PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Good to hear, thanks: Good to hear, thanks

...be low and rooted, words: ...be low and rooted, words blooming, breaking ground.

Nicely penned work here.: Nicely penned work here. Couldn't agree with you more.

What a moving and courageous: What a moving and courageous piece. This reads like the unfolding of a soul reclaiming its voice after being silenced, stifled, and sidelined for far too long. The narrative arc; from trauma and exclusion to triumph, purpose, and reinvention, is deeply affecting. Your journey is profoundly inspiring and a quiet triumph over trauma, misjudgment, and invisibility. The decision to return to study, not just as necessity but as a reclaiming of self-worth, is courageous. You didn’t just rebuild—you rewrote the narrative entirely. What strikes me most is your purpose: to become the guide you never had. You chose to break a cycle of exclusion by opening doors for others. That kind of empathy-led ambition is powerful. Your path through academia as a mature-aged, disabled student couldn’t have been easy. And yet, you excelled. You challenged expectations, first others’, then your own. That someone could steal your early work after all this, is devastating. But your response, to create more, share more, and still teach speaks of your character and integrity. The literary world gains something rare in your return: experience shaped by persistence, a voice sharpened by adversity, and a mission driven by compassion. I can’t wait to see the poetry and insight you share next. They won’t just inform—they’ll continue to inspire.

Thank you, Sir.  Coming from: Thank you, Sir.  Coming from you, that is a great compliment, and I deeply appreciate it.

Thank you, a thousand times: Thank you, a thousand times over, for this kind of understanding.  Your shrewd understanding, evidenced in your comment, has perfectly explicated the poem and my intention for it.  My mother and her five sibs were First Generation Americans, children of two "right off the boat" immigrants.  Her father was one of the "dirty Irish" who were treated, in the early 20th century, similarly to the way our society treats Hispanic immigrants and transients now.

Here, presented is a sharp: Here, presented is a sharp and necessary question: What happens when the gatekeeper forgets the spirit of the gate? It confronts a kind of patriotism that clings to exclusion while standing beneath a monument built to welcome. Emma Lazarus, in “The New Colossus,” gave the Statue of Liberty not just a torch, but a voice—one that cried out: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” That voice was not a whisper of tolerance—it could be seen as a declaration of allegiance to the displaced, the desperate, the different. Lazarus, herself descended from Jewish immigrants, understood that America’s greatness was not in its walls, but in its open door.   So when the “innkeeper” in the poem speaks of keeping out the “wretched refuse,” he is not defending American values—he is betraying them. He quotes Lazarus, but forgets her meaning. He invokes the statue, but denies its soul.   To answer the poem’s question through Lazarus’ lens: True patriotism does not fear the foreign—it remembers that it once was. And it lifts its lamp, not to blind, but to guide.