Poems in response to lines from a poem by Jimmy Carter, March 29, 2023

This entry has some poems we heard and read, written in response to these lines by Jimmy Carter:

I learned from poetry that art

is best derived from artless things,

that mysteries might be explored

and understood by that which springs

most freely from my mind and heart.

from Itinerant Songsters Visit Our Village,  in Always a Reckoning

Jimmy Carter

                                                                                                                                

Pete Blose

The poets are the last hope.

The poets are the last hope.

When the door is slammed shut

The poets' fingers will bleed.

When the gavel cracks down hard on the bench

The poets will not sit down

And they will not stop talking.

When the stranger moans in ugly agony

The poets alone will pause

Amidst the many footsteps stiffly walking away.

Poetry is the last bastion.

Against the anguish and the loneliness

Against the algorithms of the apocalypse

Against the devils destroying our world.

When the clamorous clueless march to the cliff

The poets will cry out

With rhymes for the righteous

With couplets of compassion

With unrepentant lyrics of love.

Joanne Gianinno

Ghost in the closet

 

the closet

is locked

 

chock full

of afghans in

zippered pouches

 

shirts on

plastic hangers

 

jeans stiff from

being folded

for decades

 

the bare light

pull string

too short

to reach

 

in the dark

a pair of

leather loafers

wait for feet

that never return.

Judith Janoo

The Red Kettle—What I Learned from Poetry

 

It matters

the red kettle

 

the bell

the salvation army

 

making it

through with food

 

—only ones

says the infantryman

 

emptying his

thin pocket into

 

the red well 

Mark Creaven

SISTER MARY ROBARD’S FINAL VOWS

 

Today is the day

I become a bride of the risen Christ

I hear the bishop droning on

I know he means well,  but….

I feel nervous

“Get on with it.”

“No, don’t. I must listen.”

The novices seated next to me

smile and nod, great eye contact

with the bishop as though they

are following his every word,

“...sacrifice…..” “...holiness…..” 

“Blessed Virgin Mary….”

“...Example to the world…..”.

Am I really ready for this life?

Push those doubts away.

The devil will tempt me.

Focus.

I turn my head ever so slightly.

Out of the corner of my eye

I see my mother.

I have to be careful,

can't give any hint

I will miss her.

Are those feelings a temptation?

Giving her what she has wanted

for me all my life.

What do I want?

The devil again.

My confessor says I am

“stiff necked.”

I know I am. Why  can't that

be valuable to God?

Now the three of us prostrate ourselves.

The floor is cold and hard.

I know we practiced laying down

and getting back up.

My hands cradle my head.

My breath reflects back to me

cool from the marble floor.

The bulges of my breasts

press flat to my rib cage.

I want to shift my body a little.

I am afraid to move.

Christ suffered.  I can too,

enduring a little discomfort

in His name.

I hear the names of saints

chanted by Sister Rose.

She still sings just a little off key.

I don’t like her.

My left ankle starts to hurt.

Why isn't my father here?

My mouth is dry, no water for a while.

No  bathroom right now anyhow.

Finally the bishop stops.

The chanting stops.

The three of us swing to our feet.

Smooth.

My feet don’t tangle in the habit.

I kneel before Mother.

I read my vows off the pamphlet.

She kisses my cheek.

I feel warm.

I reach out my left hand.

I feel the coolness of the gold

as it slides over the knuckles of my finger.

There. I did it.

Here you go, Mother.

Your daughter has insured you have a place

in heaven.

I hope you are happy.

