Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 29

What kind of impact did 2020 have you? What obstacles did the pandemic or unemployment or [insert any 2020 craziness here] put in your path? Spoken word artist Lloyd Garrison returns with a twist on how adversity might affect you, and how you might deal with it.

Chip In My Shoulder 

I’ve had a pain in my shoulder for as long as I can remember…
and until now
I haven’t been able 
to figure out why

Several trips to the doctor revealed a slight sprain
and no other issues.
But it takes more than a medical degree 
and a white lab coat to diagnose 
something not even the world can predict. 
Ever since, I’ve self-diagnosed with
a chip in my shoulder 
and never prescribed any medicine.
I’ve used that pain,
which won’t show up on any X-Rays, 
for personal gain.
That pain has given me
strength, courage, and wisdom 
to make it through 
hurt, despair, and pain.  

The chip in my shoulder kept me going 
even when I wanted to give up: 
It motivated me 
to achieve what they said was
impossible, 
to dream what they said was 
foolish, 
to travel to places in my mind where 
only the strong survive. 

And what the hell is wrong with dreaming?  
Nothing. 
Yet some would rather smother your dreams with 
doubt than ignite them with
hope. 

This chip tells me,
whether I am waiting 
in line for food stamps 
or the new J’s at Champs, 
that
I have purpose;
whether I am a passenger in an Uber or 
driving a beat up Chevy, 
that
I have worth; 
whether I have one kid that gets straight As,
or three that keep me up at night with migraines, 
that
I have value. 
The chip in my shoulder
confirms the greatness in front of me
not behind. 
It shows me that no matter the difficulty du jour,
struggles don’t last.
It reminds me that all I need is a chance--
I can handle the rest.  

Listen to the chip 
not the outside world. 
Pursue everything and
take the chip in your shoulder with you. 

That degree you always wanted? 
Go get it no matter 
how long it takes; you 
won’t be the first or last to graduate 
from the Univ. of Adversity. 

That business you’ve wanted to start? 
Start it.
Timing isn’t the only thing,
it’s everything when you’ve waited so long for
everything to be perfect. 
That person you always wanted to give you closure?
Go get it.
Closing doors only leaves room for knocks.
 
When operating with a chip in your shoulder, 
overcoming obstacles 
comes with the territory. 
So,walk with your head held high…
embrace the chip, 
sleep with the chip, 
live with the chip, 

use the chip in your shoulder 
to motivate you 
to turn your hopes, dreams, and wishes into 
REALITY.

©Lloyd Garrison – 2021

*****

Mr. Lloyd L. Garrison is the CEO of Hidden G.E.M.S. by LG. Lloyd received his Bachelor of Arts (2001) and Master of Arts (2005) degrees in English from Miami University in Oxford, Oh. LLoyd’s goal is to spread messages of hope, love, peace, and truth through the power of the spoken word.  

*****

For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021.

Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 28

A list poem, presented without commentary.

The Collective States of America

an aurora of gaslighting
a klan of cops
an array of blue states
a caravan of kids in cages
a route of step forward, two leaps back
a flink of fevers, fires, & fright-mongering
a cloud of undetermined direction
a grist of history
a bed of same-sect theocrats
a peep of hope
a murder of senators
a parliament of funky relics and rituals
a lounge of spineless pachyderms
a fever of racists
a waddle of ranch-addicted snackers
a sneak of rule- and norm-breaking
a sneak of dishonor
a parcel of postal delays
a bank of capitalists
a durante of taco Tuesdays
a flutter of better angels
a bazaar of guns
a muddle of historical revision
a loveliness of protests
a prickle of power-mad octogenarians
a consortium of big and bigger businesses
a barrel of youthful exuberance
a smack of five-fingered, opened-palm reality
a gaggle of journalists
a puddle of fear of the enfranchised and informed
a cackle of pundits, screeching and screaming
a shiver of voting booths
a romp of national parks and the Capitol
a skulk of red states
a cling of white racist power structures
a leap of progressive values
a pitying of those cleaving to the what-was
 and what-never-was
 or things that can never be

©David Siller – 2021

*****

For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021. Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 27

Dr. Faizan Syed offers another poignant reminder of the police problem we have.

