pReaching to the Choir

Hello?
Don't get distracted; don't be misled.
You'll miss the point.
They want you divided, fighting
straw dogs they set at you.

What are you protesting...?

It is not by your patriotism that you support imperialism.
Nor is it by your pledge of allegiance that you keep flags covering truth.
And it is not by your vote or your note to the editor.
No need to buy your vote.
They have bought your life
with the hamburger and fries
you just ate,
the SUV and one-car-per-person lifestyle.
Who the heck taught you
you could "own" a home?

It's not just sweatshops cranking out Nikes
overseas. Check our own backyards.

This time the monster *is* under your bed.

They've bought your life and obedience
with the produce pickers, the maids, and dishwashers —
the parts you ignore,
the nuts and bolts (tape & glue)
holding our economy together.
They know you won't complain unless
it falls on top of you.
But by then, you'll think it's
your fate.



Poetry is not
a job —
but poetry is about
making a living.

It is your foundation
not your soapbox —
make it your sandbox.
Play at the edges of what
isn’t soft, what doesn’t run
away, and what drums
warn you about.


Reading poetry is like entering another world — a wilderness of image, sound, and symbol. But it is someone else’s landscape. Poems are powerful intimacy. Perhaps that is why “love poetry” works so well.

This new landscape is so personal, sometimes you need time to adjust, to take your shoes off, to get your feet wet, to feel the dirt and grasses between your toes, to know where to step and what to skip. When to jump and skip.

Poems are pure ice crystals. They melt slowly in the fire of your focused attention, quenching an unsuspected thirst.

But if you haven’t got that kind of time, then a guide is helpful — someone who knows the way in … and knows the way out for you.

The guide is not you. The guide can’t do the work for you. The guide can only point at things, or point at you. But the guide is not you and the guide does not take you — you walk on your own. Walk at your own angle, speed, walk don’t run, run as fast as you can.


We think it is the poem, the painting, we create …. But it is us, the art is our self. Art works to discover, to uncover the layers experience encrusts us with. To filter/find what is us, underneath what has been learned.

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