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L. J. Carber Poem
I flew,
a modern man in a steel bird,
with all the arrogance of
ancient Icarus, but my wings
did not melt nor I swoon.
I flew high, very, very high
over Asian lands and homes,
and below me, very, very far
down where the bombs fell
like the rains of hell...
I saw the face of the moon.
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2016
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L. J. Carber Poem
I have lived a thousand lives, died a thousand deaths.
I have loved women unbounded and fathered an army of children.
I have killed and healed, stolen and blessed, fought and fled.
Jew, Christian, Muslim I have been-- Buddhist, Hindu and Jain, too.
I worshiped the sun and Thor, pagan gods galore....
I was atheist, agnostic, Marxist, and often, just indifferent.
I was cruel, I was kind, I was hateful, I was forgiving.
I laid waste to cities and wrote operas and symphonies
and little songs to dance around forever in your head....
I was poet and philanderer, philosopher and philanthropist,
theologian and scientist-- also guard and prisoner, and
many, many times, false lover or the one betrayed....
All my lives were dreams, each slipping away to be forgotten
early in dawn of the next life, none to be recalled until I awaken
in the time beyond time....
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2012
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L. J. Carber Poem
[A love poem for my wife of 43 years]
When I leave you...
it won't be out of anger,
it won't be out of jealousy,
it won't be for another woman,
and it won't be for freedom.
When I leave you,
it won't be with grace--
it will be hard, hard to do.
I could try to fight it,
but with what power?
Taken quick or slowly,
I'll still be taken--
out of this world,
out of your life....
Never out of your heart,
I know,
I'm planted there,
a Gibraltar till time's end.
Yet...yet I fear for the weight,
the heaviness on you:
all the times you'll need a touch,
or miss my breath
on the nape of your neck....
When the stars weep,
when songbirds die,
then, only then,
will my love be left
by your lonely side.
Do I yet know how much I love you?
Will my soul chant in mourning for you?
Will it long for this world,
this world of night and day
only because you are still in it?
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2014
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L. J. Carber Poem
I have been to places of great death:
walking the battlefield at Gettysburg,
as a lusty young man of no firm belief
who stepped between the great rocks
of Devil's Den and felt his soul shudder
as though he had been a soldier there,
and died in fear a long, long time ago.
I taught my tongue to the gentle Khmers
as civil war raged and the killing fields
were being sown-- I left before the
heartless murdering began, the killing
of over a million: teachers and students,
doctors and peasants, the old, the young,
each with a photo taken before dying,
their images taped to classroom walls.
And when I visited Hiroshima, now myself
chastened by death's touch, and knowing
my soul real, knowing of meaning absolute
and of unseen forces working good or ill,
as I stood at the first ground zero, I once
again shuddered to feel the pull of madness
(though I knew not if it was my own or some
remains of that evil which brought the fire
and brimstone of a world wide war...).
But by then I knew I could pray, and so
opened my desperate heart and sought
His mercy. Suddenly I saw a sort of angel
who took me from that place of insanity,
healing me while we wandered by the
beauty of the Inland Sea as my storm
calmed and left me, never to return....
I have been to places of great death, and
I have felt death's cold, careless hands.
Yet now I know what death itself fears:
the Light, the light eternal which carries
souls beyond time itself, like the winds
of a Love exceeding all understanding.
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2017
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L. J. Carber Poem
Fear not death
when it comes for you...
Death is not a monster,
not even a master, but
a servant--
having no more choice
in the taking of you than
you have in the going....
And if you are defiant,
telling lonely Death,
"By my hand, not yours,
I will set my own fate!"
Death will smirk, laugh,
and say without rancor:
"Take my job, please!
It has never given me
a moment's pleasure.
To be forever feared,
hated, despised--
when all I have ever done
was to open a door....
But know, proud human,
(the only animal who
disputes my work),
when YOU turn the knob,
yes, to eternity's door...
it may not lead you
to the same place
as when I open it."
I knew his meaning,
responded contritely:
"Fear not, Death--
I will not resist
your silent coming.
I know Who issues
your deadly orders.
Forgive us humans
for our denial:
we keep forgetting
we exist always, and
this life is but
a scratch in time."
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2015
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L. J. Carber Poem
English is not a language
one can ever get ahead of--
there are just too many words!
Like 'ludic; for example: meaning
playful, in the sense of spontaneous,
without real purpose....Soooooo,
how come I never came across
Little Ludic in over sixty years
of reading hundreds of books
in my beloved mother tongue,
the language I love,
the language I married.
Even spellcheck never saw it,
or else why underline little Ludic
in red, like a criminal of some sort
who needs a good sorting out,
a spell in word prison perhaps?
If one but takes the time to look,
one can find sweet Ludic laying low,
hiding quietly in the BIG FAT ONE,
the Oxford Dictionary!
Lord and Regent of all word books.
Ludic lives there with his cousins:
Ludibrious and that stuffed shirt,
Ludibry, and the handsome,
macho Ludrico ( who is no doubt
from the Italian side of the family)
and of course, the far more famous
Ludicrous, a celebrity who seems to
want all the spotlight for himself.
