Villanelle Poem - On RPGs

This is my villanelle poem, about roleplaying games, that I did for my Creative Writing class. Yes, I am that big of a dork.

Dungeons and Dragons Do Weigh
On the Mind of a Boy, a Man Apart

My pride, so torn, it does betray:
A game of rolling dice and playing roles--my secret art.
The quest--my craft glorified--so hid away.

As men and boys, like boys, do convey
Communal bliss in playing games--their glowing heart,
Their pride, so torn, I do betray!

And do brave men, in myth, not dragons slay?
Yet Boys--now men--from such dreams depart;
The quest--our craft glorified--so hid away.

What would they have me stand and say?
“Fellows, no more fantasy!” and with shame impart
My pride, so dimmed; my companions I would betray.

Can I reconcile these twisted halves now sadly turned away:
Vivid creativity from cold maturity supposedly so smart?
My quest--my craft glorified--I cannot cast away!

This shame, culled by joy, can bring me no dismay,
And my trembling ego will not so easily thwart
My pride, now set to shine my path. Thus I cannot betray

My treasured quest--my craft glorified--I did once lock away.


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And this is the rough draft of my villanelle poem. I like the final much better:
"Playing Role-Playing Games"

It’s embarrassing to feel this way,
To roll dice and call it social art;
I’m torn on how my passions play.

As men and boys, like boys, convey
The shameless joy at their shared heart;
It’s embarrassing to feel this way.

Do brave men, in myth, not dragons slay?
Yet boys, now men, from imagination depart.
And thus: I’m torn on how my passions play.

And what would all the women say?
Surely they find its substance smart;
Oh, it’s embarrassing to feel this way.

What of my elders? Can I turn away
Vivid fantasy then maturity impart?
Alas, I’m torn on how my passions play!

I fear they feel complete dismay
Which leaves me tasting sweetness tart.
It’s embarrassing to feel this way:
Judged, now torn, on how my passions play.

Legs - a poem

“Legs”

I’m a man, aren’t I? But that‘s not exactly the questioned called out.
--But call me out, they do; and draw me out, they do;
Out like a snake from its hole. Am I more beast than man?

How old need I be to see--too old? How honest? How moral?
What do I want but to stare and admire? Nothing! Yet--
Respect and I are not speaking; what have I done wrong?

There is nothing more beautiful than a woman.
But objects are beautiful. Sunsets beg adoration,
Not legs that lead up, up-- Women, endowed, receive attention.

I’m like a kid in a candy store, with diabetes.
I’ll have two servings, please. Or better yet, three.
I might as well starve!

I can remember what is best for me:
Two which climb to a companion heart, resting below a supple mind;
A being like me--sometimes beastly, sometimes kind.
So, I cannot forget:
I, so abusive as to objectify, become the object which is abused,
And die, limbless and alone, having left my humanity inside its little hole.

Remembering Boppa

On Sunday afternoon, on the 3rd of March, 2013, my grandfather passed away in Tyler, Texas.  His name is Ernest Edwin Atkinson, though we all call him Boppa.  He had fallen last winter, and his Osteoporosis and the fall had taken its toll.  When he died, we were waiting; he had been suffering for some time, and had not walked since Christmas.

I was at my apartment in Austin, waiting.  I had gone home from work early, in hopes of heading up to east Texas.  I had told myself that I would go see him and my family soon, but due to scheduling I couldn’t be gone too long, so I had yet to leave.  I was playing a computer game, distracted, and in the back of my mind, I was just waiting for that phone call.  When someone is going to die, particularly someone who has been suffering, you’ll find yourself holding your breath.  So I let out a sigh when I got the call, and cried with my mother and grandmother over the phone as they told me the news.

My girlfriend, Lauren, came over to my place that evening, and even though we are both on a diet, we had consolation-pizza and cookies, and went for a walk.  The air was clear and cold that night.  Even though I had cried when my mother called and told me about Boppa passing, I didn’t really feel sad yet, not really.  There was, and still is, a distance between what I know in my head and what I feel in my heart.

