The Poetry Stash: 20June2024

As I Lay With Head In Your Lap, Camerado by Walt Whitman

Today’s poem “As I Lay With Head In Your Lap, Camerado” by Walt Whitman is in the public domain.

As I Lay With Head In Your Lap, Camerado by Walt Whitman

As I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado,
The confession I made I resume--what I said to you in the open air I resume:
I know I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped artilleryman;)
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;
I am more resolute because all have denied me, than I could ever have been had all accepted me;
I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule;
And the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me;
And the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me;
...Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and
still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.

Prompts:

1.	Begin with “As I lay with my head…”
2.	Begin with “what is our destination…”
3.	Draft a poem that is addressed to a friend.
4.	Draft a poem that is a persuasion.

5. Photo by Ron Lach via pexels.com. Use the image as a writing prompt.

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