Tag: free verse

Black History Month Meditation 1: Langston Hughes

Carl Setzer

​Reading Langston Hughes 

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p style=”font-family:’Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans, sans-serif;”>I have a thing for the wanderer 

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p style=”font-family:’Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans, sans-serif;”>My own career meanders 

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p style=”font-family:’Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans, sans-serif;”>Weaving back and forth 

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p style=”font-family:’Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans, sans-serif;”>Across green fertile fields 

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p style=”font-family:’Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans, sans-serif;”>Vibrancy within each step 

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p style=”font-family:’Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans, sans-serif;”>I’m spending Black History Month exploring black ports and their great works. Langston Hughes came to mind first. I’m also thinking of Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. Do you have ideas? I’d love to hear about up-and-coming poets. 

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The Warmth of Hope 

Carl Setzer1 Comment

​Hope is a dish

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p style=”font-family:’Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans, sans-serif;”>Best served

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p style=”font-family:’Helvetica Neue’, Arial, sans, sans-serif;”>Warm

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Lies I tell myself 

Carl Setzer

Echoing voices

Brief flickers of

Light behind my

Eyes seeing potential

Birthed by different

Choices of a life

Not lived

Caught unwary

Tinged these

With regret

Painful loss

Of a false future

A lie told to

Myself

Though I love haiku, I also love creating longer works and free verse. 

The writer’s mind  

Carl Setzer

This strange 

Insanity.

I wake early,

Or is it late?

Words flowing

Forth 

Desperate for 

Capture 

My Journal 

Carl Setzer

​My Moleskine

My journal

My sanity

My refuge

Where I dump 

Life’s insanity  

Returning to 

Balance

Sunrise Meditation

Carl Setzer4 Comments

Laying here
Sun not yet risen
Quietude dominates. 

Bushes outside
This window, soon
Bursting with the
Songs from vigorous
Birds. Oblivious
To their beauty.

They hear stories
Loneliness, violence,
Domination, love and death.

Songs that change daily
Yet remain constant.

Quietude vanishes into life. 

A Meditation From Suburban Bohemia

Carl Setzer

image

Sitting here in suburban Bohemia
Trendy music echos in rafters
My elders march through
Past darkened storefronts
Embracing the silence of the zone.

Sheltered from the sky
Whether dry, cold or kind
Like now, clouds filter sunlight
The air chilled, night’s influence
Lingering like the memory of dreams.

At the edge I wait as
Automotive druids perform
Arcane rites, resurrecting
A weary shell of steel and plastic
Coffee’s tang upon my tongue

Muses of Misery

Carl Setzer

Drifting mind
Slaughtered within
Its own rages
Brutalizing itself
Uncaring; damage done
Lost, calling silently
Screaming into 
Empty echoes 
Heard by no one
And surprised 
By the lack 
Of response
Heedless of its
Own demand 
For isolation. 
This vacant 
Land inhabited 
By the muses
Of misery

Angels

Carl Setzer

Surrounded by angels.
Are they protecting me?
Perhaps holding me back?
Adrift in the cosmos.
Beholden to no one,
And yet not fully free.