The Search for Substance

I ripped another page from the calendar hanging on my kitchen wall. We enter the month of May with thoughts of Spring swimming around in our heads. The sun is shining bright on the days it isn’t raining. The snow vanished into distant memory. This month I plan to explore a poetry style that reminds me of a trickling waterfall. Udit Bhatia created the Cascade poem. There are no rules for rhythm or meter. The layout is simple in that the lines of the first stanza are repeated as the refrain lines in the stanzas that follow. The poem flows like this ABC, xxA, xxB xxC. Add lines to the poem longer. Thus, you are making a cascading effect with words. How hard can that be? This Cascade Poem I titled The search for Substance.

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Note: I will also be adding Black Out Poems as we go along the way. I plan to keep using this style until the book I’m using runs out of pages for me to play with to create these unique and visual poems. I might as well get started. I’m excited about jogging down this road.

The Search for Substance

The Search for Substance


In this world of the artificial
In a crowd of fake people 
Expressing phony passions
I remind myself not to judge
But I still search for Substance

I feel like an emotional cripple
Stranded in a church steeple
The one unable to shed tears
Stubborn one refusing to budge
In this world of the artificial

 Life can deal a blow that’s lethal
That looks benign at first glance
Leaving you to shift gears
And try to not hold a grudge
In a crowd of fake people 

Actions unmatched by affections
We glide in an unsteady dance
The accumulation of all my fears
We stand silent in shades of purple
Expressing phony passions


Little affection left to smudge
The time to surrender to temptations
Disappeared along with the years
                                          Excuses all seem so feeble
I remind myself not to judge

Days filled with sweet romance
Dressed in all the latest fashions
Wrapped in worldly cares
Down the streets I trudge
But I still search for Substance

Who is Molly Shea?

Molly Shea is an accomplished fictional short story writer from Indiana who writes short stories and novels about a fictional town called Tecumseh.  To read more of her short stories and adventures, click here.

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