Self-Arrest

 They say the world is burning. When
 they see us, don't run. Fly. They want us
 to turn a blind eye followed by our other 
 cheek. They tell us we don't deserve to be 
 saved. As if that explains everything.
 They spill the words easily, like blood:
 Raise your hands where we can see them.
 Where, allegedly, did the bloodstains fade?
 For every gunshot there's another excuse.
 For every crime, a suspect. For every sin
 another sin must be committed, or else
 how can we call it justice? Fair is fair. Lay
 your body on the ground face-down, kid.
 Who are you tonight? You're faceless
 under the knee of self-proclaimed angels
 whose mother tongue is violence. Your
 bruises just as blue as midnight, just as black.
  
 They say you have the right to remain silent. 
 Who exactly, then, holds the wrong?
 Nations glance askance, crowds divided
 like so many Red Seas. Yet no one passes
 through the line of fire. Because after
 all, anything you say can & will be used 
 against you in court. So when 
 your dream wakes up in Riker's 
 Island, you can thank yourself. 
 They said the prisons are hemorrhaging money
 & the spilled oil rises where tornadoes dance
 as droughts embrace our need. They said
 world hunger is sated by blood. Shoot those guns
 out of the terrorists' hands and hallelujah, we're 
 saved. But don't be a hero
 unless you're invincible, 
 or ready to give up all
 those years you couldn’t 
 see yourself inside
 anyways. File a plea
 of "lost." So many feathers
 lay scattered across the floor.
 You've been collecting them
 one by one. You're Icarus.
 You're Hawkgirl. You're
 as blind as Daredevil, your
 faith just as strong. Pray
 for the rest of us now.
 For when we prove 
 them all 
 dead wrong.

©Faizan Syed – 2021

*****

Faizan Syed, MD is a writer, musician, and psychiatrist based in Queens, NY and is a member of the Queens Poetic Alchemy Collective. He was awarded the Folger Adams Jr. Prize for 1st place in Poetry and the Graduating Poet’s Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been featured on Humans of New York. Faizan’s work has appeared in Montage Literary Arts Journal, Newtown Literary, Cosmonauts Ave, & Empty Mirror. Poems he’s written in collaboration with Matthew DeMarco have been published in Jet Fuel Review, Dogbird Journal, and “They Said,” an anthology of collaborative writing from Black Lawrence Press. One can find him on Instagram @docfaizan or on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/docfaizan.

*****

For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021.

Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 26

In honor of this calendar day marking an emotion we should celebrate every day, Happy Romantic Love Day. Here’s hoping it can be found and experienced after such prolonged COVID isolation.

This Is Likely One of those Occam’s Razor Occasions

When you ask me
 wouldn’t it be better to
 be in love
 than write about
 being in love?

as in
 have her palm cup my bare knee,
 just for balance during a park bench kiss

or
write about the way
a fingertip slips in
sweat drips as they
curl Qs at the small of her back

as in
 hearing her tender everythings
 murmured millimeters from auricle & tragus
 curving into the cochlea, drum beating,
 her breath as loud as hot summer breezes

or
scribbling the onomatopoeics,
stenographic nightmare, that transcription of
intimate insistent intransigences
a wheeze a gasp a whistle
a vibrato oh, staccato ah, fortissimo

as in
a might-as-well-be cyrano precision
capturing and remembering 
the orange blossom & honey in her hair
the tea tree oil tingling nostrils
enticing erotic essences

or
nose notes in a wine journal
that never logged a single swirled scent
but instead her creams of 
lavender & lemongrass,
hints of mint, a whiff of wet flesh, fresh
rain

as in
the palate discerning butterscotch
or the coconut toasted on inner thigh
the buttery nuttiness of the nape of the neck
the plump lychee sweetness of parted lips

or
the tasting notes in that
same journal, as if descriptions of
Burgundian whites:
stone fruit confusions--peach jam,
apricot nectar, golden plum juices dripping
down chin & forearm
teeth and tongue a-tingle.

as in
subway car crowd glimpse
eye cast across a theatre
street crossing scan
seeing her two seats down at the sushi bar
alabaster skin & abalone melting in my peripheral
omakase for the eyes

or
the description read
eyes brown and wide as cinnamon
hair as black as philosopher-king’s ink, spilled down the naked back
of her backless dress, skin as smooth as
hope

i ask you
how can any of it be real?

