It Seems Almost Unfair

Mad Magazine’s Depiction Of Humpty Trumpty

November

by T. A. Fry

November is the month,
Most trees are brown and bare
The leaves are down,
They’ve lost gold crowns
It seems almost unfair.

The tree invested time
In nurturing each leaf
Then let them go
Next spring to grow
New ones in relief.

Do the barren trees
Rest in a belief;
It’s better to live
Like it’s better to give,
Than be the ones to receive?

The brown leaves all objected,
Lying lifeless in the dirt;
“We fed the tree
Sugar for free,
We gave until it hurt.”

I am a fan of nursery rhymes, parables and general silliness with words. Word play, puns and rhymes are ways our brains smile. How many of you can remember the pledge of allegiance by heart versus Humpty Dumpty? We remember silly rhymes far better than we do free verse because the rhyme and meter guide our memory.

Nursery rhymes also have a long history of subversion, a way for people to rebel, to hide political satire or treason in plain sight and teach it to their children.

Humpty Trumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Trumpty had a great fall,
All of his lawyers and all of his men,
Couldn’t put Trumpty in the White House again.

I have been working on a draft of a children’s book the past couple of weeks, cooped up at home because of COVID. November kind of popped out of my brain one morning a couple weeks ago and although it doesn’t fit the current children’s book I am writing I am fond of it as a parable.

History is generally on the side of the victor and eventually the law. I am confident history will not be kind to Mr. Trump. Starting January 20th, he will no longer have the legal protections afforded him as President and will have to give an account for himself as a civilian. I believe the sheer lunacy of his claims around winning the election and the constant lies he and his lawyers Tweet on a daily basis are not because they believe he will prevail in the courts and remain President. I don’t think that’s his intention. I think he is trying to solidify his dwindling cult following and whip those that remain into a such a frenzy around a conspiracy so far fetched, so impossible, that it either has to be believed as faith or rejected, because no actual evidence exists. Trump’s defense of claiming victory is like writing a mathematical theorem on the existence of God, it can’t be done, no physical proof exists. Trump’s lies are so far beyond the realm of common sense that they become a test of faith. Trump is like a child standing before his Mother with chocolate on his face, claiming to know nothing about a missing cake, wanting to know if Mother country loves him more than the lie he is telling?

Trump is hoping to solidify his status as a cult leader and in some way that will protect him when federal prosecutors file charges and eventually convict him of serious crimes. Trump is not interested in politics or being the leader of the GOP. I don’t believe he is interested in leading the government. Trump is interested only in being the leader of his cult. Trump is hoping to subvert the law’s of this country in ways that are far more sinister than messing around with the transition of power between administrations, far worse than being rude or shrewd or rejecting the norms of our Democracy and generally being difficult. Let’s call what Trump is doing what it is; fascism. Trump is conducting a a very real civil war for his own personal gain. The question is whether it will remain a war of words or something far more dire, something far more consequential than it has already become in the damage it has done to our democracy and our unity as a nation.

I find the definition of civilian prophetic, given Mr. Trump’s civil and criminal legal predicaments hanging over this head, not the least of which are his fraudulent tax filings. I hope the vast majority of Americans will look at the golden leaves of our democracy on the ground, turning brown and realize it is the tax payers and common stockholders in their 401K and pensions, who bail out companies and individuals like Trump when they go bankrupt. It is the person working as a cashier in the grocery store who pays their full share of their taxes who finance the shenanigan’s of rich men’s accountants, who do not pay their fair share. Ultimately it is we, as citizens of a society, who pay for the repeated business failures of men like Trump; the cost of those losses are taken out of the pockets of all, in higher costs for goods and services.

