welcome to a poet walks
Walking has been a part of my life since childhood. As a young boy I often took to my feet to seek refuge from a turbulent home life, or simply to mount a small expedition of discovery. The hills of the west, where I spent a good deal of my time growing up, were expansive and isolated. That place of aloneness frequently led to meditations, on the vastness of the land, its history, nature, but more often my contemplations sought to understand what it was to be human. Spawned from the entropy that too often accompanied my days at home and in school, my quires, although juvenile, sought to understand both the beauty and viciousness of the human animal. Walking always gave me a chamber in which to calm and ponder.‍ ‍
Walking became a form of medicine
When I discovered poetry in my early teens, the use of poetic devices and unique perceptions broke through the many societal, familial and religious conventions that had shaped my thinking from childhood on. I was born into the world of being a poet. Examining and redefining what lay before me, and within me, comforted my soul. Much of my life remained a mystery, but the boy who wandered around, deep in thought, had found a canvas on which he could sketch out his angst, and a place where pain, love, joy and existence itself could be laid bare, thus becoming accessible in ways less obscure and simply less frightening. The poet walked through life, a little less lost. Poetry has remained a central way of how I approach the world. For me, breaking things apart, as poetry so often does, makes this tumultuous existence a little more manageable.
Poetry is simply another form of medicine.
A poet walks
Through days born of nights
And nights born of days
Filled with the pains, desires and joys
that are the structures of our existence
As he draws the images from the entropy
There is a truth that relentlessly seeps from his veins
Washing away enough
To reveal
The sculpted pictures
That depict what we are
And what we are not
A poet walks
My life has had many faces. Whether it was working in the hottest sweats of summer, fighting the coldest biting winds of winter, living in the in rain soaked world of homelessness, or breathing in the calm of a beautiful spring day, I continued to strip away at what existence really is and what being human really means. Walking and poetry were always the truest tools I could find in helping me down my path of discovery and enlightenment.
And so…. this poet walks on.
Poetry
Spoken
