high school

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And it was at that age poetry arrived in search of me

August 28, 2009 | Comments

My trip back to high school creative writing class concludes with poetry. It will, I’m pretty sure, make you go blind. People keep asking me why I’ve posted this stuff, and the truth is, I’m not really sure. It was either post it or burn it; you’re lucky it’s August and too hot for a fire. Anyway, enjoy?

A Pair of Leaves

Like rivers flowing to the sea
To end in peaceful harmony
A pair of leaves drifted, treeless
To a quiet end of their world
But their attempted suicide
Was soon thwarted by a gusting
Well-meaning wind, who saved a life
Angry, old and withered, without
A compelling reason to live
The tree, at least, saw fit to thank
The breeze who saved a pair of leaves.

Spring

Winter succumbs to the cycle of life
Its severity replaced
By pleasantries of the eye.
Ears too rejoice, for the sounds of the
New season now fill the air,
Mingle with a scent, fresh and gently
Warm, like a kiss.
Take care, kind days, and be humbled;
Fear not, sweet surrendering
Winter, for tomorrow you too are reborn.

Why

The stars to us are just out of reach,
Yet lay unnoticed beneath immortal feet.
Why is it that for them we would fight,
While the gods ignore their heavenly light?
Why do they desire our sweet, simple life?
And why do we fill it with hatred and with strife?
We have all we need in love, a smile, a tear.
How can that compare to more wasted years?

Dancing with the Muse

When asked to write a page tonight
Those few words fill some with fright
They whine and say they have no time
But they do write, without the rhymes

And as I’m asked to sit and think
Call the muse, go out for drinks
Or dancing in the snow
As we drink and dance, I know

Do you know? I want to write
Something for special people, who might
Know what I mean, but others would be lost
And so I take chances despite the cost

I realize no one knows right now
They say I’m lost and don’t know how
To deal with someone like me
I would tell them and show them how easy

How perfectly simple to end the strife
And together understand this life
As well as can be understood
Compromise for collective good

When at last I coax the muse
Out of hiding so I might use
The powers only she can wield
And she peeks from behind my shield

She looks out into the rain
And sets about ending the pain
And confusion that everyone shares
Until one man, left standing there

Defiantly without pain, and she
Joins him, and they leave me
But I can at least know in my heart
The muse and I will never part

And so to end my tale and frame it all
To please picture-hangers great and small
With this message I depart
For those seeking something smart

I live now in padded cells
My last works were received not well
I still make a rhyme or three
But no sharp objects for me

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Introduction to Insights

August 27, 2009 | Comments

Today’s selection will be the last of the high school prose I’m going to dredge up. It is the introduction to a compilation of material (I called the collection “Insights”) I wrote for my high school creative writing class. I am in awe of it. I apologize in advance. Tomorrow: poetry. Beware.

To the Reader:

As I begin gathering material for the first accumulated body of work that I have attempted, a thousand thoughts and questions flow through my mind. Never-ending armies of insecurities run in streams, but are dashed against an unseen wall, the certainty that I know what I am doing. Potential selections rise up to meet me from the past. Half-written stories that I never got around to finishing come back to me, asking if now is the time to complete the vision. I am compelled to bring them to life each time I write. They nag at me, gently tugging the shirt sleeve in the back of my mind. Do I include everything, since this is the first? Or do I embrace the new ideas that I have pitched around in my head but have been hesitant to start? I must consider my audience. My early writings I have buried, hidden from the rest of an unforgiving world. They are lost in the anonymity of the past, but I know where they are. I know how to find them. Do I risk bringing old ghosts back from the dead? At one point I wrote because I felt I was haunted. I wanted to slay my demons, the pen my only weapon against them. Those excerpts from my life, the beginning and learning process that my writing went through, do they remain unpolished, immature tidbits of a pretentious mind? Or should I taint them with a flair of my current mindset? They remain untouched, as they were written. There is something honest in them, something innocent, and I believed in them at the time. If that makes me unpolished or pretentious during those years of my life then so be it. I accept that as yet another difficult stage of my youth.

Now on to the greater topic at hand. Of the countless potential new compositions at my disposal, which ones do I feel compelled to compose? If I select something safe, simple, or in the same vein as some previous work, I fear I would not escape the notion that I had cheated myself and my audience. Therefore it is my hope that the few who are familiar with my writing will find something unexpected, a new style that I have not attempted before. I see this as an opportunity to experiment, not only in new realms of writing but in new thoughts as well. It is my hope that through these new writings I might discover something about myself previously hidden from my view, and I invite my audience to do the same. These are my thoughts as I begin this writing project. My work does not undergo major revision; rarely do I even read my own writings once they are finished. This keeps the idea fresh for me, for if the idea itself becomes stale, how could the execution of that idea be otherwise? Therefore the ideas and the content selected for this collection are as close to my original conception of them as possible. I submit this effort to the reader, and whether it is accepted or not I stand by it as I have all of my written work. You, the reader, will find everything you seek here, no matter how ambitious your quest.

Yours,

David E. Mahaffey

1996

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Imagine a Heart

August 26, 2009 | Comments

High school week continues with a longer prose piece, circa 1996. I was such an earnest kid, but already much too old to be writing sentimental stuff like this.

Imagine a heart. It has stopped beating and lays dormant in the chest of a dead man who lays on a table. Men and women surround the man and try to make his heart beat again. They want it to beat and they know it wants to beat again. The man is young and obviously has a full life ahead of him. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” the doctors all say. But the man isn’t listening. He doesn’t know if his heart should beat again.

Imagine two hearts, a tiny one beating along with a bigger, much stronger one. Imagine the security that baby heart feels, with Mother nearby. Follow the tiny heart as it grows up through the years. Soot it is strong, like the one who protects it. It no longer wants protection. When it wants to leave the sanctuary of home, the strong one doesn’t want to let it go. She doesn’t know how to let her child grow.

Imagine two hearts with the same wants and needs, the same hopes and dreams. They are drawn to each other in a way they can’t understand. What if they stay together? They could both recapture the old feeling of security. They could add to that feeling a new sensation, combining the past with the wonder and excitement they have discovered. These two have sought each other out, felt the thrill of discovery. What would that feel like? So easy to understand and virtually impossible to explain. Nobody knows how to express it.

Imagine a broken heart, abandoned by its mate and left to continue the journey of life alone. With nothing to keep it going. Living just to keep from dying. How could this heart go on, without a reason to feel, without a focus? Its wants and needs build up with no chance of release. Somewhere inside this broken heart there is a love that continues to burn. The flame flickers but never fades away, and this heart doesn’t know how to carry on.

Imagine a wounded heart, confused and unable to understand what has happened. Imagine watching helplessly as its love is torn from its side. Imagine again finding its mate, and finding there is no longer a connection between them. The time and distance between the two hearts has burned away the memory. Imagine trying to move on, and just when it begins to want to live again, it is damaged in another way.

Imagine a bleeding heart, bleeding from a bullet wound in the chest. Crimson tears flow from the pain of this wound and all of the old ones. All the healing, the will to live that was only recently regained, everything is undone.

Imagine again the heart of the dying man. Imagine his thoughts and feelings as his heart slowed its beating, giving up its grip on life and slowly slipping away. Along this journey, a heart blossoms and it wilts. The rose had just regained a whisper of a new bud when it began to die. The doctors know all hearts should beat. The man knows the voyage has been long. Will this heart beat again? Only it can know.

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