Free Verse
July 4, 2026
July 4, 2026 On this quiet July 4th, I sit in my apartment with the soft hum of Earth breathing outside my window. I honor the holiday in my own way not with fireworks, but with remembrance. I carry the Choctaw spirit of equality and kindness, the Irish and Baltic endurance, the Mediterranean warmth, the African and Coptic Egyptian depth, the Native and Asian roots that whisper through my dreams, and the immigrant courage of those who crossed Ellis Island seeking a new horizon. I celebrate the truth that humanity is one species with many colors, languages, and stories. I do not celebrate the friction of bigotry or hate; those shadows do not exist in my world of truth, light, and freedom. I look at the plants outside the breathing nature of Earth, and I remember that the Earth does not belong to us. We belong to the Earth. And today, I begin again with that truth as my compass. I stand in the breath of Earth, where roots remember what people forget. My DNA is a map of many rivers, all flowing toward the same horizon. Today I honor the quiet truth we belong to the Earth, And the Earth keeps us whole. I celebrate the freedom of kindness, the courage of every ancestor who walked, crossed, sailed, or dreamed of me here. No flag can hold the whole of me I am many lands braided into one breath. Today I rise in truth and let the Earth be my anthem. July opens like a leaf in my hand, Quiet, green, and honest. I listen to the plants, to the sky, to the soft pulse of my ancestors. Freedom is not fireworks, It is the breath of Earth is asking us to care.
By Vicki Lawana Trusselli 4 months ago in Poets
The Unhallowed 250th Semiquincentennial
Two hundred fifty years of turning, the spinning cycles round the burning sun. The covenant once sworn in ink and blood is now a script for brokers, not for men. The sovereign voice, which ought to ring like brass, is muffled in the velvet hangings hung by hands that weigh the soul in sterling silver scales. Behold the hollow feast. The cornucopia is tipped aside, and where the bread should break for hungry mouths, the famine spreads its silent, creeping shroud. The great have built their towers to the clouds and left the valley floor to rot in want. Their laws are sophistry, their justice blind to all save those who gild her marble eyes. What pride remains to sing of liberty? When bondage wears the mask of common good, and avarice is crowned in public square. The light is failing, the vision dim, and we, the keepers of this fading spark, stand in the cold, unready for the night. We have outlived our founding hope, and find the glory vanished, and the work undone.
By Tim Carmichael4 months ago in Poets
A Catena Rondo For Dharrsheena
Here’s how to write a catena rondo: The poem is comprised of a variable number of quatrains. Each quatrain has a rhyme pattern of AbbA. The first line of each quatrain is also the final line of the quatrain. The second line of each quatrain is the first line of the next quatrain. The final quatrain should repeat the first quatrain word for word
By Denise E Lindquist4 months ago in Poets
