PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I have the start of Lung Cancer: Reguardless the out come Starward, God has brought me comfort!  Always had funny things to write about and serious poems also, I had fun!   William J. Roney III

I am glad you kept that: I am glad you kept that Crucifix, and I applaud your attendance at Saint Philips!  And thank you for your service in the Army. I have another Crucifix, which I keep on the table by the chair to which my condition confines me, which, at each of the four ends of the two beams, has small glass enclosure which contain items from the Holy Land:  gravel, flower petals, incense, and myrhh.  While the latter three are of recent gathering, as all plants must be, the gravel may have been there at the time Jesus was living there; it may have even been on one of the paths He trod.  The Crucifix also has a sunburst behind the Savior's image's head---a symbol that has fascinated me since I acquired my first Crucifix at the age of five years old. Thank you for telling me those aspects about yourself, and I hope to be able to hear future good news about your illness---that is my prayer.

I am very glad for your: I am very glad for your presence on Postpoems; and, although we have not had much interaction or communication, I applaud this testimony you have posted, and I am very thankful for that final paragraph, "Let's continue to be here . . ." which describes and summarizes one of the chiefest aspects of Postpoems, of which I am so thankful to be a member, and to be a member among such fine, fine Poets and human beings.  Our individual differences are like the themes and variations within a Sonata, but our great similarity---being Human---is the Sonata that makes those themes and variations possible.  Like Pop Stevens said in one of his greatest poems, "Being there together is enough."

If I were wearing a hat right: If I were wearing a hat right now, I would remove it in your presence, most excellent Poet, Ssmoothie.  In this poem, you achieve a height of greatness and grandeur that, I fear, makes my poor words awkwardly inadequate in this attempt to describe and respond to your huge accomplishment.  In this short, but very powerful, poem, you have described, encapsulated, and summarized the human condition; not just what it is, but what it feels like.      Although I happen to believe that we are the only sentient inhabitants of the Universe . . . if I did believe in aliens, this poem of yours would be a perfect test with which to introduce those aliens to the human condition.    Just as. with Patriciajj's poems, it is useful to find a center of gravity in the poem, I think this poem's center is located in the lines In a world of too much / never enough . . .  This is not only the poem's centerpiece, it is also a great epitaph for the human race, if we end up destroying ourselves, or our planet.  It is also the epitaph of every great civilization that has fallen through its own foibles---as far back as Sumeria.  The great Poet, T. S. Eliot. whom I deeply admire, needed 434 lines in The Waste Land to address a similar issue; but you have addressed it fully and completely on one page.     If I were teaching a class on Poetry, this poem would definitely be on the syllabus.  It is the kind of poem I wish I had read decades ago, when I was first learning about Poetry---as it would have answered certain questions of mine earlier than they were actually answered in my experience.  I hope many young Poets who are just starting out will see this poem:  it will speak deeply to their own emotional cores, and it will also provide a viable model of how to do that.     I offer you my utmost compliment for your magnificent accomplishment in this poem.

This poem is so accurately: This poem is so accurately poignant, and speaks to pointedly to a similar experience in my life, in 1992, that I scarcely can muster the appropriate words----literally choked up from reading this.  Very few poems move me at this level of emotion; I do not usually allow it.  This poem has overwhelmed we, which attests to its verbal and poetic power.  Though it conveys sadness, the method by which that conveyance is carried out is, itself, verbally and artistically beautiful.  Wow!  I need to go pick myself up from the floor, now, because your poem has really knocked me over.  I am not good about writing of grief, especially when it is so personal, but this poem, in and of itself, could be an entire textbook of the way to write about such an experience.

I am so sorry to hear this,: I am so sorry to hear this, and I have prayed for you prior to writing this.  If I may make a suggestion (and, if you already know this, please forgive my redundancy):  a good source of spiritual comfort is the thirty-fifth Psalm, called by some the Resue or Restoration Psalm (if my memory serves correctly).  In my own medical affliction, which is not quite as serious as yours, I find myself relying upon that Psalm more and more.  I hope this is not too personal to share, but in the situation, protocols must give way to other concerns.