Who Am I?

Who am I?
I speak… how I speak
But there seems to only be falsehood.
Call it Auto Mythology
But my mythology is complete.
The giants are slain;
What were those giants?
They were complexes about not being loved
Being feared, being a bad person.

Now it’s time for the silent,
Whisper of the oboe
To silently steal the show
As peace floods my bones.
I call on You LORD,
All day long;
This talent I love.
Give me my wife and children
And my talent.
I have invested it?
Haven’t I?
I’ve given the world
Hope, in an age where it is small.

LORD, here is my honest opinion.
It’s time for the mythology to end.
The fields of giants
In my life, that being the torpid
Regrets of my past mistakes
The belief that nobody would love me:
Elisha… I write this.
I feel like I’m in a drawn bath.
Like a wind is brushing against my palm.

This talent I love
For I serve God with it:
I speak wisdom,
I break the clods.
What are the clods?
Deleted words
Learning grammar
Struggling to learn my craft
Obtaining true wisdom;
Perhaps, perhaps, some clods I don’t understand.
For I write on this sheath
Believing in the future.

My friend told me:
“We’ll blow ourselves up.”
LORD, you know this is not true.
If a conspiracy is found against me
Let me never see it.
For who am I?
This writer?
Not Judas Son of James
Not Beowulf the Less
Not the Prince of Scots;
What am I?
I am a writer
Who loves my craft.
And thank you,
Pages of this Sheath,
For being my psychologist.
For accepting me,
When nobody else would.
Here, I feel open and at home.
I feel like I have a voice
And even if only a few listen to it
It’s there for someone to see;
And if someone sees it
They see me.
Alabaster Straw

Slowly moving to the tempest rhythms
Is the time signature of Alabaster Straw
The rooted worth of the wrings
Of torpid bells upon the shining cavalcade.
There, cavalcade of alabaster
Trot through your stables of Alabaster Straw
As the tempest knells ring
For the shooting wars of the brigade.

Jeweled sandstone
The Arabian Knights
March through your deserts:
So says the Huns,
Coming back from the war with you.
Huns, Arabians
Meet for the final clash.
The Arabian Knights
Move through alabaster straw
The Cavalcade of one hundred strong.

Ring knell, ring, the repentant soul speaks:
“Alabaster Knight! So comes Attila the Hun;
Ready to war with the Knights of the Desert Alabaster Stone.”
Thus, the Prince of Thieves speaks to me:
“I’m coming for you.”
I do not blush, but reply,
“Here comes the Cavalcade
Your Cavalcade
To fight Attila the Hun;
Yet, the mighty Nethanim march behind me.”

Their war means nothing to the Nethanim
Whose power is high;
Faith brings them power
So crafts cannot prosper against them.
There they are, ten thousand strong
Arrayed in rows:
God’s angels steeped in goodness
Stand aside
As the World,
Attila and the Prince of Thieves
Ready for their war cry.

Slowly moving to the tempest rhythms
There comes the Alabaster steeds
And the Huns in armament against.
Reach for the heavens
Prince of Thieves,
Here’s my army of Angels
Ready to thwart you.
Attila is your equal.
The Nethanim are your fear.
For I am the name you fear:
St. Praise the Wise Praised
Changing Broom Tree Upon a Hill
Diadem of the New Son of Israel.

Fear not my name
Prince of Thieves:
For I have spoken kindness to you.
Thwarting me brings you only pain
I know it: For there are others whose
Interest is in my hurt.
Continue, Prince of Thieves
With thy breeding of thy steeds.
For they are stallions;
I am a Third Order King, of the Sainthood
I abscond my kingdom here on the Earth. Selah.

My Sisyphean Myth Persona

So, what delusion is this
To think I’m actually Judas Son of James?
What delusion is this,
To think there are Kings from Hell?
What delusion is this
To think that Satan has a galaxy ring?
What delusion is this?
It’s just my myth;
Don’t believe it.

