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Transcript

The Poet's Lament

A lyric poem about people's reaction to my relatively unrestrained personality and the direction that I try to take our conversation to, even if I so often fail.

I wrote this after I started to feel a young person with whom I was having a largely philosophical correspondence back away from me, without rejecting me. Sometimes I think that I challenge people too much. (Or, perhaps I’m more of a nuisance socially speaking than I am willing to admit to being. Probably a bit of both.)

The point of the poem is that I believe that people want inspiration in their lives, but do not want to give too much up for it, or to have to change their lives to live more fully if it means giving up too much of what Alice Walker referred to in her book title “The Temple of My Familiar.” The lyrics of my song are:

I guess I’m too much for everybody
Perhaps it’s always been that way 
I only mean to set the world on fire 
To bring back glory by the things I say
In a brand new situation 
When I meet some people at first 
I can see that behind their thin smiles
They are dying inside of thirst
I always want to quench it 
When living water springs up in me 
My mind taps right into its spirit
And it flows out in my poetry
At first my aim is true 
And so often it hits its mark 
I can see when someone’s lifted 
And I know I’ve lit a spark
But so often they will tire 
And their step will slow or stop 
I can feel them pulling backwards
They want living water but only in small drops
Will no one ever have the courage 
To take flight and stay with me 
It’s our preference for the ordinary
That roots us in our misery
I guess this must be my fate 
It’s a cup that will not pass 
To always feel loneliness 
And with love just sigh, alas
When the spirit springs up inside of me 
For me its always been this way
Living water flows out in poetry 
To set the world on fire by what it has to say
By what it has to say

I think that this is one of my best efforts, because I believe that it expresses a truth recognized and reported by others. When it comes to inspiration, we all want it, but what are we willing to sacrifice to make it last.1



1

As Christ observed:

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Matthew 19:23-26 King James Version (KJV)

I find it interesting that it is only my relatively wealthy “Christian” relatives and friends who are quick to claim that this passage does not actually refer to a sewing needle, but rather a geoological passage. Historical evidence does not support the idea of a gate or passage being called “the eye of the needle” during Jesus’ time, and this interpretation seems to have emerged later as an attempt to soften the stark message of the text.

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