Forget It All

Not a whole lot to explain here.  It pretty much says it all.
-Mortimer

Let it all out
Just let it go
Let it all out
Just let me know

What went wrong,
Then we can forget it
You keep it so long,
It hides like a hermit

Deep inside, dreams and fear
Make it hard to remember
That I'm always here,
January to December
To take all your nightmares
And make them disappear
To take all of your cares
While I stay near

Forget the haters
Forget the losers
Remember them later,
But for now, forget it all

Give Me a Moment

This poem was inspired by the events of my life this summer.  This message is what I've been trying to come up with since then, and I finally have it.  I hope you enjoy it, because I didn't.  Every minute I spent writing this was filled with bittersweet pain -- not so much because I wrote this in a time of sorrow, but more because of all of the memories it brought back.  Anyway, here's "Give Me a Moment," the latest poem from Mortimer's Murmurs.
-Jacob

Give me a moment,
I'm not sure what to say
Give me a moment
To tell you it's okay

Give me a second,
One more is all I ask
Give me a second,
I haven't finished my task

Give me a minute,
It's not time to part
Give me a minute,
Before we break our hearts

Give me an instant,
The length of a sigh
Give me an instant
To remember tonight

Give me tomorrow,
I'll make you happy
Give me tomorrow,
It's worth it, you'll see

Give me forever,
I won't let you down
Give me forever,
Like you've given me now

A Blind-Found Solution

                This summer, I went through a very difficult time, and I was blessed to have a very close friend that was willing to help me through it.  But it wasn’t a one-way street.  My friend was also going through a difficult time, and after spending a lot of time hurting on our own, we escaped our painful situations together.  New situations have come up for each of us, but we still help each other through whatever is happening, and always will.  I call this “A Blind-Found Solution” because neither of us knew about those first problems we had until they were too painful for us to keep to ourselves.

A Blind-Found Solution

Close eyes
Open arms
Open to harms
Torn by lies
 

Close eyes
Open hands
Give up plans
Hope dies

Close eyes
Darkness becomes
Feeling to numb
A soul cries

Close eyes
Open hearts
Falling apart
Our soul flies

Away

The Martyr's Cry- Opinion and Poem for American Martyrs

     What is a martyr?  When my friend's mom recently lost her job because of her faith, I was forced to ask myself this question.  According to Dictionary.com, a martyr is "a person who is put to death or undergoes extreme suffering on behalf of any belief, cause, or principle."  As I read this, I was forced to ask myself another question- what would I be willing to lose for what I believe?  I like to think that I could give up everything for what I believe, but honestly, I don't know how much I could lose before I would give up. 

     Recently, in Arizona, a group of people were arrested for holding church services in the homes of some of those people.  When we think of martyrs, too often we think of people who were killed long ago by Romans or burned at the stake in the Middle Ages.  But few of us think about kids that are bullied at school and lose their friends for their beliefs.  Few of us think about pygmies in Africa that are eaten alive for their beliefs by rebel militias.  Few of us think about people who lose their jobs or lose business because they aren't afraid to share what they believe.  Before you read any farther, say a prayer for Cheryl, the woman that lost her job.  Pray that she'll be able to find a new job and stay strong in her faith, and that her former employer will realize their mistake.

     This is what I think I would say, were I in a situation where I became a modern martyr.  More than that, it's the attitude I've seen in people that face difficult circumstances for their faith or beliefs.

     Do you have anything that you feel passionately about?  What is it, and how far would you go to protect it, or what would you be willing to lose for it?  Let us know in the comments section.


-Mortimer

The Martyr's Cry

Say what you will
Do what you must
If it gives you a thrill,
Betray my trust

Open your eyes
Pride, your disguise
Fills you with lies
Please realize

Your greatest mistake,

Your biggest problem

But when you wake,

Your heart is hardened

Oh, Lord, don't forsake me
Lord, I beg you, stay close
Oh, Lord, help me see

The good through all the reproach

My cry rises

My heart sinks

The enemy realizes

The enemy thinks

How can I stand alone?
How can my family see me low?

How can I push through an still carry on,

When all that I worked for is dead and gone?

Lord, help me face the time ahead

Moments or years, I know not when

And though it leave me dead,

Help me stay true to the end.

