Playing with Poetry

I’ve always said I don’t really like poetry very much. That’s not exactly true. More accurately, I’ve always been a tad afraid of poetry. As a nonfiction writer, I find prose quite comfortable. Poems . . . not so much.

However, for the past few years I’ve been hanging out with a bunch of local writers, some of them poets. It turns out I like their work . . . a lot. They’ve inspired me to at least stick my toe into those waters, and I’ve written a few little poems.

In March, I shared one of them at the "Poetry, Prose, & Pie" Common Ground event on the Cherokee County Arts Council stage in Murphy, NC. It turned out to be a fun, friendly, and delicious gathering and I met some new friends. I might consider doing it again someday.

Here is the piece I shared:

Flourishing

In spite of,
no, because of
dramatic societal upheaval,
we awake
from ennui and languor.

Forty years we slept,
no, somnambulated,
stagnated,
turned a blind eye
to injustice, corruption, and hate.

We rise,
no, burst forth
with righteous indignation,
resisting, rethinking, confronting
this incarnation of Brave New World.

We must repair,
no, reinvent
our broken system
that crushes the masses
to elevate the few who want it all.

Community unites,
yes, flourishes as we
face our tarnished history,
lift the downtrodden, embrace the outcasts,
and restore truth.

#flourishing #poetry

Image by Alexey Komissarov from Pixabay