awaking to a dream...

I dreamt about a cellar door cracked open and a dim light shining into a dark hallway. I opened the door and I walked down the stairs. Old bare wood stairs, I could feel the grain with my bare feet. I was wearing old jeans and a white t-shirt and I was young. I realized it then as I walked. I realized also that the light drawing me at the bottom was flickering. A candle was burning in the cellar and it's shadows were many and motioned me forward.
I reached the bottom and there, among the cans of paint and nails, the old radio and typewriter, various tools, there sat a small table. The candle was in a dish on that table and my grandfather, whom I hadn't seen in many years, sat in a chair next to it. Rocking back and forth, he wore slippers and a gray robe imported from some asian country. He was eating grapes and offered me one. I took it and put it in my mouth, feeling it's smooth round shape before splitting it in half with my teeth, lengthwise. I savored the soft meat and sweet juice.
Then I smiled at him and he smiled back. "What are you doing here grandpa?" I asked, 'it's cold."
"I was waiting for you," he answered and I realized that I hadn't thought about him for a long time. I looked at his hair, thin and gray and parted at the side. His shoulders, broad and uneven. He seemed thicker than I remembered him being. Maybe younger perhaps as well, but death does that to people.
"You've been waiting a long time haven't you," I said. He nodded, smiling. I said, "I'm sorry."
"It's alright," he said. I stood there in the cellar looking at him and felt sad. All the things he didn't see and wouldn't see. I wanted to thank him for everything he said to me and every wet kiss he gave me and the trains and breakfasts. I wanted to tell him that he was the reason for my passions in many ways and that I wanted nothing more than to read every word he ever wrote. I wanted to tell him how many lives I realized he touched and how I wanted to touch people that way. I looked at him and he looked at me and then he spoke: "I am proud of you Pieter. You wondered once to yourself if I would be proud of who you have become, and I am. I wanted to tell you that."
And then he was gone. I stood in the dark cellar by myself and I heard what sounded like raindrops. I looked out the small windows near the ceiling and realized that the world outside was on fire.

What if...

"I hear the divine"
August 2004

I hear the divine.
His raspy cough.
Emphysema, leukemia, and who knows what else.
I touch the divine.
His wrinkles and stretched skin.
Oily hair.
I see the divine.
The stains on the knees of his trousers.
The big toe poking out his torn sneakers.
The lice infested hair.
I smell the divine.
Piss and wine and rotting teeth.
The perfume of countless dumpsters.
I taste the divine.
The warm saliva that seeps out the glands in my mouth.
I breathe deeply off to the side.
I swallow the lump in my throat.
Not the threat of tears but the threat of vomit.

"Life Passes"

"Life Passes"
September 2004

If you turn your head fast enough
the passing cars seem to
hold still for a moment
in suspended movement.
A boy discovers this and plays games;
traces the outlines of passing hills
with his fingertip,
left eye closed.
The world is outlines and images.
Shapes.
Movements frozen between periods
of thoughtless involvement in things not understood.
Not needing to be.
His father drives;
watches the lane dividers,
road signs, brake lights.
Life passes one mile marker at a time
and he wonders into the rearview mirror
when life stopped carrying him,
as he watches his son
squint out the window,
his finger slowly rising and falling.

Train rides....

"Trains and Memories"
March 2004

Long train rides through new countries
with rivers and fields and gothic cathedrals
I fall asleep to the low metallic rumble
and awake to a sharp hiss as we
go through a tunnel and I look up
smiling silenty at the girl I think
I now love this red haired girl
with those sharp blue beautiful eyes and
that smooth and sensitive soft white skin I
think I'm still so childish but with her
I'm so much more and feel so much
more like I'm changing but I don't know
how completely but it's good and it's permanent
her friend and mind be default is still sleeping
so we're alone in this crowded train just
staring at eachother smiling until she looks away
and I knew when I loved her
in Ireland in that Irish rain
that I thought should be green
but wasn't as I smoked alone
on a bench while she slept inside and
I wonder what will happen when we get back
and we've had this great new experience
together as I talk and try to remember
this trip with other friends a month later
in a crowded room later with pictures
and laughs and drinks and stories
and I find her and she smiles at me
trying but all I remember is that
Irish rain and how her red hair
looked wet and felt beautiful as I
brushed it back to see once again
those sharp blue eyes
and we smile at eachother
alone in this crowded train.

