Category Archives: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Poetry

His Bright Red Sweater: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Haiku

Going to visit/
an old family friend,/
eyesight failed me./
I couldn’t find him/
in the crowd./
Then someone told me:
“He is there!/
in that bright red sweater!”

He always wears/
bright red sweaters./
How could I forget that?

When The Messenger Gets The Greater Gift: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Free Verse Poem

God knew
what He was doing
when He called me
to be a messenger
of His and her love.

Old, not forgotten father
got sweet gifts of kosher
home-canned plums in apple juice.
And candy.
He knows she loves him.

But how often can a guy who loves
Ella’s scatting,
the Duke,
the Dizz,
who gets Misty to Sarah Vaughn,
who channels Satchmo,
get to talk to a Mensch
who hung out with them in Philly,
when he was the only white guy in the club
where they played
for the love of that music?
That sound?

To touch the past like that,
to hear those notes
through his vocal telling,
yes,
through that time machine,
I got the greater gift.
Just like He knew I would.

America Encore July 1972-2015: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Free Verse Poem

America plays Horse With No Name, Draper Days, 2015I knew the song well,
well before I saw it,
saw the title, first,
carved deep
in an old wood school desk
in the gable room
of my historic fachwerk church
in the heart of Cream City.

Each time
through the decades,
I heard about
the desert that had turned to sea,
I thought of that pen-rutted,
scarred wood,
revelation writing,
hinged desk top.

Will that still be
my embedded memory
now that I’ve seen,
second,
decades later,
in the desert,
the no-named
equine tribute
live?