Category Archives: Great Poems Online

Prison Poetry by Conway: “Possessed”, “Rusted Actor”


Last month I introduced the readers of this site to “Conway,” a prisoner at a supermax facility in central California who’s serving 25-to-life under the state’s three-strikes law for receiving stolen goods. Conway (a pseudonym) is a skilled writer and artist, and an avid reader, despite the difficulty of finding either writing paper or decent books in jail. One would hope that the authorities would be more supportive of an inmate trying to better himself, but unfortunately he often finds them putting up obstacles to his education instead.  Some excerpts from his letters:

Oct. 15, 2006


I just received your letter and the poems. They were all very good. I so much appreciate you sharing them with me. They have nothing at all for reading around here 🙁   so pretty much gotta hear everyone’s war dogs when we go outside to exercise in the cages (kennels).

They don’t allow us to have contact with each other (physical) so we get chained up and escorted to these 10′ x 18′ cages all lined up. So, whomever you’re next to is who you talk with – wow! there are some very strange cats around here….

Possessed

   Barbed wire invades
the edge of this nakedness,
inside my concrete jungle.
   Towers loom the perimeter
flexed giant fists waiting,
to crush the lost wretch.
   Chain link webs surround
hypnotic formless foggy
death traps.
   Strange fears chill
of peering silhouettes
outside-in from hollow giants.
   As vents whistle and moan
terrorizing the hardest of soul
till possession is complete…

Nov. 8, 2006


I started a book (reading) “Anna Karenina” – never read any tolstoy before – he seems to be extremely longwinded; I traded a drawing for the book so got to read it all now 🙂

Haven’t wrote in my story for two weeks now, ran out of lined paper so will have to wait for my sister in Washington to send me some….

Anna Karenina – I’m reading it in the mornings 5:30 a.m. till 7:30 a.m. when the lights come on and everyone is still quiet – they slide our trays through the slot at 7:30 or so and it’s nonstop interference till the lights go out around 10 p.m. They extended my time in the hole another 6 months – some new regulation that if you’ve been sent to the hole 3 times within your sentence then you are assessed an indeterminate SHU (segregated housing unit) so I must remain disciplinary free for six months before I get back out to the main line – whatever! only thing I miss is radio and contact visits….

Rusted Actor

Hulk of skeleton rusting
   vines-n-bramble entertwined
through around over and under
   your aged girth.

Such a monster were you
   with the old man riding
completing your power trip
   the earth was no match.

Now the old man
   has passed, and ages gone
since you’ve been gassed
   with care and love.

Contempt though you had
   for all in your way, shredding
a path with steel spikes
   low gutteral growls, belching
your black breath with fury
   whenever challenged.

O’ the wizards of alchemy
   created such a monster
when they snatched your specter
   from out ore smelting
that demonic frame of bolted gears.

But you’re not so tough
   now that my father shows you
no more concern, even flowers
   mock with indignance unmoved.

I could wake you!
   Maybe someday I will conspire
with your mechanical madness
   just to show those wild interlopers
wrapping your rusted torso.

But for now you shall sleep
   while those bushes and vines creep
through your iron bones
   building your disdain.

I know my father
   would feel your pain but he’s gone
he’s passed you onto me
   so you see only I remember
your destructive glory.

I put you in this story
   old beast I care for you
in the least
   but dare not wake you up
for now.

You remind me too much
   of the love I lost
when my father was tossed
   off your back, you
then crushed him with your track.

Wretched machine!
   you were that dread actor
horrid old tractor, so
   may you rust in Hell…

Shower of Stoles Exhibit Affirms GLBT Christians


Now through March 14, Smith College in Northampton, Mass. is hosting the Shower of Stoles Project, an exhibit of liturgical stoles and other sacred items from gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender church leaders from 26 denominations in six countries. These beautiful one-of-a-kind vestments are accompanied by personal stories of the wearers’ quest to share their spiritual gifts with a congregation that also accepts their sexual orientation. There are also “signature stoles” covered with messages of support from straight allies. 

The exhibit will resonate with anyone who has ever loved a church community yet felt pressure to hide one’s difference from them, whether that difference is ethnic, sexual, theological, class-based, or a matter of personality. This Robert Frost poem, which was displayed with the exhibit at Smith, spoke to my own continuing sadness about not finding a church that loves gay people and preaches the gospel:


Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it–it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less–
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars–on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

(I find it amusing in a sick way that the banner ads accompanying this poem online are for “Funeral Ringtones” and “The Soulmate Calculator”.)

