A Moment Of Your Time Please

A few thoughts:
As hard as it is to make a decent living these days, they just keep coming back to rob you, although you allow yourself to get lured in to the schemes of an educational opportunity, business venture, or that new car smell, it all stinks! Just as one burden is lifted, another one comes back to haunt you. As much as we try to be honest, hard working people who pay their bills on time, I wonder if I should take on a life of crime. But the temptation, though simple, and easy as it sounds, presents a whole new set of problems.
My Savior says to go with simple faith, and determination, to pick up my cross daily, and haul it down the path to perdition, where judgement falls on the wicked, and faithful alike, but some days I still wonder, "Is it worth my effort?" When the phone rings, and it's one more bill collector on the line, I consider my last dime. When does it end?
But I cannot let this world tear me to pieces, not when I can look a faithful companion in the face, and know that a wagging tail, and joyful disposition is telling me to come out into the yard, and play a while, no matter what may happen, even if tomorrow brings an end to my time with the screetch of tires on a loney stretch of country road. Keep on playing, though your heart is low, and your spirit longing for a little rest upon the back porch of home. I will go on, and I will remember that life is full of moments I have the choice to make happy, or sink into despair. Today, I choose happiness, tomorrow be damned!
God bless!
Witt

To What Was And Is To Come

Open Window

Once I watched a door close

When she walked away

But I was long gone

Before I heard it

And there was nothing

And nowhere to go

Looking for an open window

To come along.

Pictures are my memory

I dream in vivid colors

Watching the wind blow

Through a forest

Leaves whisper her name

As I linger

Not knowing what to say

Looking for an open window.

Everything changes

No matter how we try

To remain the people

We put upon a pedestal

But we never become them

Pounding upon closed doorways

Till our fists bleed

Wounded soldiers in a game.

Noone to blame for

All the missed chances

To restore a pathway

Of a closed door

So I cling to a picture

Knowing my memories

Will hold still

Vision of an open window.

Will she reappear

Before I leave this life behind

Only time will tell

As the tide arrives

To erase difficult days

When I was blind to truth

Denying her spirit

A warm place to stay.

In my heart

There is an open window

Sunlight becomes her

To the hillside I climb

Clinging to a doorway

That will never open again

So I pray for salvation

In another's arms.

Neverland is just a place

Boys never grow old

But this world deals in reality

Something I ran from so often

Denying possibility

To make changes

For our sake

And so that door went unopened.

Don't you forget me

Even when you dream

The way it use to be

We had our moments

We brought life

To a gruesome world

We opened a window

No man can close.

Oh give me one more day

It's not the number

But the quality

Propels me forward

Closing doors give way

To open windows

And God knows

I'll be waiting anxiously.

When I come closer

Don't deny me

A way to find you

Over the phone

Close a chapter

Open a window

If only for a moment

And let me stay a while

D.A. Wittler 17’

Mentor From The Grave

I, who slipped into this title of poet,
Long to be liberated from the world
Free to rage within the realm of my own wit,
To intervene, and
To transform the world..

Taken from, and inspired by: Sir Phillip Sidney
(1554-1586) Courtier to Queen Elizabeth I. Knight, warrior, horseman, and self described poet. Though he lived a brief life, he knew the gentility of nobility, the brutality of war, and the subtlety of poetry. A hero Knight of the highest order of chivalry, and literature. Wow, if I believed in reincarnation like the late great George S. Patton, there I would be! But I would never choose to die of gangrene from wounds sustained in battle, who would? Ah, but a quick sword to the heart is more the order of my life. A loner, son of a foundry worker, signal soldier; smitten by love, a father, leader, and lonely once more. And so I digress into the shadows of my later years, dismissed, but never out of the fight.
God bless
Witt

From My Father's House

For all of us who have issues with life, and I think that pretty much covers all human beings on the planet, a little perspective:
For many centuries, perhaps even from the dawn of human creation, men, and women alike have held on to the things that have shaped them as individuals. Good, and bad go hand in hand as much comes from parents, guardians, or homes of record. Character makes up a lot of who we are, and like it or not we experience things that add to , or detract from that image of ourselves. Often we look to our fathers for guidance as we grow from childhood to adulthood, and as the case may be, we may not always get what we bargained for.
I for one may not have received the love, and affection of my father like I may have needed at various points in time in my life, but it doesn't mean I have to dwell on the loss, or lack of, rather, that I took what I could get, and ran with it. I don't have to let resentment for this lacking get me so downhearted that I cannot function when life stresses me to the extreme. I don't have to run for cover every time I am reminded of the bad things that have occurred in my life.

God knows from the very beginning that human resentment goes all the way to the top. In fact, I think it was figured into our DNA that at some point we look to a father figure to blame for our shortcomings, and or flaws in character. All I can say in this regard is this; make peace with it any way you can. Seek wise counsel of a trusted friend, or professional, pray for guidance, and above all, take the time while it is at hand to go to your father, and speak from your heart whatever it is that is keeping you from becoming the ideal image of yourself. I can't tell you how much turmoil there has been in my own life because of resentment, anger, and hurt over feelings towards my own father, but I had to pass through some pretty awful waters to get to where I am today to be able to share my experience with you. I hope that in your own way that you find a means to make peace with the past so you can become the best version of yourself that God intended. So, sit back, take a few deep breaths, pick up the phone, send a text, say a prayer, or even speak to an empty chair if it helps resolve the pain in your heart. May God bless you, and keep you firmly in His care!

