Best Folker Poems

The 'Beloved Community'
by
Rick Folker

One beloved community
in God's world
Where each soul honors
the Image of God in the other
Where neither Jew nor Greek
Woman nor Man
Delivers the 'manifest...

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It's Not My Job
by
Rick Folker

It's not my job to teach you of 
love;
to pull you, pry you from your
place of hate.

It's not my job to...

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What Remains
by
Rick Folker
June, 2017
Kansas City, MO

When the crowd clamors
And the tocsin clangs

When the mighty and powerful
Crush the weak, the vulnerable,
The poverty that chains and shames

When...

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The Ethical Self
by
Rick Folker

If there is evil here, it is complacency, and it is collective.
- Courtney Martin/columnist for On Being

The Moral Arc is bent
but not...

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Resurrecting Icarus
or
A Modern Moral Fable
by
Rick Folker
Kansas City, Mo


Daedalus claimed the sky,
Built a labyrinth from which
Theseus could fly
...
Minos enraged, entombed the 
Treacherous Daedalus in a tower
No...

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Mother Tongue
by 
Rick Folker
March 15, 2017

Words...
Words bereft of beauty
bitter words
barely concealing the 
viscious intent of 
opaque surfaces
concealing truth with 
the fake, urging us to destroy...

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59
by
rick folker

What happened in Vegas
Should not stay in Vegas.

Such a mind-numbing tragedy
cannot be contained, nor constrained
or explained
by a simple 'summing up'.

No, never 'what happened in...

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Scare-City

by

Rick Folker

Here on these mean streets...
The palpable lack of love
Threads through the alleyways
of brutal loss and unanswered prayers;
The anguished cries of despair rise
with the unforgiving...

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Advent
by
Rick Folker
December, 2017

"... you know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake ... the night is advanced, the day is at...

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Mimshak*
by
Rick Folker

As the Lord lives, it must be the Lord himself who will strike him, whether the time comes for him to die, or he...

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Ibrahim’s Broken Dream
by 
Rick Folker

His withered hand sifts through the sand,

“My descendants, Isaac-Ishmael are like
stars that have fallen, sand scattering into a
nameless lake ...
Something causes...

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Sit Transit Gloria Mundi
Rick Folker

Our current consumptive culture
Salivates over
"Tech" and "Cell" and "Screen"
That transmits the lurid, pornographic
Apocalyptic scenes.

We long for the end
Of the endless 24/7...

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That Which IS
(for Julian of Norwich)
by
Rick Folker

I came across it 
in a bookstore
As if you were standing 
right there and smiling,
"Now do you understand? ...

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On Reading Akhmatova
by
Rick Folker
Kansas City, MO

...delighted in deliriums,
In singing about tombs.
I distributed misfortunes…

… But I am not allowed to forget
The taste of the tears of...

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A Frisson of Fear
by Rick Folker

I will not bow to
your idols of
hate

I will not offer prayers to
your false gods you
create

I will not kneel to 
your...

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