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Tag: poetic forms

How Long Have I Seen: clogyrnach

Published on May 5, 2025

When did I start see it first-hand,
the sickness creeping on our land?
I can tell you when:
I was maybe ten;
you begin
to understand.

What my first thought, that time I knew
that no one out there had a clue?
It’s easy. A child
can sense the defiled
in the wild.
That is true.

How long have I been at this war,
a fight for something else, for more
than my own winning?
Since the beginning,
still spinning,
evermore.

Why do I bother keeping on?
Why fight the weeds that choke the lawn?
What good being still,
while evil acts kill,
and free will
soon is gone?

05 MAY 2025


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Small Change: cinquain

Published on May 5, 2025

Talking
about dissent
is not really revolt
unless it leads to some real life
action.

Rebels
can’t change the world
without changing themselves;
that’s how all revolution starts:
within.

Shouting
to be louder
than the other side’s team
only makes everyone in range
deafer.

Fascists
don’t really care
how much racket you make;
so long as you keep giving them
money.

Freedom
isn’t achieved
by replacing their side
with just another hierarchy
to fight.

Talking
is just small breeze
in the face of a gale wind;
you’ve got to put an anchor down
to live.

05 APR 2025

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What Else: choka

Published on April 30, 2025

What else can I say?
The world is what we make it,
or maybe it’s not.
The little splashes we make
barely change the water’s calm.

What else can we do?
From nothing, everything comes
and then it is gone.
How we choose to measure time
makes little difference to it.

What else could there be?
Nothing exists forever;
and how would we know?
We see just the horizon;
life doesn’t stop at our eye.

30 Apr 2025

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Indra’s Neti-Neti: chantey (shanty)

Published on April 29, 2025

We sail the sea that has no shore,
with just a raft beneath us;
we float until we can no more
and our resources fail us.
We find the wind and let it blow
whichever way it takes us,
without a chart or star above
we journey ’til it breaks us.
We make no claim to know the way,
nor where this life will lead us.
We work our sinews to the bone;
the sea air thins and bleeds us.
We are a wild and wooly crew,
no nation claims or wants us;
we know no home or fatherland –
no distant hamlet haunts us.
We sail because for all we know
the ocean lives inside us.
We keep a steady, weather eye
on where the fog may hide us.
We stand together on the deck
where time and tide defy us,
and with each turn and rolling wave,
we let ourselves be righted.

29 APR 2025

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Anti-Amergin: chant

Published on April 29, 2025

I am not just my name and sign,
I am not just my sex,
I am not who I voted for,
I am not where I’m from,
I am not just the work I do,
I am not just a son,
I am not from a somewhere else,
I am not just like you,
I am not where I went to school,
I am not what you taught me,
I am not playing on your team,
I am not your opponent,
I am not a mind or body suit,
I am not here forever,
I am not my integrity,
I am not my backstory,
I am not who I seem to you,
I am not a somebody,
I am not a celebrity,
I am not educated,
I am not old and wise and gray,
I am not mid-way through it,
I am not a child prodigy,
I am not a late bloomer,
I am not something that you’ve heard,
I am not just my language,
I am not some well-hidden lamp,
I am not a state secret,
I am not female, am not male,
I am not someone’s father,
I am not better off than you,
I am not part of something,
I am not one of your old friends,
I am not a religion,
I am not what you label me,
I am not through with living.

Who claims to know me, as I am?
Who thinks their claims control me?
Who else pretends to give a damn?
Who wants their cage to hold me?

What does the world want me to be?
Who out there claims to get me?
What good do all these labels do,
When I am neti, neti?

29 APR 2025

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Who Sings Your Battle Song: chanso

Published on April 29, 2025

If you would sing a battle song
to rally troops, to right what’s wrong,
be sure to check it in advance,
lest those mute puppets that will dance
mistake your good intentions.

It must bring heat, you will agree,
and indicate what infamy
you seek to topple from its throne,
but take care what you bring to boil:
you may need fire prevention.

The army of rebellious souls
you would attract to swell your rolls –
are they just parroting your lines,
or have they sought, with their own minds,
the remedy you mention?

What will you feed them, once the song
has ended, and for just how long
do you think they will sing out loud
once casualties have thinned the crowd?
Will you keep their attention?

The crowd is fickle, after all,
and once the summer turns to fall,
how will you keep those fires lit?
Will those who sing now stick to it,
or succumb under tension?

We need the song, there is no doubt,
and voices who will belt it out
with sense and comprehension.

29 APR 2025

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The Write to Read: caudate sonnet

Published on April 28, 2025

What good to write when so few have the time
to do much more than nod and swipe me gone?
Opinions vary, but to ramble on
without an audience seems too sublime.
Besides, what difference can a few short lines
make when the world needs changing, not anon,
but here and now, before the chance is gone?
The line between much good, and none, is fine.

What matter does it make, ten thousand friends,
when only two or three may even try
to navigate through streams of postured talk
that lives for but a moment, then it ends,
before it has a chance to qualify
as something just more useful than a rock?

You read me? I’m in shock.

It does me good to think of you out there,
afloat in that great ether realm, somewhere;
I write on, since you care.

Together, let us seek some peace of mind;
there is no limit to what we can find.

28 APR 2025

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