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Best Poems Written by Mark Stucky

Below are the all-time best Mark Stucky poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Races

(Note: This poem was written shortly after the 2022 Olympics and after Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos rode their rockets in a new space race for billionaires.)

Races

By Mark D. Stucky
Our country had a Space race
to beat Russians to the moon.
Decades ago, we left lunar footprints
and brought back rocks and selfies.
Rival billionaires build rockets now
for suborbital joyrides above.

We periodically join Olympic races
to go fractionally faster than others
for prestige and multi-metal medals.
Hosting countries spend billions
to applaud athletic bodies.
But for all that cash and hype,
we get no cure-for-cancer hope,
but viral spread and doping.

Our world needs better races
toward things that truly matter.
We require a Race race
to travel much faster
toward equity and healing
than ever gone before.
While we wish for a quick sprint,
a marathon is what we’re running.

Ending slavery long ago,
this race’s qualifying heat,
was just one stride
beyond the starting line.
Jim Crow still taints the track.
Systems still are prejudicial.
Supremacists still conspire.
Voting rights still are suppressed.
Vigilantes still chase and shoot.
Police still harm the unarmed.

This crucial marathon
has many miles to go,
but if we struggle to the end,
contenders might all be winners.

(Originally published in Small Town Anthology VIII: Entries from the Eighth Annual Tournament of Writers, Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center, 2022. See also my poems "Closed Community Prejudice (an Alphabetized Memoir)," "Weapons of Wonder," and "Hate Vacuuming?")

(Image by Braden Collum on Unsplash.com.)

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Life Labyrinths

(Author's note: Traditions of walking a labyrinth as a form of meditation go back to at least the fourth century. Labyrinths in Christian contexts usually have a single, winding path instead of a maze’s many possible dead-end paths. Mazes are puzzles to be solved. Labyrinths are tools for meditation.)

Life Labyrinths

By Mark D. Stucky
Nothing frightful lurks in sacred labyrinths.
No Minotaur inside waits to devour us.
No complex branches exist to confuse us.

Only a single, circular path,
winding back and forth,
silently invites us.
A path sketched on the ground.
A path for prayerful healing
of any monsters in our minds.
A path intended for mindfulness,
peace, and private pilgrimage
toward contemplative centeredness.

As in life, our path curves
and endures sudden detours
and substantial reversals.
Our goal comes closer to us
but then recedes from us
over and over again.
But we can be certain
we’ll eventually enter
that elusive center.


(Originally published on Amethyst Review, 1 July 2022.)

(Photo by Erez Attias on Unsplash.com.)

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Hate Vacuuming

Hate Vacuuming?

By Mark Stucky
Vacuum cleaners are pneumatic nobles,
built to cleanse our offices and homes,
sucking dust from floors and crevices
to discard in trash cans
(where dirt belongs).

What if we could also build a machine
to vacuum hate from our world
and to hurl hate into hell
(where hate belongs)?

What if it could suck base instincts
from souls of supremacists and mass shooters,
mute divisive talk shows, podcasts, and politicians,
and permanently delete dark social media posts?

From each of us, would it also siphon out
grievances, grudges, prejudices, and pain,
with torturous psychological turbulence...
but then heal us as our last dastardly
dust bunnies disappear?

To heal ourselves, our communities, our nations,
can we really assemble that marvelous machine?
Can tools of truth, justice, and love
help us to eradicate hate?


(First published in Peace Like A River (Valiant Scribe Anthologies), Dec. 2022. See also my poems "Closed Community Prejudice (an Alphabetized Memoir)," "Races," and "Weapons of Wonder.")

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Bringing Heaven to Earth

(Author’s note: This poem was written during the 2020 lockdown in the early part of the pandemic when many people were isolated and afraid. It was also after years of increasing political and social turmoil. I felt inspired by this particular lion-and-lamb image that I saw as well as other written sources.)

Bringing Heaven to Earth

By Mark D. Stucky
The day is coming
when lion and lamb
join together at last,
not as fierce predator
and succulent prey,
but as companions,
as joyful equals,
in divine tranquility
for all eternity.
The day is coming
when the impossible
becomes possible,
when peace and unity,
truth and justice,
love and mercy,
beauty and wholeness
prevail and endure.
The day is coming
when there is no more confusion and chaos,
no more greed and indifference,
no more inequality and injustice,
no more hate and destruction,
no more corruption and lies,
no more sickness and death.
The day is coming
when God welcomes us,
tenderly embraces us
and wipes from our faces
all our tears and fears.
The day is coming
when hunger and thirst
and separation are no more,
when we are dining together
at the wedding feast of the Lamb.

But the day is today
to share heavenly visions
of thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
And the day is today
for using heavenly visions,
to bring healing to earth,
to all the people we can,
in all the places we can,
in all the ways we can,
as much as we can,
for the kingdom of heaven
is within us now.

(First published on Agape Review, 21 March 2022. See also my poems "Resurrection iBodies" and "Haiga for the Heavenbound.")

(Image by jeffjacobs1990 on Pixabay.com.)

