In a Cage

In a cage
In a cage
You put me in a cage

not empty-handed: a dirty diaper
a foil blanket
still
You put me in a cage

Do you think I won't remember?
Do you think that I'll forget?
Do you think that I won't grieve the day
You took Mama and Papa away?

In a cage
In a cage
You put me in a cage

You play your big important games
and move me as a pawn
You see me as useful leverage
but limited and expendable

But pawns grow up
to be Bishops, Knights and Rooks
One of us a King
and one of us a Queen

Do you think we'll play
a different game than the one
that you are teaching us?

Do you think that you'll escape
the wrath which you have sown?

In a cage
In a cage
You put me in a cage

Do you think that the hearts you've hardened
when you ignore our voice
are the only hearts that beat
within the walls you made?

When yours is pounding fast with fear
inside your own ribcage,

When it is time to pay the piper
And mine is hard as stone

Remember, when you ask for mercy,
From you I never learned that word.

1/16/20 S. B. Eulberg

Pages and Practice

I find it so exciting when meeting someone who has the inner fire for understanding, a willingness to wrestle and search, converse and allow oneself to be entertained, amazed, enlightened and awed.

I experienced this excitement in the meeting of a cello-player at Camp Kiya in Tehachapi, California this past July.

Korinza Shlanta is studying to be a professor of English and is particularly taken with literary theory and the constructs of how we think and convey our thoughts.

In my experience, this has been a rare combination to find or uncover in a first meeting as we did at breakfast one morning when she joined the conversation of a group of old guys (ca. ages 50-80) and engaged fully with depth and a humoring twinkle in her eye.

We had first connected at a couple of different jam sessions that began in camp the night before, beneath the bright stars visible from this remote place in southern California.

She is now back at her studies in northern California with an eye peeled for the beauty in a rose, or a classroom set up, an ear hungering for the words and images which will wrestle and dance to become the lines of her poetry and prose.

And she has just created her literary blog, which I am having fun exploring today! (http://www.pagesandpractice.com/)

I encourage you to check it out and follow her, too.

Identity Change

Already in bed
settling in, feet unthrobbing
melting to mattress when
"the cry"
Son, 9-mo old, is awake
and unhappy
and it is my turn!

Such a creative day:
finish newsletter
and compilations of
Summer Youth Program Curricula
as well as visit Robbie
and make telephone calls
and keep Volunteers busy.
Ready for another onslaught
tomorrow.
But,
then,
holding my little
boy as he giggles and grins
and slowly drifts to sleep
changed my identity
to DAD
All of a sudden
Music Publishing,
Pastoring,
Teaching,
Organizing,
   all fade
as identity as Father
hoves into view.

© Steven B. Eulberg 3/24/93, from All the Good Ones:  shavings from the gem tumbler

Visionaries (The language of roses)

Here is another poem that captures my attention

Visionaries

(In Memory of Mary Rudge)

Seekers of the exotic,
riders of water and wind,
shapers of jewels and images,
builders of bridges/breakthroughs,
explorers of Mars, the psyche,
artists, students,
celebrants, elders,
embryos this moment conceived—

whatever we will be in an hour,
tomorrow, a hundred years
or at the last turn of the earth
under moonlight's incantations,
whatever comes
   may we lean toward
      the language of roses.

-Claire J. Baker

from San Francisco Peace and Hope (A literary journal devoted to poetry and art)

Here is another poem I've found for you.

I was the musician for a marvelous event near Earth Day at the Gallery at HerChurch in San Francisco.

This was a poetry reading by the poets of San Francisco Peace and Hope.  

It was published in their Literary journal devoted to poetry and art.  (4th Issue)

Out of Temper Out of Tune

Out of Temper, Out of Tune
Piano's out of temper, piano's out of tune.
She clangs instead of sings, I don't want to play with her.
Mister Tuner, his black leather bag,
long strips of red felt, dampers and fork,
will bring us together again.

He starts in the middle, tempers the octave
expands the fourths, contracts the fifths,
like a crossword puzzle of cheating tones
so the highs and the lows will blend with the middles
when he's done.

He seems to bang the keys, not musical at all,
and in his other hand, a funny lovely wrench,
rosewood handle, cranks the pins a tiny bit
tight, a little too tight, a tiny bit looser.
I don't know what it is he hears.

Eighty eight keys, two hundred twenty two strings,
all needing to vibrate at their own perfect speed
so the bad temper will sweeten again to beauty.
In the end it does, and it makes me wonder,
isn't there such a craftsman
for our human relations?

Someone who knows exactly how far
to tweak each of us
to render the whole chord of us
from cacophony to harmony?
Someone who hears in each string of us
Our potential for resonance?

-Jan Dederick

A Better Weapon
by Andre

A poem is a better weapon
Than a knife
Because a poem will lead you
To a better future
To succeed
A poem will set your mind free
A knife will lead you
To violence
To jail
And maybe
To death

Published in They Call Me 299-359:  Writings by the Incarcerated Youth of Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop  http://freemindsbookclub.org/our-work/literary-journal


http://freemindsbookclub.org/

Strange Irony in "Merry Christmas"

by Steve Eulberg

Sifting through past Advent reflections, I found this quote which I had highlighted in the newsletter for the amazing inner-city worshipping community for which I served as pastor.

The quote is from Howard Thurman, whose writings supported my vision and flagging spirit, as the winds of hope that fill the sails that are unfurled for the journey.

This one comes from his Meditations of the Heart. A thoughtful blogpost about Dr. Thurman can also be found here.

Now, back to the quote which made me pause in my sifting:

"There is a strange irony in the usual salutation, "Merry Christmas," when most of the people on this planet are thrown back upon themselves for food which they do not possess, for resources that have long since been exhausted, and for vitality which has already runs its course."

Despite this condition, the inescapable fact remains that Christmas symbolizes hope even at a moment when hope seems utterly fantastic. 

The raw materials of the Christmas mood are a newborn, baby, a family, friendly animals, and labor. An endless process of births is the perpetual answer of life to the fact of death.

It says that life keeps coming on, keeps seeking to fulfill itself, keeps affirming the margin of hope in the presence of desolation, pestilence and despair.

It is not an accident that the birth rate seems always to increase during times of war, when the formal processes of [man] are engaged in the destruction of others. 

Welling up out of the depths of vast vitality, there is Something at work that is more authentic than the formal, discursive design of the human mind.

As long as this is true ultimately, despair about the human race is groundless."