Mythos & Marginalia

2015 – 2025: a decade of days


a daily breath

  • on its own

    Poetry is power, and poetry is
    a weakness, as much cowardice
    as courage. A delightful
    contradiction, it sucks at your
    soul, and, like a fussy infant,
    cannot wait to be fed. More.
    Not to be silenced until sated.
    Nourished then,
    it so slips into gentle slumber,
    life’s rhythm allowing dreams and
    sweet solace, only to wake soiled
    and screaming. Comfort comes
    with a soothing voice, gentle touch,
    and reassurance. Flesh and blood,
    innocent for only a while, it grows
    alongside you, until it stands
    on its own.
    Poetry.
    You give it life, then it to you.

    © 2016 j.g. lewis
                                                       

  • Mondays are just young Fridays

    One year since. . . 

       The death toll rises each day in this certain uncertainty. A geopolitical conflict, its consequences spilling out across this planet and onto the streets of my city. Distanced from the direct atrocities of another war, it is more than tension we feel in the neighborhoods where we live.

       Every day the headlines speak to me. Every day there are more questions than answers.

       How many bombs?

       How many dead?

       How many prayers?

       How many times, in my lifetime, have I heard about the possibility of Middle East peace?

       I, still, can only try to understand.

       I too live with the fear, the grief, and the polarization of it all.

     

    10/07/2024                                                                                                                j.g.l.

  • It’s not nothing

    I would like to think it is nothing, at least I’d like to try. I know I can’t, but I will fool myself into believing it was less than what it is (I’m gullible that way).
       Still I know, deep down, it was more than what I was expecting. Certainly it was more than what I was prepared for.
       It’s always something; really, anything is.
       There is something in anything, worthwhile or not, that captures your imagination or sends your soul circling.
       Nothing matters then.
       It is always more than what you were counting on, even when there is nothing to compare it to.
       Always unlike anything else, you try to twist and turn it into something familiar, or something you can relate to, all the while knowing that nothing has been like that, or felt like this: ever.
       Yeah, it’s like that.
       It’s not nothing, but it can’t be everything. . . or maybe it is.

    © 2017 j.g. lewis

  • a deeper conversation

    Ever the questions, 

    no response, until now. In the wake 

    of all that happened all that time ago; 

    even recently, as details were 

    unearthed convincingly.

    Negligently we accept responsibility 

    for secrets and sins unacknowledged.

    The government, the Church, 

    the children. The shock of it all. 

    Tears now stain history books. Truth.

    A deeper conversation. 

    We talked about it, yesterday.

    Too long society, 

    more specifically “we”, have turned

    a blind eye to ways of a world 

    we thought we never knew.

    Lord knows what they were thinking 

    and did nothing.

     

    10/01/2024                                                                                                             j.g.l.

     

  • Mondays are just young Fridays

    It matters.

    Truth takes longer to admit

    than it does to commit.

    We now live with truth;

    shame of the sins we know,

    generations of pain 

    will forever show.

    Truth.

     

    Truth and Reconciliation.

    September 30 is an annual federal holiday in Canada to recognize the damage caused by the residential school system, including to families and communities still affected by the lasting trauma.

     

     

    09/30/2024                                                                                                          j.g.l.