Luke Austin Daugherty: Poetry

I heard her ask, “What is the definition of love?”

The definition of love?

No such thing

Only definitions

As Ingersoll spoke of the ocean

And the Bible

Love is the same

When one stands on the edge of the sea

To gaze at its wonder

He receives the echo of his own self

His thoughts, moods, and experiences

When one opens the pages

Of the book called, “Holy”

He sees in that god

His own character reflected

And finds the Jesus who he is seeking

The one he himself is

For the kind

God is found gentle

For the viscous

They happily discover Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Luke,

“But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them,

bring hither, and slay them before me.”

And then smile, thinking within their mind,

“How ironic it is that Jesus was so much like me the whole time.”

This is the meaning of love

Rather the meanings

Only a fool believes there is just one

Definition

Of the meaning of love

Or of life

When you stand on the edge of the sea of love

You will find naught but yourself

Crashing back at you

Your own answer in the foaming waves

The love you find in life

Can have no fire

But that provided by your own spark

Within

And if the definition you find

Does not suit you

Or if you find the answer to the question

“What is the definition of love?”

Wanting

I suggest that you change the definition of your own self

So that the music made by the sound of crashing waves

When you stand at the edge of the sea

Loses its dissonant and unpleasant tone

So much so

That when the blue deep, in all its glorious fury, smiles at you

You can smile back

At the meaning of it all

What is the definition of love?

I have my own

What is yours?

Fill in the blank

Luke Austin Daugherty on his 37th birthday. -Photo credit: Nathanael Daugherty

(This blog was originally published on my Wordpress site August 27th)

I am a fresh 37 years old today. It is not a very impressive year in any obvious way. Not 30 or 40. Not even 35, splitting the difference between the two. Yet, I am now as happy and content as I recollect ever being on a birthday morning from a data set of thirty-seven.

It has been an interesting experiment for me on several occasions to contrast myself at a particular age to a well-known person or a person I admire in some way. Due to the flapping of the butterfly’s wings and the serendipity of chance, I have occasion to do that today. Several weeks ago, Robin Williams took his own life, which caused me to reflect on how the movie, “Dead Poets Society,” had such an impact on me as a teenager. Reflecting on that movie brought Walt Whitman to mind, a favorite poet of mine. Yesterday, unrelated to the previous scenario, a friend on Facebook shared a list of questions given to Karl Marx by his daughters in 1865. I decided to write my own set of answers. In doing so, I needed to refer to, “Song of Myself,” by Walt Whitman, which had been brought to mind earlier this month by Robin Williams’s death.

As I read the beginning of, “Song of Myself,” I realized that Whitman was writing the poem at the age of 37. Toward the beginning of the poem, Whitman mentioned his age specifically and that he was in good health. I wondered if he actually wrote it on his own birthday or at least started the poem then, since it is fairly long. Being one day shy of 37 when I noticed that yesterday, I committed to myself to revisit Whitman and his poem today, on my 37th birthday. That may seem the long way around to arrive at this point in my birthday blog, but it has always interested me how the laws of cause and effect operate in one’s life.

Walt Whitman at approximately my own present age

I suppose the greatest commonality I share with Whitman is that we’re both (or rather, he was and I am) a scripturient. Aside from that, we share indie/self-published author status. I have always admired the fact that he published, “Leaves of Grass,” on his own dime. Thus far, every album and book I have published has been done the same way. I don’t even know if I would want to change that. I am feverishly territorial and independent about my writing and process. Both Whitman and I are beardy men. (I reckon I’ll just speak of him as though he was in the present tense for sake of ease and simplicity) I have had a much more epic beard previously than I do now. I am currently trimming it at a #4 length and it used to be several inches long. It seems, by the available pictures, that Whitman’s beard grew in length as he grew more long in the tooth.

“Song of Myself,” has been oft criticized for more than a century as the most egotistical poem ever written. Even if that were true, I do not see it as a negative. It isn’t a bad thing to love one’s own self, so long as it doesn’t lead to narcissism, spite for others, or destructive selfishness. I think it takes several decades of life to learn to really love yourself well and independent of the critique of others. I believe that it is very difficult to love others properly without loving one’s self first. A self-hater rarely finds anything untainted to offer a fellow human, even when he or she would like to. So, I hold no penalty toward Whitman for esteeming himself well. Loving yourself also does not have a direct correlation to degrading others or celebrating them less in proportion. Perhaps the opposite tends to be the rule.

Below are just a few selected lines from, “Song of Myself,” which I most relate to or find inspirational now in my own 37th year as Whitman was when he wrote them.

“I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.”

“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the
     origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are
     millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor
     look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the
     spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things
     from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.”

“These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands,
they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or
next to nothing,”

“Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in
” which they are won.”

“I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
     myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or
     ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can
     wait.”

“I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
O despairer, here is my neck,
By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight
upon me.”

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

For the complete text, please visit this link:

“Song of Myself,” by Walt Whitman

Monday, November 3, 2014

A Damn Fine Handshake (An Original Poem Typecast)

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Youth (A Poem Typecast)

Saturday, September 27, 2014

When I Finished My Slaughter- (A Poem Typecast)

Saturday, September 6, 2014

The Old Man on a Lonely Island (A Poem Typecast)

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

“Let Slip the Dogs of Peace” – An Anti-war Poem by Luke Austin Daugherty

What is the Definition of Love? Fill in the Blank – (A Poem)

Regarding My 37th Birthday and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”