Second Joy

Posted on November 17, 2023 by randamir

The Day 17 Prompt for The Poetry Pub’s November Poem a Day Challenge is a Form Friday prompt. The poetic form is “terza rima” — a form invented by Dante Alighieri which he employs in his Divine Comedy. This poem I’ve actually been working on for four years since attending a summer class at Regent College. The class and the eight late July days in Vancouver were some of the most refreshing days I’ve experienced. Indebted doesn’t capture my gratitude for the instructor and his example. I didn’t know any living poet-priest/pastors out there. His example gave me permission, and it has made all the difference. So, here’s to Second Joy, which happens to be the subject’s Yoruba first name.

You may listen to me read the poem via the player below.

Second Joy

In the spring of life I set out at dawn
On a journey seeking that thing to fill
My belly’s ache, some bread to feed on.

And I came to a man who served as a shill
For the swindlers of success who sold to me
All I could want just by taking a pill.

So I dosed my ache to the full degree
With all the world could hope to offer
But hunger still nagged and thirst pained in me.

And hunger grew, grew greater than before
Imaginings sought thrill, wandered in wild
Gorging, yet longing, thirsting wanting more.

By noon I squandered my life, defiled,
Lost and alone having left the straight way 
Where I waffled twixt two unreconciled.

When afternoon came to my life’s day
A Poet sounded me with meter and rhyme,
And was “mio maestro y autore!”

His words cleared the glass, spurred me up the climb
Beyond the heavy, damp, and cloudy air,
Beyond the film of the familiar’s grime.

Past pride’s rock, unto evening’s copse of care
The gladsome hill we climb up to hope’s height.
Where He speaks, “Peace!” to my fears.

With second joy, this poet set me right,
Colm’s servant, Ayodeji Malcolm Guite.

© Randall Edwards 2023

Uzzah’s New Cart

Posted on November 2, 2023 by randamir

This is Day Two’s Poetry Pub prompt for the November Poem a Day Challenge. It is based on 2 Samuel 6:6 and 1 Samuel 6:7. You may listen to me read the poem via the player below.

We are sympathetic to Uzzah
Whose impromptu hand it seems 
Took hold of the ark of the Lord
When the oxen stumbled
And the ark careened
Towards the ditch on the road from Baale-judah
It was being carried, which too 
May have been impromptu,
But we read that the cart was “new.”
 
And this is where it all falls apart.
The new cart was a work of art:
A Philistine-imagined invention,
A way to be delivered from
The constant Intervention
Of The Presence 
Who would just not leave well-enough alone,
Who would not leave idols standing
Leave out of sight the boiling tumors of sin:
The ugly which hides below the surface of the skin.
Instead, God drug out into the open:
Goiters of greed, pride’s pustules broken.
And so, they sent The God home,
Pulled by oxen on a “new cart.”
 
And Uzzah’s laying hold of the Ark?
It was the impromptu, habituated act
Of years of repetitive practice—
Living like one could move the Lord here
Or have him show up there,
Living like God needs my help,
Needs my holding back,
Thinking that with the right tools 
I can in fact, manufacture grace,
Keep him who breaks out, in place,
And god-help-us,
From playing the fool.

(c) Randall Edwards 2023
Artwork: Giulio Quaglio the Younger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
#PoPubPAD #NovPad #NovPad2023

A Golden Shovel: The Sudden Surprise of Joy

Posted on November 7, 2021 by randamir

The Day Five poem prompt was to write a poem using the form of the Golden Shovel. I chose Christian Wiman’s poem, “From a Window” as the source for my golden shovel. You may read Christian Wiman’s poem HERE, and you may listen to him read it below. My poem based on his below that and is entitled, The Sudden Surprise of Joy.

Christian Wiman reading his poem, “From a Window”

Lying in a hospital bed fearing the incurable,
A diagnosis of terminal illness and
Facing that future unbelieving,
I cried out for healing. But not believing in 
God or gods or doctors or any
Thing but the awful truth 
That there was nothing more but 
To face death and die. The
Bitterness of that truth 
Drove out all the happiness of 
Living, leaving only the grieving.

Broken to pieces on a mechanical bed, I 
Looked out the window and saw 
There in the winter sun, bright and bare, a
Dormant maple tree
And something more inside
It filled my vision and grew as from within— a
Tree within a tree.
And then I saw it rise,
Saw it roll kaleidoscopically
Colored shapes fluttered as 
Though the tree were alive, as if 
Spring had sprung and flung the 
Living feathered leaves 
Merely for the beauty or for me who had 
Only thought himself good as dead but was now livelier
As the sudden surprise of joy dispelled the ghosts.