-Pieter

....interesting how things change so much in a year....but i guess poetry is sometimes a record of a life, the good and the bad...and that makes it beautiful.

Another poem...

My favorite season...

"She is Autumn"
August 2004

In the last days of Autumn
my heart would swell
with a song, a shape
a laugh or a dance.
In the leaves like rain
the rain like leaves
in the sky I viewed
so happily gray.
Gray with the rain that washed
away so happily the world's dirt,
the world's sweat,
the world's hurt...
About what's to come,
what's been done
and I laughed.
I sat.
I walked in the rain.
Through the woods
the gardens, the roads,
because they were beautiful
and she was and she is.
Autumn...
her kiss is the flutter of leaves.
Autumn and her sharp
crisp change.
With her coming sister
she begins the end
of a year, an age,
a life and it's song.

Not sure about this one anymore....too cheezy?

You were lost, or I was...

Where have you been child? While I have been here, in this filthy city. I looked for you but could not find you. I walked and prayed for your return. I crossed an entire country because I thought that maybe I had left you behind somewhere far away. Maybe on some previous journey. Or maybe I felt that if I left my worries you would find me, and we could move on together. I didn't know what drove you away or if I even needed you still. Maybe this was just a part of life's process, but it all happened so suddenly and expectedly. I had no choice but to look.
I realized later that I didn't drive you off. Leaving wasn't even a choice you made. You just didn't recognize me anymore and became lost yourself. I wept once, picturing you wandering these dirty dark streets alone. Looking for me. Maybe you would even follow me at times, thinking I resembled that man that you wanted to be. The man who once guarded and grew your hopes and dreams. After a while I lost you completely though, and you lost me.
But someone watched over you while I was away and we were separated and I am grateful for that. And when I was at my worst. When I had been wounded the deepest and realized that you were what I was missing, we were reunited and I finally realized who you were and why I needed you. You were wounded too I think because you are quieter and somehow sad in your own way. But you're my anchor in this stirred sea. My compass in this wilderness and I know that I can do nothing good without you and that the closer I am to being you, the better we both are. We can become who we were meant to be. Who we both dreamed of being.

Night thoughts...

If I sit here long enough will I feel the earth spin, shifting under my body? Will I feel the branches of the trees outside my window blowing in this night's Autumn breeze? Will I understand that the breeze, smooth against my cheek, is the flutter of some faraway bird or a butterfly's wings? The breath of a crying baby or the sigh of it's mother perhaps. Will I hear a child's vespers, whispered into the twinkling evening?
How far have these words traveled, to be heard or felt by me? Alone in this room. Alone with the shadows that seem to me to be the shadows of all lights. Representations, somehow, of everything bright. If I listen hard enough, will I hear you? Will I find your voice, your sound, among the sounds in the night's wind? The night's traffic and trains that i try my best to ignore?
Maybe your sound is there too though. Carried by those trains. I listen for it every night because I feel that it will help me find you sooner. I feel that maybe if I could hear for a moment the sound of your voice or your laugh, your own prayer for me, I would know better where to look. Where to find you among this broken rubble of the world we share. The world that is now still spinning, carrying me on my knees through space or time. Spinning in the hand of God I guess.
I used to look rather than listen in these nights. Look at the lights spread outside a different window. I would guess at which one was your light. Imagine that it shone brighter than the rest. Like some beacon and, if I stepped barefoot into the night, I could walk to it and find you. Under the night sky where we could stand for a while, spinning together.
I started this evening thinking about the night and, like most of my nights, it turned into yet another searching. I feel another poet's reverence for the night. I guess because my life mostly takes place there. Where I can think and live freely. May my reflections and longings lead me home and to you some day.

