poetry teaches us to wrestle with and simplify complexity. Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman once told The New York Times, “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers. Poets are our original systems thinkers. They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.” Emily Dickinson, for example, masterfully simplified complex topics with poems like “Because I could not stop for Death,” and many poets are similarly adept. Business leaders live in multifaceted, dynamic environments. Their challenge is to take that chaos and make it meaningful and understandable. Reading and writing poetry can exercise that capacity, improving one’s ability to better conceptualize the world and communicate it — through presentations or writing — to others.

The Benefits of Poetry for Professionals at the Harvard Business Review

Perhaps I should elevate poetry higher on the list given this piece. I’ve been writing since I was 9, surely its got to count for a little bit more than the ramblings of love lost, gained, angered, or pretty bicycles. Or maybe, like this article simply states, what if the introspective and creative leanings of the poet simply made them better able to handle the environments of business – that is, unless they chose to change rhythm to another stanza.

The first issue is that of how much I’ve written. Here’s the title listing of my poetry collection to date (organized by year, descending):

• Constantly Evolving – 2012-13
• Words and Pictures - 2011-12
• Elephants - 2010-11
• Prayerfully Talking - 2009-10
• Walking Off the Pages - 2008-09
• A New Beginning - 2007-08
• Vineland - 2006-07
• In the MIst of Him - 2005-06
• A Return to Closer Than Worship - 2004-05
• Peace and Compromise - 2003-04
• Thoughts Reestablished - 2002-03
• Without the Masks - 2001-02
• Closer Than Worship - 2000-01
• Anointings - 1999-2000
• Seeds of the Vine - 1998-99
• Candlefire - 1997-98
• Rumors - prior to 1997

Its honestly been a very long time since looking at this list, and I’m just realizing that there is just a ton of poetry here. Some year’s I’ve got more than 120 pieces, others have between 45 and 60. And the last two (current and WnP) have the addition of my drawings. There’s just a lot of stuff being produced by hands in just this space that is pretty amazing to me.

The challenge though is to actually keep this accessible for a long time to come. Right now, with the exception of the last three collections, everything else is in a MS Word DOC format. And some of the later ones of those are in that fun DOCX format. Now, this might not be much an issue to some, but I’ve moved away from MS Office as the primary container and working space for documents. Having these treasured files locked here is a major issue to me.

Now, it would probably make the best sense to go two routes here: a series of static files for the collections themselves, and then a database that is maintained for them all. That would make the most sense, and is slightly outside of my skill set. To do the first, I’ve already got the template, and it would just be a matter of either doing it manually, or asking for help with a script that’s able to create those collections as they should be. The database actually seems to me to be a better option long-term, but I’ve got to go that route of exploring the best type of database, and something that stays light and flexible enough for when being hosted on a mobile (as my content is now), or if I choose to push something to an online service, that it doesn’t financially tax me there either.

Still, that’s something for another day. I was more than anything shocked at just how much I’ve written. For one reason or another, I’d not even had this kind of listing of my poetry. This is something that my new digital notebook will be able to hold for me, and is passable to other devices and services as I need. There’s a lot of history here, and nothing that I want to let time or data formats lock away.

Before me there has been activity enough to startle a bear
Enough to feed a fish some cares
And enough loss to add to Bambi’s tears

I’ve been at the moment of shaking hands with kings and puppets
At the moment where life is but a blip on the screen until I awake
If I continue this way I’m sure to see more grace
Be pulled out of another physical or financial ache
And reap something of a reward
Even if the compliments come years after they were petitioned for

Before me lies a kind of perspective many keep telling me is genius
Enough imagination to change the world yet again
And enough entropy to be just one of a percent never counted

Then there’s some space
Space to breathe
Space to knit
Hold close onto what matters
Mapping those chances that I choose to never live away
There’s that space after this three dash three that breathes easier
And struggles to take its rightful place ahead
This is the space that I know I have left to live
And before that a life dash life lived

There has been three numbered before me
There are three numbered with me
There might be something like three in the space that comes next
But for what it is worth
I’ll enjoy 33 for what it altogether means.

Then the street was taken from me
I couldn’t get any closer to her shoulder or hair
So I had to find another pedal
And a pace that was even faster
I wish it were flatter
And that I had an engine
Because the hill is challenging my convictions
Speaking promises I didn’t know I was meant to make
So I stood up some
And pressed through the cold winds further

Then I saw what could have only been a mirage
Well, only if it were a desert and I were parched
There you were coming towards me
And all the energy that was taken from me
And all the strength to remain in this a bit further
No longer mattered
Because I saw the same grit in your pedals
The same arms carrying this love up a hill
On that pink frame I never saw before
You pedaled down beside me
Took from my hand the flowers intended to blossom in yours
Placed them in basket
And planted your hand in mine
We turned to face down the hill
And with a glee our feet arose from the pedals

My car was taken from me
And I was convinced that the strength on my pedals alone would be enough
Until you joined yours to mine
And we found that this life was still going to have hills
Our determination to go up them
And not stop praying to make it up, over, and through
Was all the engine we needed
Because a love like this takes two pedals
One to go up
While the other paces down
All the fuel this engine needed
Was a car to be removed
And our lives to pedal a bit closer.

This poem was in inspired by, and submitted to, the Lovely Bicycle, Velo Valentine Bike Giveaway Contest. I was a bit late on my submission. But, not on the inspiration apparently.

The way it was clamored about
You would have this zeal to chat about
And the entire world would walk about
Repent, believe, and the cycle would begin to rout
All of those who weren’t expecting life to be about
The emblazoned path polished with the steps of a righteous way.

Yet it wasn’t until I lived it out
That the love, miracles, and victories to shout aloud
Would be hard pressed from those who were so devout
To sprinkle some reality in with their fearless doubt
Or anger, or brokenness, it really didn’t matter what they’d tout
The truth of their religion was bludgeoned into piety.

The way life has pictured this for me
I would receive the challenge to take up a cross
Find at every turn that life was but a loss
Then to gain the pain of a faith that gets tossed
Roundabout the sweetness that occasionally becomes like frost
Somewhere in me is there some glamorous faith to be displayed?

And the hope is that I would clamor about this truth
That no matter what it is that I seem to boost
That I get pruned of what seems in need of use
Or what I have bitten off has chipped a tooth
Therefore my smile has to be real joy uncoufed
Or at least a faith that was honest in its approach.

But I fear that what could be so neat
Really finds itself under a sheet
It’s really more rare to meet people like me
Because in this society celebrity we entreat
And therefore miss the truth of this walk that’s better described as deep.

And so I’m wondering aloud about that glamorous faith
What was it about the image given that made me take chase
What was it about the life they lived that wasn’t belief in haste
But had this mark of realness beyond celebrity’s gates
But had this mark about frailty plastering even their neighbors in the face

Asking simply, is God pleased with the scars on that face
With the limp, the sores, the heart, the soul that loves waste
Is God pleased with the things we have embraced
Or is his heart about what was written in the holy texts
The lives of those who had truly a glamorous faith.

The way that it was pictured for me
You would believe before you would see
You would receive before you would release
You would struggle before you’d proceed
And before hearing the declaration that cause glee
You would produce a picture that would speak for eternity.