Failure of Imagination

By Russell Willis

Paralyzed

Incapable of doing that which must be done

Not for lack of caring

There is enough passion

Not for lack of courage

Though fear has been weaponized all around

But passion runs amok, and fear

Numbing hearts and minds

The failure is of imagination

The failure of passion and courage

To simply refuse to fail any longer

The failure to imagine something else

To imagine what passion and courage

Could accomplish to stop the madness

To imagine that making this stop

Is far better that what we now allow

By our failure of imagination.

Meanwhile, the innocent die

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Russell Willis has been profiled in THE POET Magazine and published in twenty-eight online and print journals and seventeen anthologies. Russell grew up in and around Texas and was vocationally scattered as an engineer, ethicist, college teacher and administrator, and Internet education entrepreneur throughout the Southwest and Great Plains, finally settling in Vermont with his wife, Dawn. He emerged as a poet in 2019 with the publication of three poems in The Write Launch. Russell’s website is https://REWillisWrites.com