I lived through a similar: I lived through a similar time of terror in 1978 and again in 1981-83. The first was just a brief dress rehearsal for the second, and I still have nightmares about them both.
Even a cup of joe becomes a: Even a cup of joe becomes a superlative showpiece through your cunning imagination, and the theme, of course, has widespread relatability. I'm certainly good for nothing until I've been fueled with "Caffeinenated compliexities". And the title! High-grade wit. You're one of a kind.
A beat I can march: A beat I can march to.
Really feeling this rapid-fire, gut-punching protest song that I can get caught up in because the same thoughts have thundered through my mind. It's cathartic to read or hear words that echo your worldview, your frustrations, and do it with savvy, edgy, resolute, unflinching force. Thank you for rising above the tempest with solidarity and some hope for true freedom. Peace and Light.
Some killer metaphors charge: Some killer metaphors charge this emotional storm with mesmerizing beauty and impact. A worthy submission! So good to read you again.
This is a most splendid (and: This is a most splendid (and again I say, A MOST SPLENDID) testimony, and I am so very grateful to you for sharing it me, and with the PostPoems community. Reading it was more than just an act of the mind (as Wallace Stevens might say): it was, also, an act of the soul!
I cannot begin to estimate: I cannot begin to estimate how much courage is required to post such a candid essay---which will go far to help others who are burdened with shame and guild especially during adolescence. I was horribly belittled, bullied, lectured endlessly, and "watched" (my parents did excellent surveillance) for this. Your words will encourage and help others who read them.
The contours of the lines,: The contours of the lines, and the rhyme scheme, very powerfully underscore the impact and the importance of the emotional experience that inspired the poem.
I have had that experience: I have had that experience (once, in the failure of a marriage; more than once in the failures of more casual relationships in high school and college). The deviousness of the forces that cause the failure is that the experience comes with an implied suggestion, which we all dread to face, that it has a lasting duration; and, at least in my case (and, I suspect, in the great multitude of them), it does not.
My heart goes out to you.
I dislike the: I dislike the wrath-appeasement theology in Western Christianity (especially fundamentalism); and I like the Eastern Christian interpretation of the Parable of the Prodigal Son which points out that the wronged Father did not require---did not even ask---for any kind of appeasement from the repentant Son, nor was any penal sacrifice required. I like the simpler and (I think) more Biblical perspective that Sin (as a force, not as an individual failing) is the cause of Death (Genesis 2:17), and that Christ's death on the cross broke the lasting effects of this power---rather than merely appeasing the anger and outrage supposedly felt by His Father. (Again, nothing of that sort is attributed to the father figure in the parable.) Jonathan Edwards' "sinners in the hands of an angry God" approach to preaching/exegesis was obviously ignorant of the commutative and associative powers of logic when comparing 1 Corinthians 13 to 1 John 4. I apologize for my verbosity, but your poem inspired me to pursue this thought.
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