Words can be so very selfish too....
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2014
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L. J. Carber Poem
When I read a poem that breathes,
pulsing wildly, alive with its own heartbeat,
relentless, compelling in its desire,
I feel touched as if by another, feeling
some unseen hand brushing my hair,
lips light as air licking the flesh near
my own sojourning heart....
And I return the caress as my hand
glides ever questing o'er the soft and
solid paper, my eyes rolling over the
printed pages like a hawk seeking prey,
looking with the desire of the wild
at the naked words, unclothed by any
convention, unspoiled by any deceit.
A good poem is a lover,
a great poem, a great lover,
the kind you never forget.
[written 1/20/20]
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2020
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L. J. Carber Poem
It's said 100 million Americans watched the Superbowl, which like a religious event is held on Sunday. I wonder if 100 million Americans have ever gone to church on a Sunday. Now I love a good football game: it is a brutal and beautiful sport, replete with a gladiator's violence and a ballerina's grace. But I don't understand why we make so much out of a game! Look at parents who get into fistfights at their kid's Little League games. In Europe there is often mayhem or even a riot following a soccer, sorry, football game. But we Americans seem obsessed with winning like no other nation: we really, really hate to loose. So whether it's a game, a job hunt, finding a mate or waging war, we tend to go ALL OUT. And when we win, and we often do, we take great pride in that. And there's the problem:pride, be it in a person or a nation.
Humility may still be called a virtue but only in those churches largely empty because folks are home awaiting, not the Second Coming, but the Super Bowl.Who wakes up and says, I need to be humble today? I don't, though I know many of my conflicts arise out of my pride (not of wealth or prowess but intellect). Regardless of which side you're on, if you're really aware, it seems obvious that most of our politicians are vain, shallow, arrogant, hypocritical, self-serving: all the worst attributes of pride. And when was the last time you heard a doctor say, I don't know, this is beyond medical knowledge? Or an academic pontificate about society's ills when he's never stepped foot outside of his ivory tower into the messy, complicated, often tragic real world?
It has taken me 70 years to realize that pride, the ego, is a trap and that humility is a virtue because it is FREEING. Humility means honesty, recognizing that you need help, maybe from another person, maybe from another Being, one not impressed by our pride, by our 'wins', by our victories over other prideful beings. I have learned (the hard way as is my wont) that only when I give up my pride, any semblance of vanity and see my ego for the destructive trickster it is, only when my back is against the wall and I stand naked before God can I feel the wondrous freedom of humility for then I have put my soul into the hands of THE Other.
We 'modern' humans and especially Americans take such pride in our technology but fail to see how vulnerable we, the whole world is, for if death circles each life, so too does it the world:only foolish pride makes us take life for granted.
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2019
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L. J. Carber Poem
To an unmet friend:
You see the mortal world
and for you man is machine,
little more than a device
for the vagaries of evolution.
Faith is illusion, hope lacks
weight-- and love? Can love
be other than mere sex,
nature's sole mandate?
And your science now tells
you: what can I ever know?
All is quantum topsy-turvy,
mother nature being part
whore, part illusionist....
Your thinking breaks all
down to little pieces,
and nothing matters
as matter is all while
science the only god
left for us to worship.
And we are nothing,
not even dreams
anymore, just bits
and pieces to be
examined, classified,
and then ignored--
for science is all,
and faith but a
refuge for fools.
You are honest,
I know-- you see
yourself as just
another machine,
destined for decay.
then destruction--
your sentience but
a cruel joke told
yet again-- and
no one laughs.
You and I,
we breathe,
we think,
we live, but
you would stop
at death while
I begin there....
I sing to the Eternal:
quell not my songs
as they rise above
the sad despair born
of your vacant world
and follow myriad stars
streaming their wondrous
light in the vast dead-cold
Universe....
I sing to Eternity,
I sing to my Soul.
[poet's note: I put this as the 1st poem in my 1st book, 'The Enormity of Existence' because I think of this poem as coming out of something I experienced in 1971 as a 24 year old when I almost drowned in the Winooski River in Vermont. I was like that 'unmet friend' before I went into that river: certain of my nihilism, believing only matter was real--no God, no soul, no meaning to life. For 1/2 a century I've had more questions than answers, but I do know that what we perceive as 'reality'--with our limited senses and limited intellects-- is not 'Reality'....]
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2016
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L. J. Carber Poem
The old ladies
march onto the elevator,
steadied by their canes,
each a shrunken frailty
wrapping an unending soul--
they are going to watch
young people dance
their dances of grace
and beauty, while they recall
their own beauty long dissolved
in the acid of time....
Yet, they are happy--
I even joke with them
as I lean on my own cane:
'Come Ladies! Let's have a
foot race!" They all laugh,
as the young girls within
their tattered frames flirt
with the potent young man
hiding behind a time-marked mask...
for a moment we all feel a jolt
of that spark we call life.
Copyright © L. J. Carber | Year Posted 2017
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