Inspired by Edward Hopper's 1940 painting Office at Night.

My translation of Polish poet Marcin Świetlicki's "Swierszcze" ("Crickets")

Inspired by El Greco's 17th-century painting of the same name, which was in turn inspired by the Book of Revelation 6:9-11.

This poem was created from lines of dialogue spoken by Travis Bickle in the 1976 film Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader.

Inspired by Sandra Wyllie's poem If I Grew Wings ( https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4059625/if-i-grew-wings/ ), whose title and idea I shamelessly stole because I thought it was interesting how two minds could take those starting points and go in completely different directions!

The challenge here was to start with a line, then make the next line the same but for the subtraction of one letter (in this case, v) and follow the same pattern for the duration of the poem.

Inspired by several news stories about bullying. What struck me was the tragedy of the bullied person coming back, again and again, to the bullies, probably craving attention, perhaps hoping for eventual acceptance, and how that same need (to return, to be accepted) not only intensified the bullying but justified that intensity ("What did he expect? He kept coming back for more!") In the extreme case, the intensification resulted in death. The death itself was seemingly blamed in part on the victim ("Well, he didn't object to us doing X, so naturally we tried X+1. I guess it's sad that X+1 killed him, but all he had to do was [...] and he didn't, so, you know: he didn't save himself.") One of the acts of bullying that struck me was walking on the victim's body, especially across puddles, gravel and mud. I was also surprised by how poorly the bullies were able to explain why they chose their particular victims. Their explanations amounted to: (1) he existed, (2) he existed around us, (3) he kept existing around us despite what we were doing, and (4) he was weird.