Who's Afraid?

Who's Afraid Of The Dark?

By:

Dale A. Wittler

We are all born out of the darkness of our mother’s womb. Like some self contained spacecraft, it was our first real home. It gave us nourishment through a tube like embilical, provided warmth, and protection from a hostile exterior environment. We grew inside it until there was no more room to expand our horizons, and so we were expelled into a harsh light so blinding, and cold that it caused us to cry with our first drawing breath. And so, out of that life giving bath of darkness, we became beings immersed in light. We soon forgot how welcoming it had been to just keep our eyes closed, and experience life through the muffled sounds of an alien world mere milimeters away on the outside. In fact, as time passed, we began to fear what we once knew as a life sustaining darkness, and transformed it into a nightmarish place noone wants to explore again… So, tell me, how did we learn to fear the dark?

I wake in a cool sweat, my heart pounding like a freight train; throat bone dry, and lungs drawing huge gasps of air like I had been swimming under water for an extended time, and distance. There is a fading sense of impending doom leaving my body, and my mind begins to resume a normal pace of a typical afternoon. This is fast becoming a new norm for a person who has known the drone of third shift life after most folks turn in for a long nights rest. It is curious indeed, and a mystery only many years of experience can reveal as a genuine sleep disorder.

I remember as a kid coming home from elementary school, and my brothers, and sisters gathering in front of the television set to watch Dark Shadows. As if Barnabus Collins wasn't enough to scare the bezeesus out of you, there was nothing like having to use the bathroom during a commercial break, and needing to make the long trek down the hallway to relieve oneself. Yes, I mention this because that's when my fear of the dark made itself truly known to me, and the time we made our own haunted house in the basement. I will never forget my oldest sister, and the “white hand” glowing in the dark under the staircase.

Funny how sleep can be taken for granted in a world constantly at war with itself. I remember sitting behind a small green box lit up with ivory colored subscriber lights, and the slight hum of a power supply fan motor during field training exercises in Germany. There isn't much to do when you're a ninteen year old private first class manning a telephone switchboard after the generals have called it a day. Even after a change of scenery puts him on an air base somewhere the hell in Honduras, it's still the same game, a Cold War existence.Years don't change a man except when he has been up for nearly thirty six hours straight, and a National Guard captain keeps wondering why his switchboard operator keeps dosing off, even while standing up on both feet. Believe me, there is nothing more surreal than waking up half way to the floor when your body says“ Give me a break, will ya?”

So, what does this have to do with the inevitabiliy of growing old, and the fear knowing life ends in darkness just like it began? Well, again, experience is the best teacher. Over countless hours carrying a flashlight around a kind of half way house for wayward boys, I learned to embrace darkness as a means of security. As long as the kids were in bed, I didn't have to worry if one of them began to act up, and a fight would break out. I never liked sitting on top of a thirteen year old who was having an episode of “I can't deal with the reality that life stinks, and I can't cope effectively with my anger issues.” Yeah, I was one of those crazy individuals, who when backed into a corner, was forced to handle the conflict I always tried to avoid at all cost. To this day I hate dealing with the fueding frenzy this world has become so addicted to.

And so, this journey continues. After twenty years of marriage, divorce, child support, and living in exile for nearly five years, I find myself in a mid-life life crisis of epic proportions. Health Care is all the rage as I have entered a guantlet of repeated doctor visits, blood work, and issues related to that dreaded walk to the bathroom. Funny how it all comes back to you in spades. And thusly I return to a new kind of fear, the reality of knowing a lifetime of dreams, both good, and bad, are cut short by a broken mechanism inside my brain that keeps turning the light on, and off at random. After a ten hour shift at work the night before, I have been asleep, and awake at least three times since 8 am Eastern Standard Time. Almost as funny as “The Clapper” I live a commercial in my head that isn't the convenience of a modern labor saving device. I realize that it's not the blood sugar, blood pressure, or cholesterol that will kill me, it's the darkness, and comfort of a warm place to sleep that will inevitably end it. So I blame economics, the health care industrial complex, and my own broken brain as a means to deal with the fear only God in heaven knows how to heal.

The End Is Near

By The Title Of The Same Name

Who Am I?

Always take what I "say" with a grain of salt, but don't ever take for granted what I write from the depths of my heart, and the beauty of my soul. If you should pass this way again, you will know the purest form, and the best version of who I am.

So, who am I?

I don't know normal.
Sure, I look that way on the outside,
But noone knows the turmoil inside,
Or the beauty hidden there beneath;
I am real!

Know me as a friend

A one time lover

Always a fighter

Deep within

A soul searcher

A God driven man

Full of flaws,

And imperfections

Like a diamond

Once a lump of coal

Now a glittering example

Of what pressure can create

And heaven sent

To find purpose

In a world of hate

A hell of man's own making.

This is who I am.

D.A. Wittler 17’