Porthole

Reap and Sow? Does NOT apply to everyone equally.

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Space Blog  (ASR) Cruising WDC cyberspace and raiding ports for blog prompts! #2223838 by SharmellesLovableExpressions

"What Goes Around"   [E] by Sum1's Home

Mini-review: 32 long lines with aabb rhyme. Definitely poetic. The end-line rhymes though feel a bit forced in a couple places and the combination of end-line plus stop (period) or pause (comma) accentuates that. Enjambment would really help. The middle reads like a story-poem, imho, with a poetic intro and a bit of didactic hammering at the end. A bit heavy handed use of the theme.

Overall? I understand the message but it's a bit too 'simple' in the sense of black/white, once rich now poor. Reality isn't quite like that. It relies on stereotypes of wealth and poverty emphasizing the extreme to make its point and therefore fails.

An 'old' poem from 2014 ... well loved by other reviewers but although I'm a fan of the author I'm not a fan of the poem. Even if edited I can't give it more than an objective 4.0 (on strength of poetry and flow). Personally I'd give it a 3.0 as I find it too trite and I was homeless for 2 years in a shelter and it doesn't feel authentic.

Prompt: The question is how have you seen people reap what they sow?

How? Or how not? The wealthy don't necessarily pay the same price as the poor. And those who can leave the pain (abuse, trauma, mistakes) don't suffer in the same ways as those who don't or can't.

Hmm... another thought... good = wealth, wealth = good and the general Gospel of Prosperity is bogus. Good people do bad things (the reverse is also true). And poor people aren't inherently bad nor poor because they are bad. Individuals are far more complex. We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience... and sometimes that sucks.

BUT... Let me get political for a moment! DJT has not, will NOT, pay for the harm he has inflicted on individuals and groups of people. His fan club defends his criminal and immoral behaviour as if he is some kind of Great White Father. His lies undermine him, but not enough that he pays for them. Wealth and power cocoon him from any meaningful consequence.

Yet this from Vox: "Over 230 people have died from Covid-19 in Texas’s correctional facilities — and in county jails, nearly 80 percent of them were in pretrial detention and hadn’t even been convicted of a crime, according to a new report." Need I say more?


I entered this old poem in the Shadows and Light Contest of free verse: "The sound of lavender" . I'm at a point where I have 20 years of poetry and 15 years here. I cannot remember whether I've entered them into contests! But this poem written 17 years ago has no pretty ribbons. It could use a lavender one.

The sound of lavender

Lavender
was his favorite color

and the color of his bedroom
he could not see

since he went blind at twenty,
fifty years ago.

Once he played the saxophone,
played piano too,

and bowled.
Bowled great, they say, the day he died

alone.
It was days before they found him.

We buried him in November,
sent him home.

Who now plays his saxophone?
Do the notes spill forth in lavender?

© Kåre Enga [160.633]

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