©David Siller – 2021

*****

For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021.

Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 25

Are we really only one quarter of the way through? Let’s keep it going!

The Evolution of the Chant

Started so simple
yes we can
translating hope and 
change into action, 
sí se puede, 
translating American dreams
into DACA dreams
(or is it 
the other way 
around?) dreams 
a long night’s
journey into broad 
daylight with work
to be done, 
no choice but 
to be fired 
up, ready to 
go and the 
go go go
got up and 
went and soo
those shouts were
drowned out by
drain the swamp 
and lock her
up until Foggy 
Bottom got turned 
turvy topsy with 
the monkey running
the circus, monkey
whose spinning and
spinning failed to
build the wall
and lock her
up and meanwhile
in non-white ‘Murikkka
the bubbling brew
was reaching boiling
point, long heating
and percolating and
churning, steam murder
on the lungs
that still somehow
shout I can’t
breathe! and everywhere
in exasperation and
fear hands up!
and in exasperation
and fear don’t
shoot! and still
I can’t breathe
and between wheeze
and knees and
choked hopes, there
is a rumble
and roar of
Black Lives Matter
and when they
ask, they say
his name and
when they forget
they say her
name and black
lives matter gets
louder as they
counter all or
worse white which
worsens into four
more years and
we respond no
justice, no peace
and four more
years and no
racist police and
Black Lives Matter
so we Vote!
because yes we
can and they
try to stop
that with a
stop the steal
and there is 
no stoppin’
no stoppin’
no stoppin’
no stoppin’
because there is
no stealin’ no
rhymin’ and they
get to stealing,
looking to bring
out pence so
they can hang
mike pence after
they take the
building trying to 
fight for trump
and the chants 
seem to be
drowned out by
window smashing and
certification crashing and
above the din
and after the 
din we add
lock him up
and our inner
voice reminds us
I AM SOMEBODY
our outer voice
rouses We Can
Do More. We
Will Do More
and with our 
outer voice and
inner voice combined
it is the
boost we need
yes we can
sí se puede.

©David Siller – 2021

*****

For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021.

Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 24

An erasure poem, presented without commentary.

©David Siller – 2021

*****

For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021.

Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 23

Here in New York City, the difficulties of shut downs and isolation have been especially acute. You can’t live in a place like this without feeding off the energy of the millions of people around you. But as vaccines get distributed, and we get closer to a new normal, we can think on how we will be after.

Unlearning the Lessons We’ve Learned

When the masks come off, stretch your lips up and out
remember that the seats on the R and the F are not sofa-soft and not for           spreading or lounging

at your first happy hour, lock eyes at the clink of glasses, hoist your arm high
 your HUZZAH must be higher
hugs, handshakes should be firm and warm
 allow them to linger as long as needed

buy a normal amount of toilet paper

take a slice to go
 take two, take a whole pie

browse for books--the TBR most certainly needs reinforcements after such an assault
buy tickets to the show your friend adored, see the midnight screening of the premier
 long delayed

race the Grand Staircase, pant and wheeze as if you’re as out of shape as the   peasants in the pastoral you passed, as you linger to catch your breath before the first canvas that
caught your eye, speaking to you in an ancient tongue

and, if, hope beyond hope, you have match-made, or swiped correctly,
 when your hands meet halfway across the table, avoiding wine glasses & tapas plates,
 make the first fingertip-to-fingertip freeze
 in your new moment

©David Siller – 2021

*****

For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021.

Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 22

It’s been called the United States of America for a good long while. But let’s be honest, we’ve always ALWAYS been this divided. From the moment the first colonizers arrived, with their killing, looting, stealing and genociding. How do we get to unity when it’s never been on our map?

