Transcendental Sonnet #1397: Farmer Sometimes



I weeded my backyard and I feel better
By meeting some primal agrarian need
The spirit of the act and not the letter
The general and not particular weed
I pulled them all nor did I discriminate

By manifest destiny my hand of fate
Acting as grim reaper and it was cheaper
Than having it done and a whole lot more fun
Synthesizing vitamin D in the sun

A Lance as a farmer not wearing armor
With calluses on my unaccustomed hands
Tonight as I write: my neighbor understands
I need to be a farmer sometimes he does too

It works for us and I think it might work for you








Good Morning Mr. Jones!



Expecting your daily grind
You wake up in the morning
And discomfited you find
Overnight without warning
You have gone out of your mind
You notice your worldview starting to decay
And you wonder if you wished your life away

But reality shatters
And it no longer hurts you
That nothing really matters
Society deserts you
But it does you a favor
Because it has no flavor
Or is it perhaps that you never had taste?

And is a mind a terrible thing to waste
Really? Or does no one care?
But you no longer worry
Because you left yours back there
And need no longer hurry
Just to keep up with the Joneses anymore
Because now you know the Joneses are a bore!








Was Me



The father sought to split and call it even
When the sallow sick unwanted baby came
The mother fought to fit and call it Steven
And both of them thought it would die just the same
Yet it did not to everyone's surprise
But grew a fragile child with big brown eyes
In spite of them and Steven was his name

The father's diamond eyes ice-blue and cold
Look from the outside into where he is
The brown-eyed mother never got to be old
But lived through her child and her eyes are his
Eyes of the mother reflected in the son
Who never really has been loved by anyone
Except for her the way they were was beautiful to see

As for the rest he did his best was dutiful: was me









Bloodstain



Whoever you were wherever you are
I send you sweet kisses if from afar
Remembering the magic we once shared
You do not love me but are part of me

Because of you I lived and died and dared
To live again so I embrace your pain
Since it is all these empty arms hold now
All you left me except for this bloodstain

You were the best and never mind the rest
So I will take what our fate will allow
And send you sweet kisses if from afar
Whoever you were wherever you are








Transcendental Sonnet #1396: I Embrace My Life (If a Little Late)



The sun has come out much to my surprise
I thought it would be gloomy all day long
But life takes delight in lighting my eyes
And when I feel weak making me feel strong

I just never know what I will see when
I look out my window not until then
Since it is always changing which is nice

None of us ever lives the same day twice
And if I had to do it all again
I would keep the pleasure but also the pain

All of it the way it is was meant to be
There is no way to escape the hand of fate
If I were not like this I would not be me
So I embrace my life (if a little late)









Transcendental Sonnet #1395: Early Saturday in Early June



This early Saturday in early June
The sky is gauzy as it is this time of year
And grey but it will yet be sunny soon
If not today then surely when July gets here

Where I live it is always like this on these days
In early June these grey and gauzy Saturdays
And I recall so many of them all so sweet
Loved and lost at One Forty-Five North Cleveland Street
But here is one today and there will still be more
One day recalled as fondly as the ones before

I think the sun is trying to come out
And I can feel that it is getting warmer now
I want to stand on my front porch and shout
I love you and to feel you love me too somehow








Transcendental Sonnet #1394: Erasers



The school year is ending and pencils sell cheap
At the gigantic grocery store
So I bought a lot of them and stacked them deep
In my Grandma's old wooden desk drawer
Pencils are things which are very hard to keep
Enough of and I always need more

Not the pencils actually
They last as long for me as anyone
It is their erasers you see
Which never last to their end once begun
Confronted by uncertainty
Without erasers I get nothing done

Pencils all over the house with their erasers rubbed flat...
Write with no erasers? Even I am too smart for that...








Remiss Like This



A new friend once observed that I am diffident
Would never force myself on you nor shout
My capabilities unto the trees
And that for an author this seemed different
But I have a great deal to be modest about

I neither interview myself nor toot my horn
Do not doodle my own ding-dong all the day
But would rather listen to you about your kids
And seldom Google myself since I was born
To people without egos who did not believe in ids

...Except for my father who never would bother
With me but we never noticed anyway...

Vanity of vanities! My vanity
Is here somewhere I just cannot find it right now
I misplaced it along with my sanity
Until I find it I can muddle through somehow
Remiss like this but I could sure use a kiss








Monstrosity



Monstrosity of a monster's deathwish
Wearing hell's halo and hovering high
Above a ruined planet's deathbed scene
Mushroom cloud like a monstrous jellyfish
Soaring like a damned angel in the sky
Too late to contemplate what might have been
But not too late to mourn what we have lost

Our lives were lies we could not bear the cost
Of being our own gods and holding in
These trembling hands the scales of grace and sin
We dropped them and they clattered from our hands
They shattered and I hope God understands
And who am I you ask me who am I?
Just someone who is too alive to die

So many times I asked you begged you why
But each time and each day all you would say
Is you knew best and I must join the rest
Just keep my eyes down follow and obey
But you have killed my world are killing me
Monstrous jellyfish of a mushroom cloud
I never knew what could make you so proud

But now I see you grin in victory
A monster's deathwish a monstrosity









Seeds of Destruction



Here on the outside looking in
Defeated before we begin
Stand victims of the culture wars
As ours is victimized by yours
Of course you say yours is divine
I wonder therefore what is mine?

