"stripling" poems
(Exodus, xvii.15)
By whom was David taught
To aim the deadly blow,
When he Goliath fought,
And laid the Gittite low?
Nor sword nor spear the stripling took,
But chose a pebble from the brook.
'Twas Israel's God and King
Who sent him to the fight;
Who gave him strength to sling,
And skill to aim aright.
Ye feeble saints, your strength endures,
Because young David's God is yours.
Who order'd Gideon forth,
To storm the invaders' camp.
With arms of little worth,
A pitcher and a lamp?
The trumpets made his coming known
And all the host was overthrown.
Oh! I have seen the day,
When with a single word,
God helping me to say,
"My trust is in the Lord,"
My soul hath quell'd a thousand foes
Fearless of all that could oppose.
But unbelief, self-will,
Self-righteousness, and pride,
How often do they steal
My weapon from my side!
Yet David's Lord, and Gideon's friend,
Will help his servant to the end.
2.4k
In ancient woodland
this child roamed,
lost in nature,
briar & loam.
Mapping clearings,
badger setts,
the places where
the deer had slept.
Picking berries
hops & flowers,
lying under
stripling bowers.
Until evening's
amber gloam,
with twiggy hair
racing home.
Jun 3, 2019
Jun 3, 2019 at 1:22 PM UTC
O, it is definite.
I submit to your summit,
And linger there indefinitely.
Like my father did,
O, so perfectly lulled;
took the pill
His mother nursed him with,
To forget his father, he who
Met his grace
Earlier than the stripling of your years.
O, how he reset your communion,
Traced your strength asunder-
Compacted you into diamonds;
Your violence mined them with duds.
Recall me now, you recalled me then-
Never now, do you see me,
Without yourself as him.
Him for his failings.
I am your mirror to you,
The roses you gave me
Have been rotting since 1962.
O father, I just wanted you to be true
But you took your dead father,
And gave me him too.
Oct 20, 2023
Oct 20, 2023 at 4:38 PM UTC
On a whim,
we packed up what little was
left of this strung-out relationship and
rattled out of town in your raucous,
senile rustbucket.
I thought for sure the engine’s cacophony
meant we'd be stuck on the side
of the road in no time, but you
just smiled serenely into the mirror,
pressed the pedal to the floor.
This is why I love you, you know,
because you're calm even
when I'm freaking out beyond
belief and my hair starts to frizz.
Baby, this rope may be
frayed and burn us as it slides along the
palms of our hands, but we hold on
nonetheless, to all that we are,
never slowing, never stopping, rolling
on and on.
Mar 23, 2010
Mar 23, 2010 at 3:28 PM UTC
One day Dostoyevsk talked to me in dreams.
In my early teens, way before the time of my life.
A stripling adolescent,
misspent juvenile youth.
I sat on the roof of the bakery,
reading The Devils.
Over and over again,
until it started to make sense.
Before Kierkegaard,
I found life hard,
no meaning, no dreams came true.
Quantified in my mind,
applied to doctrinal differences I found within,
authenticating the delusions and disorientation of this absurd world we live in.
It all Sartre(d) with being and nothingness.
A cultural movement brought to public providence.
Ominously before I was born,
but I was still torn between being,
and nothingness,
like everyone else.
Distinguishing secular humanism,
rejecting pseudoscience,
apparently.
Now the Blade run’s across my skin.
Married to the cause,
with the force like Harrison,
can you appreciate the retort of
my existential crisis.
We could get lost in the Matrix,
in the “necessary absurdity of the human condition and the horror war”
Like Kubrick.
There’s beautiful new tricks I use to wake up each morning and go about my personal piece of silver screen.
Dec 18, 2015
Dec 18, 2015 at 4:46 AM UTC
a tender shoot once felt the sun
beneath its snowy comforter
and dared to peek a tendril out
the promise of an afternoon
and sun's love on its eager face
bespoke a need for nourishment
despite mistrust of fickle wind
with wolf of winter prowling still
the stripling brazenly rose up
and winter gratefully stopped by
to drape a coat of ice upon
the startled stalk who sought the sun
who hadn't time for warm caress
in early February dusk
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 3:06 AM UTC
Two hundred forty two
(12.1 score) years ago
countless stripling soldiers
strapping farming homeboys
healthy agrarian lads
raised among generations
in summer re:
offspring original settlers heirs
family acreage encompassed
wide uninterrupted forested swaths
across sprawling vistas
sparsely populated enclaves,
now heavily industrialized
lovely bones occupying
unmarked never known graves
buried amidst avast
cleft rapacious urbanization
long forgotten innocent youths
hailing within then bucolic
Montgomery, Delaware and Chester county
forsook their young precious lives
voluntarily promising sons
risking life and limb
more often former versus latter
sacrificing stripling flesh
encompassing urbanized tracts
quite familiar to yours truly
suddenly made aware
unbeknownst till yesterday
informative literary handiwork
titled "A Glimpse of Freedom"
engagingly written by Douglas Shupinski
details innocently naive country bumpkins
sacrificing potential sweat of brow,
albeit grueling labor
fostering holistic existence
transforming boyz to men
hardened green soldiers
into battle weary fighters
regarding, kickstarting, envisioning
inchoate cause named freedom
emancipating fledgling America
against British throne
awareness percolates,
perturbs, permeates psyche
synchronizing, manifesting, galvanizing
how past historical events
within close proximity,
where I mostly resided
since birth, now experience
absorption, communion, edification...
with dead souls
nearly deathly quiet
only most perceptive can detect!
Jul 8, 2019
Jul 8, 2019 at 6:04 PM UTC