Don't Run Away

Here's one of the ones Mortimer and I came up with over the summer.  Hope you enjoy it!
-Jacob

Don't Run Away

Don't run away

I'm here to stay

Listen to me say
It will be okay

When it feels like you've lost your strength

When you don't think you can make it through

When you fight to keep your faith

Don't run away, I'm down here, too

Don't go hide

Don't fear pride,
The watching eyes

And screaming lies

When it feels like you've lost your drive

When you think you can't trust the truth

Know that you can thrive
Don't go hide, I'm down here, too

Whatever you do,

Wherever you go

Whatever they tell you,

Don't run away, I'm here with you

Monsoon: A Lesson Learned

 This summer was definitely very different than any I've had before.  Long days of school early in the summer and aggressive physical training towards the end meant that I usually had something to do.  I wouldn't say that this was a good summer, though.  I trained, but I didn't reach my goals.  I had a lot of tough moments over the summer that were eventually offset by good things later on.  But if there's one thing I can say about this summer, it's that it taught me a lot of lessons.  This poem is about one of those lessons.  I hope you enjoy it, but more importantly, I hope that it makes you think.  About what, I'm not sure, but I'm sure you'll think  of something  as you read, and maybe this will make you pay attention to something you've been overlooking.  Anyway, here it is: Monsoon.

-Mortimer

Monsoon

Storms roll
And bells toll
To remind me of what I’ve been told

Thunder's crash
And times pass
But my choices haunt from the past

Lightning’s streak
And lions seek
To destroy us, lowly and meek

Clouds rain
And seasons change
But don’t remove all of the pain

Mud sticks
Makes me sick
I can’t quite avoid the painful prick

Skies vent
What I meant
Was not the direction they’re bent

In shallow seas
Do as you please
But I’ll not respond to your pleas

Ships thrash
And rocks dash
I’ll be gone when you burn to ash

When storms roll
And the bells toll
They remind me they watched it unfold

Finally Back From Vacation

Hello all,
Our summer vacation ended up lasting a bit longer than I had intended, as you may have noticed from the lack of new stuff on the blog.  The extra-long vacations has given Mortimer and I a long time to think, grow and work on some new material that we will be releasing over the next few weeks.  A lot of it still needs polishing up, but we believe we've come up with some of our best ideas during our break.  We've also added a new page to the blog.  Every week we will be adding a new quote to our quote book.  Most of these will be inspirational or meant to make you laugh your head off, and we hope you'll enjoy this new feature.  I'm currently working on finishing one of this summer's poems, and it should be uploaded to the blog within the next few days.
Thanks for reading,
Jacob

The Science of Us- Sonnet

 Ok, so Mortimer and I like sonnets.  Mortimer likes to use them for all of his gloomy stuff, but I like to remind people that they are useful, no matter what emotions you want to express.  This, like most of my poems, is for the girl that inspires me in nearly everything I do.  People who know her might get some of hidden messages in this.  If you're not one of those lucky people, I hope you can just enjoy the poem with its seemingly generic theme and message.  I used seemingly random mathematical variables in the first part of the sonnet, so really this could be interpreted for anyone.  Then, in the second part, where the theme changes, I made use of my favorite scientific tool.  Bunsen burners are cool, but I pick lasers over them.

Anyway, here's my sonnet.

Thanks for your time,

Jacob

The Science of Us

A plus B
Equals happiness in me
J plus J
Equals heartache and pain
mE divided by U
Has left me fresh and new
mE minus U?
What would I do?

A laser is just light
But it cuts through the night
Cuts things apart
Light has power
One ray is all that separates our hearts
And keeps me fighting every hour

Oh Weary Traveler- A Story in Limerick

Life, as we know, is a journey.  We go through our precious few days trying to find happiness.  Some of us find it temporarily in people, money or things.  Others find it in God.  Whatever you try to find happiness in, though, there will always be difficult times in your life.  Times that you don't know if you can make it through.  Times that make you wish you had never been born.  This is a story about one of those times.

The idea for this actually came to me while reflecting on a particularly difficult time in my life.  Oddly enough, what came to mind during this reflection was the popular nursery rhyme "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," and this is the first poem in a collection I am currently working on that is based on the nursery rhyme.  The third stanza of the nursery rhyme mentions a traveler who has lost his way.  My story talks about me as the traveler trying to find his way again.

My choice in using limericks to tell the story has something of a double meaning.  During the 1800's, limericks were the most popular form of political attack add.  They were used to constantly make fun of people running for political office.  In a similar way, this mocking comes over in the story, to reflect how often people belittle our problems.  The other reason I chose limericks is because of their rhyme scheme- AABBA.  In non-poet lingo, the first, second and fifth lines of each limerick rhyme, while the third and fourth lines rhyme with each other.  Basically, this brings the end back to the beginning, and helps keep a focus on a central issue.  It reflects how hard it is for people to learn from and move on from their mistakes.

