I. [Race medals on wall or just race medals]
Two thousand nine was quite the year for me
I finished Boston twenty-six point two
And Ironman, the race, I did all three
The swim, the bike, the run, my ego grew
Caught up in all my training I forgot
That life was more than just some storied race
But Kona’s Ironman was what I sought
I didn’t think that I would fall from grace
The grace of one more medal on my wall
From one more race as hard as it might be
I didn’t think that I would ever fall
But fall I did and how I fell you’ll see
They saved my life when I was nearly dead
A TBI persists within my head.
II. [Hospital image in bed]
My helmet saved my life but brains will bleed
And scars will form in place of what we know
New neural pathways form to meet the need
Of “normalcy” a “normal” brain might show
My normal was my racing, which was lost
Paralysis replaced my “normal” self
I had to learn to walk again, the cost
Was more than unused shoes upon my shelf
I had to learn to eat without a tube
I had to learn to walk without a cane
I had to learn I wasn’t just some rube
I had to learn to use a broken brain
A broken brain that used to be so bright
I learned my “normalcy” was this: to write.
III. [Hand writing in notebook]
What else but racing had I done before?
Before my TBI changed everything
I’d written sonnets. Could I write one more?
One little song a troubadour might sing
Resiliency requires that I write
Again like I had written once, when whole
Not whole? I know, I seem a “normal” sight
But I have lost and found a lofty goal
My goal’s now this, to write in storied verse
The tales of all that I have stood to live
I’ve learned that life is more than to rehearse
And life has many stories left to give
Thoreau said I should live before I write
I’ve lived through death so Henry, let’s not fight!
IV. [Human heart with "iamb" emerging from it like a song]
My name is more than just an anagram
Sonnettics is the way I choose to live
A sequence made of sonnets is the dram
I drink, I write. It’s what I have to give
Iambic lines sound like a beating heart
A beating heart sounds like a subtle drum
Familiar pulses fill my veins with art
I hear them find their words and watch them come
They find their way around my TBI
They find a way to bleed out on the page
I hear them talk, at least I think they try
The words are gods whose confidence is sage
The wisdom of familiar words to sing
Is how I’ve learned to deal with everything.
V. [A plowed field with iambic words or a verse of pentameter… maybe the first line of this sonnet]
Resilience is a sonnet that I write
To help my brain find pathways it once knew
Resilience won’t be easy, but it might
Be how I learn to do the things I do
Like walk or write a sonnet: here’s one now
I know we’re in the middle of a tale
A tale of sonnets, dirt before the plow
The plow is me before you to regale
Regale you with the hope of what I plant
I hope the seeds I scatter here will grow
And then I hope the harvest won’t be scant
True hope is like a secret that I know
I know to share my life in metered verse
And hope it doesn’t go from bad to worse!
VI. [Some image of a poet..maybe you in a kilt… on a cloud]
I know it doesn’t seem a lofty goal
Like running Boston Marathon or such
A poet pays a dithyrambic toll
To write in sonnets (or to write too much)
More sonnets than the Bard of Avon did
More time to write than Dante spent in hell
If hell were fourteen lines in which we hid
The price of all the metaphors we’d sell
The poet might descend in hopes to rise
To rise to heaven to entreat the Word
Then metaphorically I might disguise
My soul with verses God might find absurd
But God knows how to laugh, a hearty sound
And laughs as all the angels fly around.
VII. [Brain]
I saw them fly to Earth and pick me up
I saw them hold me back from life’s last leap
And every card they dealt me was a cup
Each dealt me an emotion I should keep
For TBI had stripped emotions clean
The cards were my prostheses, mine to hold
I held them to my chest, each one I’d seen
I might have lost such precious veins of gold
The gold of my emotions, unrefined
Was mine to keep in neural pathways new
Emotions had been lost but not my mind
I found a purpose, what I had to do
I had to find the stories I could tell
And Dante-like I had to go through hell.
