Scott Fillmer » poetry

Jesus, I need Your Love, Hawkmoon

Scott Fillmer — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 19:54:37 +0000

Do we recognize how much we need God’s love in our life, or put a different way, how much do we desire that love that only God can fulfill? Our lives are so busy, we tend to just push away this desire or we may not even think about it at all. But even when we do contemplate God’s love, we can only express it in terms that a limited human mind can do (like below), in terms of things that are familiar, but it’s so much more than that.

I came across a familiar poem today that expressed, in worldly terms, how much one can desire the love of another, and it reminded me more of whether we desire God at least like this, or is it only this powerfully expressed for the things of this world? If we can express worldly love “like the hot needs the sun, like honey on her tongue, like oxygen, I need your love”, how much greater is the love God has for us? Without the desire for God’s love, and for His Glory, we are just about in the same shape as my widow pictured above, broken.

I have gone over the words below about twenty times now, it’s pretty powerful (even more when put to music), but how much more should we desire God’s love… probably more than we need to take our next breath.

I Need Your Love

Like a desert needs rain
Like a town needs a name
I need your love
Like a drifter needs a room
Hawkmoon
I need your love

Like a rhythm unbroken
Like drums in the night
Like sweet soul music
Like sunlight
I need your love

Like coming home
And you don’t know where you’ve been
Like black coffee
Like nicotine
I need your love (I need your love)

When the night has no end
And the day yet to begin
As the room spins around
I need your love

Like a Phoenix rising needs a holy tree
Like the sweet revenge of a bitter enemy
I need your love

Like the hot needs the sun
Like honey on her tongue
Like the muzzle of a gun
Like oxygen
I need your love (I need your love)

When the night has no end
And the day yet to begin
As the room spins around
I need your love

Like thunder needs rain
Like a preacher needs pain
Like tongues of flame
Like a sheet stained
I need your love

Like a needle needs a vein
Like someone to blame
Like a thought unchained
Like a runaway train
I need your love

Like faith needs a doubt
Like a freeway out
I need your love

Like powder needs a spark
Like lies need the dark
I need your love

I need all the love in your heart… and I need all the love in your heart…

~ Hawkmoon 269, U2

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Tick Tock Goes the Clock by Jacques Marciano :: Poem

Guest Author — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:37:23 +0000

Today I have a guest author, one of my nephews (published here under my given pen name for him), graciously offered one of his poems for this Saturday sidenote post. After reading several of his poems I realized that poetry is certainly not dependent on age for elegance and beauty. My first thought was, not bad at all for a 12 year old poet, but I am not sure age has anything to do with well written poetry. When Edgar Allan Poe wrote “To Helen” in 1831 he was only 14 years old, and it still to this day it is referred to by some as one of the greatest American lyrical poems ever written.

Tick Tock Goes the Clock was the first of several he offered, which will probably grace these pages for the next few Saturday’s. I am sure he would appreciate any comments you might want to leave.

Tick Tock Goes the Clock

Tick tock goes the clock,
Twenty-four hours in a day.
Tick tock goes the clock,
Little time do we have to play.
Tick tock goes the clock,
Working, toiling, and laboring.
Tick tock goes the clock,
Getting up in early this morning,
Tick tock goes the clock.
Every second just flies away,
Tick tock goes the clock
Watching the sun’s bright leaving rays,
Tick tock goes the clock.

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The Spirit Phaneroō in Tiberias :: Poem

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:21:09 +0000

Poetry is an interesting form of literature to me because of how extensively the writers of scripture used poetry to express God’s instructions, thoughts, and proclamations. I take no claim to being well read in poetry, quite the opposite, but if it was important to the writers of the Old and New Testament, and ultimately to God, as an inspired form of literature, then it isn’t one believers should totally ignore.

Poetry as a Form of Worship

If you had mentioned poetry to me 10 years ago I may have gone screaming for ESPN, but when examined in the heart of the hundreds of poems in scripture, the literary form as a whole begins to take new light. This is probably one of the greatest lost forms of literature in the 21st century church (by lost I mean non-existent). It is hard for poetry to compete with our modern day worship styles, but it is certainly a form of worship, no matter how seldom it is practiced today.

A great modern day example of this appreciation for poetry is still seen in several pastors, but most recently a post from Desiring God’s website, A Pastor and His Poetry, reminded me of the importance poetry has in God’s creation. Pastor John Piper has written many poems over the last 25 years, many inspired by contemplation and meditation over a particular scripture passage, and about a year ago I did the same thing as part of my ongoing studies.

