Grab A Spoon
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hungry for Gumbo is written for people who like to stir the pot. Grab a spoon.
Conventional wisdom. Two words that do not belong together. Because conventional wisdom isn’t always wise. For instance, if I listened to conventional wisdom, I wouldn’t even consider a third career act in marketing communications. Marcom is a young person’s game. Plus, all the creativity has been sucked out of the business. It’s no longer a good fit. Admit it and move on.
Okay, but that’s not how I do. I am a promoter and an advocate. A poet and mentor. A brand builder and teacher. Someone who has reinvented himself before. Someone who is prepared to do it again. But that’s me telling. Showing is something else.
Poetry As A Point of Difference
I like the idea that poetry and art can be used to inform commerce. I like the idea that poetry can be a point of difference for me in my search for meaningful work.
According to the Poetry Foundation, a prose poem is a “prose composition that, while not broken into verse lines, demonstrates other traits such as symbols, metaphors, and other figures of speech common to poetry.” I like the prose poem as a literary form that delivers maximum impact in a readable short story-like manner. I like reading and writing them.
Here’s a prose poem that I recently wrote and published on LinkedIn.
SOCIAL CURRENCY
Like modern plumbing and birth control, money is a necessary invention. A social construct. A way to transfer value to the workers. The idea in its purest state isn’t bad. If only ideas were kept under the stained glass of your imagination, instead of traded for dollar bills. Black mirrors. NFTs. Fake followers. Machine-generated text. Stolen art. It’s 2023 and social currency is not yet accepted at the grocery store, not recognized by banks, but it gets you and me a front-row ticket to the show. And the show is real. Like I really do have this green yolk around my neck. It’s LinkedIn’s way of saying that I’m #OpentoWork. For what it’s worth, I have never met a person who isn’t open to work. Anyway, here I am with this green collar resting on my digital shoulders. Fine. You can dress me up. You can encourage me to dance. What do you think poetry is? A word dance. Feed me street tacos. I’m buying another abstract painting. Also, please put something funky on the non-ironic turntable. Honor the groove! I’m open to work. Show me to your idea people— dedicated people who work for change. Where are you hiding the humanists and hedonists? It’s time to fertilize the fields. Time to strike a new vein. Together, we will make it easier for writers and artists to succeed. We will keep coal out of gas tanks and hold space for wolves in the wild. There are few things that an impassioned information worker can’t do. But change comes by degrees. That’s why I’m down here in the world’s largest Social Capital Mine with my pickaxe. People are tired of scraping by on a diet of silicon wafers. Fumes before ashes. Can we bring back charisma? How about charm? I don’t see it on TikTok. There’s a community of readers there known as BookTok. The stage is a powerful magnet. This isn’t the poetry you learned in school. We’re free from rhyming couplets and Tweed jackets now. In the Kingdom of No Context, free association is the best passport. Your ticket back to Meaning, the capital city of What Matters. It’s good to see you again, Captain. Here are your favorite slippers.
#writerforhire
This prose poem is one of twelve in a series that boosted my Impressions on LinkedIn by 920% during the month of January.
It takes a whole lot of Impressions to generate a Conversion and a whole lot of experimenting to find a productive new form for your writing.
Lagniappe
Thanks for being here now,
When you’re ready to run for office, start a business, or spark a movement, I’ll be honored to help. Visit DavidBurn.com to learn more about my writing and brand-building services.