Best Folker Poems
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 lift you
from willful ignorance
when you elect a president
the despot whom
you elevate.
It's not my job to offer you
truth and beauty
in place of your racist, supremacist
warped world-view;
your wicked weltschmerz
you fearfully embrace.
It's not my job to point you
towards the weeping women
whom mourn their lost children,
taken too tragically, too violently
by the guns you make.
No more, no more can I convince you
that this country is in love with death,
No more, no more can you ignore
The glaring cynical game you
continue to play,
The absurd theatre
the thirst for more victims
will not abate.
The truth lies bare
for those of us willing to
educate.
Categories:
folker, inspirational,
Form:
Alliteration
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 destiny'
From Sinai's peak
Where all are called to Isaiah's mountain
Eunuchs and lepers
Publicans and saints
Lips humbly muttering prayers
they cannot speak
Where all observe Jesus from afar
On lonely Gethsemane
Sweating blood
For the sleeping, satisfied, selfish crowd
The torpor of disciples, deaf to the
Impending flood
One beloved community, Or...
Some fairy tale kingdom struggling
To become a living thing or tossed in the trash
Or the mountains where "used-to-be"
crumble from sorrow
into a mournful ash
And well-meaning Christians hurry
For shelter, cowering in sack cloth
As the complacent sleepers of Gethsemane
creep back
Into the darkness, covering their ears lest they
AWAKE! to the night that is far gone
And hear of light and justice
Escaping the righteous rebuke of
WRONG! Wrong! Wrong
One beloved community
That Martin gave his soul and his life for;
A King who was prophet and priest
Whose dream was smothered in the still-born birth
in a would be manger in some slum in Montgomery
Where no sun rises in a forgotten, hopeless east
'Move to the front please'
One beloved community
shattered and now praised
for its greatness, its whiteness, its bravado
and hubris in soul-grinding waves
Ignoring the please of the blacks and the browns
and the braves
One beloved community that exists
in a dream
And one loveless community that ends
in a scream with a lone,frightened individual
Praying to be redeemed
Categories:
folker, community, courage,
Form:
Ballad
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 broken
It can be retrieved and repaired
like a shattered heart
withering in the penumbra
of great grief
If only we take back the responsibility
we have so casually ceded to the loudest, harshest,
and most unforgiving voices
Then we can become caretakers and caregivers
when the moral arc seems to lose the path of justice
and lies discarded and dismissed as so many hopes and dreams
are driven to despair
It is then that we must all the more forcefully stand up and stand by
our ethics, our morals, and refuse to blame 'evil' of some other
'uncontrollable force' when we are ultimately to
be held accountable for the killings, the cruelty, the craven fear
that paralyzes our better selves
and cynically opt for helplessness when these atrocities
could have been prevented.
Ultimately, we will be held accountable for the future we
and only we can make.
The moral arc in long and it does bend
but we need make sure that we bend
with it.
Categories:
folker, america, care, evil,
Form:
Free verse
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 fear fights fiercely
With the menacing gang
Silencing the prophets
With their poisonous slang
When the refugee seeks safety
Those sojourners are met with a
Door slamming
And a deafening bang!
When these omens and portents are
The normal sturm und drang
Of a soul-less people clinging to
Myths of endless positive change
When all of these mindless, pointless,
Endless
Strife-filled days
Divide and dwindle down
To the ashes of the last
Death pangs
A Remnant Remains
A Remnant Remains
And life and love are reborn and return
Again! and Again! and Again!
Categories:
folker, hope, inspiration, political, power,
Form:
Alliteration
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 sky could aide the architect’s power
On high
No land, no sea
Gave comfort to the builder's sigh
Would he hopeless entreat the silent sky
Or conquer it within, at least, in his mind’s eye?
...
Yet, the great artificer fashioned
An ingenious answer to the Minoan king;
Feathers of wax resembling wings
His craft and his son could now be free
To dream
Where only untamed zephyrs and partridges sing
Where high aloft they would transcend
Minos, Ariadne, Theseus
And Meandering rivers of Cretan men
...
But hubris, not modesty, carved the Icarian path
Daedalus, proud Daedalus, helpless
To tame the youth's spirit, and soften
The gods' wrath
And so Icarus unrestrained
Tried, like Prometheus, to lay claim
To the fire, that only Olympians retain
And thus fell Icarus to Daedalus and
The Nereids' plain
...
Thus leaves us wondering, like hapless sages through the ages,
"Would he rise again?"
Or would his brilliant feathers melt into the smouldering shame?
