Verse by Caleb Mannan

If you like Robert Service, Longfellow, Tolkien, Milton, Robinson Jeffers, Whitman, Poe, The Bible, Tennyson, Ray Bradbury, life, death, Untermeyer, Pound, Donne, joy, sorrow, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, children, beauty, Dante, Tom Waits, then set yourself down beside this fire.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

XV. The Philosophy of Fire

There in the moonlit meadows and sun tanned streams
This wild man hears his drumming dreams
With ceiling high and temple wide
The mountains rise up as my guide


Who may know what huddles in my heart? That aching, glowing, lumbering heart
“Go forth and be set apart,” aches within my heart of hearts
So as a child(in childish fervor and manner wild) it is within my heart.

Who can know the pioneers? Toiling for some unseen years
That beyond horizon at them peers, the wild, the free, the beckoned seers
So as a pioneer(with less guts and feeble fear) so I go to unseen years.

I long for forest and fire, where prying eyes may not inquire
“Go forth my son and there retire,” into the land I name and sire
So as my children grow(Lo! How they grow!) I long for land that I may sire.

XIV. Bolt Action Man (unfinished)

I am the bolt action man
Don’t give a knife’s edge damn
Living the hoboe’s lam
Unable to live a sham
I am the Lord’s good son
Carrying His name in a gun
Saying his name on the run
My prayin aint never done
I am my mother’s son
She don’t love me cause what I done
I am my daddy’s son
He never loved no one
I am a flash in the pan
Lion or lamb, none give a damn
I am what I am
The bolt action man

XIII. The Hardest Lesson

The hardest lesson of a man is thus:
I do unto my family as I do unto myself.