I am the sea:
You can count on me
To transfer gravitational energy
From the moon to your coastal property.
I am the ocean:
Strong currents flow
Beneath my surface, moving
Marine life faster along their route.
My currents
Influence the weather;
Sometimes to your delight,
Other times my influence is to your dismay.
I am the sea:
Bound only by the shore,
Each crashing wave wears rock away;
My rip currents pull your sand to me, day by day.
© 2014 H.K. Longmore
Two children meet on a beach;
For their sand shovels reach.
A castle they build,
With dreams it’s filled.
But the filling of the moat
They leave to the sea.
And the sea is pleased:
On the castle he dotes.
He reaches the moat with each high tide,
With each high tide, the moat is complete.
With each low, the heat competes
For the castle’s mastery.
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Posted in poetry
Tagged bliss and glad life, commitment, communication, poem, relationships, resilience
She has deliveries to make.
She rounds the cubicle walls,
Her voice lilting
As she greets each person.
Sometimes by name,
Others with a hello,
Always with excitement;
Her enthusiasm is evident.
I consider plugging in my headphones
So I’ll not know when she arrives;
But no, I know what to expect.
I choose to leave the clutter on the desk.
She enters my domain,
Not a word is spoken.
Gingerly she holds the booklet
Between two fingers:
I am a leper,
My disease flaking from me;
The fibers of the booklet
A transmissive medium.
She must minimize her contact
With that filthy rag
Lest she contract
What I have.
So I seek the doctor’s couch
In the spinning iron ore
Spread throughout the globe;
I inquire to find the prognosis.
But the diagnosis accurate
Comes from the heart;
It is as I presumed:
I am not a leper.
© 2014 H.K. Longmore
Darwin city skyline from East Point Reserve by Bidgee
If I were a high school English teacher, I’d have my students write a compare and contrast essay on the Hoodoo Guru’s song Tojo (lyrics) and Santa Never Made It Into Darwin by Bill Cate.
First I’d have them listen to Tojo, with a printed version of the lyrics in front of them, and write their initial impressions of the meaning. Then I’d play for them Santa Never Made It, with the lyrics to reference. Then I’d ask them:
The relative sizes of the United States, Cyclone Tracy and Typhoon Tip, the smallest and largest Pacific tropical storms recorded, respectively
Hideki Tojo
I’d award some bonus points to students who accurately describe who Tojo is; slightly less points for making a good guess. I would also possibly award various levels of bonus points for various levels of answering the question, “What would be required for a computer to understand either song?” It’s probably a good thing I’m not a high school English teacher: my students would have too much fun. Or I’d get fired for not following Common Core.
Meeting time in ten,
Processing ceramic-ly
What nature demands.
Mind is occupied
By blue and white striped candies
And red and purple.
Things and time pass by;
Level failed, I try once more.
How much time is left?
In panic I check;
Two minutes is all that’s left:
Skip some rituals.
© 2014 H.K. Longmore
Posted in poetry
Tagged candy crush saga, consequence, counting the cost, poem, punctuality, ritual, timing
Leftovers find their way
To a paper plate in the microwave;
The container finds itself
Filled with soapy water.
Peach looks good,
Though bruised.
Paring knife supplied
Leaves bruised flesh behind.
And I’m near ready to eat.
But lo! There in the sink,
Another’s bowl soaks,
Now with leftovers and peach flesh.
The choice seems simple:
Do nothing, and risk that this other
Gets her feelings distressed;
Or, wash and deliver it to her desk.
I choose the latter,
Not wanting to hurt her,
Not even in the most harmless way;
Bright and fresh and clean,
I bring the bowl her way.
But she’s not there.
I kindly place the bowl on her desk
And return, unlike a house-elf,
On my own two feet, to the lunchroom.
I hear her voice as I depart,
Turning, I see: several yards away, she saw me leave.
“No matter,” I think,
“She’ll see the bowl and know.”
Quest completed,
I’m now seated;
My mind begins
To haunt me again—
Exploring possible thought paths
She might have started down.