Or would the Phoenix sort and gather the remnants that remain
And take up another more hopeful god's refrain:
'The surviving remnant will bring forth
new roots below and fruits above; for you have restored the dignity my Icarus has duly slain”
Categories:
folker, allegory, death, growth, mythology,
Form:
Classicism
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 Vegas'
Should be termed, the new normal
Or the the new acceptance
Of a virulent form of violence
Or a fatalistic excuse for
Humanity's propensity to cage
Such stark, naked evil in words
that defy words.
No, never should the 'banality of evil' stay in Vegas or Newtown or Orlando
It should affect and effect each and every person with a soul,
with a will, with a modicum of compassion and turn each of us away from Vegas and toward
our national and individual wounds
What happened in Vegas should transcend mountains and oceans
Transverse the healing cosmos and return to us
With a simplistic and fundamental message ...
We shall NOT be monsters
We shall NOT be harmful or heartless
We shall NOT remain in Vegas
Categories:
folker, america, bereavement, hate, society,
Form:
Epitaph
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 - not to make
swallowing the ashes; leaving rage in their wake
Separating the hater from the hate
But I too, have words
Words that patiently ripen
beneath that opaque substrate
they wait, they wait
Roiling like lava my words.
They strain to remember -
Ashen shades of history's mistakes
The faulty rememberings
We continue to remake
Of sharp words, hate words
I have no need to take.
Is it possible that now;
After so much time, after so much pain
We still ache and break?
Are we unable to create, celebrate, or
possibly embrace?
Can we find the courage re-speak, re-learn
The I in me, the thou in you
and find! fail! but at least try
to imagine better words, healing words
Or are we to gather the ashes of bitterness again?
Categories:
folker, community, inspirational, language,
Form:
Elegiac Lyric
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 heat.
Here among the forlorn refugees,
the frightened and the poor,
Can be found the ones who
forgage for a phantom friend
and beg for an absent god to speak;
where Hunger Games
are played for keeps.
Here are those we pray for
Yet, never pay for...
The addicted, the afflicted
Those we would rather not see
And those we wish might have
never been.
Here, a thousand miles and a thousand tears
from the suburbs of the cynical elite
One may, if one tries
Travel to this city of the meek.
Categories:
folker, america,
Form:
Alliteration
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 hand. Let us throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light." Rom. 13:11-13
The light this December
seems somehow, somewhat
dissipated and weak.
It struggles to shine, to show forth
a joyous, hopeful season, fulsome with
nervous anticipation of a new birth - A Savior!
In awe and wonder we hear of of this 'annointed one'
who cries in his crib;
in a ghetto or a flavella with other outcasts, other suffering servants.
He is offering comfort, care, and consolation
for those still strong enough to seek, to survive,
and maybe even to thrive?
Yet; this humble, hopeful birth is over-shadowed
by a fog of fear,
a paralyzing despair
of a people clinging to old tired myths
and lies re-told, re-learned, renewed
once the season is past and our hope
is kicked to the curb with the old tree
and the tawdry tinsel trash.
We seem to shrink from this fading, weak light
in December so that we might remain
in a shadow world of un-checked shame, hidden traumas,
and night stalking terrors, whilst continuing to blame blame blame
all the while avoiding the healing that must be exposed
to the new day; that requires us to be awake.
So tired of it all, yet we remain in our addiction
to the game, and impatient for the promised morn
when the Savior promised he would come again
we retreat to the safety of sleep and vow to ignore
the stark, post-nativity demands of that sweet
Savior newborn.
However...
I choose, this December
to embrace the fading, waning, weak light
and embrace my frightened shadow self
and expose it to the healing light
I will awake and blindly feel my way up from the
cave of darkness, that fetid stench of fear,
and put an end to that long, lonely night
Then with a tremulous, yet confident voice
I will sing boldly with my
fellow wounded pilgrims:
Silent night
Holy night
The hopes and fears
Of all the years
Are met in thee tonight
Categories:
folker, change, christmas, december,
Form:
Carpe Diem
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 hollow info
Hoping, even praying that
The Moral Arc would start to bend.
The dreadful, the destitute in their death throes
Are caught by our ever-present lens;
The Schadenfreude tourist
Documenting the world's worsening
woes.
We check off the trauma
As part of our Holy Bucket List
And tune in and tune out of another
Kardashian/Jerry Springer blitz.
All along we lurch from crisis to crisis
Bankers scot free, Blacks burned in worship
While blaming the ever-elusive Isis
White supremacy in the land of the free?
The clown in the White house doesn't get it ....
Or does he
Categories:
folker, angst,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
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 goes out and perishes in battle. But the Lord forbid that I touch his anointed.
