Tag Archives: revolutionary poetry

State House Stars, Bars And Scars: Revolutionary ImproVerse Rhyming Poem

South Carolina State House battle star cannon ball scarThe stars/
showing Sherman’s scars/
before this/
meant nothing to me./
Long live the Republic!/
Long live the Confederacy!/
(But now it does/
because/
I’ve touched history.*)

*[added later]

———–
The back story behind this poem:
Toward the end of the Civil War, General William T. Sherman and his Union army captured the South Carolina State Capital in Columbia, SC on February 17, 1865, leaving city-wide destruction. Shells from Sherman’s cannons, which were of light caliber, damaged the building only slightly, and brass markers were subsequently placed on the west and southwest walls of the building to show where the shots had landed. Ten were fired in all. Six “struck the western front,” with little damage. This photo is of the lowest (and most accessible) brass star marker (and the damage), near the western door.
In late February, 2015, I turned the star and ran my fingers along the damaged wall.

Afternoon In A Surprise Museum: Revolutionary ImproVerse Free Verse

McKissick Museum at University of South Carolina - drum and dugout canoe in Native American Low Country art exhibitAs the southern
evening bells
rang,
I banged
the skin drum
and sang:
“Yah, yah hey yah hah!”

Then rubbed I
the dugout canoe,
and dreamed,
and cared not
who heard my chanted prayer,
nor that I got splinters
in my hand.

I thought of she
and he,
and that they
might be better.

But observational joy
is never a contest.