In the back of my mind, I was thinking about my grandfather’s machete.  When I was a child, I would always want to play with it; he got his machete while doing mission-work in Costa Rica, and it fascinated me.  I wanted to swing it about, to pretend to be someone else, somewhere else, on an adventure.  He would tell me, “When I die you can have it, but you’ll have to fight Jim for it,” or something similar.  But now that he’d actually passed, I  just wanted to put it up on my wall, to remember him by.

Monday started out with prep for the trip.  I met with my brother Jim afterward, and we unsuccessfully clothing-shopped for the funeral.  Then we picked up Lauren from her apartment, and decided to have lunch at my cafe, Cafe Java, before we left.  We arrived in Whitehouse, Texas, well after dark; the trip up was filled with the usual deep and theoretical conversation that Jim and I usually get into.  Lauren listened, and slept, in the back seat.  We weren’t sad or distant; we were normal, as if it were any other road trip.

I found my family to be as tired as I felt, yet everyone was calm, relieved even.  Very few tears were shed, and there was plenty of hugging, laughing, talking, and planning.  On Tuesday, after lunch, we went through some of Boppa’s belongings.  Meema seemed to want to get rid of, or give to us, as much of his things as she could.  We were obliging, and personally I wanted something to remember him by, thinking about my machete.  Jim and I personally took a collection of books--all theological texts--and I took an old thermos, two scarves, an old wallet, and a gold watch that he had worn for a short time.

While we were looking, I mentioned Boppa’s old machete, feeling childish and silly as I did so; my family responded with sympathy, however, and helped me look for it.  We searched the garage, the study, the bedroom, and all the closets.  Nothing turned up.  My mom thought that perhaps he had given it to Baylor University’s public archives, like he had done with some of our old family photos--something he was prone to do, to his family’s chagrin--and my aunt Elena said he probably just got rid of it, thinking it dangerous.  Either way, there was no machete.  Later, after shopping, I went home feeling uneasy, feeling even more childish than when I asked for the machete.  Simple expectations can yield simple disappointment, unfettered by wisdom or understanding.

That night I talked with my father--who was going to lead the funeral services, as I expected--and I shared with him a passage written by Henri Nouwen that I believed Boppa would have appreciated--Nouwen was one of his favorite authors.  The passage was about celebrating life, and death, and about how they’re intrinsically interconnected.  I was too shy to ask, but my dad beat me to it: he suggested I read the passage at Boppa’s funeral the next day, and I agreed to do so.  I thought it would be fitting, and I wanted the responsibility, wanted to be a little more like my family, like my grandfather.

Boppa was a man of incredible intellect and drive, yet he sought a spartan life, admiring monks and scholars most.  I have always looked up to him for that, though I myself don’t crave solitude and simplicity enough to pursue them outright.  But we all know Boppa for his faith and his eccentricities, of which he had many.  Even now I feel like I am who I am because of who he was, and if Boppa taught me anything, it’s not to be afraid to be a little weird, and to never stop learning.  As Boppa himself put it in an oral history interview he did for Baylor University in 2000, “I’ve been a student all my life.” 

The funeral was in Ennis, where my grandparents had lived for a time and purchased plots there in Myrtle Cemetery.  The family caravaned there from East Texas.  Lauren and I dressed in our funeral best and drove the two hours to Ennis.  Friends and well-wishers met with us at Keever Mortuary; I met a few of my grandparents’ friends for the first and perhaps last time there, and we all spent part of an hour sharing and mingling.  Boppa’s casket was open, and he looked better now than he did when he was alive.  It feels, in some way, like we were all having our introductions and conversations right there with him, as if he was just listening in, as he often did.  When it was time, we headed to the cemetery.

For the first time in my life, and completely unscheduled, I was a pallbearer.  My brother and I and a few others carried Boppa to his grave.  When everyone assembled, there were only about twenty or so of us, and the graveside service was short.  The wind was chilling, but the sun was warm.  Afterward someone rhetorically asked why it was always so windy and cold at funerals, and I said, “because there are no trees around to block the wind.”  I’m pretty sure I’m right about that, and that the biting cold has nothing to do with how we feel when we lose someone.