Let us hope as a civilian he will be seen as unprofessional by the vast majority of Americans, not just the 80 plus million majority of legal voters who cast legal votes for democracy, who voted for Biden. Let us hope that Trump will be seen as the emperor with no clothes, with no golden crown, who has fallen from his ledge of power. I hope main stream Republicans will start to look on Trump as a criminal who does not belong in the GOP. I hope they will realize that it is unbecoming of the traditions of our nation to support a fascist who wants to rewrite an election in his own favor for his own personal reasons. Its time we all distance ourselves from this man, a man unworthy of anyone’s loyalty. Biden is offering a flower of peace, a white lily. Let’s hope we can all put it in a vase to admire while its still in bloom.

civilian

[ si-vil-yuhn ]

noun

a person who is not on active duty with a military, naval, police, or fire fighting organization.
Informal. anyone regarded by members of a profession, interest group, society, etc., as not belonging; nonprofessional; outsider.

My Pretty Rose Tree

by William Blake

A flower was offered to me,
Such a flower as May never bore;
But I said, ‘I’ve a pretty rose tree,’
And I passed the sweet flower o’er.

Then I went to my pretty rose tree,
To tend her by day and by night;
But my rose turned away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight.

Through Faith

Hebrews 11

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it our elders obtained a good report.

Bible – King James Version.

Through Faith

by T. A. Fry

Through faith, we understand the worlds were framed
By God’s words; that things are not made solely
Of which they appear. Without faith, it is
Impossible to please or be wholly pleased.
Faith is a reward unto itself. And those
That state plainly; “we’re earthly strangers, pilgrims,
Seeking a country from whence we came,”
May have the opportunity to return.

But what if we desire something better?
A heavenly country; where God is not
Ashamed to be called our God. Is there more?
Our elders, having obtained a good report,
Through faith, received not the promise;
God provided something better;

They, without us, should not be made perfect.

The end of the American experiment, may well come in part, out of the fictional character from which it was partially fashioned; the idea of American independence and rugged individualism. We have fashioned a cloak for ourselves and our politicians out of this idea of American exceptionalism. The idea that as American’s we are innately superior by our very founders declaring independence and then fighting for our freedom. These noble words and ideas may yet fashion the heroic myth that will be our undoing; the idea that you can make it in this country by yourself, if you just apply yourself and work hard and don’t let the government or anyone else get in your way. What that myth ignores, is that the reason that all of us have things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving is because of others’ contributions, small and large, to our successes and our failures. The Plymouth plantation survived, the reason the revolution succeeded, when so many others prior to it did not, was because groups worked together, communally, with the belief that they could build something better together, build it through self sacrifice for the betterment of others, where alone, they would fail.

It is ironic then, the heroic myth of American exceptionalism and independence is partially responsible for bringing us to the brink of fracturing, has created a divide that is growing through a proclamation of self service, when the need to work cooperatively could not be more beneficial for all. This failing should not be a surprise. It is because we suffer as human’s from the same challenges of being human that William Bradford and his fellow colonists on the Mayflower did nearly 400 years ago, our egos get in the way of our better selves.

Bradford penned a journal of his voyage and establishment of the Plymouth colony, that was published by his sons after his death. A devout Christian, a man of faith and also realism, he believed that his faith in God, could help guide the providence of his community and his family if they worked together with the idea of a common good. He observed:

“The settlers, too, began to grow in prosperity, through the influx of many people to the country, especially to the Bay of Massachusetts. Thereby corn and cattle rose to a high price, and many were enriched, and commodities grew plentiful. But in other regards this benefit turned to their harm, and this accession of strength to weakness. For as their stocks increased and became more saleable, there was no longer any holding them together; they must of necessity obtain bigger holdings, otherwise they could not keep their cattle; and having oxen they must have land for ploughing. So in time no one thought he could live unless he had cattle and a great deal of land to keep them, all striving to increase their stocks.”

William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation

Bradford was a poet as well. Most of his poetry is religious in nature or what we would now call patriotic. Bradford wanted for his sons and their families to have something better than what his opportunities had been in England. I found humorous that Bradford wrote poetry complaining about various things he considered sinful, including – Ranters, proving not much has changed in 400 years, only the technology with which the Ranters rant.

