Tag Archives: revolutionary poetry

We’re Not Perfect, But: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Haiku

A friend said she was concerned that, although she wanted to do good, she was not, and would never be, “good enough”. (See the previous poem: “Making up the Difference”.) I responded that none of us are “good enough”, but …

With Jesus’s help,/
we can all be good enough/
and rise to glory.
Or
… rise to greatness.

Our Lives Are Wrapped Up Again: Revolutionary IMproVerse Iambic Poem

Two grandchildren of good friends have childhood cancer. I am no longer the common link. I wrote this about that experience.
For more information on both, plese visit:
KissesforCami.com and
Beckhamsbattle.blogspot.com
and support however you can.

Our Lives Are Wrapped Up Again

My son’s best friend
is now a mother
who’s going where your child has been
And is.
You may think I’m not there.
You may think
That I don’t care.
But because I care as deeply as I do,
I have respected the silence from you.

I know you have duties and obligations to keep.
I know you have worries and thoughts which deprive you of sleep.
I know that in trying to help at your daughter’s home,
you have felt, sometimes, left alone.

But you’re not.

Prayers are constantly being uttered
for you as well as your granddaughter.
But now this silence I must end
to help The daughter of my friend
and the son of my son’s friend.

For in your daughter’s voyage beneath
There is experience
and wisdom and surviving grief
which may bring sense
And some relief
and insights
and make a dawn
out of the night
and the fears
that bring tears
to so many.
If I had that wisdom,
I would share it,
but I haven’t any
except to bare it
and to show another the way
to the experience
that your daughter and granddaughter have today.

And so, while I respect your pained silence
heartfelt, wide and deep,
please forgive me if I that same silence
can no longer keep.

Xanadu Revisited With Codeine: Revolutionary ImproVerse Free Verse Poem

I lay,
room spinning,
throat choking me,
wondering what was reality
and what was dreamscape
fantasy.

I wondered if I’d become as Coleridge,
if I should take up my pen and write and write and write
of things seen in fantasy vision,
of women danced with and light cotton gauze summer dresses,
of time lost in a solitary tick of the clock,
seeming to go on forever and yet being a moment.

Or was it longer?

And as the codeine cough syrup flowed through my veins,
I felt myself elevating above the bed and spinning and turning and collapsing again down,
and wondering if I would never rise again.

But determined to rise I was.
Determined not to die and be found by my mother,
wide open I’d died,
smelly rising of flesh
when she’d come in the morning,
but instead,
sitting up,
swinging my feet down
so they once again touched solid ground,
and did not dance in the air.

I determined to find me there in the morning,
codeine free,
empty,
and willing to deeply drink not drought
but the draughts of
Springville springwater.

If this seems foolish to some,
so probably seemed Xanadu foolish then.

And will someone knock on my door?