Racing, racing around in circles,
A frenzy stirred up inside:
Fearing her wrath,
Or a giant frown;
An injured porpoise, I see tail heterocercal
As HR pulls me aside to chide.
Oh, to have been that house-elf,
And snapped my fingers to avoid this bind.
“Silence! Let me eat in peace!”
I yell into the void in my mind.
© 2014 H.K. Longmore
Posted in poetry
Tagged consequence, heterocercal, leftovers, lunch, poem, relationships, self reflection, service
For me, the problem with starting a poem on WordPress is that if I don’t get time to complete it then, in the heat of the emotion, while the words are rattling around in my head, bouncing off my skull … Continue reading
Author’s note: I wrote this last week, in two cities and over hundreds of miles in the air, before Robin Williams left our sphere of existence. While that event and the subsequent news and social media flurry may color how you read this, and while some of it may even apply, to think I am making any statement about that would be incorrect.
This post showed up in my FB feed the other day stating:
It is interesting to realize I was taught to believe that suffering was healthy. Suffering isn’t healthy, nor necessary. Ever.
Someone commented on that post saying that pain is necessary, but suffering is not. This idea is not restricted to that post or its comments. Over at society6.com, Josh Lafayette has an art print expressing this idea. And there’s a picture incorrectly attributing the idea to Buddha (the tl;dr version of the article: “Imagine someone in Asia posting ‘Jesus quotes’ (which are actually AA slogans) under a picture of Santa Claus, and you’ll get a feel for what’s [wrong with this picture]”).
The problem with reading the dictionary when you’re doing your spelling assignments in second grade is that you can’t let people misuse their native language with impunity. So let’s take a look at the root word “suffer“, as defined by the descriptive linguists at Merriam-Webster:
You won’t believe what happens next! Oh, sorry, this isn’t bait. I’ll leave that stuff on buzzfeed.
Posted in commentary, essays
Tagged art, atonement, auto accident, co-feeling, compassion, Edvard Munch, etymology, Fake Buddha Quotes, language, linguistics, medkänsla, Milan Kundera, Mitgefühl, pain, pietà, pity, semantics, soucit, suffering, The Merchant of Venice, The Scream, word misuse, współczucie
Walking down a desert path,
Sounds of stirring
Drew my eyes. Turning,
I beheld an object of wrath
Perhaps from the farmer’s wife.
It stopped, frozen: a deer
In headlights. A knife
Cut through my heart: fear.
Too dull, the blade, to last;
I laughed as I passed,
The mouse hoping I would not see.
Beyond his eyes, he turned to flee.
Walking down that desert path,
My eyes beheld
Another. He held
His youth as a tub a bath.
No sighting of farmer’s wife,
Too calm for cervine metaphor;
No fear of carnivore
Pierced him through with fear.
Filled with delight, he stood fast;
But before I passed,
He stopped his eating
In time to avoid a beating.
The many darting to and fro,
From hole to hole;
The two crossing the trail,
The first waiting for the second (aw, how cute!);
And the older fat one,
Too preoccupied with eating,
Too slow with his response,
So that if I had a heavier step
And a slower reaction time,
I’d be cleaning him off the bottom of my sandal.
© 2014 H.K. Longmore
Posted in poetry
Tagged commitment, consequence, counting the cost, hiking, poem, self reflection, timing
“Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of thyself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wanted to give a gift to someone. Nothing particularly fancy, but getting it involved a lot of personal effort, and finding something appropriate required a lot of thought. Having selected what I felt would be a good token, I waited for the right moment to give it. I had planned to give the gift without any wrapping paper or other covering, but on the spur of the moment, just seconds before giving it, I changed my mind and decided I wanted to cover it. I used what I knew I had available: a facial tissue paper. I probably would have been better off to stick with my original plan. The moment came that I presented my gift, with a customary greeting for the occasion.
