Show Me By Your Experience: Revolutionary IMprov Prose

I once was working on a project at a very large company back in Seattle. Someone with considerably less experience than I had, (decades less,) came to my cubical and somewhat derisively suggested that I change the the way I was working on the project. She said I should try it another way that she had heard about.

In my experience, her way had never worked in any other place I’d ever seen it implemented, so I very calmly asked her if she had ever done it that way. She said no. I suggested that she go back to her desk and work on the project she was working on, in the way that she had suggested, and when she was done and the project was successful, she could come back and show me how to fix my project using her tried and proven methodologies. It wasn’t that I was not willing to listen to her, but I felt that I had more experience than she did, and she was trying to implement a pattern that had never been proven and that she had never used.

She never returned.

What if Trump’s recent comments are simply following good busines process? I think he’s say the same thing to some young apartment manager who came up to him and tried to tell him how to run one of Trump Plaza. That is what Trump said to four young Representatives. It wasn’t a racist comment. It was a business comment.

“Show us the proof, show us how to do it, and then we’ll listen. Oh, you don’t have any real-world experience? Go back to your workspace, go back to a place where you can implement those policies, where you have a blank canvas, and see if your suggestions and ideas work.

But don’t come into our work space, into a place that is following a pattern that has been relatively successful for more than 200 years, following rules which we believe are inspired, and tell us how much you hate our process, and our rules, and our results, and then tell us to try something that you’ve never even tried, and that you have no proof of it working anywhere else.”

Experience Is A Cruel Teacher: Romantic ConTEXTing Haiku

She wonders why he/
doubts and fears. She doesn’t know/
his experience.

As Folks Fall: Revolutionary ImproVerse Haiku Lament

As folks fall, reach out./
If they turn away, you don’t/
have to watch them crash.

Two Friends At Sin’s Door: Revolutionary IMprov Sonnet

Two friends
now stand at the same door
I had once entered
and exited, before.

One is heading out.
One might go in.
One is fleeing darkness.
One might embrace sin.

She who is leaving,
(as I also learned,)
knows the folly of entering;
knows evil should be spurned.

I will weep for joy as the one comes out,
and cry in anguish ‘til the other turns about.

Learning By Experience: Revolutionary ImproVerse Haiku

She would have enjoyed/
the experience more, but/
I needed to learn.

T-Shirt Vendor Performance Experience: Revolutionary ImproVerse Haiku

He, rushed, didn’t have/
the whole experience he’d/
paid for. She, still, did.

Who Gives Good Advice: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Haiku

I like receiving/
advice from older folk who/
have experience.

She Was An Awesome Experience: Romantic IMprov Haiku

She was an awesome/
experience, a mirror/
to me, my soul’s lens.

A Wise Old Woman: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Haiku

She spoke from her life’s/
wisdom. We could have stopped Church/
meeting with “Amen”.

Finding Our Guides: Revolutionary ImproVerse Sonnet

We all stand at the brink/
Of new horizons, and think/
Of what we can’t do,/
And fear, instead of soldiering through./

We feel like we’re all alone
far from the familiar surroundings of home.
But there are others who’ve walked this path,
who wait and hope and want to be asked.

And when we look, we’ll find/
those Guides wise and kind,/
Who’ll lead us past terror’s door,/
For they’ve passed this way before./

Our new friends can help us go the distance
if we have courage to seek their assistance