Brian B

Brian B
Location
Thunder Bay, Canada
Birthday
November 14
Title
Devil's Advocate
Company
The Sort of Company your mother warned you about
Bio
A Work in Progress. When not doing the devil's work, I'm the single parent of two great young men, living playing and working in beautiful Thunder Bay Ontario. That's at the western end of Lake Superior - the North end of Highway 61. from here, you can just drive all the way to New Orleans, though I have yet to do it.

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Salon.com
MAY 10, 2009 10:59AM

Reflections Off the Edge of a Coffee Cup (Old Poem)

Rate: 17 Flag

Reflections Off the Edge of a Coffee Cup

 Another cup of coffee shared-

hardly an intimacy

and yet, you can read my mind

my mind which is not so simple

which even I don't fathom

sometimes. You are so wise

 and so beautiful.

I am cursed by wise beauties.

You are both rock and hill 

and I am Sisyphus bound for eternity.

Unable to conquer the duelling dualities

of rock and hill; wisdom and beauty.

Yet I keep on my task, trying.

Because there is nothing better to try? No. 

Because it is the only task for me?  Right

Waste of time, of life? Again No

Because it must be thus. 

The task is growing, is being, is me.

I ask not for sympathy.

I'd love some empathy.

I must be me.

My task awaits.

 

(when I moved nineteen months ago,I unearthed my long lost folder of wallowing earnest collegiate poetry. Shoved it in a drawer, forgot about it, until I opened that drawer looking for something completely else. I offer this first, slightly edited, example, out of a self indulgent need to post without a new essay to add to my posts. It is amazing how my emotional life is back in the same place. )

 

 

 

Author tags:

books, love, poetry, musing for a sunday, self indulgence

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Brian, thanks for sharing this with us. It's interesting to me how the cycles of our emotions go around and mark different times in our life. Looks like you're in a time a growth again and that's not a bad place to be.
CoyoteOldStyle
May 10, 2009 12:05 PM
i think we've all been there... just alot of people do this kind of thinking over beer not coffee
Barbra anne
May 10, 2009 12:23 PM
I know exactly what you mean. The intensity of emotions during those younger years are hard to find again. I recently re-read some poetry that I liked during those younger days. And the feelings it brought back were exactly the feelings I had when I read them many years ago. I had thought those kinds of feelings were gone. I think they're being resurrected in this new stage of my life.
Can't believe you wrote this as a college student. Pretty damn impressive. I still can't believe there are men like you out there. :)
j lynne
May 10, 2009 12:29 PM
beautiful brian. Thanks for digging this out and sharing it. As COS said, the cycles of our emotions is quite interesting. I know I realize it whenever I end up back in the same old place...good and bad.
JK Brady
May 10, 2009 12:30 PM
COS: growth is good. Must be why I love spring (it snowed here yesterday! but only flurries )
BA: I didn't drink back then - gave it up after a few bad adolescent experiences. Still not much on beer. I'm trying to remember which gal inspired this piece - S, or the ice princess? S was a tea drinker, so likely Princessa...
j lynne: starting over... never reaaly new, is it?
Janie: by your command, general!
Brian B
May 10, 2009 12:49 PM
I really love the title best... you could use that title in different ways and do a series of these....

But BA's comment is a good one, too. Maybe "Reflections Off the Rim of a Beer Stein".
wakingupslowly
May 10, 2009 01:30 PM
Wow your collegiate poetry is good! Mine was a bit more, well, emo-ish.