On The Various Heresies In Old And New England, With An Appeal To The Presbyterians (Excerpt)

By William Bradford

Nor need you fear sin to commit,
For Christ hath satisfied for it.
But these doctrines make men profane,
And bring dishonor to Christ’s name.
Now faith is made, hereby, to be
A dead body, as you may see;
And these are but a wretched race,
That they abuse God’s holy grace.

Ranters
Next unto these we may bring in
The filthy Ranters, near of kin.
Where had they first their rise or name?
I know not from the devil they came.
The Adamites they are most like,
But more against public shame do strike.
Cynic-like, as vile as dogs,
Carry themselves as filthy hogs,
Yea worse than brutes, they know no end;
But all their strength in lusts they spend.
They shame the nature of mankind,
And blot out reason in their mind.
Professed atheists some of them are,
Who openly revile God dare,
And horridly blaspheme His name,
And publicly avow the same,
Which makes my heart quake and tremble.
Nor may I herein dissemble;
Methinks such wretches should not live
In any land offense to give,
Of this high nature, against the most high,
And men it hear, and pass it by.
I might say more of their vileness,
How in contempt they will profess
Their fellow creatures to adore,
That God’s dishonor may be more.
But let them pass; they are too vile
My fingers for to defile.
I hope the Lord’s help will come in
To cleanse the land of such vermin.

I feel compelled to leave a footnote about the poem Through Faith. I thought carefully whether to attach my name to this poem, as it feels a bit like hubris to do so. I recognize that many people take scripture as literal, the literal word of God. I do not. I see it as a creation of many minds over time, written in languages other than my own and passed down. I see the connection between poetry and scripture and the poetry in scripture.

I found this text the first time I read it incredibly confusing. I could not wrap my head around it. If you read Hebrews 11 in it’s entirety it is a lengthy list of prophets in the Old Testament and their trials of faith. It feels impersonal and antiquated. But there was an element in it, that the more time that I spent with it felt relevant. And its relevance is in being a father and a son. The process of deconstructing and then reconstructing the text into a poem made it viable as something meaningful to me. And I hope might open the door for others to look at it through their own spiritual or poetic lens.

And The Chef is God

If the only prayer you ever say in your life is Thank You, it will be enough.
Master Eckhart

We Eat Out Together

by Bernadette Mayer

My heart is a fancy place
Where giant reddish-purple cauliflowers
& white ones in French & English are outside
Waiting to welcome you to a boat
Over the low black river for a big dinner
There’s alot of choice among the foods
Even a tortured lamb served in pieces
En croute on a plate so hot as a rack
Of clouds blown over the cold filthy river
We are entitled to see anytime while we
Use the tablecovers to love each other
Publicly dishing out imitative luxuries
To show off poetry’s extreme generosity
Then home in the heart of a big limousine

Where ever you are in this world, whatever your traditions, or beliefs, we share our humanness through gratitude. So much of poetry is tied to this quality, the ability to express thankfulness, that I don’t think poetry would exist without this innate ability.

I don’t think however it is only a human trait. If you live around animals they often express their gratitude for your touch, for your presence, for feeding them or grooming them, or petting them. Gratitude is a trait that goes beyond our species.

As I celebrate Thanksgiving today, separated because of COVID from the loved ones I would normally get together, I will say the same prayer of Gratefulness that I have said many times over the years. I am maybe more grateful than previous years as strange as it sounds. I am grateful they are healthy and capable of marshalling through these challenging times. I am grateful for their self reliance, their perseverance, their ability to make their own fun, and keep a positive attitude. I am thankful for all my blessings, – the greatest of which is their love.

I feel compelled to be original writing this blog, to have every poem on every post be new, for the first time on Fourteen Lines. But that’s not the way I read poetry. I go back to the same poems over and over. If you are needing a Thanksgiving Prayer, either to read aloud at your table or to say silently, here’s my go to favorite for Thanksgiving. I shared it on the first Thanksgiving of Fourteen Lines in 2017, and it warrants sharing again, as I plan on reading it again, and again.