Through a few hours of meditation (worship) over John 21, “The Spirit Phaneroō in Tiberias” became the tangible result of that worship.

The Spirit Phaneroō in Tiberias

The spirit penetrates the air
But futility still reigns supreme
It occupies the mind all of the day
Oblivious, save self, to the way.

Caught nothing but the sea
Chained by routine, still blind
Yielding yet unknowing
I follow, though I know not why.

These shackles I long to throw away
The breath I leap after
It becomes food for my brain
For the here, and ever after.

Love, love, love thee, the spirit perceives
Freed from the bondage of sin, just receive
No, no, no, I do not love thee I now know
Please help me to believe and I will go.

How is this man to live, how is this man to die
Wonder penetrates the air with grief
It matters not, you follow me, you’ll see
Perfection now attainable, but only if you focus on me.

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Why Jim Morrison and the Bible are Still Consumed

Scott Fillmer — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:06:25 +0000

I love the music that comes from the mid to late 1960′s to mid 1970′s in the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd and many more. It was at the very height of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and a time of great growth and pain in our country and the world. The music of that time was filled with passion… to the point of death in many cases. It was psychedelic, spiritual, religious, real. It was a world that I can only read about from the perspective of history.

The other day while Deb and I were driving over to Georgia (see Welcome to Our Living Room // Friday Feet) we were listening to an iPod playlist and Peace Frog by The Doors came on and we started talking about what the song meant. Not at all an uncommon conversation between us when we listen to music together in the car. Deborah’s first reaction was who can fully know what any of Morrison’s songs meant and then it hit me, this is exactly why we still study the Bible today. People still listen to and marvel over Jim Morrison’s music because it isn’t simplistic and easy to figure out. You can just listen to it but you have to dig deep to understand the meaning of some of The Doors songs. That’s what makes their music great and part of history, you can listen to one of his songs over and over and still not grasp its full meaning.

I know this may be a big stretch to some who don’t care for The Doors music, but there is no denying that Jim Morrison is one of the all time greatest song writers and muscians in pop history, so if that is the case, how much greater are the riches provided for us in scripture? This may be totally off in left field to compare Jim Morrison’s works to a body of 66 books of God’s glory, but that is how my mind is able to wrap around the unimaginable hugeness that is the Bible.

Scholars for centuries have examined every letter, every translation, every Greek, Hebrew, and Latin meaning and yet, there is still more to be discovered. It is 66 books together that were written so that a child could understand and comprehend and a Biblical scholar could spend a life getting to know and still not fully grasp its greatness. To gain a better understanding, you have to dig in deeper.

Anyone can listen to Peace Frog but do you understand it from a casual listen? Go listen to the song or read the lyrics. What do you think it means? You can come up with a guess but there is far more to the song than just one listen can gather, not to mention the actual guitar work or all the history that goes into a piece of work like this. Without explanation or some research, grasping its full meaning may be difficult (especially while you are driving around in your car in 2009, a long time after 1970).

Like scripture and poems that tell a story, you can casually read through them and get a brief understanding. Some of the parables Jesus told were not the easiest to comprehend without some research into the culture of the time or history that surrounded the time. If it was all so easy and simple to understand I doubt people woud disect each chapter word for word centuries after it was written.

Peace Frog was originally called Abortion Stories, changed by guitarist Robby Krieger, and the lyrics came from poems Morrison wrote (he wrote several books of poetry along with his music). One of the more well known lines of the song comes from his childhood.

Indians scattered on dawn’s highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind

This seems to be tied to a bad car crash Morrison witnessed when he was 4 years old while on vacation with his parents. (Jim claims that the souls of those people [killed in the car crash] combined with him at that point on some level.) Morrison accounted it this way in An American Prayer, a work of poetry and music released years after his death in 1971:

Me and my mother and father and a grandmother and a grandfather were driving through the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian workers had either hit another car, or just I don’t know what happened but there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death.”

“So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time I tasted fear. I musta’ been about four €” like a child is like a flower, his head is floating in the breeze, man.

Some of the song could be related to the race riots of the late 1960′s when The Doors were at their height or possibly the demonstrations of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, both of which happened around the same time as the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968, and Robert F. Kennedy on June 5/6 (shot on the 5th and died on the 6th).

There’s blood on the streets, it’s up to my knee
She came
Blood on the streets in the town of Chicago

“Blood in the streets of New Haven” looks like it came from when Morrison was arrested after taunting Police during a concert in 1967. When he was arrested a riot ensued in the arena and poured out into the streets of New Haven.

