social commentary
There's a rich history of poetry serving as social commentary, intended to inspire calls to action.
The Devil’s Science Project
mankind: the Devil’s home-brewed science project paid for by His Father Author’s Note: This is my eighth day in the fifty-day song/lyric-based senryū challenge. This one is based on “Little Drop of Poison” by Tom Waits, which you can listen to below.
By Stephanie Hoogstad2 months ago in Poets
What Is Missing?
Negative Space challenge: The Prompt - Write a poem shaped by what's missing. Let an absence, omission, or empty space become as important as what you put on the page. Negative space is what surrounds the subject. In a poem, it can be silence, omission, white space, or the thing the speaker refuses to name. Write a poem shaped by what's missing. Maybe it's a person who never appears, a word you keep avoiding, a gap in a memory, or something the reader can feel without ever being told directly. Use form, line breaks, repetition, restraint, or even the space on the page itself to make that absence felt. Whatever approach you choose, the emptiness should do real work in the poem.
By Denise E Lindquist2 months ago in Poets
Surface Thoughts
Is it abstract or concrete to cry until you puke? And then The image of the vomit splattered across the Cobblestones Is that showing or telling or engaging in Melodramatic Prose that can only live long enough to find itself Thrown out In the trash of some know-it-all literary freak? What about the feeling, hot and acidic, right before Crashing To the knees, pressing jeans into damp earth and Screaming? Is that the kind of thing that no one will believe Just because They've never experienced the universe reaching into Their gut And rearranging the fundamental structure of their Existence? Why is rambling incessantly about the wallpaper So fucking bad When it's just there, mocking its inhabitants with its Vivid color While they are bent over at the waist, grieving something Tragic and Equally unimportant to the big world hunched Over them? Write from the well of your knowledge unless your Knowledge Is the kind of thing that the group decides they just Don't like. And then it's your responsibility to shut up and shove Those words Into neat little boxes so they can be devoured by Consumers Who obviously know best when it comes to the Passive voice And things that are uncapturable.
By Silver Daux2 months ago in Poets
The Lunatic Ball
Don’t hide your weirdness We’re at the lunatic ball: The world, upside-down Author’s Note: I’m on day seven of the fifty-day song/lyric-inspired senryū (as we agreed in the comments of my previous installment) challenge! Time sure does fly by, doesn’t it? This poem is inspired by “A Symptom of Being Human” by Shinedown, which you can listen to below.
By Stephanie Hoogstad2 months ago in Poets