Gratefulness

Thou that has given so much to me
Give me one thing more, – a grateful heart,
See how Thy beggar works on Thee by art.

Not Thankful when it pleaseth me, –
As if they blessings had spare days.
But such a heart, whose pulse may be
Thy praise.

George Herbert

Amuse-Bouche

by Max Ritvo

It is rare that I
have to stop eating anything
because I have run out of it.

We, in the West, eat until we want
to eat something else,
or want to stop eating altogether.

The chef of a great kitchen
uses only small plates.

He puts a small plate in front of me,
knowing I will hunger on for it
even as the next plate is being
placed in front of me.

But each plate obliterates the last
until I no longer mourn the destroyed plate,

but only mewl for the next,
my voice flat with comfort and faith.

And the chef is God,
whose faithful want only the destruction
of His prior miracles to make way
for new ones.

Wildpeace

Yes, all of this is sorrow. But leave a little love burning always like the small bulb in the room of a sleeping baby that gives him a bit of security and quiet love though he doesn’t know what the light is or where it comes from.
Yehuda Amichai

Sonnet

by Yehuda Amichai

My father fought their war four years or so,
And did not hate or love his enemies.
Already he was forming me, I know,
Daily, out of his tranquilities;

Tranquilities, so few, which he had gleaned
Between the bombs and smoke, for his son’s sake,
And put into his ragged knapsack with
The leftovers of my mother’s hardening cake.

He gathered with his eyes the nameless dead,
The many dead for my sake unforsaken,
So that I should not die like them in dread,
But love them, seeing them as once he saw.
He filled his eyes with them; he was mistaken,
Like them, I must go out to meet my war.

Wildpeace

by Yehuda Amichai

Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds—
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace

Where Can The Crying Heart Gaze?

Burning the Old Year

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Blood

By Naomi Shihab Nye

A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.

In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.

Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn’t have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
“Shihab”—“shooting star”—
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”
He said that’s what a true Arab would say.

Today the headlines clot in my blood.
A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.
Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root
is too big for us. What flag can we wave?
I wave the flag of stone and seed,
table mat stitched in blue.

I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilized?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?

We Saw It In His Eyes

A Life of Austerity

By Peter Hartley

My grandfather was always old. The more
I think of him the more I call to mind
He seldom left his kitchen. We would find
Him sitting in an upright chair, the door
Pine-panelled, high ceiled, lino on the floor,
And he would sit there all day long behind
A newspaper. The place for me defined
Him like the horrors of the First World War.

You see it spoke of his austerity.
He dwelled, like all the old in reverie,
A lifetime in his prime. Sometimes he went
To sleep, his nightmares we could only guess.
Sometimes again we saw an immanent
Serenity, a twilight peacefulness.

One hundred years ago the returning soldiers from World War I helped spread the Spanish Flu epidemic, the last great pandemic, to all corners of the earth. Peter Hartley’s memories of his grandfather in sonnet form are touching testimonials to the his grandfather’s humanity. The difference between that virus pandemic and COVID-19, is the Spanish flu killed young adults equally as well as old.

When reading about the Spanish flu pandemic in the past, I had a sense of isolation from it, an arms length detachment. No matter how many health experts sounded the alarm that it could and likely would happen again, it felt like something that was in the past, despite SARS, Ebola, etc. Our experience of relative safety because of public health strategy and modern vaccination technology for generations was ignorant bliss. Despite the paranoid rantings of anti-vaxers we have lived the past 50 years in undreamed of respite from childhood diseases in human history, and unfortunately taken it for granted. There is certainly reason for optimism heading into next year that things will get better, but I also have a sense of realism in what 2021 will bring before this is brought under control with effective vaccines.

How will this pandemic experience shape poet’s writing in the future? I could retreat into my kitchen for a couple of years to write and read if I didn’t have a job I had to attend. I would need a wood stove in my kitchen for winters and a kennel for the dog in another room on those occasions I want peace and quiet, all things for me to consider putting on my checklist of what to do if this continues beyond 2021. What will our grandchildren write about us one day, sitting in our chairs reading, looking off into the distance?

A Biscuit Tin

by Peter Hartley

Put in a biscuit tin behind a door
Beside the hearth among old dog-eared snaps,
Of long-forgotten kith and kin perhaps,
His father on a bicycle we saw
Who died in nineteen ten, four years before
All hell broke loose. Amid the other scraps
We found inside their careless little wraps
Were all his letters home from the Great War

One hundred years ago, and all forlorn
His honourable discharge creased and torn.
Could he still hear the pounding of the guns
Resounding to a barrage from the Huns?
For if by chance upon the Somme one day
We saw it in his eyes he didn’t say.

Of Praise The Little Versemen

Ford Madox Ford (1873 – 1939)

“Yes, a war is inevitable. Firstly, there’s you fellows who can’t be trusted. And then there’s the multitude who mean to have bathrooms and white enamel. Millions of them; all over the world. Not merely here. And there aren’t enough bathrooms and white enamel in the world to go round.”

Ford Maddox Ford, Parade’s End

To the Poet Before Battle

By Ivor Gurney

Now, youth, the hour of thy dread passion comes;
Thy lovely things must all be laid away;
And thou, as others, must face the riven day
Unstirred by rattle of the rolling drums,
Or bugles’ strident cry. When mere noise numbs
The sense of being, the sick soul doth sway,
Remember thy great craft’s honour, that they may say
Nothing in shame of poets. Then the crumbs
Of praise the little versemen joyed to take
Shall be forgotten; then they must know we are,
For all our skill in words, equal in might
And strong of mettle as those we honoured; make
The name of poet terrible in just war,
And like a crown of honour upon the fight.

Is war inevitable? Is it a terrible cancer of the human condition? Is it inevitable that the outcome of viewing those as different than ourselves, the “other” who obstructs our path to obtaining our objectives eventually becomes our enemy? I hope not. I lean towards a pacifist mindset that we can do better as a species. I find the current predicament of glorification of military service as something that gets more attention than preventing conflict in the first place a contradiction of good leadership. If we want to praise open communication, conflict resolution and peace keeping in our communities and schools, then why can’t we do the same across nations?

I find interesting Gurney’s idea of the role of “little verse men” in making sense of the aftermath of war. Equal in might is pen to the sword is not a new concept, nor is the poet warrior. Both concepts have been around for thousands of years. But why isn’t there equally as strong a history in literature of poetry of peace, poetry of arbitration, the poetry of negotiation and truce? Poet peace makers rather than poet soldiers. Writing in muddy, blood stained notebooks may sound more noble than a peace keepers reasoned speech, but which takes more courage?

One Last Prayer

by Ford Madox Ford

Let me wait, my dear,
One more day,
Let me linger near,
Let me stay.
Do not bar the gate or draw the blind
Or lock the door that yields,
Dear, be kind!

I have only you beneath the skies
To rest my eyes
From the cruel green of the fields
And the cold, white seas
And the weary hills
And the naked trees.
I have known the hundred ills
Of the hated wars.
Do not close the bars,
Or draw the blind.
I have only you beneath the stars:
Dear, be kind!

It Is Not As You Knew It

A sense of beauty is every hindrance to a soldier; yet there would be no soldiers – or none such soldier had not men dead and living cherished and handed on the sacred fire.

Ivor Gurney

The Soldier

by Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915)

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust who England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives Somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

River-Severn-Wales

Severn River, Wales

To His Love

by Ivor Gurney

He’s gone, and all our plans
are useless indeed.
We’ll walk no more on Cotswolds
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed.

His body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn River
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through.

You would not know him now…
But still he died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride
Purple from Severn side.

Cover him, cover him soon!
And with thick-set
Masses of memoried flowers –
Hide that red wet
Thing I must somehow forget.