My uncle Benny, Elena’s husband, spoke well, and so did my father.  I have spent my life watching my family--my father, several of my uncles, my mother, even my brother--speak well in public.  I am the youngest in my family, and when I got up to read my Nouwen passage, I felt like it.  My voice was small and shaking, my emotions suddenly high, and I couldn’t even get through all two pages of it, though I was aware enough to at least skip the middle and read the closing.  When I was through, and my father was through, my cousin Elizabeth closed out the funeral by leading us all in singing Amazing Grace.

Then there was food at Tabernacle Baptist.  Everyone was ready for it.  In my passage that I partially read at the funeral, Nouwen talks of celebrating death.  It sounds morbid, unless you’re there, or you’ve experienced it.  But that’s what we were doing: celebrating.  The conversation was happy, not awkward, and the coffee was perfect.  We all spoke of memories and good times.  The ham was sweet, the mood calm, and the dessert wonderful.  We had thrown a little party in Boppa’s name, and I think he would have approved.

When we finally left the church, where we had been graciously fed, we all parted ways.  We hugged, we smiled, we thanked one another, and we did not cry.  I promised to my grandmother Meema that I’d be down to see her soon, and it wasn’t an empty promise.  Before Lauren and I left Ennis for Austin, we went with Jim and his wife Emma to go by and see our grandparents’ old house.  It was nothing like we remembered.  Someone remarked that things always seem larger, farther apart, when we look back on them as adults.  Nothing could be more true, as we navigated the narrow roads of the crowded suburban neighborhood.

Lauren and I had a pleasant drive home alone, stopping for both ice cream at Braum’s and pastries at the Czech Stop.  There went our diets for the week.  But life gives you time enough to stop and taste the roses, as it were.  I will always remember my grandfather, for many reasons, least of which was his love for the simple things like food, friends, conversation, and family.

We got a little lost driving back, as we sped down dusty roads and crept through tiny central Texas towns.  When I realized I was lost, I smiled, and Lauren googled a route home.  I felt alive then, unafraid of the unknown.  I was happy to have been with my family, and now I was happy to be lost with my love.  It felt then like the start of something new, and it feels now like I have an example to live by.  I will travel, I will finish my education--though I will never stop learning--and I will learn to live a life worth celebrating when I’m gone.

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Below is a link to the oral history interview my grandfather participated in, and below that is a re-posting of his obituary from the Ennis Daily News for the sake of posterity.

Oral History Interview:

http://contentdm.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/buioh/id/2040/rec/8

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"Ernest Edwin Atkinson, 89, passed from this life to his new home in Heaven on Sunday, March 3, 2013, from Tyler, Texas. Ernest was born in Jessup, Georgia, on July 15, 1923, to James Nicholas and Ruby (Bass) Atkinson. He grew up in Baxley, Georgia, and graduated from Baxley High School. On August 21, 1948, he married Martha Sheffield in Pelham, Georgia. After moving to Texas, he received a Bachelor of Arts from Howard Payne University; a Bachelor and Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; a Doctorate of Ministry from The Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He served in the United States Navy from 1941-45. As a missionary for 40 years with the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, he served as pastor of Spanish speaking churches both in Texas and Florida and also served as professor, librarian, and Dean for the Mexican Baptist Bible Institute from which he retired in 1988 after 28 years of service with the school. He is survived by his wife, Martha Atkinson; two daughters: Elena and husband, Benny Petty of College Station; and Becky and husband, Ray Davis of White House; along with three grandchildren: Jim Davis and wife, Emma; Elizabeth Petty; and Joshua Davis. He is preceded in death by his parents, two brothers and one sister. Visitation will be on Wednesday, March 6, 2013, from 10 am. until 11 a.m. in the J.E. Keever Mortuary of Ennis. Graveside services will be held at 11 a.m. on March 6, 2013, in the Myrtle Cemetery of Ennis with Dr. Ray Davis officiating under the direction of J.E. Keever Mortuary, Inc. In lieu of flowers the family requests any donations be made to the Heart to Heart Hospice of Tyler, Texas, in memory of E.E. Atkinson. www.jekeevermortuary.com"

http://www.ennisdailynews.com/obituaries/ernest-edwin-atkinson/

The Fault In Our Stars: Impressions (SPOILERS)

   “As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

              ― Hazel Grace Lancaster

I'm a big, old mess.

