(poem) - All Hallows Eve Approaches

My dreams are haunted as of late
I have needs I need to satiate

The thirty first of October comes
Looming across many horizons

The drums of the day, beat within my head
Telling me of who shall return from the dead


To haunt the waking world outside
And who it is with which I will ride

The sands of time fall through the hole
And pile up like dunes in the bowl

Everything around us will eventually turn to dust
Scattered by the wind which forgets our petty lust

Ghosts from the future along with those from the past
Will come on All Hallows Eve to make it our last

But we will dress up as demons and freaks
To scare them away from that which they seek

Ultimate destruction will in no way be theirs
For even the dead have hysterical fears

At the end of the night, as dawn breaks in the East
We raise our glass and prepare for Thanksgiving’s feast

But only if the Great Pumpkin doesn’t arise and devour....
Hopefully Linus van Pelt will keep that covered


So my friends, as I awaken
I can look at these haunted dreams of mine

And realize the greatest truth of all
That Halloween is the greatest holiday of them all

For it’s the only one that we have to struggle to survive
The rest are all gifts, love, and lies

But All Hallows Eve is a test to the living
And makes you appreciate life without the gift giving

Because if you make it to the Day of All Saints
Then you shall have a bucket of Candy and nary a single complaint

--Dan

--Want more Poetry?  Check out my Poetry Collection Page!

My Nightmare

Ever have one of those dreams after hearing a song or watching a movie.  Yeah, Nightmare on My Street by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince has been a favorite of mine for decades.  But sometimes, after maybe watching a Freddy film and listening to that song...you drift off into sleep and....

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A Character's Story

Everyone knows, by now, that I truly love writing and creating characters.  Its one of the true joys of creativity, to be able to really get into a story and work through it.  What most don’t know is, the character of El’Mindeeya Do’Katal, the Emerald Bard, has been around for quite some time, probably close to a decade, and only just recently has she been truly captured in a high quality picture.

She started off as just a name.  Deeya.  Such a simple beginning, but I loved how the name sounded.  It sounded almost elvish, but it was used in other ways first.  In fact, before we go any further, let me go even further back.

(poem) - Inspiration, Take Me Away

I love to be transported
To another place and time
Be it by writing
Or music’s amazing rhyme

Dreams can only
Take you so far
You have to find inspiration
To raise that bar

Is there a better rhyme
Than this American Classic’s Line?

“Give me the beat boys
And save my soul
I want to get lost
In your rock and roll”

That is how I view music
Its why I listen at all
I love to hear the music
While watching the leaves fall

Trust me in this
When I say
I could listen to rock
Every and all day

But then there are times
That motion pictures set up the best lines

Some people can scoff
At the movie Avatar
When I watched it the first time
I dreamed I was seeing a distance star

From a world
I had never seen
A lush land
With tons of green

Sure the people were blue
But I was one of them
Daring to rise up
And share freedom’s dream

I live for moments like these
When I’m transported through outrageous dreams

If I could live
Under another sun
Or be taken away
By rock and rolls sweet fun

Then I would dance along
With my wife
In a place far from here
Without any strife

Because in these places far away
Where inspiration rules the day
My wife and I, in each other’s arms would lay.
Because each other’s love will stay

The funny thing is, no matter what I say
This is my life already, in every way.

--Dan

--Want more Poetry?  Check out my Poetry Collection Page!

The Conversation on Religion

I finally heard someone say it....

A few of my friends posted a video on Facebook the other day, and it was a friendly debate between an atheist and a christian on a late night talk show called “Totally Biased.”  They started off talking, and I was impressed how they two were interacting, especially how great the christian guy actually was.

A debate between an atheist and a Christian.

"A debate between an atheist and a Christian has quite a surprising result. You should share this if you wish every disagreement went just like this..." - Upworthy about this clip from Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell ( W. Kamau Bell)

Posted by Jamie Kilstein on Saturday, April 25, 2015

It never got heated, and both made great points.  But there was one line in there that got me, because I had used it several times before, but he said it quite eloquently:

"So my take is if I get up to Heaven and there is a God and he's like, 'You were wrong, how did you live your life?' And I'm like, 'I tried to help people, I tried to give to charity, I didn't know if you were real, there was no evidence,' and he was like, 'Well, you didn't worship me every day.' And I'm like, 'Fine. Send me wherever is as far away from here as possible because you're a sociopath!'"

THIS is how I feel when christians get all christian on me.  The christian bible is full of analogies, so let me do the one I always say.  “When I go and rescue a dog, I don’t do it so that dog will worship me, I do it to give the dog a better life.”  If I did it to get worshiped, what kind of being am I?

I fully believe we were all given this life to enjoy, this world is beautiful and amazing.  We were all given morality to know right from wrong.  The biggest evil in the world, when you look at it from this direction IS religion.  It has divided us beyond any possible belief.  It might be the point of a popular song, but imagine if there was no religion, and we could work together as the human race?

In the end, I’m not saying anything one way or another, because I don’t know for sure.  But when I look at this world, I don’t want to believe its all some crazy coincidence.  And when I think about everything that’s out there, I know in the end it doesn’t matter.  We are in a huge playground, full of beauty and mystery, if it wasn’t put here for us to enjoy, if it wasn’t put here as a test to see how well we do this thing called life, then there’s something wrong with...well, everything.

To quote another song, “I’m not a slave, to a God, that doesn’t exist.”  No one is a slave.  Most of us learned that slavery is reprehensible, that dictatorships are bad, and freedom on all levels is the most wonderful thing, the right thing.  Why do people break the bonds of others to be willingly enslaved to some factious dictator that the preacher believes is real, that the preacher makes up dogma to control you for?

My advice is the simplest of advices.  Find out for yourself what is out there, find out what you believe before you believe what some book says, or some other man says.  The truth is within you.  It always has been and always will be.