Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Linda Mitchel at her blog HERE. Thank you, Linda, for hosting!
If you would like to know what Poetry Friday is, find out from poet, Renee LaTulippe, HERE.
I’m using the above image to express how I feel after this week’s violence in Buffalo and now in a Texas School. Am I the only one who feels insane hearing explanations about why gun control is impossible? A conservative Texas lawmaker was asked why 18 year olds should be sold weapons. He said that since eighteen year old boys bear arms in the military, they should be able to bear arms outside the military.
I thought about that. I tried to understand that from my own experience. When my brother, 20, was in Vietnam, he was trained how to use a weapon and when he was discharged, he didn’t come home with a machine gun, not that I can recall. He didn’t walk the streets of our small town carrying a gun and I never heard him complain about the lack of it, rather was glad to be free of it and the war.
In the new anthology IMPERFECT ll, edited by Tabatha Yeatts, there is a perfect poem to express how I feel this week and will for quite a while. (Tabatha gave me permission to share it.)
UPSIDE-DOWN by Robert Schechter Don't tell me that I'm upside-down! My top's where it should be! If you're convinced I'm flipped around, then blame yourself, not me. This kingdom isn't yours to rule. You wear no monarch's crown. Why can't you see I'm right-side-up? It's you who's upside down.
I hope, because I have to, that through reason and compassion, the U.S. can get its priorities straight.
Thank you, Linda, for hosting. I love to share one of my own poems, but I don’t have anything new. But I have this one that I shared previously from Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell’s book, THINGS WE DO, which celebrates an everyday joy of childhood.
KICK By Janice Scully Brass shaker worm waker Hi popper cloud topper Ball smasher goal crasher Tie breaker score maker Watch me KICK!
Have a good weekend.
Janice