(For National Poetry Month I am writing a stream-of-conscious poem per day. Each poem is  a spontaneous poem single edit – could get messy!  Here is Poem #15.)

i can’t say, i really don’t know;
maybe i deserve your vitriol;
so pour it on a little faster,
highlight the depths of my disaster.

you know I’ll never agree with you
you’ll be right no matter what i do.
and me? well I’ll be left over here,
speaking out against all your fear.

you know we don’t have to be this way;
if only we’d listen to what we say,
hear ourselves and then each other,
pause and think about what we utter.

i can see that you truly believe
in the basic truths as you perceive
them; required for each to succeed,
to be independent, proud and freed.

do you know we mostly agree,
on the foundations of that creed?
where we disagree is that you think
the drowning ones should be left to sink.

they made their choices for good or ill,
and own the consequences by free will;
like these grasshoppers that choose to sing,
instead of working on winter planning.

here is now then where we disagree,
for it is from singers that we see,
and found the strength to carry on,
when oppressors tell us we don’t belong.

when summer heat was beating down,
we worked hard under rising song,
their rising rhythm building our hope,
making it certain that we could cope!

yet here we argue at winter’s door,
if singers are what we can afford?
what payment did you give them then,
for music that moved you again and again?

you gave nothing, while they gave freely;
now you demand they pay so dearly?
think about tomorrow in the dark,
in the cold, without their summer spark.

in the deep dark dead of winter night,
we’ll need warming song to lend us light.
can you not see the artist’s task,
is to feed our hearts so we can last?