Thanks for sharing it!
b Koscelny
May 10, 2009 02:02 PM
Brian, I like the title and I know what you mean about rediscovering a familiar emotional life in earlier writing...I find that when I read old diaries of mine that I was (way back then) discovering things that I thought I was just now discovering...so maybe I'll still be learning the same things down the line....oh well. such is, as you put it, the sisyphian task...
doloresflores_d
May 10, 2009 02:19 PM
was: can't recall why that title, except, as noted above, must have been inspired by a coffee "date".
BG: oh, I have lots that are 'emo-ish' in the folder
dolores: I'm self aware enough to know that's what 'new' is just the 'old' again...as I sometimes say, I'm 17 for the 3rd time
Brian B
May 10, 2009 03:01 PM
But how does that cup of coffee taste in your mind now (meaning in the present) that you have taken it out of the drawer? Does it draw you back in and make you feel the same as it did back then or does it taste reheated in the mouth and the heart? Did you find those things or are you still looking for them? I think this would make a wonderful ongoing series of poems......
cartouche
May 10, 2009 05:53 PM
It's hard to share these earlier writings and emotions. Nice work, Brian, and hope you have inspiration for poetry right now as well.
Lea Lane
May 10, 2009 06:41 PM
the coffee tastes great cartouche - probably better than what I lived off as a student. I doubt paper cups really reflected. Wish I could recall what inspired this poem... though i was very into Don Quixote & Sisyphus that year, I recall...

lea... I didn't think it brave at all, as long as i got to pick which to share.
Brian B
May 10, 2009 08:56 PM
i think middle aged emotions circle back to these years for sure. it's kind of nice in a way, and maybe something we never should've lost to begin with. the title is great.
cindy capitani
May 10, 2009 09:47 PM
cindy: I think I never did lose it... though I probably lost the coffee cup (which, anyway, mighta been a restaurant of cafeteria cup)
Brian B
May 11, 2009 09:27 AM
Brian,
Like the Hopi, our lives are a circle not a straight line. It is wonderful to see that in college you were still the same sweet person you are now. I love that you shared it. It gives me courage to maybe, sometime share some of my college work.
C Berg
May 11, 2009 10:47 AM
Was college really that long ago? Funny, isn't it, how sometimes it can seem like a whole other life completely, and sometimes it seems like you lived it yesterday.

Glad you imbibed in a little self-indulgence, otherwise we never would have had the pleasure.
PublicFlogger
May 11, 2009 01:29 PM
CB: my life seems more like a double helix than a circle... like a piece of ribbon twisting in the wind, maybe... anchored at a point, but not fully in control.

PF: it often seems like yesterday...anytime they play anything from "Frampton comes alive", i'm back in spring 1976, tossing the frisbee outside my dorm....
Brian B
May 11, 2009 03:14 PM
Describing a lover as both the rock and the hill of Sisyphus's eternal damnation is quite possibly the most keen observation of a relationship that I have read in recent memory.

Rated enthusiastically for the perfect-metaphor bits.
RavingBits
May 11, 2009 03:33 PM
RB: thanks.
*blush*
not really perfect but glad you liked it
Brian B
May 11, 2009 09:59 PM
Fabulous work -

"You are both rock and hill
and I am Sisyphus bound for eternity."

To repeat a previous post, but I agree about this bit - it is as perfect as I can see from this ledge.

peece,
dj
Jimenace
May 12, 2009 09:14 PM
I meant 'to repeat a previous comment!'

as in RavingBits above me.

:0
peece,
dj
Jimenace
May 12, 2009 10:50 PM
oh, brian, i love this. of course i know nothing about poetry. but i love the way you use language and it's moving and shit. :) i would never have the courage to face my college work, even if i could find it. please alert me to your posts, love. i'm just not able to keep up at all otherwise. the fevers, oh, the fevers. love love love and gratitude for knowing you a little.
Theodora L'Engle Knight
May 12, 2009 10:57 PM
theo & jim... thanks for the encouragement.
Brian B
May 13, 2009 09:27 AM
I really like it. Of course I love references to Greek mythology! There is only one small criticism, that is the punctuation at the ends of lines isn't always what one would expect..... but maybe you designed it that way? If you want more detailed comment on that, email me. Either way, it is wonderful!!!
Michelle Fergenson
May 14, 2009 03:20 PM
Mich- I played with the punctuation for effect, emphasis, and in some places to vary the cadence ( the period after "sometimes" was a particularly hard choice - I broke that word from the earlier phrase, with which it belongs, in order to also tie it to the following phrase. I think in the prior version, it had its own line - the 1977 version had a lot of one word lines I collapsed as I edited). Message or email me if you have other comments.
Brian B
May 14, 2009 03:38 PM