Inflection

People will say it's overblown;

That really nothing new or worse went on.

They'll say it's something we've already known

For years. Nothing has changed. Nothing is gone.

They'll tell you to stop acting like today

Began a chapter, or else saw one end;

That they could see it coming far away

So it's just confirmation of a trend.

They'll swear it's nothing new under the sun

Or if it is, you shouldn't really care;

That everything today could have been done

The day, the year, before. And that's all fair.

But when they do say it's been true before

Tell them that we won't take it anymore.

Little Room

I felt inspired; then I went to write. 

And suddenly the thought of composition

Is terrifying. Should I keep it light,

Or would that lightness trigger your derision

As if the topic that I wrote about

Deserved no better? Should I try instead

To prove significance beyond a doubt

By writing heavier than would be read?

Are darker poems better? Lighter? None?

Would even this be read by anyone?

At last I sat and told myself: ignore

These meta questions. Write your thoughts. Go on.

And so I write. I love you more and more

Even though this sonnet space is gone.

Social Contract Theory

Politics should be the art of deals

But for that to work, there has to be

Agreement on the base humanity

Of everyone involved. If one side feels

Only they have rights, that likely seals

The fate of all negotiations. We

Can compromise to build society

But not when compromising subtly steals

A part of us away. To deal we must

Acknowledge that all parties play a part:

A compromise is made of cut-and-thrust

But no one's thrust should cut another's heart.

All politics must be, then, built on trust

Without which we can never even start.

Karenina

It's easier to write about a love that seems

Impossible or difficult or somehow barred;

That occupies the distant orbit of one's dreams;

Whose realization is unlikely, or just hard.

A troubled love's complaint, although of course not new,

Is for that very reason often easier

To share with others who, perhaps, have suffered too.

Its treatment may be lighter, open, breezier,

Or wrought beyond belief into a twist of woe

But either way, the audience is primed to feel

Beside you, filtered through what they already know:

Which means that they'll believe that thwarted love is real.

But speak of love achieved, and Tolstoy's words reverse:

A happy love's unique, and so the poem's worse.