If I throw caution to the winds, will you be willing to read my first poem, written at age 18? ?

Question

Well folks, this is me 35 years ago, and what a blast from the past it is! This is my first ever poem, written in about 45 minutes and for some reason saved for some 35 years:

It's in those quiet, solitary moments

We find ourselves the center of life's wheel

While all about us swirls the cosmic maelstrom

And persevering loses its appeal

We ask ourselves the deep and gnawing questions

Give reign to all our ontologic dread

How do we forge a path through all the churning tohu-bohu

And what's the point when all is done and said?

Then in the lives of others we find wisdom,

Though questions just as troubling as our own,

Quixotically hope phoenix-like has risen

We're with others, but all utterly alone --

Now each must choose his footway in life's vortex

Or risk oblivion in an ill-timed pause

Make no mistake friend motion is the secret

In this mad game with vague, inconstant laws.

So Mithridates, king of ancient Pontus,

Of poisoning at court long lived in fear

He was a man of action and a realist

Albeit one who held his life too dear

And so each day he swallowed bits of poison,

A dragons water meant to spare his life,

And by long life all of his days was tortured

Until his slave did cut him free with knife.

And so still today most men do choose

To steel themselves 'gainst poisons of this world

By sipping daily of life's bitter draught,

It's wormwood wherein Eden's serpent curled.

They grasp on desperately to this life,

And fear what 'waits them on the other side,

So deadened are they with their chosen poisons

It's this realm they are unfit to abide

For in it they can find no real pleasure,

Not sigh or cry a moment in release;

The thing they've grown to hate too much by guarding

Can have for them no everlasting peace.

Siddhartha also knew the world's sorrows,

It's passing sights caused him to contemplate

What binds souls to existence's dread wheel

And in desire's burning he found Fate.

Our passionate attachment to this life

Has yoked us to this slowly turning wheel,

The terror-joy of every human's momentary visit

Is the question what, if anything, to feel.

So prophesied awakening at Benares

Was followed by six years of grass and seeds

And thus the journey's end was abnegation,

Denial of life's daily proclaimed needs;

But what if life is not, as he thought, evil

But just innately filled with pain instead --

If only we'd embrace it, love it, drink it,

And savor it before our hearts are dead.

And Enoch Arden, how did you go on

Denying yourself what you held most dear,

Sailing aboard the merchantman "Good Fortune"

Now shipwrecked on an island for ten years?

When you returned and found beloved Annie

Embraced in the arms of Philip Ray,

How could you stand to live your life without her

Forever, or even for a day.

You knew what you'd been rescued for, I'm sure --

To trod the meeting of the two great ways --

To savor poisons suddenly made sweet,

In self-denial find self in this dark maze.

So friend, while we are living in this world

Whose cosmic maelstrom never shall be past,

Fear not to sail if you can on good fortune,

Lash yourself steadfastly to the mast,

For one day you'll be rescued and return,

Rejoicing in all you can give away,

Alive, at peace, and living on this earth --

You'll find your way, so shall we all one day...

Had I known then how much I already understood, and how much grief it would cause me, I might not have found the will to go on. Well, it's time to go make a living, so I'll let you poets do what you do best.

Answer 1

Ah, 18 again and in love with a new-found vocabulary. Here's mine. I was a late bloomer. I wrote this when I was 23.

*****

God gave hands

to the fisherman

To cast nets

‘or blue water

To bring forth

the bounty

That his arms

left within

God gave eyes

to the wanderer

To tell beauty

from darkness

To seek out

the garden

only his eyes

comprehend

God gave heart

to the poet

So verses

would flow

And tell of

the glory

In his heart

In his soul

And God gave us

each other

So we’d

stand together

Knowing

the future

By his will

Unfolds

*****

Answer 2

Bloody good for 18, son, or indeed for any age. A lot better than some of the pants on here that passes for poetry.

Bags me be Batman. You can be Bruce Wayne. Deal?

(Happy ending after all, eh?)

Answer 3

I've been studying this since it was posted, in between work periods.  I am most familiar with the teachings of the Buddha. and had I been at 18 my life might be much different.  Some words forced me to a dictionary and for this I am grateful.  Now I will be studying Mithridates...and rereading after at least 30 years, Tennyson.  Thanks for a glimpse at your 18 year old emotion, as well.  

Answer 4

Hey, you read MINE!!!  Let me digest yours a little more before further comment, but I think this has been fun, this blast from the past, don't you???

ma

Answer 5

When the muse calls, words flow and often flow rapidly.  Yours is an indication of that.  Enjoyed the transitions, especially Siddhartha, since Hesse consumed a lot of my attention back then.  You need to write more if you are not already.  This at that age, very impressive.  

Answer 6

I have come to the conclusion that you are the sort of person who would say "A man's got to do what a man's got to do" and you do it. I think that you have an active mind which sends messages to your fingers at such a pace that they are unable to keep up with that which must be written. I think that I would be right in saying that you have always been like that, for your mind is unable to restrain that which does not wish to be restrained.

I will not comment on your early poem for I think that sufficient has been said for me to try to better the praise you have already received. That you are my friend is the best that I can do.

Answer 7

Dear pete,

wow, that was wonderful! written in 45 minute! That was great.

But I didn't quite get your message or theme. Please forgive me.

Lulle

Answer 8

I stopped reading half way through, maybe I am attention deficit or something but I found it pompous and boring.

Answer 9

I8 uh, what school did you go to? I'm pretty sure my school library didn't even have those books.

I get the feeling your not looking for a critique, so I'll just make a comment.

That was very Thoreau. Here's what I got out of it (in layman's terms)

first stanza: Don Quixote = Dreaming for the unobtainable.

2nd stanza: Mithridates = a life of battling to reach those dreams - get there only to be miserable - have somebody kill you because you can't drink poison because you've spent your life drinking it in fear somebody was going to poison you. (Severe case of irony)

3rd  stanza: Siddhartha = trying for nothing in hopes that that's the answer.

4th  Stanza: Enoch Arden = Being happy only to end up miserable in the end.

(Poor old Enoch at least got to experience SOME good times.)

So what your saying is to experience anything pleasurable we must experience pain -- yin and yang. Got it. With out ugly people we would not know beauty.

I gotta ask: in thirty five years, why have you not revised that thing yet.

I'm just jokin'. Thanks for making me spend my morning in the encyclopedia; I've never heard of Mithridates or read Tennyson's Enoch Arden. I think I will look that up--I love 19th century writing.

Thanks for sharing.

(Funny thing about Siddhartha: I've tried to read that book three different times over the last twenty five years, and for some reason I've never finished it--don't have to now)

Answer 10

I like it! ALOT! Your choice of words is really nice...Good job!

Answer 11

At age 18, my thoughts were similar, but I expressed them in prose in essay form. When I was about 20, an employer let me see references from my university professors. One of them read, "she seeks answers to unanswerable questions." I am still accused of doing that. However, I no longer lash myself to the mast. I have "paid my dues,"   found my way some time ago, after falling into life's sea more than once. Despite the turbulence, I have never  drowned.