Looking Within – A Poem by Daniel Miltz
What I always turn to
For inspiration or energy
When I am downcast
Or in need of invigorating karma
With knowledgeable answers hurrah
Swarm my medulla oblongata
critical thinking poems
Rolling Away the Stone – A Poem by Roy Pullam
I gibraltared my opinions
Arming my personal philosophy
With the parochial views
That surrounded my youth
Passed on as a legacy
Of ignorance
Maybe through the wish
To not be different
To not voice the uncertainty
That I grudgingly felt
I accepted the doctrine
Of my religion
Doubt crept in
As I was exposed
To a broader world
Slowly without my notice
Fissures developed
I began to question
To stent
A clogged mind
Allowing reason
The blood of wisdom
To reach my gray matter
First one
Then others eroded
Until
Questioning
Left no rock
Just the clay
That crumbled
Under my feet
Some
Have the comfort
Of a closed mind
Always knowing
Where they stand
And I have my dilemmas
With seemingly few answers
In Defense of Intellectual Labor – A Poem by Daniel Klawitter
It begins innocently enough
With a wondering.
With a however hung
On a what if.
With a maybe
Married to a possibility
Not yet exposed
Or explored.
Sure, there are answers—
Some of them are even
Convincing.
What is deplorable
Is thinking the obvious
Is obvious
Just for existing.
It requires
Some agility—
Some frisky flexibility
To not become distressed
When provoked
By a question
That turns into a quest.
No Walls | Langley Shazor
The opportunity is there
We owe it to ourselves
If you haven’t
You must
Think beyond
Think outside
Just think
There is so much more
So much to experience
So much to life
I urge you
Think beyond
Think outside
Just think
Beyond borders
Beyond race
Beyond religion
Beyond differences
Wouldn’t that be freeing?
To think outside?
Just think
Lambs to the Slaughter | Stan Morrison
We miss shaking friends’ hands
And the warmth of their embrace
What’s called a greater good
We are fulfilling our civic duty
Masks sanitizers and distance
Those elected to do better
Are always up to no good
Masquerading evil intentions
With the latest sanitized spin
Humanity way in the distance
Re-election trumps sanity
The curve has not flattened
In the bars and at the rallies
The greater good is really
Us lambs to the slaughter
Limo Ride to Hell | Judy Moskowitz
I had a dream
A nightmare
I was blindfolded
Taken away in a limousine
Certain I was going to die
By a man in a mask
And gown to a motel room
Somewhere in the state
Of hell
Vilified by the self righteous
Burned and stoned
I am skin and bone
Heart and mind
Every feature on my face
Belongs to me
I’m not alone in this dream
I’m sharing it with you
Choice is not an
Acquired taste
It belongs to you
Hypocrisy, or Just a Simple Understanding? | Tara Lynn Hawk
Break my back
Rape my humane considerations
Barrage my mind with all this “news” that is not news
And it’s all
Just another form of slavery
Hijacking our innate motivation to determine our own conclusions
We know well of your need to keep us all stuffed
Crammed into your crafted paradigm
Emotional selfish poison to digress one’s consciousness
Back to an infant needy state
Push me down with the heel of your eight hundred dollar shoe
Paid for with my sweat equity forced tax “donation”
Stranded on the lower rungs
Threat of humiliation and isolation
Of being a “nobody”
Insignificant even to those of our own blood
Rats in a cage shaped like a shopping mall
We time our days by what we consume
Swapping cabins on the Titanic
I want to grow, expand
Move on, forward, off, away
I love the fog
But the kind of my own creation
Not your mindless misery polluted stew
Wake up
More at https://taralynnhawk.com.
Two Pages | JD DeHart
One page, a whale of a story,
fake news, vitriol
The other, a different sense
of the same raging emotion
One page, a picket sign,
words formed with anger
The other, anger unfolding
in a similar manner
See the place they meet,
question
Start there.
More at https://onpossibilitypoems.blogspot.com/.
Like Dreams I Shouldn’t Live With | Martine V. Clarke
I’m contemplating the effects of these memories
the effects of these sounds and situations forever surrounding me.
I’m considering the boundaries and borders encircling my brain,
burdens as bombs exploding in the midst of my mind,
systems stifling my sanity
stealing every semblance of my common senses.
I’m sitting in the middle of my own silence
contemplating emancipation,
searching for a freedom that no society could present
longing for real liberty and a perpetually distant paradise.
I’m drowning again in useless memories
and a barrage of the irrelevant and unnecessary,
still searching for a freedom that I may never find,
devoured by a dream that I shouldn’t live with,
dwelling in an existence that I shouldn’t try to define…
More at https://formuchdeliberation.wordpress.com/tag/poetry/.
Transgender: On Trump’s Seven Forbidden Words… | Eliza Mimski
I am a transgender fetus.
I am vulnerable.
My vulnerability is evidence-based.
There is no entitlement here.
I am a diversity fetus.
I have no entitlement.
My transgender is science-based.
Transgender transgender transgender transgender
Vulnerable vulnerable vulnerable vulnerable
Evidence-based, science-based
Evidence-based, science-based
You are not allowed to talk about me.
Do not speak of my vulnerability.
I am entitled to nothing.
Vulnerable diversity.
I am an evidence-based fetus.
Diversity is science-based.
I am a vulnerable transgender.
Evidence-based fetus.