"A devouring"

Here is a poem I have been working on. I would appreciate feedback from anyone who reads it. Posting it here is a lot easier than emailing to various friends and family members.

"A Devouring"
October 2004

1.
Is there a word
in this language we share
that I could speak and express in full
my desire for you?
'Inhale' comes to mind.
For the way I want to inhale
each and every one of your exhales
simply because
there is a part of you
in each of them.
'Drink,' perhaps,
for the way I want to drink
every idea or passion of yours.
Every single thought
about life or love
or eternity.

2.
I could spend and entire day
drawing you.
Every curve and pore and hair,
and my charcoal lines
would give shape to your thighs,
your shoulders, your collarbone.
I would trace your lips to your hips
with my pencil
or my fingertips.
And if I finished the portrait
I would set it on fire
and watch your entire body,
from your toes
to the hair framing your face,
turn to ash and dust.
And I would smile because
the picture,
no matter how beautiful,
would always exist
more perfectly in my mind.

3.
There was that time
on the pier one evening,
when I almost touched your hair.
Orange light stretched our shadows,
soaked into our skin,
and I imagined
that this was how i wanted you.
Soaking into my skin.
Seeping into my pores.
I wanted every word
that poured from your throat
like crisp liquid,
and the ponderings behind them,
to pour into mine.
Into me.
Become mine and become me.

4.
My history with you
has been a history of hunger.
A desire to consume
but not destroy.
A sort of merging
or intersecting maybe.
The way I would breathe you,
The way I would paint you,
Or swallow or swim
in you or with you,
is a type of devouring.
And love, I guess,
is a devouring.

-Pieter Lars

Hearts and Hands?

I have this image burned in my mind of this person, barely distinguishable as a woman, sitting on an empty doorstep in Berlin. She had bandages and cloths wrapped around her feet and her shins were bare. The skin covered in sores and blisters. Peeling and cracked. I thought for a moment as I stared that perhaps this was what leprosy looks like. She looked at me and said something (or wailed it really) in Turkish. I looked at her helplessly and shrugged because i couldn't think of a single think i could do for her. And i walked away.
After a few yards, I looked back and watched her as one person after another passed her. Those that noticed her recoiled as I did. My heart broke as i watched her wailing, holding out her hands. I don't know if she wanted money or healing or just a kind word. Her face was frozen in an expression of such complete sadness. As if she had wept for so many years that not only had her tears dried, but her face had taken that mournful shape permanently.
I figured she was born in the wrong time. A time when not only would the passing people be helpless to heal her, but wouldn't even care. Could I have sat with her and tried to pass some peace to her? A peace that I didn't fully feel myself even if i could have expressed it. I could have given her some change but it just seemed so trite and meaningless. I wondered how long she had sat there and if anybody even knew who she was. Sure my heart went out to her, but my hand didn't and that breaks me over and over.
This isn't some motivational blog to go out and help the homeless. I'd be the first to need it if it was. I guess I'm just trying to make sense of this strange incident that I cannot seem to forget. I wrestle with this feeling of complete helplessness but also the conviction that I should have done something for the poor lady. These sort of people were the exact people that Christ and his disciples healed and we're supposed to have that same kind of faith? Sounds all good in theory but, confronted with a living example of that kind of deep hurting, I shrank away like everyone else that passed her. Afraid i would contract the same disease she obviously had. Or maybe I just didn't want to smell her. I don't know. The point for me isn't what specifically stopped me from reaching out my hand. It's that I barely even considered stopping.
I'm wrestling with that part of me that is afraid of faith and stepping out. Hope this all makes sense.

Inspiration and imagination.