1 Samuel 26:5-25
David’s “honorable” moment
Is often forgotten in our
Death-obsessed culture
Where blood-soaked remnants
Of gang murders
And innocent prisoners
Whose lives are wasted
With swords quite less forgiving
With David’s sword so close
To the head of Saul
So close to injecting the lethal
Dose
So easy to sentence another to
Death row …
David’s spear poised for the final blow
So easily to dispatch the
Hoody-wearing teen
A town in Florida replays
The drama at Zilph
Abishai urging the destruction
Of the fugitive’s enemy and
A frightened gun with such an easy shot
Can’t you hear General Abishai now?
“What fortune, God has delivered the
Enemy to us - JUST DO IT!
David more than hesitates
He defends the “anointed of God”
“But the Lord forbid that I touch his anointed”
Thereby anointing all of us who
Just might forget …
That God (and only God) anoints
And that the same God both gives
And takes what we should never
Presume is our “right” to do what
Only David says the Lord is allowed
To do
That spear of vengeance and hate
Through the head of Saul or Treyvon
Or Iraqi children or Syrian tyrants or the
Many lost souls walking that last “green mile”
Are they not God’s anointed too?
By Rick Folker
*Hebrew for ‘anointed”
Categories:
folker, murder, violence,
Form:
Narrative
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 him to wake
some voices whispering,
"Remember Isaac, Remember the Knife.
Lillith-like women laughing
they torment him,
he sobs
the desert quakes.
Yours is a land
In future will break!
Looking up, he thinks he sees Hagar
“Two beloved wives, now none….
In the hot Arab sun Isaac and Ishmael
Phantoms who vanish
reaching, fighting, arguing for their star.
The veil rent from afar
“Why have you left us bereft of
your dream, your wish
of shalom
sinking, stinking
in your wars?"
God is weeping in his musings, thanksgivings, desperate pleadings,
“I would have them together….
He presses his ear to the earth
For an answer
The nightmare, the dream resumes...
My descendants are like a broken family
Without their mother,
Scattered like the sand,
Similar beneath the sun.
“Oh”, his last cry,
“That they might be one…”
Categories:
folker, allusion, arabic, bereavement, betrayal,
Form:
Classicism
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 yesterday.
- Anna Akhmatova
“The Last One”
Awake in my darkened room
Another nightmare of doom
Entombed in this nothingness
Life has become a series of shades
Passing by my window on a heavy
August night - Friends long dead
Whisper,
“Hey man, you should have bowed
Out gracefully … we did”.
Survivor's guilt covers me
like a shroud
Their deaths leave me hollowed;
Dessicated like late autumn leaves
...
The stifling heat is burying me beneath
My last gasps of relevance, remembrance,
And sanity,
I live; they sleep.
I in this lonely room,
they in the distance
Of their deep
Now the pathos of age and dead end paths
Beckon me; those former friends
Those shades I flee
Against my earnest, ardent screams
Escape my desperate silent plea
for dignity, forgetfulness, and
longevity
I shall not dream again tonight
I hope; I pray
Of those I loved;
Of those I lost to AIDS
Categories:
folker, anxiety, bereavement, remember,
Form:
Elegiac Lyric
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?
It IS enough."
You, in your cloistered cell
assured us of the death of fear
and the inifinite Reality,
"All will be well, all manner of things
will be infinitely well."
Now, neither the approbation of humankind
nor the critic's nod to what is sacred; what is profane
Can dispel or impede my very self from ever-seeking
the Divine: in you, in me, in others
And now and then I catch a short mystical breeze
when multiplicity disappears into unity
And I gain some understanding of words like:
Ground of Being, Ineffable knowing, Dark night, Eterna Luce,
the Eternal Now
And such knowing is more than enough to sustain me
to carry this struggling soul
From exile; from wandering
To a place where you pointed
That strange country now seems familiar
And I realize that I am Home
Categories:
folker, encouraging, faith, mystery,
Form:
Free verse
KINDRED KIND
by
Rick Folker
We need prophets and poets
Poor people, lost people
Raising their voices
In Rage
We need Feminists
Fearless Gays, Forces of Freedom
Ready to
Engage
We need Blacks
We need Browns
Burning with your
Fundamental
Faith
We need the Unsung Young
And the Yellow-Red tongue
Yelling down
The rising tide of
Hate
We need Torturous Truth
And Towering Hope
Talking back to power
Slinking from the
White privilege
Haze
We need you, we need me
To seize the scepter
Of shouting supremacy
Something
That just might sound;
Soulfull
Selfless and just simply
Sane
Categories:
folker, motivation, political,
Form:
Political Verse