Tag Archives: poems about discord

August 1, 2021 Sunday Whirl: Wordle

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Advice to Self and Others

If your writing is inciting
civil discord and inviting
calls to action
by reaction
of one faction
or another, become a brother
by listening to one another.

Try a blend
of words that mend.
Work upon a pending rending
of ill thoughts you’ve been extending.
Try to start a happy ending.

Choose a task that takes you higher.
Shed your mask and bend your ire.
Anger’s such a bitter pill
that words can poison, bite and kill.

Still your vitriol and follow
kinder thoughts into that hollow
where the gentle grass is waving,
where we go to still our raving,
heeding nature’s gentle call
to save ourselves before our fall.

Here to raise the cup of peace.
That fragile glass that brings surcease.
And by that small sip that you sample,
you can be the good example
that draws another to slake their thirst
and start the journey to best from worst.


Oops.. nearly missed last week’s Wordle prompts. Here they are: writing, civil, bend, pill, mask, follow, glass, still, call, save, blend, sample.

We Seem Meant to Argue

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Time for change?

We Seem Meant to Argue

We seem meant to argue, to disagree and fuss––
to call each other s.o.b.’s, to blather on and cuss.
Somehow the world needs movement––the hurricanes and tides.
In every situation, there must be clans or sides.
There is a natural movement toward the pack or cult or gang.
Each game needs an opponent, and every yin a yang.

It may be named a congregation, a party or a cause,
but still there will be discord. There always is, because
there is something within us that draws us towards division.
Every peace march draws its crowd screaming in derision.
Some force within the universe that knows the whole of it
has decreed that everything has its opposite.

So though we may crave unity and hope one day to coin
accord between the nations, and for hearts and minds to join,
the truth is that the universe is like a pendulum.
For every radical event, the opposite will come.
if we just wait long enough, it will be peace’s turn,
but in the meantime hate will pillage, conquer, rape and burn
.
We would have it otherwise, but hope won’t make it so.
We may unite in nations, but we’ll still go toe to toe:
nation versus nation, like street gangs in a rumble.
The most sincere peace accord eventually will crumble.
Mere wishing will not bring on peace, but we can make a start
simply by appealing to that attitude of heart

that chooses to forget and start that upward swing
that can pull the whole world with it as it takes to wing.
The answer to the hatred is to start out one-by-one
to try to make the choices to set discord on the run.
To choose the dark sides of ourself is an act of treason.
We must conquer our own petty hates and choose to live by reason.

Today’s prompt is “Argument.”