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Risk

risk...
waking up...
the monster under the bed...
the slippery bathroom floor...
the electricity in the kitchen...
the traffic...
Then everything we do affects everyone we encounter
whether we choose to take a risk or not.
Not is conservative,
a suffocating envelope,
a cocoon of ignorance.

Living life
is being a meme.

Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Last few words: 
meme noun 1. a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.
Editing stage: 

Comments

that's your choice and your quest.
Of course you can change any of your own rules.
The discussion on risks worth taking won't carry on, that's up to you.

'did close at noon'? You haven't been looking much at meter in structure lately, have you?

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

Or very old English like Chaucer?
The best reference I know for prosody is "The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary" by Frances Stillman.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Meme? Maybe it is if we were to agree with Richard Dawkin's popular science "The selfish gene." The world is weaved together in all aspects of both physical and cultural world, including our thoughts. The monster under the bed always returns at a later time.
I am a novice in the world of poetry. However, please allow me to say that "Then everything we do affects everyone we encounter whether we choose to take a risk or not" sounds like a statement rather than a part of the poem.

xxxxx

It was meant to.
I could have split it into more lines to disguise it, even added meter, rhyme or any other poetic device if I chose. I know how to.
I wanted it to stick out like a sore thumb.
It is more important than the rest of the poem, acknowledging that we all make choices, even when we choose not to.

I always value input from everyone. Knowledge of poetry is not required, only honesty.
I always tick-
Review Request (Intensity):
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back.

In fact I've long maintained that that should be the only option.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

You are what you do? I thought that this poem sounded like an individual who questions what and why life is all about. On the one hand, feeling that they are insignificant in the tide of life and the other hand, saying that they are inadvertently an important part of the entire scheme. Rather typical as an Agnostic, such as myself. Not to worry, it doesn't matter here, if there isn't a there and you won't know if you never get there, so "What? Me worry?" - [Alfred E. Newman].

There is value to commenting and critique, tell us how you feel about our work.
This must be the place, 'cause there ain't no place like this place anywhere near this place.

It's more than that though, mate.
You are what you do and don't do.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

a Grabber!
held my mind....
thank U!

Ford Maverick came out with a beefed up trim package
in the seventies called a "Grabber"
maybe because we lived the seventies
eighties...
Like the electricity spookiness
and slippery floor
I got tiles in my room on the
bathroom...slippery damned
stuff...

thank U again!

ta

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

give a talk at the Sydney Opera House recently. His companion/reader said "you Australians are awesome"
Pratchett interrupted "No, if god and all his angels turned up, trumpets blaring, that would be awesome, Aussies are cool".
Cool is good enough for me, ta Gemma.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

If we were to avoid taking risks how boring life would get. And how we choose to live our lives does affect those around us, be it directly or indirectly including the risks we choose to take or not take. Long story short, like your thoughts on risks; how you've chosen to express them.

for your thoughtful response, Valene

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

because
its the proper thing!

Risk is everything
mice that roar
are not the lemmings
that squeak!

Excellent Poem Elf!

to be anyone's Sancho Panza.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

Not for the faint of heart!
but a worthy experience!

I never was a On The Road
kind of person
nor Bukowski
yet...eventually
On is On The Road so to
speak
and One becomes the
reveller
Love Bukowskis story
of having that guy pull
the gun on him.
He didnt back down
and he lived!
he wasnt a coward!

windmills were dragons
to Don Quixote
and he was a trained Knight

he still kept doing what
he was keeping doing!

Thank U!
let us find a horse
and mule!

There is a rich aura with this text I was taken back a bit.
Very thought provoking & nice !

Mario Vitale

Mario

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

Nice presentation with word structure

Mario Vitale

my word,
hint: never kill a butterfly in the Jurassic.

Do you feel disempowered, Keith? Everything I say affects someone.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

Not at all but I am by no means God almighty, the only one of whom I could accept having the power you ascribe to everyone. As individuals we may influence some, or with the greatest of luck many but only God can have a universal effect because he has power enough to bring it about.

Keith Logan
the happy chappy
https://www.neopoet.com/community-guidelines

Our effects vary.

And there is no god.

https://www.neopoet.com/node/killing-god

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

even more

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

But I don't really feel that the body of the poem fits the ending.
I think, to make 'meme' the subject, there needs to be more regarding some emphasis on the repetitiousness of it all.
Also (just me, as you know) I think that 'risk' as your title detracts from the concept of 'meme'.... maybe should be two separate poems???

An interesting subject... good pick
There are people who won't go outside (some won't get out of bed) for fear of risk....
Love judy
xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

The poem is a transition in short form from fear through philosophy to ideology.

Very seldom will I so utterly reject feedback, Judyanne, this time I must.
Read it again.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

I read it many times before I made my comment, but I read it again as requested (again, quite a few times)

No doubt I am misreading, but the comment re 'meme' still seems, to me, to be a bit of a bald statement. I just feel there is missing a connection

I emphasised in my first comment that it was just in my opinion....lol - I claim to be neither intelligent nor an intellectual :)

Love judy
xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

and will re-evaluate the piece.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment
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