Helette Gagnon

Poetry as Beacon

 

When everything you see reveals itself

in verse

 

As story with its own future—alone—

past-present tense—special

 

Skeptic’s song on how to belong to 

this tribe

 

A world of insights—head of the class

style

 

An ocean of words slung together but

fluid

 

Exposing the earth with its deep seated

problems

 

Bits and pieces of filth in fish’s gills—

when all it wants to do is breathe

 

Wave after wave barefoot dangerous

—spill the content of life

 

See blue in every shade—wonder

if salty water cures

 

To be cured in brine—tides litter more—

try to recreate the moon

 

Every Wednesday afternoon in your

leather chair—sharing

 

Grey tunes of a moment—mostly of

peril—the time you skimmed your knee

 

The burn of sand—shells inside your

head—renew—renew

Ellen Mass

Ode to Jimmy Carter
39th US President


I grew up in Macon near Jimmy’s Plains
Truly like its name
Poor and black
No fanfare or fame
-the Georgia backwoods
from where he came

A caring man arose
from misery and strife
to guide the country to a different pose
with kindness without lies,
he brought mean spirits down to size

He toiled and lived with the ‘coloreds’

in that separated village setting
Taught and learned deeply from their hardened hands-
Its what transformed the man,
to change the country into something grand

But piles of corruption
infiltrated our would-be-saint
from governorship to president-
He was not safe; and
even at his best,
could not reach his blessed quest

Nepotism and heavy political hands
took away his will to heal our land
But after his term,
he traveled the world to understand and expand.

He vowed to heal - seeing such dismay
And bravely told the sad MidEast tale along his way,
kindling the Palestinians' saga from 1948,
Shared their story and quest-

remembering Plains, Georgia at its best
so to listen and sympathize-- And maybe, Jimmy, 

one day we'll all abide

Sylvia Manning

Some times:  justified draft of a rant with a nod to the Argument from Evil

 

Sometimes you almost all most let yourself believe be lief to accept emergence, a theory you could once intuit in-tú-it to mean surprise clarity, something like intelligently-designed epiphany.  Really.  Said to be sedative.

 

Some days are too gray even to try for the try in poetry even if it’s in there unless you’re Billy Collins calling in with his stand-up smugalug grin.  (Somewhere in all this mess his latest, already all ready late to be taken back – one is taken aback – to where it came from.)

 

Some newsome Nous Sommes Old Chum days, gruesomely glum, we’re gonna gun-ah Gun!-Ah! have news (Who knew? Who new?) an underpaid undereducated underling custodian dies beside a well-paid administrator educator and others only nine years old this time, just three this time, so that you will fear there’s no substitute for despair not in the very air we breathe in this world famous democracy this time in Tennesee you see.   Des-pair, despaired, despairing.  (It’s said to be a sin, despair, but it’s just a word made with marks -- or in the air.)

 

Or while you’re beside yourself good grief a tornado kills dozens of ordinary folk in Mississippi.  Not in Money -- one supposes, doesn’t know -- in some other towns with people out and about and without.)

 

Some days there’s no OM in some and of course there never is unless you can see it.

 

Some days – back to emergence and liefness to believe it – some 40 men detainees all but also deportees (all so-called) die from smoke inhalation after being locked out of the land of the free to be kept locked-in in another so-called Safe Country.

 

Some days it won’t work to try for the try or even the tree in poetry.

 

Some day you may have to read that Yeats was a nascent fascist.

 

Some days are even too sad for Billy Collins.  Better for a Tom Collins, if you have some gin.  But then again, better not to begin.

Adrien Helm

The Truth of Water

 

Dip a fore finger

Through the shivering

Skin stretched, from

Rim to rim.

The fragile nerves

Beneath the pad

Quake in sensory rush.

 

Or, plunge grubby fists

Under a gushing tap,

Cleansing heat,

Aerated spate,

Shimmering blanket,

Sparkling wash.

 

Skin, organ of senses

Dazzled all over

Beneath a shower’s

Needling jets,

Engulfed, ecstatic

In overload.

 

Soles bare on sand

Calluses abrade,

Then playful, foamy

Tickles the arch.

It’s too much,

You dance.

                                        

Or, dive too hot,

Cool spank, too sharp,

Bubbles erupt,

Hair streams --

Sudden reprieve,

Familial return.

                            3-29-23