, driving to Dallas, hugging my sister, driving to Alabama, and finally the farm, the home of my grandparents, the place I have been anxious to get to but also a place I don't want to be because part of me knows that without her it will never be the same.

I don't know how to begin describing who my Grandmother was, maybe it is because for my entire life she has been there. She is part of who I am. Over the last three days we have been telling stories and laughing, remembering special times and crying, and trying to remember her for who she was to each of us. I could easily tell stories of trips to Tennessee, Pennsylvania, or Gulf Shores. I could tell about her strong will and work ethic. I could tell about Christmases, Thanksgivings, or Spring breaks I spent with her and my Grandpa at the farm. There will be a right time and place to tell each of those stories, but now, I want to share the story of November 27th, 2009.

The entire family had made the trip to Alabama for Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving was the Iron Bowl, the annual football game played between state rivals Alabama and Auburn, and somehow I had managed to score a ticket. The game was great, I enjoyed seeing my first Iron Bowl, as well as seeing Alabama play the year they won a national championship. The only down side to the trip was that while I was in Auburn waiting for kick-off I had missed my favorite breakfast, biscuits and sausage gravy. I don't think that my Grandmother ever cooked something I didn't like, well maybe turnip greens, and the only reason for that is that I don't like turnip greens, but out of everything she cooked biscuits and gravy were my favorite. When I returned after the game and discovered I had missed my favorite breakfast I was disappointed but was promised I would get biscuits and gravy on my next visit, I never would.

My Grandmother was a great cook, I know it may seem to cliche to remember my Grandmother as such a good cook but the truth is that it isn't the end product that made her so great. Though the food itself was always good, it was the love and thought behind the food that made what she did special. In the conversations over the past three days more than once I have heard this from more than one person:

I don't know how she did it, but in a house full of people she always managed not only to take care of everyone, and be the perfect hostess, but she always cooked everyone's favorite foods.

It's true, I can't remember ever visiting my Grandmother's house where I missed out on my favorite meals. The fact that she could take care of a house full of people, cook every meal, and manage to know and fit in everyone's favorites is no small task, but it was a task full of love.

Wednesday night after traveling through four states and finally arriving at the farm, we were all emotional, but the thought I cant get out of my mind is that if I didn't go to a stupid football game I could have had her cooking, my favorite, one more time. At night it is good just to be together as a family, but it feels strange, as though Grandmother is in the other room setting up bedding and should pop her head it at any moment, but she never does. At the end of the night my parents, Ashley and I are the only ones awake, everyone else has given their hugs, wiped away tears, said their goodnights, and had gone to bed. My mother offers me a piece of chocolate cake,

It's the last cake your Grandmother made, and it is the last piece,

reluctantly I accepted the cake. After sacrificing a few bites to my wife, I enjoyed the last piece of the last chocolate cake that my Grandmother ever made. It wasn't biscuits and gravy but it was something that she had cooked with love, and she might not of been thinking of me when she cooked it but I felt her love all the same.

Have you ever experienced a place or a time that you associate with a certain sense. Hear a certain song and remember a place. Smell a food and remember that one time (KPO F. line). Has there ever been something that you will enjoy better because of where you are. A good book at a coffee shop, or hot dog at a sports a professional baseball game And here is the rest of it. When I drink a cup of coffe on a cold morning, I immidiatly think of our family farm in Millry Alabama. I am not sure if there could be a better cup of coffee at a better place.

When Geoffrey didn't answer my call I texted him this...

Dear Geoffrey,
I attempted to call you but you did not answer the phone. Therefore I am left to draw one of three conclusions. 1) Your phone fell into radioactive goo transforming if into a robot and being tired of your ceaseless demands of calling if ran away. 2) Due to an icreased amount and volume of you giving shoutouts to people you know across large rooms you have shouted so loud you are temporarily deaf. 3) In an attempt to rescue princess peach from king kooppa you fell prey to an evil flying turtle-duck while dodging a walking mushroom.

September to September

Season change. And so with the seasons humankind itself changes. The person I am today is not the same person I was yesterday. I have grown, experienced life for that much longer. The person I am today is not the same person I was one year ago. When honesty can be depicted through the blur of the speed of life, after the passing of one year I have a little less hope. Not that I am void of all hope, or that I am hopeless, quite the opposite. I am hopeful and to some degree excited about who I will be after tomorrow, but if one were to measure hope in a test tube or on a scale the amount I have today would simply equal a lesser amount than it did one year ago. My current state, while leaving me somewhat wanting in levels of measurable hope, is one that has had one year of changing days.

In the last year I have learned more about who I am, who I am as a son, who I am as a husband, who I am as a person. I am me. And I will try my best to continue to be who I am. While such a statement might sound whimsical to some and postmodern to others, further analysis will show that further analysis is a waste of your time. If you truly want to know who I am then you will have to be with me. As a husband isn’t it my wife that knows me the best? Is it not also my wife who spends everyday living life with me? It is the person who spends each day of change and growth with me that knows me the best. If you want to know who I am, know me today.

Through the last year I have made the discovery not only of who I am but also who I want to be (a large part of the previously mentioned discovery is rooted in the equally epiphanizing discovery of who I do not want to be). The most sobering and challenging factors of discovering who I want to be are, knowing that said person is not me and finding the path that leads to what I want. The potential is on the cusp of tomorrow, but tomorrow itself provides twenty-four hours of change resulting in a twenty-four hour different person than me. I know so many of those twenty-four hours of the past year have brought with them the changes, some good others bad. The usefulness in change, as pertaining to a person, is the gained knowledge of desired direction. I know who I was, I know who I am, I know who I want to be. The true challenge in knowing who you want to be is manipulating change in such a way that it lends the desired results, even if it means willing or pushing yourself through the change to get to such results. It is only with a determination to manipulate life into what it has to be in order to make you who you want to be that will change you in the desired direction.

While in the chronicles of my own life, I will most assuredly not classify the past year as a great one, I will give credit to its positive efforts in shaping who I am. While a year past, I might own a little less hope than the previous, but perhaps the greatest hope is the hope of who I will be after tomorrow.