I typically do not like to explain what I write.  I prefer to leave it open to interpretation.  However, today I made the effort to explain one of my favorite poems to someone who I have asked for input and advice on writing.  Be warned, it is a long read.  This is what I had to say:

When I write, especially a poem, it is when I have something that has been bouncing around my head for a long time and it wants out, or I feel very strongly and need to express the feelings.  To me, poetry is about passion and value.  Writing is about expression and perspective.  These are all related to each other.  

I have never thought of trying for greatness or genius, but rather with conveying a full microcosm of something I want to share.  I am rarely happy with my attempts at it, but I am happy with a few things I have done.  

I write for myself rather than for other people, but want what I write to be a medium able to communicate to those others.  I am curious as to what they think of my work, if they enjoy it, and how well it achieves what I want it to do.  

I will endeavor to explain what the poem I shared with you means.  It all started with the words "blood and wine, pearls and swine" bouncing around in my head for a very long time.  In the fall of 2007 I was unemployed and staying with my mother out in the country while looking for work.  It was being a very bad year for me, but I was refusing to let it get to me.  

I spent a lot of time outdoors, and can vividly remember those words popping in my head when I was outdoors enjoying the richness of experiences to be found out in the country.  Nature, life, the elements, the sky...everything all around me, flowing through me.  I spent a lot of time thinking about life, situations, and how people live.  

"Thick blood and dark wine,
Lustrous pearls for the swine."

Imagine small droplets of spilt blood or wine on a stone floor of a feast hall in front of a fireplace, glistening like red pearls in the light.  Two sweet and precious liquids wasted by the idiocy of man.  

To me, blood embodies life.  Wine represents the passion, revelry and enjoyment of life.  So often both humanity as a whole and so many individuals squander both life and the enjoyment of it.  The gift of life and passion to man is all too often like casting pearls before the swine.  

"Simple concepts profound beyond measure,
Endless precepts confound priceless treasure."

We let so many things get in the way of living and being happy.  We have so many choices about so many things, but instead choose to be willfully ignorant rather than accept responsibility for our lives and happiness.  We make up our minds about things, and let those prejudices make us miserable.  

"The value of a moment,
The cost of a lie,
The price of atonement,
A deep well can run dry."

Life is lived in the moment.  Our birthright of free will is all about making choices.  There is always a choice and a cost for that choice.  Each moment is an opportunity.  To enjoy life, you have to know what you value, what is truly important to you so that when the opportunities arise, you will not hesitate and can make the decisions that will be true to your self.  Too often people choose instead what seems to be the easy route, trying to avoid a cost or put it off till later.  Eventually it all catches up to you.  

"Forgiveness is for the living.
Regrets are for the dead.
Life is ever forgiving.
Death is nothing to dread.

Count not what you may have lost,
Count not what you do not own,
Such accounting has great cost,
Such accounting is a burdensome stone. "

People live for expectations, whether they realize it or not.  We a creatures of cycles and patterns.  People expect things out of life, good or bad.  People also would most often rather be right than be happy.  They choose satisfaction over happiness.  

They expect something bad to happen, and as such they make choices as if it were going to happen, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.  Conversely, they expect something good to happen, and then when it doesn't they get hurt, upset, disappointed or even panicked.  They use these feelings to justify future bad expectations.  

Thus, they get in a habit and cycle of making themselves miserable.  They cannot enjoy the good things in the present because they are either too afraid of bad things happening in the future or reliving bad things of the past.  Or because they are living for the potential enjoyment of things that may or may not come in the future or trying to recapture the good things of the past.  

Life is harsh.  It doesn't care about our expectations.  Too many people think it owes them something.  Instead, it only promises everyone two things: Death and Suffering.  All people in the world can claim those two birthrights.  If you are born, you will some day die, and before that happens, you will experience some sort of suffering.  

Life is also equally forgiving.  It always gives you a choice and an opportunity.  We can always choose how we feel about our circumstances, and how we react to anything that happens.  Bad things happen, but no disappointment is ever the end of the world if you are still alive.  So long as you live, life promises you more opportunities to be happy.  

People are their own worst enemies.  They try so hard to avoid responsibility for their choices and defend themselves from both accountability and the opinions of others.  Yet, some part of them always holds themselves responsible for their choices whether they admit it or not.  On some level, everyone blames themselves for their lives.  

People have such a hard time realizing this, let alone learning to forgive themselves.  Too many let the past be a heavy stone they carry around instead of breaking it down into a fertile earth that their roots can draw strength from.  

We cannot recapture or change the past, we can never claim or encompass the future.  Too often people live in the past or fear the future.  They miss the joy of life because they cannot see the forest for the trees.


"Relish always what you have,
Revel now in what you can claim.
Priceless is a simple laugh,
No two moments are the same.

Make each pleasure a tribute,
To all that you have left behind.  
The ephemeral does constitute,
What we reap with our minds."

I just wish more people would stop, look around, listen and understand what it is they are perceiving.  People could be so much happier, healthier, and more productive if they could just do this.  I want people to reclaim their lives and their passions.  

Yes the past paid for where we are now, or we are now paying for our past.  Yes people may have made decisions that hurt them, but just because something was done wrong doesn't mean you have to keep doing it wrong or punish yourself for being wrong.  If it can't be changed, then it doesn't have to affect any future choices.  

People can let go of those cycles of choices without losing the value that they represent.  Instead of finding the value in suffering, they can find the value by enjoying what they do have.  It is like being in a bar and raising a beer to a dead and gone friend.  You make the enjoyment of the fullness of life a tribute to all the suffering and loss in your past that helped you learn what you needed to learn.  

Our minds, and what we hold in them really is what defines our lives.  As I said before, people live for expectations.  In so many ways and on so many levels, what we believe is what is real to us.  The harvest of our lives is dictated by what we believe, not by the world we live in.  We occupy the flesh, in the physical world.  We live in a universe of concepts and values.  What is real is what we make real.  You reap what you sow, so you might as well be aware of what you are sowing.  

That's it.  That is all of the meaning and feeling that I tried to pack into that short little poem.  That is what I wanted to share and invoke in people when I wrote it.