POEMS Rising to the Occasion

I guess what bothers me most is the news of mass extermination around a Covid world. I noted this angst in an autobiography A Room Full of Shadows in which I followed an ant around my study. I started to form thoughts about a search for values in a raucous novel GAPS under the pen name Mac Keyes in which I wrestled with scriptural background to discover core values in a drama of romance, religion and death. The first three volumes of Prophetic Poetry identified six significant values: Peace, Justice, and Ecology in Volume Two and Openness, Authenticity, and Love in Volume Three. The collection of stories can be seen as reflecting these six themes, developed by the prophets, such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr. and today’s poets. Primarily, it was focusing on the theme of Peace as a way to refer and talk about God. Then came Volume Four Poems For Lonely Prophets, demonstrating the difficult task that unpopular prophets endure discerning the destructiveness of some mainstream thinking. I documented the tenure of the 145th Prez of Chaos in the poetry UNPRECEDENTED. This was extended in Volume Six Percolating Poetry, admitting there are greater poets out there but this is what bubbles up in my free verse. Now I humbly offer Volume Seven Poems Rising to the Occasion in a sweep from January 6, 2021 to June 9, 2022, from a coup to the September 6 Committee hearings. Always the backdrop to our cultural chaos is the nuclear event. The atmosphere of violence was ignited by the atomic bomb and has escalated the fear ever since. The culture has become numb and accepted mass massacres as a normal routine of daily life. The mindless madness has mistakenly tried to protect itself by acquiring more guns than people. The doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction may assure its own demise. That will lead to a Dead End. That’s why I crossed the line on May 30, 2022 at a Kansas City nuclear parts factory. The thread that runs through these poems is a prophetic function of rising to the occasion in bubbling up truth hidden below the surface and at times questioning the status quo. Poetry that can do this serves an important role in facing evil intent and putting us on higher ground to do what is right and courageous and honest. I think poetry should be slightly dissident and have language to move us. Here is a springtime occasion to think and feel these provocative poems.