What Being In The Army Did

Iraq US Troops — A U.S. Army soldier from A Co. 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, passes a bullet-riddled wall during a patrol Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010 in Hawija, north of Baghdad, Iraq, on the last day of U.S. combat operations in the country.(AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

What Being In The Army Did

by Graham Barnhart

Things you’d expect.
Taught me a trigger’s weight—
its pull—depends on the gun
and doesn’t matter much
if you practice
proper follow through.
Follow through here means holding
the squeeze through the kick
like you won’t have to do it again,
like you’ll never have to do it again.
The army taught me torsos
and tailgates
are useful for gauging distance.
That swaying grass
or flags or scarves
can estimate windspeed,
and traveling from an artifact
to a fundamental constant
requires loss.
It takes me sixty steps
to walk one hundred meters.
Assuming my body weight
and leg lengths remain
roughly constant
and I’m using a compass,
which means I’m moving
in very straight lines, then sixty
ten times is a kilometer,
and sixty
one hundred times is ten.

Incandescent War Poem Sonnet

By Bernadette Mayer

Even before I saw the chambered nautilus
I wanted to sail not in the us navy
Tonight I’m waiting for you, your letter
At the same time his letter, the view of you
By him and then by me in the park, no rhymes
I saw you, this is in prose, no it’s not
Sitting with the molluscs & anemones in an
Empty autumn enterprise baby you look pretty
With your long eventual hair, is love king?
What’s this? A sonnet? Love’s a babe we know that
I’m coming up, I’m coming, Shakespeare only stuck
To one subject but I’ll mention nobody said
You have to get young Americans some ice cream
In the artificial light in which she woke.

We Wanted To Save Them All

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke 1904 letter

My Life As A Polish Nun During WWII

by Anna M. Evans

We ran an orphanage in old Gdansk,
which overflowed in nineteen thirty-nine.
Daily, the Germans rolled by in their tanks.
We kept our heads well down and toed the line.
But any child that came here in the night,
no questions asked, was never turned away–
starving, beaten, sick, half-dead with fright,
Christian or Jew–with orphans, who can say?

We had to teach the Jewish ones the creed,
so the Gestapo wouldn’t know our game.
The irony of sowing that small seed,
it wasn’t lost on me, though not our aim.
Children are dear to God, gentile or Jew.
We wanted to save them all; we saved a few.

Today’s poems are examples of how the sonnet structure remains relevant. A wide variety of writers continue to explore the structure that 14 lines imposes and the power that it also unleashes. Rhymed or unrhymed, free verse or experimental, the idea of connecting your writing to the past and writers that have influenced your imagination is something all poets wrestle. Anna M. Evans has contributed a number of fine sonnets during her career and I applaud her use of the first person in imagining the stories of others and bringing them to life in the sonnet form in the poem above. In her imagination the sonnet becomes a polaroid picture, a snap shot of literature that challenges me to fill in the blanks, even if the margins are slightly faded.

I would be curious to know if Warren even considered the fact that her poem was fourteen lines? She did not employ rhyming or limit number of syllables, she let the ideas flow to a grand conclusion. Her words made me step back and think. I realized that for someone who normally buys lots and lots of new music; I haven’t purchased a single new CD or record of new music since the start of the pandemic. I have only bought a few old used jazz records, trying to create a different vibe to the growing monotony of staying at home.

Do you have a favorite new pop song from 2020? Please share.

Something is Coming Toward Us

By Alli Warren

Flaunting in the atrium, ostentatious at the gates
I saw a shooting star thru a window on Alcatraz Ave
& cladding struck up against those who demand
We stomach the stick and tend the commode
They’re selling trees in the paint store! trees in the paint store
Datebook chips in the soft skin of our wrists
On NBC, CNN, and NPR broken windows are weeping
We’ll have 35 apples and shrieking in the thickets
Aloft in the air golden and golden the dial among the mounds
So much is stunted in understanding of what a light can be
They storm the scrimmage line and clear-cut bran and germ
We want the petal unto itself, the unalterable vessel
The arc end of the precipice grows 1.9% annually
What was popular music like before the crisis?