Category: poetry

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer’s day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll listen now.

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll listen now.

For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.

Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget.
Like the strangers that you’ve met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they’re not listening still.
Perhaps they never will…

Hello mother hello father
this is Johnny in Iraq
don’t you know the ears are growing
phone calls to and from ‘other countries’
include Iraq
and mother’s sons and daughters
we can tell you we are lonely
but not, we want, to come home
you can tell us that you miss us
but if you tell us come home, they will brig us
demote us degrade us but never let us
consciously object to following orders
Iraq quagmire is our quagmire
we can’t tell you, of the thousands
of us
MASHed out of duty from disease
you can’t tell us of the 18 new bodies found in New Orleans
yesterday and more days after Katrina
the body count, mysteriously stays, at 1,422
oh poor Uncle Sam
how did we let them make you, the eyes and ears of the world
and our bedrooms
how did right get it so wrong
mother father when you find me
standing trial at Nuremberg will it still be
“Following orders is not an excuse.”

Shazoom it worked!
Fear returns to so many
the mind controllers set off pipe bombs in tiny communities
protesters numbers shrink exponentially
but the candle’s wick is longer
brighter insistent warmer
shades of Edward R. Murrow
who will fill his shoes?

i stand knee deep in burning coals
waist high in bombs bursting light
eyes filled with poisonous gas
ears to the crackling wind

i kneel deep in daisy filled garden
soft breeze caressing my face
tear drops coursing the river
bird song in my ear

i lie on the ground hugging
holding least i fall further
than i can remember being
down in the deep deep well

i turn to face my Maker
i cry, “o Maker face me!”
give me just one reason,
or take this cup.”

the crackling wind is silent
the air is sweet & pure
i see a tree in the garden
it burns but does not die

“My child, & you are my child
My love, and you are my love
You are the seed of the burning
Tree, and you and I are one.”

when sleep won’t come
and the moon is full
when arms are empty
will we remember?

play must be work
when day is done
and previous distractions
no longer distract

when all is said
and nothing done
no place to hide
no place to run

naked of masks
we face our feet
are we walking our talk
or splitting our tongue?

we made God
in our image then swear
He made us
in His

we make our enemy
the Devil and swear
who is not with us
is against us

nono nannette declares
never more
Poe’s raven cries
some of us wear sandals

walking in the sand
across lines drawn
blown clean
by feathered wind

When the most intense revivals swept
the mountains just a century ago,
participants described the shouts and barks
in unknown tongues, the jerks of those who tried
to climb the walls, the holy dance and laugh.
But strangest are reports of what was called
the holy cuss. Sometimes a man who spoke
in tongues and leapt for joy would break into
an avalanche of cursing that would stun
with brilliance and duration. Those that heard
would say the holy spirit spoke as from
a whirlwind. Words burned on the air like chains
of dynamite. The listeners felt transfigured,
and felt true contact and true presence then,
as if the shock of unfamiliar
and blasphemous profanity broke through
beyond the reach of prayer and song and hallo
to answer heaven’s anger with its echo.

First printed in Southern Poetry Review, Vol. 43, No. 1 2004
© 2004 by Robert Morgan

lets us have a cartoon about Abraham
lying to Egypt’s Pharaoh,
claiming Sara is not his wife,
so he, Pharaoh, will take her,
because him, Abraham, wants more food
from the Pharaoh.

lets have a cartoon about the Pope
controlling two puppets’ strings
one is a Jew being led to slaughter,
like a sheep, the other is a Muslim,
being led to slaughter,
like a raging bull.

a third cartoon might be in order
of Abraham, the father of monotheism,
tossing and turning in his grave, muttering,
“I only wanted them to become less violent.
In their quest for vengeance they were slaughtering
whole tribes of people. I wanted them to understand
and eye for an eye was vengeance enough.”
And Jesus answers from his grave,
“I told them to turn their other cheek, thinking:
who would slap a cheek that turns away?
But look at them now,
ready to set the earth, their paradise, on fire,
over a cartoon.”

on God’s Learning Channel
this second day of February declares:

“There are two kind of Jews
those that follows Abraham’s tradition
and those that do not.”

“Seventy-five percent of American Jews
are secular Jews, twenty-five percent
are not.”

Give me Charlie Chaplin
who’s freedom was sacrificed
because he depicted Hitler
as a buffoon,

or Steven Spielberg who says it’s time
to admit the sins of Abraham’s seeds
at the same time being proud
of our heritage i.e.
wonderful tenders of gardens.
the truth even today
genocide lives, in the Sudan, Haiti etc.

What happened to the Uniting of Nations
after World War II that decreed
“Never again.”
‘Never again to genocide
and never again to nuclear bombs?”

Oh Israel will you now join
the Non Nuclear Proliferation Treaty?
Will the nations already members
renew their pledge? Will Pakistan, India?
It is not good to break treaties
Nor is it good not to sign them.

Will we go thru another Cold War rattling nukes?
(lots of blood shed during that cold war,
though few American and few Russians)
Or will we start firing nukes
Creating a man made Armageddon
Who will G_d say caused Armageddon?
Those who use the nukes or those who refuse to use them
like, but not limited to, the seventy-five percent
of American Jews John Hagge calls
secular.

Secular, in a democracy, does not equate to
absence of religion. And democracy
will never be achieved when there is
tyranny of a majority over a minority.

What is it we want our neighbor to do unto us?
And what do we do unto our neighbor?

When the other cheek is turned who will slap it?