VIII. [Brain surrounded by stars]
The hell of finding pathways ‘round my scars
The scars that blocked the pathways of my brain
But even in such hell I saw new stars
That marked the pathways where I stood to gain
To gain a poet’s life I’d been prepared
To gain a life at all, I didn’t die
At times it’s true that I was very scared
It’s not some phony story to deny
Denial is any easy path to walk
But I had run as hard as I could go
If medals on my wall could somehow talk
They’d tell the world of challenges they know
The challenge now is writing songs of art
And finding stories deep within my heart.
IX. [Scott writing poetry with medical team in the background]
I think that most good poets start with doubt
I found my doubt that year I almost died
I learned that words could not be lived without
As there I laid with no one by my side
Oh, there were doctors, nurses, quite a few
I love them all, for by their art I healed
They fixed my poet’s brain, but never knew
The poetry my broken brain concealed
Within my mind, my poetry was lost
I journeyed there through seas of doubt and pain
I paid the piper, such an angry cost
So that I might be whole and write again
They couldn’t heal my doubts, that job was mine
Such doubts constrain, confuse, and yes, confine.
X. [Scott writing. Fates in the background.]
The poetry I sought was to unbind
Like Kubla Khan to Xanadu I fled
The sacred river Alph I sought to find
In words that I composed while still in bed
I spent my time with words; each word was god
I rearranged these gods to make them sing
A little song that mortals might enjoy
I found what my mortality might bring
To bring the knowledge needed of the now
The now my chronoception can't conceal
Resiliency is more than Fates allow
And so I write in hopes I might reveal
Reveal to all who read or hear and feel
That poems too are gods of words that heal.
XI. [Scott writing in hell]
Let’s focus on the sonnet now to see
If songs of words with some familiar beat
Might amplify my own resiliency
Or if they should have left me on the street
Do iambs come in groups of more than five
Are neural scars poetic in my brain
I guess I’m glad that I am still alive
Regardless of the death of unseen pain
The volta of my life, a TBI
Is part of the great sonnet of my life
I write my little songs, at least I try
Regardless of the scheme of hidden strife
It doesn’t make a lot of sense, oh well
Like Dante I still write while deep in hell.
XII. [Scott writing under a rainbow]
The hell I’ve come to know and overcome
Is finding life in sonnets that I write
So why then write? Is writing sonnets “dumb”
They may not heal my brain, and yet, they might
Resiliency in hell that no one sees
Is more than just the writing of such verse
And normalcy is more than just to please
The people who believe that they’ve seen worse
So, worse than any hell that I’ve been through
Would be to stop composing little songs
I write, I write, I write; it’s what I do
Pentameter is where my soul belongs
My heaven of pentameter is this:
A broken brain that’s found it’s normal bliss.
XIII. [Sonnettics in the middle of a circle. The circle has hearts around it or is made up hearts brains]
Chiasmus is returning to the start
It’s like a circle showing us the way
I think I found the way through this my art
The art of sonnets since that fateful day
Iambic blood goes pulsing through my brain
And through my heart, my soul, and through my pen
The neural pathways I propose to train
Are sonnets I will write and write again
Familiar as my name, I’ve found they help
To bring me back from places I have gone
A bitch called out to this poetic whelp
Like Xanadu called out to Kubla Khan
The similes and metaphors are real
When I compose the sonnets that I feel.
XIV. [?]
I am my song, my pulse, my turn, my scheme
If that constricts your mind then you should leave
I’m more than just a vision or a dream
In which some simple acolytes believe
And yet, I’m not a temple on a hill
I’ve seen too many temples come and go
To make pretenses which I can’t fulfill
Pretend I sound like somebody you know
I am iambic meter at my core
Pentameter I place where it belongs
A sonneteer and yet I’m so much more
Much more than I express in little songs
I’m fourteen lines, and yes, a volta too
You think you thought you knew me, now you do.
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