Poem 11 (National Poetry Month): Leakage

Posted on April 11, 2020 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Another attempt at rhyming poetry. Some are better than others

Leakage

By Michelle Garren Flye

The pool in the forest looks endless and deep.

But I know a secret that I will always keep.

The stream that away from the pool leads

Now has all the water a little stream needs.

But look closer, look harder, and you will find

That time to the stream will not be kind.

Upstream a dam has been built to cut off

The flow to the pool and the stream’s runoff.

Does the pool know it is leaking away?

Will it attempt to make the water stay?

Or just like us, it may avoid the strife

And allow the leakage to continue for life.

Poem 6 (National Poetry Month): Mortality

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Michelle Garren-Flye

April 6, 2020

Mortality

By Michelle Garren Flye

Immortal words are hard to match.

Immortal actions impossible to catch.

Mere humans cannot hope to fight

What Gods defeat with a show of might.

Yet we plod on, we persist in trying.

Some may even come close to flying.

But most of us remain on the ground,

Our wings clipped, our feet earth-bound.

Do the Gods of Olympus laugh at our effort?

Do they snicker as we grovel in the dirt?

Or maybe some of them can’t help but admire

That rain and wind cannot defeat human fire.

Mortal deeds may be undone over time.

Statues fall, paintings fade, words fail to rhyme.

But persistence in spite of defeat impresses,

And that alone accounts for our successes.

Despairing of Toxic Humans

Posted on January 23, 2019 by Michelle Garren-Flye

He’s witnessed a lot. What would his social media status be?

Albert Einstein said, “We cannot despair of humanity, for we ourselves are human.”

Of course, Al didn’t live in the age of social media, did he?

By now, everyone has seen video of the MAGA hat-wearing Catholic kids making fun of the Native American elder who may or may not be a Vietnam veteran. And everyone has an opinion. Some say the kids are at fault, others the African American men who hurled insults at them because they were wearing MAGA hats.

Personally, I find fault with everyone involved in that situation, including myself. And I was several hundred miles away when it happened.

Just to be clear here, the kids from Covington Catholic were absolutely behaving badly. Toxically. Their parents should ground every last one of them for disrespecting their elders.

With that said, however, those kids were mirroring not only what they were seeing right then, but also, probably, what they see at home and at school. The evidence for this? The chaperones did not interfere. By not interfering, they okayed the behavior of these kids. I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by this. They are from Kentucky, the lovely state that gave us Turtle Man McConnell, the most toxic human being in government.

Add to that the horrible behavior of the other adults on the scene, and you can see what these kids are up against. And then some idiot adult edited the video to make it look like the teenagers were the only ones misbehaving and idiot adults like me were outraged and posted and reposted on social media.

The truth of what happened on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is that everyone was behaving badly. There are no martyrs here. And I really wish the adults would own up to their bad behavior and set a better example, because condemning kids for following the super bad examples they see from adults is going to get us nothing but more toxic adults.

Of course, Einstein also reportedly said, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.” So maybe I shouldn’t hold my breath where humans are concerned.