My Girlfriend: An Elegy

My girlfriend is in the graveyard
She is buried six feet deep
She is emotionally unavailable
She is really fast asleep

My grief for her is like a drug
It causes me great pain
It never ceases or goes away
It is red washed down the drain

My soul was saddened when she passed
I moped around for weeks
I visit her gravestone everyday
How bad her body reeks

My jealousy was too much to bear
It made an ugly me
It forced my hand to do bad things
It cost me my sanity
~ KEO

Happy Birthday Uncle Edgar

Today is the 200th birthday of one of my favorite authors and poets, Edgar Allan Poe. While I was in high school I had a friend named Jake who was constantly exposing me to new music. I never knew how people did this, I could only find musicians that were played on the radio and I was always impressed with people who knew of cool music before anyone else did, well that was Jake. We both shared an interest in the macabre, the depressing and the dark. I wasn't goth by today's standards but I was definitely the brooding type, my unicorn obsessed brother in-law came close when he guessed me as the kind of guy in high school who " dressed up as the Crow, brooded in the downtown gazebo reading poetry,". He was close in this description, I dressed as the Crow twice for Halloween, I proposed to my wife in the downtown gazebo and I brooded in high school as I read poetry in the library. When Jake introduced me to Edgar Allan Poe I found someone who was tormented with grief and sorrow, who suffered as I felt I suffered and was depressed as I felt I was depressed. I didn't find that many authors who interested me during this period of my life so when I was introduced to the works of Poe I devoured just about everything he ever wrote. His contributions to American Literature are being celebrated by the U.S. Postal Service with his own set of stamps, which I purchased on Saturday. I'd like to leave you today with one of my favorite poems by Edgar Allan Poe from the book I carried with me in school.


A Dream Within a Dream 1827

Take this Kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
Oh God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Happy birthday Uncle Edgar!

Cardinals Rule!

The kind Dollimoma gave my wife and I this tsatske last month and I just love it. The birds are maniacal and malicious as they appear to be in the midst of some ancient and diabolical ritual of nature. I adore creepy and these birds are creepy. This piece gave me a new found respect for cardinals. I've always enjoyed our state bird and apparently six other states do too according to Wikipedia. Yes, Ohio is one of seven states to share the cardinal as it's state bird. Regardless of association or claims to this bird by these states or various sporting clubs, I have been tinkering with the idea of claiming this bird for myself; as Edgar Allan Poe had the Raven, I shall have the cardinal... maybe.
Yesterday during the unrelenting snowfall I began creating my version of this colorful bird.
This is what I came up with thus far. Northeast Ohio only receives about 165 days of sunshine a year. During the winter when everything is cold, gray, and depressing these red devils are sometimes the most colorful things found in nature at the time. I really do appreciate them, their plumage is striking and bold in our eternally dreary Ohio winters.

A Talk with the Dead

A Talk with the Dead

A talk with a dead man is really quite pointless

Believe me I know I can contest

I’ve had one before

It was an absolute bore

He talked and he talked

Oh the mile we had walked!

No knowledge was gleaned of the afterlife

From this apparition filled with such tireless strife

All he talked of were people who I do not know

And anecdotes told in a pace oh so slow

I tried to escape him I tried to leave

But he was so very lonely and he would pull on my sleeve

So heed my warning should you ever encounter

A ghost with a top hat and a penchant for dull chatter!

~ KEO