Failure | Sravani Singampalli
Do you feel that failure is your enemy?
Make it your best friend
After all, it taught you so many things.
If not then stop dreaming about
Being another Thomas Alva Edison!
courage poems
Caste | Nate Maye
Reach down
in this broken
world to the ragged
and help them
do not perpetuate
the distance
you find between
yourselves
do not purchase
that dream
of dust and dire
circumstances.
Tethers | Stephanie Wilcox
That child folded under me like a century of war-torn pages blown away and tethered into nowhere.
Now we sing alone, tearstruck.
A distant home falls harder every second but the skylorn crows don’t stop their skulking.
They are merciless.
One night the breach will break,
The music untangled into rapture beyond earthly recognition will stream through our veins again,
rising against storms that enrage survival.
Let’s leave lovelessness to rot away.
Just stay still with me underneath the stardusted shadow cries while we wait.
The Night I Didn’t Stand Up | Tricia Knoll
That rock concert in New Haven, Connecticut took me by surprise
and why – the national anthem and the crowd was ready,
as one the many stood and hooted for the band.
I didn’t, a white girl whose knees knocked and never thought
of kneeling. Short of breath under the video of carpet bombing
of Cambodia, over the top, over the edge saturation
killing in Cambodia. And this was my country ’tis of thee
I sat in protest. Forty years later the black man kneeled
in more courage than I had in a pot-smoke crowd.
I ducked when some guy yelled I should stand
but there are times when you can’t, when the wrong
is too great, and the great isn’t great enough. So when
Judge Ruth says it’s wrong not to stand but not illegal
I know it can be right and the only thing you can do,
and perhaps it’s better to let wrong drive you to your knees
than sit like a numb ass.
More at http://triciaknoll.com.
Honoring Voice | Cattail Jester
I found your
story shoved in a box
far below others
Colonized
Marginalized
Disenfranchised
Those in power
laugh at your name
but you echo
Your story will be heard
as you keep tradition
alive.
Sanctions | Izzy Noon
Step here
Look here
break a rule
now and then
find a boundary
cross it
when the time
seems ripe.
No Island of Escape | G. Louis Heath
There is no island on the rivers, nor in
The lakes or seas, or in abstruse clouds
To escape the plagues of humankind.
All bear the black dog on their backs
As shadow nibbles mountain, plain, and
Valley to our doors. Yes, the megrims
Bite deep but we must carry on against
The plagues that beset us. The way is
Hard, strewn with mighty windfalls and
Boulders, on a high, torturous route, each
Step precarious. We hunger for the meadow,
Open to all. There we can enfold one unto
Another, build bridges of spirit and act, to
Deny the evil days of barbarous annihilation.