The Activist Poet Wins Bronze

Hello everyone! Just dropping a few lines to keep my mind sane as all the world leaders jump off the cliff of insanity.
 
Lines from songs and poems lace my thoughts today as I, “breathe deep the gathering gloom, and watch lights fade from every room,” <<<(Graeme Edge – Moody Blues)  
 
I love those two lines, which are taken from the poem ‘Late Lament’, written by Graeme Edge of the Moody Blues (full poem embedded below taken from their album, ‘Days of Future Passed’)…The Moody Blues is one of my favorite bands by the way. 😉
 
Like everyone else in, my generation, <<<(The WHO now comes to mind), music captured my feelings and emotions and drove my imagination down common and uncommon roads. However, lyrics captured my essence, especially when I was, oh so very young <<<(Cat Stevens 😊) they flowed through me and pulled at my thoughts and feelings; lyrics wrapped in music by my favorite bands and artists such as The Beatles, John Lennon, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Al Stewart, Cat Stevens and of course, the Moody Blues…and there are many, many others of course.
 
However, it was a tenth grade English teacher from my high school that pointed out the bridge between lyrics in music and poetry. By playing the music of my favorite bands and artists in class and then analyzing the lyrics, a deep fascination and understanding pulled me closer to poetry. I soon began trying to express my deepest feelings and intuitions in poetry which I kept mostly to myself. (A teenage thing apparently. 😉)
 
I continued writing poetry for a few years after high school, but life’s patterned programs and conveyor belt have a way of pulling us in different directions than we want to go and away from the things we love and enjoy. So, for a number of years I fell away from writing for myself and fell into the technical fields that society’s patterned programs are meant to do, which is to steal one’s attention and energy.
 
Yet, over the years, even though I wasn’t writing my own script in life, poetry remained at the back of my mind like a flickering candle in the wind <<<(Yes, Elton John, you were one of my favorites as well) but my poetry only resurfaced after I had crashed off of the slave diggers superhighway of attention theft and burned…in those ashes of my burned out life (low battery), I began to see things around me which had been a blur on that highway. I began to see what life was really about and that humanity was travelling in the wrong direction…
 
I had experienced an intellectual and spiritual awakening, and began to write about the hard realities and injustices of this world in rhythm and rhyme and sometimes in the quatrain style of Nostradamus <<<(Al Stewart 😉).
 
I tried to condense, and capture my feelings and insights in poetry but of course, being up to date on geo-political and economic trends while being more mature from that teenage version of me, made me unafraid to express myself. However bold I felt I was, the darker forces that run the digital programmed online world, pushed back…It seems they don’t like free thinkers or people who question the establishments twisted narratives and so like many others speaking truth to power, the dark shadows of online censorship shadow banned my expressive writing.
 
Which brings me to the main reason why I dropped these lines.
 
Through all of the battles and censorship I’ve experienced over the past 13 years, I received word today that my book ‘The Activist Poet – Volume IV’ won the bronze medal in the 2025 Reviewer’s Choice Awards. (YAY! 😊)
 
I can’t tell you enough how important an achievement that is for me. It’s not about winning, it’s about being heard. I’m actually quite ecstatic for this recognition…recognition that sends life’s energy and inspiration through one’s soul to, carry on <<<(CSNY 😉)
 
Not only do I feel vindicated but it feels good to know that others read my book and enjoyed it so much as to give me an award…it means the world to me. A great big ‘Thank you!’ goes out to Reader Views and to the reviewers who basked in the light <<< (Led Zeppelin) of what I wrote and decided it was worthy of an award. 😊 Thank you ever so much!
 
And since I’m talking about books, I’m now finishing up the last two chapters of my second novel (72,000 + words to the good and counting) I can’t wait to share it with everyone. 😊
 
Thanks for listening, everyone. Have a great day! Oh, and here's the poem by Graeme Edge I Promised.

Late Lament
(By: Graeme Edge)
 
Breathe deep the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsitter people look back and lament
Another day's useless energy spent
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one;
Lonely man cries for love and has none;
New mother picks up and suckles her son;
Senior citizens wish they were young
 
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey is yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion