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Saturday, January 17, 2009

WALDEN, JANUARY 2009

by Scott Simpson


Like some sort of Thoreau
ignorance, I am here-- I hear,
in my cabin in the woulds

and shoulds, doing nothing
worth the price of my real
estate, with mortgage I can

not even pay--I hear on my tele
vision, those chosen
people and their fugitives die

aspora-aspirations of promise
now woven into what’s Read
of our Bibles, the White of unflown

flags, the gun-Blue of anthems
launched above poverty’s head,
and of dying babies.

Silly me, I went into the woulds
because I wished to live
de-liberate-ly.


Scott Simpson is a former high school teacher, college professor, camp director and lay-minister who attempts to live a contemplative lifestyle on a planet that views quietness and stillness as destructive ideas that could potentially undermine the fabric of society. He, indeed, hopes to undermine the fabric of that society with quietness and stillness. Scott lives on a planet called Earth. Scott's poems have appeared in Switched-On Gutenburg, BigCityLit, and New Verse News, and anthologized in In Praise of Pedagogy (2000, Calendar Press). You can listen to some of Scott's music and poetry on MySpace.
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