I've got a lump in my throat, and I could cry at the drop of a hat, and it's all thanks to John Green.

Finishing Green's The Fault In Our Stars (referred to as TFIOS by the author himself) has left me distant, emotional, listless—and satisfied.  I anticipated that I would appreciate Green's work, as I've watched his various videos on YouTube, enjoying his sense of humor, clever dialogue, and honesty.  But I wasn't prepared for TFIOS.

John Green's hit young-adult novel.
In case it isn't obvious, I really liked it.

Hazel Grace Lancaster suffers from thyroid cancer, though an experimental wonderdrug has bought her some time.  She is wrapped up in her own little world, unaware there's love out there for her--until she meets Augustus Waters at her support group.  Augustus has osteosarcoma, in remission, and even lost a leg to it.  He's also dead sexy, and interested in Hazel, to her surprise.  As the two grow closer-- bonding over Hazel's favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, and over a trip to Amsterdam to meet it's author--their love and understanding of one another grows.

I fell in love with Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster, and I am mourning for them in the end. This is Green's great feat; his book is equal parts tragedy and romance, and it works perfectly as both.  It is as sweet and funny as it is serious and mature.  Augustus' blind, bull-headed determination and his guarded ego drew me to him immediately. And Hazel, with her maturity, her fragility, her seriousness, her wit; even as the narrator, as we see her from the inside out, she's compelling from the outside in. I fell in love with Hazel as Augustus did, and I fell in love with Augustus as Hazel did.

Then came the drop. You know it from chapter one, from page one; for Hazel this story will not end well—in the sense that she will not live, not have a long and healthy life. We all have to die, but Hazel is dying sooner than most.  In anticipation for this fact, she has matured, refining her worries into something she can handle. But from the very beginning, you know someone's gonna die. You sense her hidden fear, her anxiety.

But when that drop comes, when the novel's twist hits you, and Hazel survives the love of her life, the narrative turns from being about her death, her end, to being about Augustus,' and the life they had. The finals pages extol Hazel's love and Augustus' legacy, and in that way, the book doesn't end with death so much as it does with life—why we live and care for others in this life, and why we let ourselves get hurt.  This may sound trite, but I assure you it all comes naturally.  This novel is a meditation on sacrifice and suffering, and coming to terms with both.

And so, TFIOS' final chapters are haunting me. Augustus' words haunt me. Hazel's pain is in me, and the pain isn't about disease or death, or about leaving this world without making an impression.  Explained in her own words, Hazel fears that she's a grenade—a time bomb, ready to go off and hurt those around her. She's going to die, and she knows it, and she doesn't want to get too close to Augustus, because she doesn't want to hurt him. She sees her parents suffer, and has seen Augustus suffer after losing someone else, and she doesn't want to be another source of pain for him.  God, isn't that relevant.

Going through my divorce, spending seven years loving someone, trying to make it work, and then having it all just go away... it feels like that if I did that again, if I got close to someone, and they went away again, or I went away... I'm not sure if I could handle it. I mean, I could, but what would it make of me? The book seems to illustrate what could happen, with the only character that could suffice as the villain: Peter van Houten, the author of our two lovers' favorite novel.  He lost his daughter years ago, when she was eight, and it haunts him. He wrote a book about losing her, to give her another life on paper, to try and make her immortal, but now he's crawled into a bottle, and given up on life.

I don't want to become a Peter van Houten, ever. And I fear I that I might, if I don't learn the lessons my life has to offer.

The point of the novel, of this story about loss and love, is addressed beautifully in its final pages.  Augustus hits this sensitive nail right on the head with his own words.  I find it hard to accept, hard to fully swallow--hence the lump in my throat--not because I don't believe it, but because it's just so damn relevant:

        “You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”