Ash Wednesday Meditations


Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Christian penitential season of Lent. This is often a time of great joy and liberation for me, when I try to give up not just a worldly pleasure or two, but those more subtle attachments (usually some form of works-righteousness) that seem outwardly commendable but actually are taking me further away from God. This year, for instance, I’m giving up “Queer as Folk“, the Episcopal Church (no, they’re not the same thing), and having unnecessary opinions.

What does it mean to give up my church? I think it means continuing to pray for it, but ceasing to worry what will become of it. Continuing in loyalty to the vision that made me join–a church that values intellectual inquiry, diversity of beliefs, and the worship of God through the arts and the sacraments as well as through words and concepts–while recognizing that my primary loyalty is to Jesus, and I have to go where he is worshipped, first of all.


As a dear friend reminded me today, Christian community is not optional. We are called to be the body of Christ, so we cannot worship solo. And yet, this Lenten season, I feel a deep call to withdraw from “church” because worrying about the church, arguing within the church, and longing for full acceptance by the church have all become crutches that I use to avoid relying on God alone. It’s time to go where there are no words, where certainty gives way to faith.

Leaving my parish feels like a painful divorce. I’m not ready for a new relationship. I went to a Catholic church today with some friends for the imposition of ashes. For a moment during the service, I really did feel like all the strangers there were my family, because we all loved Jesus together.

Weren’t the desert saints also members of that body, even if they practiced their faith in solitude? In a much less ambitious way, I need to turn inward, but I believe I am still connected to my fellow Christians, in my old parish and beyond. Or maybe I’m making a big mistake. For me, Lent has always been about the freedom to make such mistakes in search of God. I could give up sex, chocolate, and the sight of Gale Harold‘s nude posterior, but if I still think I’m saved by expressing all the right opinions about the Trinity, I’ve missed the point of salvation by grace alone.

From the Book of Common Prayer:


Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


(Being able to get the entire BCP and a sing-along version of the hymnal online is almost too much temptation for me never to return to church. Call it liturgy porn.)

Well…I’ve just spent an hour writing about everything I was supposed to give up…sin sin sin. Back to you, Tom.


Ash-Wednesday
by T.S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief t
ransit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Prison Poet “Conway” Speaks

Since last fall, I’ve been corresponding with an incarcerated writer at a supermax prison in central California who discovered our Winning Writers website. “Conway” (he’s asked that I not use his real name) is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for receiving stolen property, under California’s three-strikes law that imposes life sentences for a nonviolent crime if the defendant has two or more prior felony convictions. The Supreme Court (wrongly, in my view) ruled in the 2003 case Lockyer v. Andrade that such mandatory sentences do not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

From what I can tell from Conway’s rap sheet, his priors were burglary and grand theft auto. Without access to his case history, it’s not for me to judge whether he ought to be at liberty. Nonetheless, as I read his letters, I was struck by his descriptions of unnecessarily brutal prison conditions and his drive to better himself through literature and art, despite the constant interference of guards confiscating his books and writing supplies.

I’ll be posting his poems and excerpts from his letters on this blog from time to time. I’m not in a position to vouch for the accuracy of everything he writes. Read them for yourself and see what rings true. My goal is simply to provoke further inquiry about how we ignore the humanity of the incarcerated.

Cell Widow
by “Conway”

Black spiders build traps on my window,
Their intricate veins with morning dew glow,
gray butterfly caught in deadly net,
a victim devoured by my bloodthirsty pet;

On lines creeping it approaches and overtakes,
the gift of life so simply forsakes,
captured before destiny can finish its flight,
dread spider consumes with sweet delight;

Bonded to be drained drop by drop alone,
abandoned heart bled dry to the bone,
as I watched the tiny wings crumble away,
I felt life’s loss, as I do every day…

***

Hole

steel teeth, cell doors
concrete tongue tasting
my soul wasting
inside locked corridors
concrete wasting
my soul tongue tasting
cell teeth, steel doors
locked inside corridors
wasting my soul
out of control…

***

Life Seeks Relief

This wise old owl must not
be so wise I fear,
for it has chosen to build
a nest in the most absurd
of spots precarious,
the tall menacing tower
where gunners seek targets
human, on barbed perimeter.
A lair of predators on hunt
perpetual, a death stalk
from above, in chain link
spiderweb’ belligerent
boundary of nettle surrounds;
“The no man’s land”
Yet unperturbed/unbiased
this odd creature, then bizarre
occurs to me, as I stare
out my cell window, I realize
how safe the chosen roost,
for the gun towers that menace
my mind, are no threat to
this nocturnal interloper:
Those large eyes stare back
accusingly, every time
I check to assure myself,
unwise owl is safely rested,
realizing it is I who is
unwisely nested…

Victory Lee Schouten: “Wild Seeds”


I follow deer trails across morning fields.
Cheat grass seeds cover my socks,
determined to travel.