And so, I give you Oh Weary Traveler.
May you be spellbound,
Mortimer Micheals

Welcome back, oh weary traveler
You may find rest, but oh, not here
To find your heart
Tear yourself apart
And find what you know really mattered

Welcome now, oh weary traveler
For once, ignore the quarreler
Continue your quest
Fight it your best
And don’t let yourself be flattered

Well, come here, oh weary traveler
You made yourself a jeweler
To set your stone,
But wound up alone
And find your heart now, tattered

Well, come away, oh weary traveler,
Find yourself away from her
Discover the truth
Soon see the proof
That maybe your dreams aren’t shattered

Welcome home, oh weary traveler
Now you may finally rest here
To finish your days
Be happy through haze
Though you find yourself broken and battered

A Wonderful World?- Personal Essay from Mortimer

                As I took my reflection time this morning, I realized that all I was thinking about were the negative things that had happened in the past several weeks.  I was betrayed by a person that I trusted, only to turn around and watch the evening news and see a story about a homeless man getting his face chewed off.  When I finished watching that, I got to work on a school assignment about children in Africa dying from disease and malnutrition.  But I wasn’t done with school for that day, so I got to work on my next assignment, which happened to be about American workers losing their jobs to outsourcing.

                But the bad news didn’t stop there.  One of my closest friends moved across the state, while another of my friends got angry at me for something that wasn’t my fault.  One of my friends hurt someone who serves as an inspiration for much of my poetry, and I don’t know how I can respect one of them and work with him after that happened.  My reputation is being attacked by people who don’t even know me, and my own friends won’t even listen to me when I tell them the truth.

                I continued pondering the depressing events of my life and my thoughts came to rest on last night’s newscast.  On it, I saw that two men that I had once seen commit a crime had been arrested for a violent murder in a city of only about 50,000 people.  I wondered if, had I reported them, I could have spared an innocent person’s life.

                Ironically, while I was pondering these and other unfortunate and depressing events in my recent life, I thought of the Louis Armstrong song, What a Wonderful World.  The writers of the song, Bob Thiele and George Weiss, paint a decidedly optimistic picture of the world, and point out everything good that they can find in the world around them.

                One stanza of the song particularly stuck out to me- “I hear babies cry and I watch them grow.  They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.  And I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world’.”  This pulled my mind completely from my own problems and reminded me of the sibling I will be gaining this winter.  

                What will this unborn child’s life be like?  A thought occurred to me the moment I asked myself this question- that’s the wonderful part of it all.  If you break down the word wonderful, it doesn’t mean great, good or even decent.  It means “full of wonder.”  Full of mystery.  And with that realization, I saw the most beautiful thing about life.  To quote Forrest Gump’s mama, “You never know what you’re gonna get.”

                Maybe your life stinks right now.  Maybe it’s so bad that you think you can’t make it through whatever you’re dealing with.  The thing of it is, though, that you have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow.  Maybe it will only take one more day before things get better for you.  And maybe, just maybe, tomorrow you will wake up and realize how many people you have that care about you.  People that will hug you when you least expect it, be there when you need them and pick you up when you fall.  Don’t take those people for granted- they really care about you, and get hurt when you do.  Trust me on that one.

May you be spellbound,

Mortimer Micheals

Father's Day- Jacob's Opinion

It's Father's Day, as I hope you've noticed.  If you're like me, you might sometimes wonder why we have a Father's Day.  Having put a great deal of thought into this, I've put together some thoughts on dads, and what's we find so nifty about them.

Fathers are by no means perfect.  To the average toddler, they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, and the first hero in the life of most boys, if not most children.  As we grow, however, we start to see their faults.  We begin to see them more as human than god-like, with flaws that go along with their wisdom.

But that's just the thing.  While they may not be perfect, and while they make mistakes, they have wisdom and experience to help us grow and give guidance when it is needed.  And, whether we like it or not, we need guidance.  Regardless of our age, there will always be something we haven't experienced- something we will need advice or guidance on.  You could blunder through it, and learn from your own mistakes, but where is the intelligence in that?  No business, given a choice, would do that, because they would risk destroying themselves.  Rather than blunder through your own mistakes, learn from the experiences of other people.  Fathers offer years of experience and wisdom that can save us from doing things that we will regret for the rest of your life.

My dad is like any other good father.  He's not perfect, but he always does what he can to help me through whatever I'm going through.  We have our disagreements, but I can respect his side because he respects mine, and whether I agree with him or not, what he says always helps me get through whatever I'm dealing with.  No matter what, I'm thankful for my dad.  Are you?

