Month: November 2012

Nathan Bedford Forrest Poem

by
Nathan-Bedford-Forrest-Thru-The-Trees

You stand there on your pedestal
as the cars go by
the boys who died on your raid
charged yelling into the fray
fighting for something they
would not believe
could not believe was
possible as the
cars go by
Nathan did you curl and wax your mustache
on the morning of your raid
did you take a drink in this well on the square
did you walk under this Sycamore
and say I captured a piece of yesterday
and rolled into the square for one day and
for one day the
slaves were no longer free
and the garlands lay in your path
and your statue stands here now
having been moved because of
the flow of the traffic
around you

david michael jackson

Murfreesboro Courthouse and Murfreesboro Public Square Photo courtesy of Murfreesboronet

The loner poem by David Michael Jackson

by

He lived in a small house beside the river.
We would only see him on the road,
riding a bicycle with a small motor,
an eccentric loner puttering by on that cycle.
He didn’t drink,
caused no trouble it seems,
we kids didn’t really know him
except for the motorized bicycle
and the river.
I guess every group of kids has a loner
full of mystery to
speculate about.
I think of him to this day.
Was he a poet or just a lonely man?
He is stuck forever in a memory that
forgets almost everyone, forgets
all the wasted or plentiful lives.
How do we not waste our lives?
The famous dead poets are merely names.
These words are just magnetic spots on
a disk somewhere.
If the bill is not paid, then
the ones will become zeros
and I will have puttered by.
***

THEY WILL SAY Poem by Carl Sandburg

by

THEY WILL SAY

OF my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.

READY TO KILL Poem by Carl Sandburg

by

READY TO KILL

TEN minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver
on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be
hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory
hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of
the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,
Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag
in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men
all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.

***