Welcome to my Poet Lady Chat Room. I would like to invite you to click on the chat box and type in a question, a suggestion, submit a poem, in other words – “chat with me.” I may, if you submit a poem, decide to feature it in my Poem of the Week section or, we may simply exchange ideas and suggestions about your poem.
This is a place to “talk” poetry with someone who has loved it all her life. I have a true passion for the possibilities of poetry and would love to hear your thoughts and/or read your poem. I will be happy to offer my reaction to your work and, based on over 40 years of teaching poetry, organizing, and conducting poetry workshops, working as a book review editor for an international poetry magazine, authoring five books of poetry and two textbooks on teaching poetry, send along my thoughts on ways to make your poem stronger and more impactful.
If you’re on my site, you have a connection to poetry. Feel free to connect with me – right here -right now, by typing your message into the “chat box” and clicking send. I’m waiting…
Your friend in poetry, Susan
FEATURED POEM
How to be an academic, an advocate,
A revolutionary, a human, or simply just humane,
When we are tied to choices
even monarchs couldn’t make?
When we are so young, only just thrown into the world,
And we are already at war.
For we know that these decisions
Will decide the future which we will own
And it is ours, solely.
The future is only mine, and only yours, and
Only ours.
The tragedies we marvelled at in our youth
Have come alive, trudging through their graves of fantasy,
And gnaw at us, eat us alive, and fester us so,
That the only other choice is ignorance.
But we have learned, that Ignorance is not bliss,
It is lethal, deadly, dangerous,
the worst kind of poison.
Because we are not Icarus,
We are not the Olympians in their silence.
We are voices, turned Artemis, turned Athena, turned Hippolyta, turned Otrera.
And we must adapt, and you have forced our hand, and turned us Brutus,
So Brutus we will be.
We wear his robe, we stab with his sword, into your back, into your back, into your back,
Twisting, tears in our eyes, Wretched laughs tearing their way out of our throats,
Shouting, Shouting, Crying: “Liberation!”,and “Freedom is Ours!”..
And so it will stain us, taint our conscience,
And stay with us forever.
“Et tu?” You ask,
Yes. Us too. Us only. Us ultimately.
I am not the face of this war.
My fallen, brothers, sisters,
Those who have it fires worse than me.
Are perhaps, Those who you muted.
And they, who have no voice,
they who bear only their heads high.
So if I must speak for them, I will,
I will shout, cry, yell, scream, until mine is gone as well,
And another takes my place.
We can only hope to be better than you.
Only hope that the murder of our conscience,
Saved the next from that fate.
We hope that t h e y will have Rome, Completely.
For we can only fight for it.
In name of No Helen, of No Troy.