Remember, friends
That the mind is a seal of all sorts of dreams.
My dreams come here, and I express them free.
My actual life is not so boring,
But painful to speak.
A divorced family
Constant bullying
Two very tragic sins
Captivity,
And the hope for revival.
Not a spy,
Not a prince
Not Judas Son of James;
A Saint, yes.
Perhaps, friends,
Perhaps, I am God’s servant.
Not Cyrus, not a false prophet
For I don’t prophesy;
I don’t claim to have written scripture.
For, if I prophesy, I do so foolishly.

I say this: I’m a lover, a fighter, a rebel
But also a Saint.
Sainthood comes from owning your past
Bearing your consequences
And hoping God can fix all of it.
Just know, friends, just know:
I’m not so deluded as you think.
It’s just fiction: And fiction
Is in part dreams.
The myth won’t destroy me
Because it is just myth.
There are no kings seeking to destroy me:
For what? They don’t exist.
Understand, citizens of the world:
This myth is simply myth.
A myth of Sisyphus.
For I am not Sisyphus
And there is no boulder.
For, world, are you so deluded
To think that there are kings?

Here is this writer’s persona,
Pushing that boulder up the hill
And it falls back upon him
Over and over again;
For he needs a giant to slay.
I don’t; the constant abuse I’ve suffered from peers and family
Is a giant enough. Where are they?
Do they exist? No.
Don’t get caught in this delusion;
It’s just a world I’ve invented
Where I play as a character.
Not me, but a self-insert;
Heroic, bold, but in real life I’m just
As pathetic as the rest of mankind.
So, who do I put forward?
Me, or this? I’ll be Stan Lee
My Persona Peter Parker
And Judas Son of James my Spider Man.

Little Mead

Upon the halls with Beowulf
There stood Unferth, of course
Beowulf indeed.
There stood Unferth and Beowulf
So here is the story of Little Mead.

There he drank his honey wine
And listened to Beowulf boast
So once our hero was finished
Little Mead called a toast.
But Unferth took to table
And gave his cacophonous cry.
There Beowulf challenged him
With a story for all times.
But Unferth spoke no goodness
And Beowulf was left aghast
Until Little Mead, that scrawny fellow
Took Unferth to task.
“Unferth, thou silly soul
Doth thou not see he?
His muscles are strong
His hair is long
And his sword reaches
To his knees.
For, what warrior are you
Unferth, who ever fought that Grendel?
Me, I know my smallness
For it is to I that Beowulf is lended
So Beowulf will fight the demon
Within this hallowed hall
And that Grendel will be defeated
When Beowulf’s war cry is called.”

Then Unferth, big and mighty
Shodded up his girt
And he began to spake of Little Mead
To his very hurt.
“What has thee, Little Mead
Done so mighty brave?
I see your scrawny form
And your sword easy to break.
What is this? Damascus steel
Nay, t’is only bronze.
Your sword is weak
Your flesh is meek
And I have killed many sons.
Giants and warriors innumerable.”

Beowulf, hearing the fight, took to table with might
And then said to Unferth, these faithful words it’s true:
“Unferth, thou art a silly man, to think thy talk is good
For a giant you slayed? Then Grendel you would have two.
For so you speak so bravely, yet this little man has heart
That he looks to his heroes, and encourages them by far.
For if I could have jumped a furlong, I now could jump twain
And If I could slay a Giant, Grendel’s arm I could now break.

Grendels we all know,
And Unferths are very gay;
Yet Unferth is more intolerable,
For he speaks what no brave man would say.

For a Beowulf is strong, but a Little Meads are stronger.
A Little Mead encourages the mighty
And gives them courage to fight a little longer.

For, Little Mead would die against Grendel this is true.
But, the very fact of the matter is, so very much would you.”

Neifert, B. K. My Collected Writings. Kindle Direct, 2017.

A billion people in the world

I knew nothing about it.

Until I realized it was pretty important.

I see you where we were in the 1920s.

Ready to burgeon, and bring your people food.

Ready to bring your people houses.

Shelter.

A poem I read spoke eagerly about maybe this being the year

That India will have its stand in the market.

A drought I read about, was bad.

Yet, freely you have the press…

You have your free internet.

You have your freedoms to read just about every poem I’ve ever written.

Gladly, I want you to have my style home…

I want you to have rain,

And cornfields, and cotton fields

And peach trees, and vineyards.

