Tag: wordsmithing

Friendship Garden

I am lucky to have cultivated a lush garden of beautiful, meaningful friendships throughout my life.  I am luckier, still, to be planted in the deep soil of my friends’ gardens where they shower me in love, and light, and their amazing company.  To exist in a well tended garden cultivates a gratitude so profound it can only erupt from me in joyful colors painted with hugs, laughter, and happy tears like sacred rain upon parched earth.

- gws

Write a Banned Book

Aspire to write a banned book
Describe the human condition
So thoroughly
So honestly
Others find if vulgar
Tell a story so devastatingly true
The pearl-clutchers swoon from their shock
Real life
Real experience
Is not sanitary
It is not "golly gee!" and "oh, my!"
Real stories
Real living
Is dirt covered
Blood stained
Disturbing
Realness is a dystopia covered in expletives and epithets
Characters spitting fiery words like
"FUCK!"
"SHIT!"
And "You God-damned, MOTHER FUCKER!" 
While thumbing their noses and erecting middle fingers
In real stories the hero's journey is never facile
It's not sanitized or resolved in three acts
In real stories antagonists are 
Insidious
Oppressive
Outrageously powerful
The game is rigged
Injustice systemic
The ruling class held aloft and apart
Tucked safely into their delusion of their goodness and security
Benefiting remorselessly from the oppression they enable
In contrast the rest of society scraps and scrapes
Dreaming of freedom unattainable
Reveling in whatever joys afforded them
Praying that they can meet the next hardship
Survive the next day
Provide a better future for their progeny
I implore you to write a story that reflects hope in survival
Pen a tale that may not have a happy ending
Hold a mirror up to the world in which we live
Let those who would look away 
See their villainy reflected back at them
And let those who are not seen
Be held glorious in the spotlight 
Because their existence matters
I hope you write a disruptive book
An honest book
A book full of the truths of living in an unbalanced world
I hope you see it move from the bestseller feature table
To the dusty banned books shelf
Then you will know you understood the assignment

-gws

The Bookish Child

(For Abriana)

I met a little girl once
And quite a girl she was
Her passion was for reading
It was her deepest love

Words became her closest friends
And stories her salvation
She hung on words like branching limbs
One swings from on vacation

I hope she knows how special she is
I pray she never wonders
If she’s really ever good enough
When seen through eyes of others

I imagine her crafting stories one day
Deep and rich and compelling
Inspiring another child
To fall in love with storytelling

-gws

Significant Other

My significant other 
Is more other than significant now
I wish I felt better about this fact
I do not miss the now of him
I’m still in love with the then of him
When love knocks you can never know 
The beauty or horror in its entourage 
You believe love can conquer all
And learn that love is often not enough 
My significant other left
A significant mark on me
That is hardly insignificant 

-gws

America’s Not Beautiful

Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com
The great social experiment 
     The revolutionary idea
That we, the People, could form
     A more perfect Union
Failed to uphold justice 
     Protect domestic tranquility 
     Provide for the common defense 
Abandoned the general welfare 
Incinerated the Blessings of Liberty
For ourselves and our Posterity 
Two hundred and forty-eight years
     Was a good run, I suppose
The hope to be governed by the people
     For the people
     For every eligible voice 
     To enjoy the opportunity to be heard
Was willfully eclipsed by the shadow of
     Kakistocratic -
     Technocratic -
     Plutocratic - 
     White supremacist -
     Christian nationalist -
     Fascism
Have we answered the question
     Whether societies of men 
     Are really capable or not,
     Of establishing good government
     From reflection and choice
Or have we proved
     They are destined to depend,
     For their political constitutions,
     On accident and force
Or, dare I add, willful ignorance
     And deliberate, egotistical self-absorbance
The fifty stars and thirteen stripes hang upside down
     In the hearts of the concerned citizenry
While chaos, fear and greed reign unchecked
     Over the land that was never to have a sovereign
With days cacophonous and nights despairingly bleak
     There is light from the resistance
Those who risk to speak 
     To share 
     To shine light
     Onto the truth of the grift of the century
Those who take serious their vow to uphold the Constitution
Those who believe we hold these truths to be self-evident
     That all PEOPLE are created equal
     That they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights
     That among these are
          Life,
          Liberty,
          And the pursuit of Happiness
Those people who do what they are able
     To take a stand however they can
Because they hold fast to the American Dream
     And the dream of a better America
Oh say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave
     Where we yearn to be free
     And we're tired of being brave

-gws


The Next Chapter

And so comes the end of the heaviest chapter
The plot twisted dramatically 
In the hands of an unreliable narrator 
Linear time fractured
Slowed
Ran backward 
Perspectives shifted
Creating more confusion than clarity

Muted colors of nostalgia dull recollections 
Emotional sharpness blunted
The hollow ache of a long goodbye 
Completed with the deliberate placement 
Of an arch-ending period.

The next act begins with a page turn
“THE NEXT CHAPTER” written atop it

-gws