Feste's Lute

It is a supposed truism that familiarity breeds contempt. Most days it certainly seems so. There are so many people you can get on well with, but days of exposure can turn that liking into a dull annoyance. Like a fast food window visited too many times in a weak, it’s strange to feel your stomach turn at, what used to be a welcome sight.

But lately, I find the opposite to be true. I jumped back into a Beatles collection that I haven’t listened to in ages and found my sense of what they were doing much improved. There is so much that is amazing in those familiar tunes, from the musicianship to the writing. Humbling and inspiring at the same time.

A well-known man once said that we must, at once, learn to know both God and ourselves in order to to know either at all. A less well-known man said that to love someone, one must understand them and understand them love them.

So… when things grow stale, is it just because we’ve stopped trying to love and understand? Possibly. I don’t believe that anyone is really uninteresting. But one must get past the awkward things to see it.

Finally, I’m trying to write more. I’ve been posting poems with the goal of writing regularly and showing them with no care of how good or bad they are…. I need to write to improve. So here’s another. It’s away from my recent mode, probably temporarily. I still feel like there are things I wish to explore in that vein.

The saddest man who never wept
showed us how to pity.
So deep in righteous self-love
it sputtered from his mouth
and singed us all.

So certain in his raging fits,
a jihad ill-defined.
He only hates the ones with heads
that won’t hear sound advice.
“They’re dead to me.”

“None have ever faced me,
or in their minds defied.”
They did him great disservice
not blackening his eyes
to teach him fear.

Ridiculous in retrospect,
his belly, soft, exposed.
He laid down to his hatred
and, supplicant, allowed
the fatal tear…

I’m not sure if there’s enough ending or beginning on that one. Oh well.

P.S. – The Spicy Chicken Deluxe at McDonalds sucks. The Taco Supremo salad at Wendy’s however, in spite of its horrible name, is amazing. :p