Is there a line
between poetry and politics,
The personal and the political?
If there is,
Who draws it?
If there are rules,
Who makes them?
My father told me Rock and Roll was not music.
He liked Frank Sinatra.
I don’t.
I like Bing Crosby and the Rolling Stones.
The guardians of political correctness
use labels to intimidate.
They shut down creativity
and block collaboration.
Who’s more oppressed,
Blacks or Jews?
While we debate the question,
the folks who hate us laugh.
What we like is a matter of taste.
And politics.
We don’t have to agree.
and our disagreements can be heated.
But to say what I write
is not poetry
Serves only the status quo,
Politically, poetically and otherwise.
February, 2019
poems for friends 
Poetry Man
We no longer need
to tolerate “the line.”
Indeed, that line kills.
There is no more poetry
to be written
where pre-conceived lines
and proscribed ways of being
form chokeholds
over our sometimes soft,
sometimes coarse,
often broken
needs, loves and dreams.
Write on, my friend!
Help us breathe
in a world with so little oxygen
that we are gasping for air
and can only inhale
when our exhale is shared.
If that’s not poetry,
What is?
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Thank you Caroline. Exquisite!
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A Fire Burns
Until it is put out
By the sea
Or high on a ridge
Behind it the black stumps
The lie of withdrawn life
The land foresaw
Creating a new green struggle
As needed by the next great age
By ignorant, longing, hope
GRE 2-3-19
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Beautiful. Evocative and succinct. Great poetry/politics. Thanks….
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Thank you David.
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