Bob Gaydos: Celebrating the holidays in recovery "No thank you" is a complete sentence and perfectly acceptable answer. It should not require any further explanation. "One drink won't hurt you" is a dangerously ill-informed reply. The same goes for, "A few butter cookies won't hurt. C'mon, it's Christmas." Or, "Get the dress, Put it on your credit card. You'll feel better." Not really.

William T. Hathaway: My Dear Other A poem about how the difficulties of love can strengthen it.

Irene Fowler: La Vie en Purple "I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe." - Alice Walker

Irene Fowler: The Sun Came Out To Play Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine." - Charlotte Brontë from Jane Eyre. 2 

Andy Mccoy: About the Variety in the Designs of Earring Jewelry There are different kinds of jewelry. There are hand jewelry, necklaces, rings, and earring jewelry. Sometimes they come in a complete set with a pair of cartilage earrings, a necklace, a ring and a bracelet. An anklet may also be added, along with a brooch. The history of the evolution of jewelry is one that is complicated and ever changing.

Ethan Indigo Smith: The Fourth Initiation of The Jesus Christ Story The esoteric inspiration within the resurrection idea and its occurrence during the Winter Solstice, and the exoteric replacement.

Kevin Tully: AI: The Writer Dies Artificial Intelligence soon at a bookstore, art gallery, poetry reading, photography exhibit, war zone and furniture store near you.

David Rothman: 'After the Ivory Tower Falls': A Book Review Will Bunch, the Pulitzer-winning Philadelphia Inquirer columnist, has written a thoughtful AND lively book called After the Ivory Tower Falls. He tells how colleges have exacerbated cultural and economic differences. Grandson of the founder of a small college closed after enrollment declines, Bunch fervently hopes that policymakers will understand the importance of college and vocational training as public goods.

Kevin Tully: A Thought About Story Anthropologists must be chuckling and shaking their heads, if not wringing their hands. There was a singular, very important component of the rise of civilizations -- story. Without it they would have stayed just a bunch of loosely connected hunters and gatherers, individually avoiding catastrophe, trotting into oblivion. 19 

Monish Chatterjee: To Mahatma-ji (Tribute poem by Sukanta Bhattacharya, early 1940s, to Mahatma Gandhi) Recalling a significant tribute poem written by Bengali poet-prodigy Sukanta Bhattacharya (1926-47) in honor of Mahatma Gandhi in the early 1940s, identifying him as the galvanizing figure central to the Indian freedom movement against 200 years of British imperial occupation of the sub-continent. Sukanta was a powerful leftist/progressive voice who had written momentous poems in a life taken much too soon, in 1947 at age 21. 8 

Kevin Tully: The Ghost of Taras Bulba "They all left. She resisted. Her grandchildren tugged at her beautifully embroidered apron. She resisted..." 3 

Irene Fowler: An Ode To Lost Love "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." - Alfred Lord Tennyson 13 

Gary Lindorff: There will be a war It will not be just any old war. / It will be our very own war. / Make it count. 4 

Gary Lindorff: Somewhere in Coimbatore Somewhere in Coimbatore / There is a patch of grass / That is greener than green

Gary Lindorff: Tenderized by L/life You might not understand what I am saying. / That is why I am including the link in this poem.