I want your poor to be fed.

I want your people to not live in sheds.

I want them to have nice sized homes.

It’s a lie that you can’t… it really is.

There’s plenty of land, and there’s plenty of air

To give you all nice homes.

Communism won’t do it…

Capitalism might.

But… You’ll have to patronize artists.

You’ll have to patronize hard work.

If you want my type of house…

If you want my privileges—

And I’m privileged, along with all of America—

You have to take your freedom of speech

And speak out with every ounce of who you are.

You have to understand, in my society it is not unjust.

But injustice exists.

Your country, injustice exists, much worse than in mine.

But… I want you to eat.

I want you to have vineyards, and shelters.

But you have to speak out.

You have to participate in your government.

You have to, like me, talk your lips off…

You have to make a lot of wrong predictions

Before you can start getting them right…

You have to frustrate entire countries.

I fight for you,

For China,

For Russia,

For America,

For Brazil,

And all of Africa

Asia, Europe…

Because I have a good life.

And I can’t believe that you don’t.

But, if I’m leveled into poverty

After a significant amount of effort and hard work…

What does that say for you?

You may not hate me…

You may actually like me…

But I want all of you to eat

And even be Christian…

Yes, because I know your religion frustrates you…

But you know as well as I do that there is a spiritual truth.

Why not just bow to one God?

Instead of many?

Why not bow down to Christ?

I have a notion to believe

That’s why my society prospered,

And as we run away from that fairness

And equity of hard work ethics

And food is plentiful…

Jesus brings rain.

I’ve prayed for it several dozen times

Silently, so nobody would hear.

Precisely what I pray happened.

I have no explanation for it.

The mantel of my religion

And my society’s success

Rests on you… here it’s slipping away.

Where you are, I can see it happening.

Remember that Israel, our nation

Did a lot of hard work to make a desert green.

But, rains testify one last thing

That for them to come, there must be a blessing.

Here, there will probably be forests that turn to deserts.

The opposite is true. A desert can turn into a forest.

I can testify, that if it’s not the case

Than the rains that I’ve prayed for

Must not have shed upon the emerald grass.

I don’t want to come off pretentious.

I truly just want to bring Christianity

Rain, food…

And I can’t. You can’t.

Only Christ can.

And He will if you accept Him.

That’s a promise.

Why do you hate us?

We bring you joy.

We liven your day.

We build societies.

We break tyrannies.

We give you things to think about.

We better you.

We teach you how to live right.

We teach you how to cry.

We teach you how to feel.

We teach you, we better you, we give to you, we break tyrannies, we build societies.

Why do you hate us?

Simplicity sometimes works.

Sometimes extravagent metaphors.

Me, I like pretty faces

So words have to be beautiful

In the poetry I read.

I’m vain like that.

The same cliche wallpaper

Over and over again…

There it is painted in my living room.

But I like it, so I use it.

It’s funny because every canvas hanging on

My wall a family member did—

Every piece of art on the one wall was made by a family member.

The chess table which appears on my covers

Was made by a PA carpenter.

I’m inundated with art, and artists

And yet none of them were famous.

One is an impressionist sail boat.

One a winter scene.

One a needle point of two children on a swing.

One a photograph my dad took.

My chess table is a masterwork.

Why so many Pennsylvanians

Master their art, and don’t get paid much for it.

My bookshelf was made by my Grandfather.

My afghan quilt—though patterned off of a magazine—

Was hand stitched by my great grandmother. My book shelf

Was hand crafted by my Grandfather.

All expertly done.

My Nanny did a white afghan

Which such expert craft.

My Grandmother made three afghans,

Too, of a much finer quality.

Photographs, I’m surrounded by.

My house is decorated by family…

Either their faces

Or their works of art.

Even some of the music I’ve had

Growing up…

Songs of high quality that my dad had sung,

Great accoustic songs by my brother,

Recipes of family members handed down from generation to generation…

Sometimes out to six.

Even my sports team

Is part of that Family tradition.

Fourth Generation Philedelphia.

Our house is decorated by things we’ve made,

My entire family.

It truly is.

I suppose if I were a good writer,

That would be the cause.

And nobody knows any of us.