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Consider the Dreaming Birds

Consider the (Dreaming) Birds

By Mark D. Stucky
Jesus told us to consider the birds of the air.
I have pondered parakeets (budgies) in a cage
routinely performing what seems impossible.
No, not flying. (They fly rather poorly.)
It’s the posture they keep as they sleep.
Usually before closing their eyes,
they puff out their colorful feathers,
precariously balance on just one slender leg,
twist their heads halfway around,
and nestle their beaks under the backs of their wings.
How can they do that? Why would they want to?
No human could hold such an improbable pose,
not even in yoga, let alone while dreaming.
I’ve puzzled over those tiny amazing acts
that birds do daily with little thought
and no explanation of their motives to me.

Although I can’t replicate their strange stance,
to those tiny birds, I am godlike.
They periodically chirp loud petitionary prayers
for me to give them this day their daily birdseed.
But omnipotent and omniscient I’m clearly not.
Those winged unlikely wonders mystify me.
Perhaps if I could enter their caged existence
and take on the feathered form of a fellow bird,
they would softly warble their secrets to me,
and I to them.

I treasure miniature miracles in implausible places.
And if a fluff of feathers can perform such wonders,
surely the God of the universe
can go bigger and better,
can fling a star-like light across Bethlehem’s sky,
can create conception in a virgin by divine in vitro,
can take on flesh in our own featherless form,
and can croon to us heavenly dreams.

(First published in Small Town Anthology VI: Entries from the Sixth Annual Tournament of Writers, Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center, 2020, pp. 38-39. See also my poems “Quantum Theology” and “Journey of a Contemporary Joseph.”)

(Photo by garten-gg on Pixabay.)

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How Much Vengeance Is Enough?

How Much Vengeance Is Enough?

By Mark D. Stucky
How much bloody carnage and rubble
is required to atone for sins of a few?
How many eyes must be gouged
to extract desired justice?
If wronged, is exchanging one eye enough?
What about two eyes for one? Or ten for one?
Is twenty enough?
How about a hundred?
Such revenge might feel like justice,
but it fuels hate’s endless cycle.

Can we exit this interlocked sequence
of oppression and reflexive violence?
Can we struggle toward implementing
a radical, restorative, improbable alternative?

Remember what a crucified carpenter taught
about loving enemies and turning cheeks?
Do such ideals seem impossibly wrong
when gushing anger from our wounds?
Yet, as he stretched on splintery beams
no carpenter would willingly build,
he said, while gushing blood for all our sins,
“Forgive them for they know not what they do.”


(See also my related poems “Your Order for Peace on Earth,” “Hate Vacuuming,” and “Weapons of Wonder.”)

(Cropped image is by Amin Moshrefi on Unsplash.com.)

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Resurrection iBodies

Resurrection iBodies

By Mark D. Stucky
I laundered my iPhone the other day,
left in a pants pocket bound for washer glory.
After all the agitation and spin ceased,
below the damp graveclothes,
I found its corpse, cold and dead,
circuitry and battery drowned.
Ashes to ashes, suds to suds.

How our lives seem to rely on our phones.
How anxious we feel about sudden loss!
But fear not,
iCloud carried a backup.

After purchasing and registering a newer model,
restoring from the heavenly Cloud began.
Soon, all my old apps, photos, and music
miraculously appeared on my new phone.
My old phone’s configuration,
its personality, its spirit, its soul,
resurrected in the new model.
The same soul in an upgraded body,
newer, sleeker, faster, better,
more glorious.
A promise to us all.


(First published in Time of Singing, 48:1 (Spring 2021), p. 30. See also my poem "Bringing Heaven to Earth" and my visual poem “Haiga for the Heavenbound.”)

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Antisocial Media

Antisocial Media

By Mark D. Stucky
I remember the old days
when people only had friends
they’d actually met in person,
before “social media” seduced us,
and people became less social,
sitting alone and anonymous,
insulting strangers and neighbors,
tweeting threats and riotous rants,
multiplying misinformation,
damaging decency and democracy.

Antisocial media betrays us
and the original vision
of joining virtual hands
and singing “Kum Ba Yah.”

Did media change our culture
by clouding minds and hearts?
Or by unleashing demons
lurking among us all along?


(See also my poems "The Art of the Devilish Deal," "Tweeting the Truth in Love," "Hate Vacuuming?" and “What Would Jesus Tweet?")

(Image by geralt on Pixabay.com.)

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Broken Beauty

Broken Beauty

By Mark D. Stucky
Glamour is a hollow, shiny shell,
a rapid, pretty paint job
on an insubstantial surface,
that alluringly promises much
but never satisfies the hunger.

True human beauty is internal,
from the depths of one’s core.
It starts in the heart and soul.
It slowly sprouts and spreads,
percolates and permeates
the exterior from within.

The best but bleakest beauty
grows from wisdom
wrestled and wrought
from woundedness.
Pain, a teacher of distinction,
comes to every one of us,
but only some students
embrace the lessons
and find meaning in affliction.

For perceptive learners,
crises cut and clear the clutter
from bloated, busy lives,
enabling the complex splendor
of sorrow and healing,
of tears and laughter,
of doubt and faith,
of truth and grace,
of peace and joy,
of love and compassion
to emerge from pruned spaces.


(First published in Small Town Anthology VII: Entries from the Seventh Annual Tournament of Writers, Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center, 2021, p. 93.)