ARE YOU? DO YOU?
Are you a ceaseless sympathiser for the world's weaknesses and woes?
Do you feel obliged to follow regardless wherever life's misery goes?
Are you a soul who's sure life's unfair and honour bound to show it?
Do you design your work to fit so all the world will know it?
Are you a staunch defender of those who love to kick up a stink?
Do you take their side before you give yourself time to think?
Are you someone who thinks its always right to make a fuss?
Do you take a stand and reject the hand that offers to "discuss"?
Are you unable to create a line that revels in the joy of rhyme?
Do you enter competitions with prose poems every time?
Are you always seeking those with whom you can agree?
Do you dismiss an opposing view however reasoned it may be?
Are you able to accept that other opinions might just have a point?
Do you instead think they seek to put your own nose out of joint?
Are you ready to keep writing when others blather on about blame?
Do you know the wheat from the chaff that makes a poet worth the name?
Are you? Do you?
..................................................................................................................
M.C. Newberry
Thu 13th Oct 2016 16:58
elP - thanks for your response. I can easily see how
valuable it is to have a background in discourse that
offers the cut and thrust of reasoned and rational
thinking about subjects, however controversial, under discussion.
Having been on this site for a while, I've seen plenty
of content from all sorts of "origins" and "opinions"
and have actually been invited to depart on one occasion because of my own considered response.
These lines originate from the experience of reading
a substantial and substantially varied content, and
occasionally meeting rigid refusals to countenance a
a reasoned reaction to what is written - as if some
see their positions and posts as virtually (and
virtuously!) "written in stone" on some poetical Mount Sinai. Happily, these are in the "me, me" minority.