Nothing in my history of giving gifts could have prepared me for what happened next. She looked at my poorly packaged gift and after a moment of silence said, “I don’t think I want your gift.” Hurt, enough that I could have cried had I not been in a relatively public place, I said, “Okay.” I thrust my extended hand into my pocket, dropped the gift in, and withdrew my hand. Calm as a balmy summer day, a trembling puppy frightened by thunder, I walked away. It took all the focus I had to not run, not cry, not look back. I turned a corner, and put on a façade of normalcy as I interacted with those in the vicinity. Returning the gift to the place it was obtained would be impossible, so I put it where it would be available but out of sight.
When I was in junior high, an object lesson was taught using a slice of cake to represent the gospel of Jesus Christ. The cake was shown to the class, and the question was asked, “Who would like a piece of cake?” Several hands went up; one was selected. The person selected went to the front of the class to get their slice of cake. However, before they were given the cake, it was mashed up until it looked like leftovers retrieved from the garbage. The analogy made was that you might have a wonderful gift, such as the good news of the atonement of Jesus Christ, but if you present it poorly, the person you are giving it to may reject it. Thus, you need to take care that your life and your presentation of the gift match the wondrous quality of the gift, to reduce the likelihood that the gift will be rejected. Perhaps she was rejecting my gift because of how poorly it was presented.
There is another possibility. “For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift.” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:33) Did the presentation of the gift matter at all, or was she really rejecting me? If I was on the other end of such an exchange, I would at least receive the gift, and if I didn’t like it or didn’t want it, I’d throw or give it away. But I have forgiven the rejection and the rejector.
And now I think of all the times God offers His mercy to us, and we reject it, either by refusing to apply the atonement to our lives, or by choosing to apply it for a time only to backslide our way to rejection of the gift. I think of how sorrowful He must be at our rejection of Him. His hand is extended in mercy, ready to deliver us from all the chains that bind us captive; it is extended all the day long, and yet we do not listen. And unlike imperfect me, who ran from rejection of the gift or of me on account of emotional pain, He feels but stands as before, His outstretched hand yet offering the gift. His gift is no apology for a gift, but the truest gift of all: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” — John 15:13.
© 2014 H.K. Longmore
Posted in reflections
Tagged atonement, communication, consequence, coping, forgiveness, gift giving, impressions, love, rejection, relationships
I am weak; it takes but touch to draw me along.
But the siren song is not so strong
That I cannot resist its charm.
I can withstand, do your best, you’ll do me no harm.
But take me by the hand,
Put your finger to your lips
To silence questions in the sand
As I ask where we’re headed on this trip;
My weak knees will obey,
And my heart will not delay.
But this weakness, it is no concern,
On it’s head you’ll see it turn.
Most of the double-x chromosomes
Want one with a y, enticed by sweet honeycomb,
To be the instigator,
Or it’s “see you later”.
© 2014 H.K. Longmore
Posted in poetry
Tagged frustrations, introspection, poem, relationships, self reflection, weakness
 | Esther Longmore on Not In |
| The Impact of Therap… on Out to Lunch | |
| Summer’s Tail… on Teepee Valves | |
| Ow. | Henry Hurdles… on Teepee Valves | |
| Vacant Echoes | Musi… on Trashed |
Musings of a Kunderian Monster 
What of Columbus?
unworthy of a federal holidaya despicable rascal. See this “article” on the oatmeal and this one on vox.com. I saw the oatmeal article last year. A friend who is a teacher shared it with me. The following is what I shared with her, and now with anyone open minded enough to not jump on the revisionist bandwagon without long contemplation and deep investigation.Vicki Jo Anderson, while researching many historical figures over the course of several years, discovered that
Of Columbus, Anderson writes:
Her source for the Columbus quotes is:
Columbus, Christopher. Letters to King Ferdinand & Queen Isabel 1496 Raccolta Collection. Raccolta di Documenti e Studi Pubblicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana, pel Quarto Centenario dalla Scoperta dell’ America, Appendix Roma 1894, p. 270.
I am not saying by this that he never did anything bad, just that he may not have been as bad as recent history writers make him out to be.
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Posted in commentary, quotes
Tagged Christopher Columbus, Columbus Day, communication, Letters to King Ferdinand & Queen Isabel 1496 Raccolta Collection, misunderstanding, taking quotes out of context, Vicki Jo Anderson