Category: Poetry

In the New World

 

You can feel the changes

As the people begin to move

From Earth’s every corner

Bringing with them hope and will

Knowing their dreams will soon take flight

In the new world they will create

 

You can see the changes

As the people begin to rise

Loosed from the shackles of fear

Breaking the bonds of ignorance

Rejecting the power of separation

In the new world they will create

 

You can hear the changes

As the people begin to sing

Songs of courage and strength

New as a baby’s cry

Old as the language of life

In the new world they will create

 

You can be the changes

As the people begin to build

Bridges from one to all

Forged from peace and justice

Raised on love and truth

In the new world we will create

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2009

 

 

Scratching and Popping

 

I sounded like an old LP

On the phone with you

Early this morning

 

You believed me didn’t you

That the January wind

Had stolen the strength

From my voice

And the breath from my lungs

 

 

Or did you know

The spasms that afflicted me

Stemmed from the rupturing

Of the cords surrounding my heart

Being pulled in so many directions

 

How long has it been

Since you’ve heard the choking

Spitting cough bursting in between

The swallowed breaths

Or is it too hard to recognize

When you can’t see

The escort of tears

 

 

 © Gayle Force Press 2014

 

 

Waking in Winter

 

Morning comes so quickly on days like this

When the wind itself is so cold

It longs to come inside with you

 

Wisely, it’s assumed, you stay

That much more tightly wrapped

Unwilling to exchange your wool

For the blanket of snow awaiting you

If you decide to exit your bed

 

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2015

 

 

New Year’s Day

 

January 1 is always the same

A bacchanal of sound and fury

Signifying something ineffable

Precisely timed though

Imprecisely valued

 

We pause to notice the flow

Of time’s endless river

Hoping to gain some measure

Of how far we’ve sailed

Or at least gratitude

 

To be journeying for

One new day

One new month

One new year

One last chance

 

 

 © Gayle Force Press 2015

 

 

American Mythology (#1)

 

the history lessons i received in school

have very little connection to the stories

my grandfather waited until i was 25 to begin telling me

but they do sound like the tv shows and movies

produced as saturday morning serials in his day

and cartoons in mine

 

which should have made me nervous as a kid

since Neil Armstrong, MLK, WWII, Vietnam,

FDR, Sputnik, food stamps, AIDS,

computers, the Cold War, crack, Coltrane and the Greatest

 

all changed history between my generation and his

but since there were bright colors and the good guys always won

I tried hard to believe the myths

since what else could be true

  

 

 © Gayle Force Press 2015

 

 

World B. Free

 

Twenty years ago

I went with my dad

To an old stadium

Gone and dearly departed

If not regretfully

To see my Indiana Pacers who

I loved stridently

At home

In the new Curtis Mathes set that

How were we to know

Lasted far too long

 

But there in person

For the first time

Was a different kind of feeling

Since they were bad

And most of my focus

Started and stopped on a man named

World B. Free

Although I’m not sure how much of

This poem

Is true

I have no doubt

About World B. Free

 

It started with his hair

Though it was not exceptional

Except in its lack of exception

Stuck in a time

I may never understand

But all the rest fit too

How much he loved the game

Even when it was an awful game

And tried without ever looking

As if he were trying

Mostly though

The shooting

Like little orange only rainbows

Up and down

With no gold at the end

Only more orange

And then at its beginning

The look that might have been a smile

If he’d known no one could watch

 

At the end of the game

It seems that no one did

Because watching him play

Might have kept someone from skipping school

Or me from stealing gum

Off the too short racks

Meant to taunt me

At the store

But lots of kids did that

And their parents drank too much

Cheated with a stewardess

Then left

Not because of the children

Even though they’d seen World B. Free

On the court downtown

 

When I asked later on

My dad said he used to be called Lloyd

That may well be

But he was always World B. to me

 

 

 © Gayle Force Press 2002

 

 

West Onan

 

West Onan is a river town

on a narrow bend where two states meet

and quickly brush apart

 

West Onan is a bastard

with an ancestor near enough to warrant the name

but distant enough to ignore its offspring

 

West Onan is my hometown

where my initials are raggedly carved

in the trunk of a long dead tree

 

West Onan is a river town

whose small docks miss the bounty

the other state's highways capture

 

West Onan is an orphan

since a revival movement came through

turning Onan into New Corinth

 

West Onan is my hometown

and the only thing bearing my name

are cracked stones in the tall cemetary grass

 

 

 © Gayle Force Press 2004

 

 

Christmas Crossing

 

It’s Christmas Eve and my wife is napping

At the other end of the couch

Dreaming in a Santa hat

 

Tonight when she wakes

And after tomorrow’s presents

I’ll try my best to remind her

That my life is more complete

Better and more real

Than I could have imagined for myself

 

Her presence animates my life

Not in a slavish sense of duty

But through the constant commitment of love

Densely defined and elaborate

Telling as the Rubicon,

broad as the Nile

 

I have fully crossed over

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2006

 

Justified Use of Force

 

This summer I told a friend that I couldn't write any more poems about police brutality. So here's an old one. Again. I initially wrote this poem in 2002 and when performing it in public through the years have changed/updated the names. Mike Brown  Eric Garner is only the most recent addition to the litany of blood.

 

 

Justified Use of Force

   

Every month there’s a new one

A Diallo, Bell, Brown

Ford, Garner, Rice or me

 

Clamoring loudly

Broken faces on TV

We ask so many questions

But no one’s forced to answer

 

With sympathy’s short half-life

Soon most are hoping for the noise to stop

And the questions to disappear once again

 

Just like us

In our lives

And our deaths

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2014

  

 

Carole’s Songs

 

I’ve been listening to Carole King

Singing about love and loss

But mostly life

 

Although I know she’s not singing to me

She must be singing about me

 

Since so many of my fears

find breath through her sighs

And all my hopes take wing

with her hoarse cries of possibility

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2004