This is (Not) My America

look at the whole of the map

mandered or rigged,
 it matters little what these jerrys did
   the carving clinical for all those turkeys
   in the red cages & blue cages
  occasionally threatened
 by purple rages

look at the whole of the map

the flyover states, the beer gut of America
  the bloated persuasion that
   it is the true America
   the (lock)landed heart of America
  tornado-torn & fond of porn
 harvested & re-planted fields of self-absorption

the coastal elites with their fancy pants & skinny jeans
   neither in my size
  with their net worths & networks
   their leagues ivy not intramural
   their societies secret only after fully paid admission
  (but completely free of admissions of guilt)

the Rust belt, with belts & boot straps
  so rusted, so stripped of value
   it’s impossible to pull up (except stakes)
  only able to pull out

the desert Southwest
  deserted of compassion
   borders patrolled by trolls cold as ICE
   unchanged, even the summer sun not quite hot enough
  even with climate change boost juice

the dark tundra of Alaska
   open & empty
   voting machines & voting machinations
    in plain sight
   for the Russians who can see their
  White House

in the NW corner, Pacific looming
  vineyard booming, rugged progressive grooming
   sleepless rainy Emerald City, Portland fame
    ancient golden city in a golden state
   gold showers over its
  gold mines & moving picture show gold mine

over snowy Rock-capped mountains, past geyser gusting
  more hot gas & hot water than guys will be guys politicians
   over lands reserved for the only ones that didn’t 
  immigrate or assassinate or dominate

the big red state with its big pink rock
 capital; campaigns against science & history
   front line in the war on women.
 it’s almost as if the other 49 were forgotten
or the outshined sun hurricane state, the tail or the prick of America
 ass wagging between gulf and sea

let’s look up

the south, with its blown-up churches & blown up
 cinemas & blown up night clubs
   bright white terrors glowing
  in these dark days America
 winter trees not hanging leaves

up up up the coast from outer banks to 
 Wall St banks
past the swamp capital of America
  stench stretching from sea to shining sea
bounce through the original colonies
  the witches burn better on wood stakes
   bonfire lines
  the genocide starting line
 the white supremacy dancing country western line

and then finally to the harbor
 where you must imagine the shadow of two towers
 it is Lady Liberty, her torch now a flashlight
 barely enlightening the world from the great
 Porte of the World
 behind her the contiguous states of America
 doused in darkness, covered in a patchwork quilt
 
and no e pluribus unum to kick off the covers

©David Siller – 2021

*****

For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021.

Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 21

Careful, poet Faizan Syed is coming in hot with this take on immigration and xenophobia and racism and…

©Faizan Syed – 2021

*****

Faizan Syed, MD is a writer, musician, and psychiatrist based in Queens, NY and is a member of the Queens Poetic Alchemy Collective. He was awarded the Folger Adams Jr. Prize for 1st place in Poetry and the Graduating Poet’s Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been featured on Humans of New York. Faizan’s work has appeared in Montage Literary Arts Journal, Newtown Literary, Cosmonauts Ave, & Empty Mirror. Poems he’s written in collaboration with Matthew DeMarco have been published in Jet Fuel Review, Dogbird Journal, and “They Said,” an anthology of collaborative writing from Black Lawrence Press. One can find him on Instagram @docfaizan or on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/docfaizan.

*****

For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021. Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

Posted on by waxyandpoetic

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? Day 20

Among the many issues that need to be tackled in this country, domestic violence and sexual assault have to be considered two of the most pressing. This powerful poem by Terri Muuss, in a video directed and edited by Rainer Pasca, is the clarion call to the 46th President to the continue the leadership role and action he undertook during the Obama administration.
CW;TW: sexual assault.

©Terri Muuss – 2020; 2021

*****

Poem originally published in “Godspine” by 3:A Taos Press. (Available from publisher or directly from Terri Muuss at terrimuuss@icloud.com.
Film directed and edited by Rainer Pasca on IG @rainer.raps.

Ms. Muuss is also on IG as @terri.talks and can be found at www.terrimuuss.com

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For the first 100 days of the Biden administration, this website will feature a new poem of What’s Next!? These pieces can be calls to action, calls to attention, or calls to anger. They will light the way and guide the fight. They will get us moving and keep our momentum. They will be filled with hope, with anger, with sorrow. They will get us into good trouble and point out the trouble we need to stop. They will be polished gems, or rough-cut drafts of rage, or in-process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered.

#100Days100Poems of What’s Next!? wants your poems, your prose, your visual art (photos, drawings, sculptures), your music, your short films and animations. Interpret the theme as broadly as you’d like.

If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with your visual art (as .jpg or .pdf) or your poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. Include a short bio (2-3 sentences) and social media/website information. All rights remain with the author. Please address any formatting preferences in your email. Waxyandpoetic.com will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day beginning 20 January 2021. Read, follow, share, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !