Whiner Refiner
"I just can't do it...it seems too hard..."
"Just reshuffle your deck and pull another card!"
"But it's just far and I'm too tired..."
"Maybe it's time for you to be rewired!"
"But this and that. I'm too thin or just fat..."
"Why choose being a whining, self-defeating, brat?"
-
Brenneman T. June 4, 2002
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Our
Peace Grows Without Yearning
Yearning on the other side of understanding,
Brings no quiet to a mind with it's demanding.
Our peace grows towards the light, but oft we avoid it.
We section off our soul, until we've annoyed it.
-
Brenneman T. June 4, 2002
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Fifty-five
Alive
Fifty-five years,
Of coupled cheers.
Fifty with children,
Their smiles and tears.
Forty-five beats per minute,
Our heart's will savor every measure.
Forty ways we're touched each night,
With piano we'll always treasure.
Thirty-five held it's celebration,
With skits and culmination,
At thirty still no grandchild,
To add strength to our foundation.
Twenty-five marked half your lives,
Had already been lived together.
Twenty came after Austria,
Perchtoldsdorf, Kirchmeyer forever!
By fifteen, five children were born,
With cute quirks you would excuse.
Like ten fingers heard on keys,
In a practice room at Syracuse.
Five children you have had,
Who soon add ten more "Sydnor's", wow!
More chance for us all to love you,
And add a wrinkle to your smile.
- Brenneman T. June 4, 2002
In honor of my parent's 55th wedding anniversary June 2, 2002
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Between
Life and Time
Stepping back to quiet,
I see myself and others as only my most serene understanding and stable love
will allow.
From the distance of a moment's calm,
My reactions slow into action, and the depth of my existence is made magically
clear.
Practicing my dance with the light,
I glide, then seem to float across the expanding universe.
Learning the art and rhythm of peace,
I ride the smooth, slick plane of ice,
Frozen above the running river. With all time past beneath me,
And the future bright above,
I create the present,
As I skate the balance between life and time.
- Brenneman T. June 5, 2002
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Motorcycle
Mind
Isn't our thinking more than the gatekeeper,
To either our measure of lunacy or sanity?
Wedged between our struggles and serenity,
Is reason's precise opening; our transportation,
To a way through life by choice.
As all experience gives us new opportunity,
Our thoughts will wield their weight.
As we think, our ideas empower us.
Filling our tanks with the mind's raw fuel,
We rev up and create our peculiar turns and tracks.
- Brenneman T. June 9, 2002
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Love's
Time
I convince myself of many things.
What I want I capture in my dreams;
This house, this yard, this job, this wife,
Then God enters in to save my life.
I've held so tightly to a hope,
And always found a way to cope.
So thankful am I on this new day,
Love's time has taken me another way.
- Brenneman T. June 10, 2002
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Setting
A Head
Calibrate my thinking watch.
Set it up or back a notch.
Until with truth it does agree,
Clear mind on time to better me.
- Brenneman T. June 13, 2002
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Jus' a Littl' Fondlin'Foil
and fingers in your hair,
Gay flamboyance everywhere.
Gossip and work, highlight and wait,
Your fondled hair sure does look great!
-
Brenneman T. June 13, 2002
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Our
Messenger
We usually do what we're most comfortable doing.
If this ultimately hurts us, we place blame elsewhere,
Until the persistent pain of denial persuades us to see and change.
We learn again and again that discomfort is not all that bad.
It is only our messenger. Learning and growing isn't easy.
We find our true hope and path to lasting peace and joy,
Lies in the gentle, but disciplined way of choosing a new life within.
-
Brenneman T. June 14, 2002
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Core Remains
As I tenaciously persist in defining my spirit's core belief,
I carve the doubt out of life, leaving hope above that cavernous relief.
So that the whole of my faith is not so much what I've created,
As it is the image formed by the sum of what I've not eliminated.
-
Brenneman T. June 17, 2002
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Faith
in One Unaware
I am a real person, but may lose touch with reality.
A friend who cares sees my truth and shows me:
I am hurt by my faith in one unaware.
Why walk on quicksand?
Why choose to heed a call of despair?
There is no one to love me there.
But I want to be awakened, yes.
If I fell asleep in worry, and time passes,
Where has my now gone? It is always here.
I'll only find the present in living today.
I'll stay away from empty history,
And know tomorrow is always pictured in a memory-clouded mirror.
- Brenneman T. June 19, 2002
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Crunch
The ants you walk on matter.
Oblivious to the crunch,
You mix your butter in the batter.
- Brenneman T. June 19, 2002
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Dusk
Delivered
Her mind of swirling images,
Consoled within a moments hope;
A ride on sanity's fringes,
No less daring way to cope.
As the baby possum cringes,
Frozen as dead upon the ground,
On all life's fear she hinges,
On all movement and all sound.
With a tiny stick I pet her fur,
Pointed snout, and twitching ears,
Then let nature resurrect in her,
The courage to face her years.
- Brenneman T. June 24, 2002
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June
Trimming
Cutting back the growth of spring,
Tangled green wet vine.
Power clippers buzz and sing,
Gassy sweat and grime.
-
Brenneman T. June 24, 2002
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Midnight
Breeze
The cool June evening breeze feels refreshing after the run.
A spontaneous walk at midnight with my dog and nephew.
The moment already seems a potent memory.
Impressions made in the density of shared darkness.
Shammy looking for stray cat food along the porches,
Reluctantly coming when I insist, licking her chops.
She's old enough and trained enough,
To have earned some freedom. I give it to her.
There are lessons I would like to give my nephew.
Things I'd like for him to conveniently grasp or shrewdly avoid,
But he's old enough and trained enough. The best I can do is be there.
This night I am, as we talk, and walk the street back home.
-
Brenneman T. June 25, 2002
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Rhythmically,
Incessantly, and Without Remorse
No beating heart is silent.
But it pounds against the chest,
Rhythmically, incessantly,
And without remorse,
It pounds against my chest.
No wave is flat,
But it rises to crash upon the sand,
Rhythmically, incessantly,
And without remorse,
It crashes upon my feet.
Life is in motion,
And motion is in all life.
Rhythmically, incessantly,
And without remorse,
It moves in me.
- Brenneman T. June 26, 2002
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Left
On It
It seems so irrational to think of love,
Still quite unimaginable to feel.
As the residue she left on it,
Is worn away, I heal.
- Brenneman T. June 26, 2002
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Senseless
Censor
Your child's knowledge,
Needs no protection,
From your imperfect truth.
Secrets teach shame, just as honesty,
Teaches courage in our very humanity.
Life is not a test, nor theory we must prove,
But an authentic and messy experience.
Hide the way you really live,
And the student will soon do the same.
Your truth that is hidden,
Becomes his lesson in deceit.
- Brenneman T. June 29, 2002
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Silent
Sore
Your silent message I could hear,
As your empty vacuum sucked my ear.
And left me deaf to life and time,
And songs of love in metered rhyme.
Words slept in minds and lost their way.
They passed their chance to soothe our day.
Just as my courtesan a witch became,
And left her castle to bathe in rain.
Wild berry juice flowed like raucous rum,
As her index finger opposed my thumb.
What primordial sound our 'ohm' did make!
It shook the dead in me awake!
Then left in me such thirst for sound;
How loud the silence I have found!
-
Brenneman T. June 30, 2002
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