Greed: A Sonnet

The sonnet is the one of the oldest and most challenging poetic styles in the English language.  It uses pairs of rhyming lines (couplets) and groups of four lines that may or may not all rhyme (quatrains).  This is an irregular sonnet, as it only has 12 lines.  Normally, sonnets have 14 lines.  One of the key components of a sonnet is that it changes tone, and can even change its focus, somewhere around line 8 or 10.

Now, about the message of the poem.  While the body of the poem never actually tells you what the subject is, it does allude to it.  It references Shakespeare, one of the greatest sonnet writers, by mentioning "the green eyed monster."  Anyone who knows much about Shakespeare instantly recognizes this as Jealousy.  What is the mother of Jealousy?  Greed.

Greed is the source of most of our problems as a society.  Why do we hurt people?  Because we think it will benefit us somehow.  Why to we lie, cheat, and steal?  Because we want something.  The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil.  Note that it does not say that money is, but the love of money- greed.

The problem is, we really have plenty to be grateful for.  If you are reading this, you probably have a home, and you probably own a computer and/or smartphone.  If you can afford items like that, it means that you have the means to support yourself, or that you have someone with enough money to take care of you.  Even if you're reading this on someone else's phone or computer, in a library, school or friend's house, you likely have friends that care about you enough to help you out.  And even if you have no money, no home, no possessions and no friends, you are still alive.  You might be in need of some things, but if you need something, then there is no ignoring the fact that you cannot keep living without it.  Just remember not to get greedy once you have what you need, or it will destroy you.

And with that, I give you Greed, A Moral Poem.  Drop me a comment and let me know what you think about the poem, or about my thoughts on greed.
May you be spellbound,
Mortimer

Greed

Diabolical, you strip it away,
Trying to prevent me from having
A new day, and in a way
You spend all your time worshiping
Yourself, not caring about the lives you destroy
You’re worse than your child, the green eyed monster
Sucking us all in with your dangerous ploy
Getting us all to turn on each other

Were it not for you,
Nothing would be made new-
Through your evil, you may add happiness to life,
Though you destroy many through anger and strife.

It Shouldn't Be This Way

I know some of our fans also like Doctor Who.  I'm a huge sci-fi fan, and one of my favorite things to do is wonder about what could have happened.  After watching Doctor Who, Series 4, I wondered what would have happened in the Turn Right Alternative- what if Donna Noble hadn't gone with Rose to find the time machine?  With no one to ensure the safety of the universe, what would have happened, from her perspective?  And so, with those questions in mind, I wrote this flash fanfiction, It Shouldn't Be This Way.  If you watch Doctor Who, this should make sense to you.  If not, hopefully you will still find the mystery and allure intriguing, at the very least.

May you be spellbound,
Mortimer Micheals

It Shouldn’t Be This Way

                The stars are going out.  Slowly, but surely, they are just going away.  No one is sure why.  But when you look up at night, you’ll start to notice.  But no one knows what’s going on.  First the bees disappearing, and now this- the stars are going out.  Something is wrong, though.  You know it shouldn’t be this way.

                “There’s something on your back!”  Why do people keep saying that?  Why don’t you go near mirrors anymore?  You don’t know.  All you know is that something is wrong: It shouldn’t be this way.  The disasters, the royal family dead, America turning to blobs of fat, half of Britain killed in a split second, the concentration camps, the poison sky- it shouldn’t be this way, and you know it.

                She’s blonde; fairly good looking, and strangely familiar.  She told you to leave London just before the ship crashed and leveled the city.  How did she know?  What else does she know that no one else does?  She tells you that this is all wrong.  That there is someone- a doctor of some sort who wasn’t supposed to die, but did; he was supposed to stop all of this, but something went wrong.  Something about a time machine.  You’ve lost everything, and now this crazy woman wants you to give up the rest, and follow her for reasons she can’t explain?  No way.  You stay home.

                The stars are going out.  The darkness is coming, and still they don’t know why.  Nearer and nearer it gets.  And just like that, the sky is dark.  The Medusa Cascade, scientists tell you.  That’s where earth is now.  But how?  The aliens come down and start killing people.  Little robots with little squids inside.  You’ve never seen them, but they are strangely familiar.

                An announcement is made.  Hold your families tight, for the earth shall be destroyed.  The aliens need Earth, a moon and 25 other planets.  Earth must be destroyed to stop them.  And just like that, Osterhagen- Earth’s gone.  But you were Donna Noble.  You knew something was wrong, that it shouldn’t be this way.  But you didn’t try to stop it, even though for one shining moment, you were the most important person in the universe.  No, it shouldn’t be this way.  But it is.