I don't want to write about love because I haven't felt enough of it. All I've felt is a longing for it. I don't want to write about politics or God because I don't know enough about either. I haven't given much thought to my life or my childhood. Or I have, but not enough to find the poems and the stories that lay there. I'll trip over them one day, fall flat on my face, and give them shape as I heal. At least that's the hope.
I want to write about inspiration... and creativity, but tonight I'm too tired. Believing that I was created in the image of a Creator makes me feel the need to exercize that part of my 'self,' my being. Ideas are hard to come by and are never good when forced. The good ones usually fly away before i can put them on paper. The ones that don't leave before I am done. Forcing me to plead with them at a later date to return so that I can truly do them justice.
I do know that I am more pleased with my creations when I feel as though I am submitting to something outside myself rather than digging within. There is nothing good within me worth writing about. I shouldn't say that. I should say there is nothing within me that I could make good. It has to be pulled out of me by something else, washed, and handed back to me to give it shape. Even now I feel that I am rambling because I am trying too hard to say something worthwhile. What is worthwhile? I'm not going to find it and express it at 12:48 in the (morning?). That's for sure.
But I can't sleep so I will keep trying....
Remember the time, as a kid, when a stick could be a sword or a gun depending on which way you held it? I remember crawling through massive forests and fording swift rivers, tracking some elusive ninja or my imaginary girlfriend's kidnappers. My friends and I truly were whatever we wanted and wherever we wanted. At what point do we lose that? When does a stick become just a stick and not a Colt revolver. (Pardon all the weaponry, but boy's don't really come up with anything else). Those massive forests were really just the the trees and streams between houses.
My point is that at some point we lose that purity of imagination and I want to know why. Why does creativity become something we search for, rather than something we can't stop? My imagination used to be so overwhelming that I often spent more time there than in the real world. Sounds scary but I think it's natural. Something God intended in his creation. Maybe it's because we are stuck in this life knowing that something else exists that we can only glimpse through our imaginations. That reality exists elsewhere and our imaginations are the windows we can look through to see it. I think Schopenhauer or Feuerbach or somebody said this once. Something similar anyway.
Did God create our imaginations so that we would in turn never stop creating? Or was it so that, while stuck here, we could glimpse the Divine and know that something else awaits us one day. Maybe none of this makes sense.

Going home? Just a slice of thought...

If I could fly what would would I find so high above the earth and the trouble that pulls at me. Until I feel that heaven is home and the sooner I get home the better because life and existence will finally be free and easy and happy. I think about home a lot while I'm here and I miss the family that I haven't lived with for four years. Some of them for longer than that. I miss my sister and her energy that fills rooms and sparks smiles. I miss my mother and her teeth. Her grin that makes you feel like there is at least one person in the world who thinks you're special...thinks you're worth something. My dad and his unexpected hyperness. His lack of care for people's regard that, in the right context, becomes a wonderful strength.
He held the keys to my security and self-worth for years and guarded it safely. I forgive him for losing it because it is time I held it for myself anyway...and I in turn give it to God, and maybe to you as well. The girl I don't know if I've yet met but have anticipated my whole life. As a boy I would see you in the school room crushes and piano class kisses. I would see you in the girl down the street that I sent rose petals to. The friends that I knew would make amazing wives...just not for me. I noticed you in my relationships. In characters in books and movies...stories of my own. All these glimpses have formed a picture in my head and I can't wait until the day I say 'Ah! There you are.' And we go on to complete eachother in all the ways that we always imagined.
All of our imaginings that have been refined and made perfect by our sufferings and stumbles...our joys and excitements. the paths we've taken that took us to places we didn't want to be and had to hack our way back to the good road. I want to tell you about all of my detours and forgings and explorations because, even though they've scarred me, I found myself in the healing. I want to explain how I believe that we are given freedom and God shapes our will back into His when we stray so that, even in our disobedience, His plan is furthered. I want to ask you how our mistakes or our own will could end up playing a role in God's that is so perfect and so crucial, it's as if we never left that road.
I want to ask God what He thinks. I want to ask Him a lot of things. When I get home I will and even though i talk about the return a lot, I know that for the most part I like it here because it's new and exciting and shifting and changing and wonderful. I've dreamt about exploring new lands and then woke to realize I do it every day. Just without the ships, the guns, the horses or cowboy boots. I'm an explorer in my own right and so are you so let's explore tomorrow together.