Favorite Poem Project

I'm not exactly the religious type of person, but when I looked up Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Psalm of Life, I was enchanted by its talk about life's struggles, and how far we've come. Then, I listened to the video by Rev. Michael Haynes, and I felt like, in the context of the Reverend's life, the psalm made all the more sense, and all the more connected to my life. I, myself, constantly think about life, and the stories that Rev. Haynes told, and Longfellow's psalm, just made me feel that I wasn't alone when it came to a pedantic philosophizing of life and its purpose.

A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

~Roland

A freewrite on nicknames

You want to know nicknames I've been called? Do you really seek so much of my past history, as to desire what I have been called?
Well, so much for redundancy.

Well, I suppose I'll start out strong, then get increasingly worse and worse.

I'm called Ro by my sister, and my (dare I say only?) friend throughout high school. Um...I suppose that's just because their too lazy to explicate the full two syllables of my name. But, my sister and Kelcy were my two favorite people when I was younger, so Ro has become a nickname of endearment to me...sort of.

Rolly happened when i was in elementary school, by my friends Dionis and Marcielle, who were in my karate class. We enjoyed doing somersaults on the mats together, and so I acquired the name Rolly. However, when I left in third grade, people stopped calling me that.

Rolly Polly Ollie I was called by the guys in my gym class. Since I was about half the weight of the rest of the guys in high school, often in gym class during hockey, soccer, I found myself flying across the rubber floor, which, sadly, does leave carpet burn. And plus, they liked making fun of me, and such equated me to the child show's robot. Lovely. Obviously, I didn't enjoy the nickname much. Boris Taratutin is the only one allowed to call me Rolly Polly Ollie.

Lulu was a branch off of my Chinese name. I'd rather not talk about how that makes me feel.

And, there are other nicknames that I'd...rather not mention. Ro-shizzle? Honestly?

In interior speech...um...I call myself I. and me. and sometimes he. I don't think I have a special name for myself, however.

What is in a name? Endearment, sometimes, teasing, sometimes, and sometimes just a reflection of a physical description of me that happens to work with my name.

Peace,
~Roland