Cape Canaveral Poet Laureate

The end of the year contains so many amazing opportunities to come together.  This poem contains references to some of the events celebrated around that time.   The Winter Solstice occurs when we are tilted at our furthest away from the Sun.  This makes our longest night of the year.  For centuries, people have celebrated this event.  Some people, such as the naturalist and Wicca,  still celebrate the solstice itself as a welcome of the returning Sun.  Certain cultures believed that the Sun was a wheel that rolled away and celebrated its turnaround at the Winter Solstice.  This was often done with fire, a symbol of the Sun.  Thus we have a Yule log, lights on the Christmas tree, Kwanzaa candles, etc.... Ancient cultures saw this as a sign of rebirth as the Sun was swinging back towards the Earth.   In Buddhism, the Buddha found enlightenment after meditating under a ficus tree until he found peace and freedom from sufferi...

In honor of Thanksgiving, I wrote this poem.  It is a song, made up of many couplets. It is easy to remember to be thankful for the positive things, but this reminds us to also be thankful for the things that did not go as planned, because that is how we learn and grow.  "Magic words" is a reference to "please" and "thank you".  "The pen is mightier than the sword" is an old saying meaning that words can solve problems that violence cannot, and with less harmful effects.  Because that saying is a metaphor, the next line shows gratitude for metaphors.  The femme fatale, ingénue, and protagonist are types of characters used in story telling.  So, this is showing thanks for stories and literature.  Der Blaue Reiter is a group of artists from the early 1900s who united under philosophies surrounding art.  It included artists such as  Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Ma...

(Photo courtesy of City of Cape Canaveral) On Friday, October 4, during our wonderful Friday Fest, the City dedicated its new mural, One Giant Leap for Mankind,  by artist Anón .  You can find his work on Facebook or at this link:    https://anon.myportfolio.com/?fbclid=IwAR2ESNmbrfCul2xcC5gS8vuGBbBjd2xExQ1SzMUaKH-DGcXSV5recZBfFDc I was honored to be part of that event and meet the artist, who, aside from being talented, is a super nice guy.  He brought his wife and new child to the dedication.  His mural served as inspiration for a new poem in the form of a song.  This song is comprised of four mono-rhymed quatrains (meaning each stanza is four lines long with a rhyme scheme of AAAA, BBBB, CCCC, DDDD, with perfect and loose rhymes).  The title is based on the location and topic of the mural.   The first line is from JFK’s famous speech that set us on our lunar path. The trajectory refernces the conical path portrayed on the m...

Tonight at 7:00 the City will be dedicating the mural at Friday Fest.  The artist will be present and much fun for all will be had.  Come and enjoy!

This is a new original song focused on the wonderful environment in which we are so blessed to live and the wonderful feelings experienced by the residents.  It uses imagery to conjure emotions and paint scenes.  Some of that imagery is more abstract than others, meaning that it is not necessarily clear to the reader, and is open to interpretation.  For instance, the chapel referenced in the first line has two meanings to me.  One is building sand castle towns on the beach, the other is the spiritual freedom that comes with taking a stroll on the beach (kind of like a church in its own sense, that we conjure up just taking it all in).  The medicine is the sun and sea air that cleanses us and helps reduce the stress and transport us to our happy place. The verses rhyme, but the refrain does not.  The refrain adds lines each time it is repeated, making it what we call a strophe.  This is done to build tension.  Tension is a word people use to basi...

This song is in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch, Moon landing, and splashdown.  It was a great mission and a beautiful moment that brought the world together.   This song uses "personification".  That means that we give a non-human thing human-like characteristics.  Here, the narrator is speaking to the Moon as if it were a person and a friend. The narrator even sees the Moon as having "hands".    There is "wordplay" in the first line with the word "distant".  This word can mean things are physically far apart, but it can also mean (especially when it comes to relationships) that people have lost touch or emotionally grown apart.   There is a lot of "allusions" here.  Most of it making reference to important dates, locations, equipment, or other items related to the Moon missions.  For instance, the "Gods of time and of light" phrase refers to Saturn and Apollo (the launch vehicle and the sp...