That would be the opposite I suppose
But only your God in your heaven knows
Who tells you not to judge us but you fudge
You know you are right and you never budge

Except when it fits your flexible fancy
Which makes your certainty certainly chancy
But that is just me espousing heresy
And of course as for you we know what is true
Hypocrisy as far as the eye can see
You make the rules so you get to break them too

There on the inside looking out
"Might makes right" was not very bright
"Shock and awe" was the lock we saw
The rock on which you broke the law
Seeds of destruction seeds of doubt
Now sprout as you turn out the light

Goodnight my conquerors sleep tight








Void



The void where the one I loved used to be
From which she tore herself with violence
Is one which cannot heal apparently
A wound which defies all medical sense
Or any other kind of sense at all
A black hole into which all else is drawn
A dead star all-consuming in this fall
From which I wish to wake to find it gone

Yet from this hollow heart it never will
Be gone nor lessen but always remain
Suspending me thus terminally ill
To know that I cannot be well again
With only this to count on just this ache
Of emptiness an everlasting pain
Which although all else should my heart forsake
Will always be yet not be here with me

The void where the one I loved used to be









Little Underestimated Me



To swim upstream to stubbornly resist
The obvious defy all common sense
Which says that it is hopeless to persist
Against such grim determined and intense
Unequal opposition as though fate
Itself had set its jaw against me now
I bet my life that it is not too late
That there is still a chance for me somehow

I simply will not give up till I win
For I have come too far to turn away
I fight to the finish once I begin
And I will win no matter what they say
I have a lot of fight left in me still
Though I might only make one step a day
Step by step I will take another hill
And no one will taste sweeter victory

Than little underestimated me









Transcendental Sonnet #1393: Tonight As I Look Back Upon Today



Tonight as I look back upon today
I remember twenty-four hours ago
I saw no hope could imagine no way
For happiness I simply could not know
Could not begin to see how I could be
Within this quiet place I am of light
I never dreamed tonight I would be free

The sun goes down but does not bring the night
After itself as if to close the door
The moon is rising and I hope for more
Hope rises whether sun or moon I see
Faith lights a candle whether rich or poor
And love will bloom at midnight inside me
Tonight with hope and faith to light the way








Transcendental Sonnet #1392: You Will Know When



Neither before nor after but only
When the moment arrives and only then
At the time appointed to the lonely
Comes the companion and you will know when

But there is nothing for it but to wait
No mortal can reset the clock of fate
Stronger arms than mine timeless and divine
Move turning hands to sweep across the face
Of what has been what is and what will be

The challenge we face is to meet with grace
Surprises borne within the mystery
When the moment arrives and only then
Hidden in those hands as for you and me
Comes the companion and you will know when








Transcendental Sonnet #1391: Decoration Day



Memorial Day MMV

Our old flag from the Second World War
Stands at attention by the front door
Home alone here where my mother grew
Up in those days of red white and blue
To marry a man I never knew
Who fought in that war and then one more
And boxed and drilled and wrote poetry
Between and afterward fathered me

Grandma called this Decoration Day
Family would come from far away
And we would take them to the graves of
Those we remember honor and love
Decorating them with memories
As the ravens watched us from the trees









Dreams: Crossing Time and Death and Space



for Patricia Lance (1934-1998) my mother my friend

Whenever I sleep I dream
Of my mother who has been
Gone from this earth for seven
Years now but lately I seem
So lost as to what things mean

I know she is in heaven
But I dream of her each night
Maybe just a little light
Escapes from where she is to
Where I am in darkness here
Since I hate to bother you
With my loneliness and fear

Does this mean somehow she sees
My life go from bad to worse
And in moments such as these
From across the universe
Lets me know that she is there?

I know my mother would care
That she would not forget me
My father may regret me
All I do is bother you
But love can go anywhere
Crossing time and death and space
To dry these tears from my face



+Steven Curtis Lance



Copyright MMV

lance,you still have a lot to learn

dont we all

It has been argued that my "meter" is somehow "off." This misunderstanding arises because people are expecting and seeking and are used to so-called "poetic feet," and they are, instead, finding counted syllables.

As a "savant," as they call freaks like me, I count. I count everything in general, the syllables of my poetry in particular. My poems are filled with numbers and numerical meanings which are not obvious at first reading. I do not consciously apply poetic feet or traditional meter; I count syllables. The reason my poems rhyme as they do is that, in my case, rhyme is a function analogous to counting; I tie everything together, so that the poem is woven. As in weaving, where they speak of woof and warp, the two parameters analogous to those horizontal and vertical functions are, in my poetry, counted syllables determining the length of the line and the rhyme which connects the lines in verticality.

Therefore every poem of mine is a matrix of counted syllables and rhyme; this is the structure which bears the ideas which I seek to express, the matrix the vessel, the ideas the wine.

I mention these issues not in answer to my friends and fellow authors here at AuthorsDen, but in answer in general to criticisms received in my Poetry Journal and on poetry boards of mine elsewhere. One wag offered this gem:

"lance, you still have a lot to learn"

Of course I do! That is why I seek so relentlessly, that I might find. And I do find, if slowly; I grow a little every day, come one halting, faltering step closer to the end of all things at the end of every day. Whether one calls it death or enlightenment, whether it is both or neither, my life is process, and the train never stops, until it is "there." "Are we there yet?" No, but inevitably we will be. Therefore I seek to make the trip meaningful, to "improve the time," as my Grandma said.

Thank you for reading these words of "explanation," exercise in futility though they may be--it is manifestly impossible to ever "explain" art: art is, by its very nature, inexplicable--and for your beautiful support of me and of my work. Were it not for the few people with whom I connect through this admittedly-eccentric poetry of mine, I would be utterly alone, and life would seem meaningless to me. Thank you, my few and faithful readers; you and I share a transcendentally intimate relationship.

Love,

+Stevie

Fiat lux!