On this Thanksgiving Day, I have many things for which to be grateful. What stands out for me this year is all that has come along through the writing of poetry. I have made new friends and connected with old ones in a different way. I have gone new places within the city in which I live. I have connected with other arts in new and exciting ways. So, the poem that follows is a short (as usual) tribute to the building blocks of poetry.

Word Work

Words you read
Words you write
Words that give insight
Words you sing
Words you share
Words that convey care
Words you hear
Words you need
Words that plant a seed
Words you taste
Words you smell
Words that work so well.

I re-discovered haiku after taking a jazz poetry workshop and found that I enjoy the form. Most of the haiku I have written is related to jazz, but I am starting to use it for other topics. Here are three of those.

Mighty and muddy,
the river exudes power
and elicits peace.

Rivers turnover,
and like neighboring cities,
are revitalized.

Nature demands our
respect, but rewards us by
renewing our souls.

I attended a program about the Kennedy-Nixon Debates, which were the first televised presidential debates. This poem was inspired by remarks about the difference between politics then and politics now.

Give Me a Skillful Manager

I yearn for the days
when politicians were
engineers not ideologists.
Their decisions were not
pre-packaged, but freshly made
as called for by circumstance.
They did not vote against
other people, but other principles.
They practiced what seems to be
the forgotten art of doing
what is right at the time.

Two of my jazz poems were published in the Rusty Truck Poetry Zine. One is a biopoem of Lena Horne called Chosen and the other is three haiku that I combined into one poem titled Trio. Go to rustytruck.wordpress.com and scroll down to find the poems.

This poem was inspired by the same event as Humanitarians. Throughout the presentations and acceptance speeches, the ideas of advocacy, speaking out and finding your voice recurred.

Voices

Voices come in

different registers

different volumes

different temperments

different languages

different accents

different genders

different races

different ages

but they are all

made to speak.