Strangers touch, minds go blank,
dark promise comes alive.

Cold nests, starving fledglings.
Desperate mother brings home tainted food.

Nearby feral dogs wake, circle closer.

Blame their wicked ghost paws,
rabid spirits, howling and magnetic.

Blame our own stories grown thin and untold,
leaving us to dry and crumble.

We¹ve been good and lost, but we¹re found now.
And we lay claim to this life we fought for.

To the good men who love us,
the close friends who hold us steady.

To the bold children who are our hearts,
the vast earth which is our soul.

Peace, so unfamiliar we hardly knew its name,
is often with us now.

Grace drifts by and throws a kiss.

I wore a red hat to your wedding,
danced on the muddy grass.

Wild seeds need only a rumor of rain
to send out pale reaching roots.

Clouds of geese shift direction,
vanish in the mist.


(Victory is a board member of the Washington Poets Association. Read about the chapbooks she’s published here.)


 

Poetry Roundup: Kelly Cherry, Jean-Paul Pecqueur

This poem by Kelly Cherry from The Cortland Review somehow spoke to me today:


She Doesn’t Care What you Say About Her, Just so Long as you Spell Her Name Right

Would she have fame?
Would she take tea and have fame with her tea?
Or roll a joint, famously?

She imagined approval, applause
A man not bored by her voracity.

In the house to be
Furnished in the future,
There would be intricate, quiet rugs,
Acres of books,
Someone playing the cello.

A late supper after the concert or play…
Outside, the people were clamoring for autographs.

The Madonna Syndrome:

Later, they went home,
And the man who was not bored
By the fact that she loved him
Allowed her to write her name
On his balls with the tip
Of her tongue as many times
As it took to make sure
He got it right.

In other news, those whose interest was piqued by my review of The Case Against Happiness should check out this even better review at the poetry blog The Great American Pinup, and this interview with Pecqueur at the blog every other day.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Ring Out, Wild Bells”

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
    The flying cloud, the frosty light:
    The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
    Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
    The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
    For those that here we see no more;
    Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
    And ancient forms of party strife;
    Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
    The faithless coldness of the times;
    Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
    The civic slander and the spite;
    Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
    Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
    Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
    The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
    Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

The Pedestal Magazine Celebrates 6th Anniversary

The Pedestal Magazine, an appealing online journal of literature and art, celebrates its 6th anniversary this week. Highlights of the latest issue include a poem by Ed Frankel, who won our Winning Writers War Poetry Contest this year, and a review of Mitzi Szereto’s anthology Dying for It: Tales of Sex and Death, to which I contributed a story.

Ezra Pound: “Ballad of the Goodly Fere”

Simon Zelotes speaketh it somewhile after the Crucifixion
Ha’ we lost the goodliest fere o’ all
For the priests and the gallows tree?
Aye lover he was of brawny men,
O’ ships and the open sea.

When they came wi’ a host to take Our Man
His smile was good to see,
“First let these go!” quo’ our Goodly Fere,
“Or I’ll see ye damned,” says he.

Aye he sent us out through the crossed high spears
And the scorn of his laugh rang free,
“Why took ye not me when I walked about
Alone in the town?” says he.

Oh we drunk his “Hale” in the good red wine
When we last made company,
No capon priest was the Goodly Fere
But a man o’ men was he.

I ha’ seen him drive a hundred men
Wi’ a bundle o’ cords swung free,
That they took the high and holy house
For their pawn and treasury.

They’ss no’ get him a’ in a book I think
Though they write it cunningly;
No mouse of the scrolls was the Goodly Fere
But aye loved the open sea.

If they think they ha’ snared our Goodly Fere
They are fools to the last degree.
“I’ll go to the feast,” quo’ our Goodly Fere,
“Though I go to the gallows tree.”

“Ye ha’ seen me heal the lame and blind,
And wake the dead,” says he,
“Ye shall see one thing to master all:
‘Tis how a brave man dies on the tree.”

A son of God was the Goodly Fere
That bade us his brothers be.
I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men.
I have seen him upon the tree.

He cried no cry when they drave the nails
And the blood gushed hot and free,
The hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue
But never a cry cried he.

I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men
On the hills o’ Galilee,
They whined as he walked out calm between,
Wi’ his eyes like the grey o’ the sea,

Like the sea that brooks no voyaging
With the winds unleashed and free,
Like the sea he cowed at Genseret
Wi’ twey words spoke’ suddently.

A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea,
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.

I ha’ seen him eat o’ the honey-comb
Sin’ they nailed him to the tree.


(Read Pound’s bio and more poems here.)