I am lost, tired, and adrift, in a world filled with hate
And for now it feels like I’m out of defiance.
And I’m losing, I’m losing, I’m losing
That beautiful dawn I used to believe in,
And I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know what to do love,
And I don’t remember the words -
words that brought faith,
words that once could heal.
With a tired faith and lost words,
I don’t know how to remember anymore
and I’m forgetting how to keep the covenant.

    – nehar
       

I will not falter
I will not fail
In this hate soaked, anger tainted world
My soul I choose to keep.

    – nehar
       Holmdel, NJ

Thought dies, memory dies
The world diminishes as it always has
But in these brief moments of clarity -
Wrapped in the feel of the warm sunlight on yellow grass,
I can imagine the peace of eternity.

    – nehar
       

Hate always wins
Division always wins
It’s easier to tear down. Always.
As things break apart and crumble,
More often than not, In this best of all possible worlds,
We who would defend can but stand aghast and witness.

    – nehar
       

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

    – Theodore Roosevelt
       April 23, 1910,
       Sorbonne, Paris

In some slow time,
and another deeper space,
I could be bigger than this…
I would be - more unfathomable.
A broader river winds through
the woods,
and I would follow if I could
The brighter starlight that falls -
if only I could see it as I should.

While all the truth that I can muster waits
expectant… lingering… in the silence,
the slowed time passes…
…and the wider spaces shrink.

    – Nehar
       June 22, 2015
       

In this liquid world,
In this fluid, fluid, fluid world
How do I remember to run and breathe at the same time.
Run, run, run while the minutes drain through
Mine and yours, darkness claims its piece of flesh.
I raise my hand - and my armies rise
I raise my hands - and the blood tide rises
In this crumbling place, in this tiny narrow place
In this mean small space.

Remember this.
I raise my hands
Remember this
I raise my head
Remember this
I raise my eyes
Remember this
look up at the sky
Remember this - before the breath slips away.

There were those of us who thought of this
There were those of us who remembered this
In this liquid world
In this fluid, fluid, fluid world
Breathe and run, breathe and run, breathe and run
How do I remember to breathe and run at the same damn time
On this spinning, rocking world
The divine slips away as we run and breathe,
run and breathe,
run and breathe,
run and breathe,
one last damn time.

    – Nehar
       May 21, 2015, 10:30 pm
       

And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.

    – Thomas Babington Macaulay,
       Lays of Ancient Rome, 1842
       

Memory before loss
Thought before the grave.
Words are lost, language dies
Yet there must remain believers -
bereft of faith if need be,
To mark the passing of the divine.

    – Nehar
       Sept 02, 2014
       

For a few brief moments in time, we become the things that we do.

    – Nehar
       July 12, 2013