WrittenExcellence

The sun was setting. I tried not to look at it. Looking at it only reminded me that I shouldn’t still be here, shouldn’t still be sitting on this bench in the park waiting for someone who should have arrived hours ago. What had I done wrong? The question kept bouncing around my head as I searched, over and over, for an answer I knew I’d never find. I’d never know why I spent this whole day alone—the one day a year, aside from Christmas, where you shouldn’t have to be alone—and that was the worst part of all. Had I done something to upset her? Said the wrong thing? I racked my brain in search of an

I don’t normally make a habit of demolishing media articles—if I tried to refute every single piece of hyperbolic superfluous tripe that gets put out every hour of every day, I’d never have time to do anything else. But every now and again I run across an article so asinine, so jaw-droppingly idiotic and so childishly infantile that I feel almost obligated to systematically refute it and take its author out behind the proverbial woodshed for some holiday season's beatings. One such piece of vomit-inducing cancer comes courtesy of a certain Bruce Livesey, who writes for a Canadian outlet called the National Observer. In mid-

The trees grew wild, the leaves were green. No sign of man was to be seen. I walked through grove and shadowed vale, Through sunlight bright, and moonlight pale. Through fields of cane that brush the sky, And halls of trees where cool winds sigh. Past rolling hills and meadows green, No fairer sight was ever seen! Past streams uncounted, swift and free, I heard their waters sing to me. They bade me hail and welcome home, To secret glens I call my own. The world was fair and shining bright, I wept in joy at such a sight. I knelt in fallen leaves to pray, In thankfulness that autumn day.

At least once in our lives, something will happen that is so earth-shaking, so unprecedented, and so enormously impactful that everyone remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing at the precise moment it happened. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was such an event. The 9/11 attacks were another. But within the past year, another such event has been added to the list, one that will likely leave just as big an impact if not bigger on the civilized world’s collective psyche. So where were you, and what were you doing, when you found out that Trump had been elected President? Me, I was writing a poem—or at least

You do not know Katrina. You’ve heard the stories. Maybe you've seen the video footage of gale-force winds and roaring waves, of roofs torn off of houses and huge pleasure yachts tossed about as if they were nothing more than toys. But you don’t know Katrina. You weren’t here. You don’t know what it was like. You never experienced the moment the power gave out, when the food in the fridge began to spoil and your children began to ask, over and over, when they were going to eat and you didn’t know what to tell them. You weren’t here when the wrath of Hurricane Katrina descended upon a grand old city like

There’s a story that folks in this neighborhood tell, Of a coven that opened a portal to Hell, They dwelt in Camp Claiborne, far back in the woods, And hid all their faces beneath masks and hoods. Camp Claiborne is evil, its soil now attainted, Its buildings of concrete with blood once were painted, And yet, my dear reader, you also should know, That at its inception the camp wasn’t so. In the wake of Pearl Harbor the camp was erected, But what it would come to, none could have suspected. They used it to ready young soldiers for war, They trained to perfection and then trained some more. But once the war ended and peace was de

It’s been a hell of a tough year for America. Donald Trump is president, Congress is more polarized and petty than ever, and the media’s having an absolute field day with what seems like our imminent self-immolation. Ever since November there’s been a nonstop cacophony of people both at home and abroad lamenting—or sneering—that America’s finally done itself in, that we’re about to go the way of the dinosaurs and that there’s nowhere to go but down. Codswallop, I say. Sorry, haters, but for all its flaws, this is still a pretty darn good country. Is it perfect? Hell no, and I’ve never pr

The year was 1779 and every schoolboy hears, Of how we battled Britain in those distant far-gone years. Burgoyne had just surrendered and the French had joined the fray, And battle broke out on the lake one fine September day. Like France, the Spanish grumbled at Britannia’s growing might, Like France, they backed the Patriots from sheer vindictive spite. They owned New Orleans at the time and used the river well, To send us what we needed so we'd give the British hell. They gave us shot and powder so we'd bloody Britain's lips, But most importantly of all, they sent us scores of ships. The rebels had no navy, not a single man-of-war