This is just one song by Morrison. He was said to be an intelligent and capable student drawn to the study of literature, poetry, religion, philosophy and psychology and of course went on to have a successful career as an American singer, songwriter, poet, writer and film maker after graduating from UCLA. But, even when Morrison was alive and people could actually ask him what a song meant you couldn’t figure out how his mind worked, only he could (and that might be a stretch).

That was a mere mortal man who died at age 27. As great as he was, how much greater can a collection of 66 books of law, history, poetry, and prophecy be than that? I know, kind of a strange analogy but how can you get your mind around something so O-mazing and huge as the Word of God. Relate it to something comprehendible in our own time and space.

In the days of the old testament and even when Jesus taught his disciples he often spoke about things beyond their comprehension and understanding and to help them understand he related the stories to things, places, and people they all knew so they could start to grasp the meaning. How do you describe something like the beauty of the Garden of Eden or Heaven or a “new heaven and new earth”? In this life we can’t fully grasp His greatness but we have been given a lot of material to study in the mean time.

Come
And let him who hears say
Come
Who ever is thirsty, let him come
and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life
Yes, I am coming soon.

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The Lack of a Dead Poets Society Copy

Scott Fillmer — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 03:48:31 +0000

I love being around creative people in the church body, always thinking and pushing the limits of their own thinking. Being on the photography side of creativity I feel like sometimes I have one foot in the creative door and one looking in to see if anything interesting shows up. Sometimes photography to me feels like the fringe of creativity.

Realistically, with technology today, anyone can pick up a camera and push a button, but to do it differently, you have to create. As is the moto of WordPress themselves, Code is Poetry, a computer can become the essence of creativeness in today’s culture. Years ago only a small percentage of people could understand what code was and you needed a degree in graphics design to edit images. Today, teenagers are becoming expert videographers and editors so they can post their creations on Youtube before their bus drops them off at home.

I walked into a friends office today and he was doing a relatively mindless and repetitive task (although important) for a series we have coming up and to pass the time he was watching Dead Poets Society on his computer. I ended up staying just long enough to remember what a cool movie it was and tried to find it when I got home so I could finished watching it. Of course neither hulu, nextflix, or even blockbuster’s new download had it and I was stuck trying to watch a movie that apparently only he has (I would like to borrow it now, thanks). Since I can’t sit here and watch the movie, I figured I would post a poem in context with the movie.

He got me thinking, especially from his last blog post, why we don’t challenge each other more. Challenge each other in learning (or listening to) new music, new books, scripture, our faith, or even a poem. Of course they are all the normal reasons, like time. I don’t read physical books much at all, but I love to read. If it doesn’t show up on my computer I have a hard time flipping through endless pages one at a time, but I can read for hours on a computer screen, so I really have to force myself to read.

One of the last longer physical books I read was one called Galen Rowell’s Inner Game of Outdoor Photography, which was written by an author, photographer, climber, adventurer, environmentalist, call Galen Rowell, who had been to all parts of the world looking for his spiritual peace through photography, mostly in Tibet, helping many along the way. The book was called a cross between Sir Edmund Hillary and Ansel Adams. He was a photographer I followed closely over the years and while on an assignment for National Geographic his plane crashed on landing at his home in California and he and his wife and the pilot died. I finished the book about a week before he died and I remember right where I was and what I was doing when I read the news about his plane crash. I remember at that time the book had challenged me and my normal ways of thinking. He respected “religion” of all kinds, but was not a Believer, and he challenged me to think deeper about my own faith.

So here is a popular poem discussed in the movie by Walk Whitman called O Captain! My Captain! Written by Whitman in 1865 after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, about the return of a ship whose Captain has died at sea.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up – for you the flag is flung – for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths – for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and Dead

—– from memories of President Lincoln

Typing instead of writing may not be art (as I have been told), but perhaps reading it, is. Who do you challenge to grow, and who challenges you? We each have both, but may not recognize either.

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Music Makes the Mind Come Alive with Words

Scott's Misc — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:44:30 +0000

There are so many different types of music and given the right key and harmony can make a spirit come alive with dreams of places and relationships. Music to me is a memory of time and place.

It is poetry for those of us who can’t read and to me lyrics have an amazing way to tell a story.

China all the way to New York
Maybe you got lost in Mexico
You’re right next to me

These are part of the lyrics of a song that I listened to while I did my daily walk about. An interesting artist, one I did not know prior to about 6 months ago.

Update: I have since come to know this as poetry, but had never really seen the words for the music.