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Best Poems Written by Rick Folker

Below are the all-time best Rick Folker poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Rick Folker Poem

Beloved Community

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

Details | Rick Folker Poem

It's Not My Job

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.

Details | Rick Folker Poem

A Remnant Remains

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!

Details | Rick Folker Poem

The Ethical Self

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.

Details | Rick Folker Poem

Resurrecting Icarus

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”

Details | Rick Folker Poem

Mother Tongue

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?

Details | Rick Folker Poem

59

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

Details | Rick Folker Poem

Scare-City

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.

Details | Rick Folker Poem

Advent 2017

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

Details | Rick Folker Poem

Mimshak

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”