Members
18/F/pennsylvania
trying to make sense of it all
In your dreams
Touch me without using your hands. © 2023 Sydney Carter
Poems
Terry Jordan
Mar 2016
I think that Jimmy Carter
A true and noble man
Should monitor the voting
Check on ballots being scanned
Watch over our elections
The suppression of our votes
Long lines, few polling places
Jimmy Carter, that’s no joke!
I pray that Jimmy Carter will
Monitor our elections
I trust he’ll keep them honest while
We’re making our selections
When there is no paper trail
And lines 5 hours long
Votings not for weak or frail
Be Jimmy Carter strong!
The man can still build houses
Even though he’s 91
Please watch those ballot boxes
Or Democracy is done!
A true and noble man
Should monitor the voting
Check on ballots being scanned
Watch over our elections
The suppression of our votes
Long lines, few polling places
Jimmy Carter, that’s no joke!
I pray that Jimmy Carter will
Monitor our elections
I trust he’ll keep them honest while
We’re making our selections
When there is no paper trail
And lines 5 hours long
Votings not for weak or frail
Be Jimmy Carter strong!
The man can still build houses
Even though he’s 91
Please watch those ballot boxes
Or Democracy is done!
Lawrence Hall
Feb 2018
“See all those workers digging through that hill?”
The carter asked, there pointing with his whip
While two mismatched old horses lumbered on
Jerking carter and prisoners along the ruts.
An empty church, its now skeletal dome
Open to the dusk, lay somewhat in the way
Of where the rails would lay, just there among
Stray stalks of wheat, from lost and windblown seeds.
One prisoner yawning through his sorrows said
“I wonder why the Czar didn’t send me there
To carve with pick and shovel and barrow and hod
His new technology across the steppes.”
“Too close to Petersburg, and Moscow too,
My lad. The Czar wants you to labor far,
Far off. No mischief from you and your books,
Your poems, your nasty little magazines.”
“Oh, carter, is Pushkin unknown to you?
Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoyevsky too?
What stories do you tell your children, then?
Do you teach them to love their Russian letters?”
The carter laughed; he lit his pipe and said
“You intellectuals! Living in the past!
Education for the 19th century -
That’s what our children need, not your old books.”
“Someday,” the carter mused, “railways everywhere,
And steel will take you where you will be sent.
Electric light will make midday of night
And Russia’s soul will be great big machines!”
“Machines, and louder guns, and better clocks -
All these will make for better men, you’ll see.
You young fellows will live to see it; I won’t,
But what a happy land your Russia will be!”
And the cart rattled on, the horses tired,
Longing for the day’s end, and hay, and rest;
The prisoners made old jokes in laughing rhymes,
Begged ‘baccy from the carter, and wondered.
The carter asked, there pointing with his whip
While two mismatched old horses lumbered on
Jerking carter and prisoners along the ruts.
An empty church, its now skeletal dome
Open to the dusk, lay somewhat in the way
Of where the rails would lay, just there among
Stray stalks of wheat, from lost and windblown seeds.
One prisoner yawning through his sorrows said
“I wonder why the Czar didn’t send me there
To carve with pick and shovel and barrow and hod
His new technology across the steppes.”
“Too close to Petersburg, and Moscow too,
My lad. The Czar wants you to labor far,
Far off. No mischief from you and your books,
Your poems, your nasty little magazines.”
“Oh, carter, is Pushkin unknown to you?
Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoyevsky too?
What stories do you tell your children, then?
Do you teach them to love their Russian letters?”
The carter laughed; he lit his pipe and said
“You intellectuals! Living in the past!
Education for the 19th century -
That’s what our children need, not your old books.”
“Someday,” the carter mused, “railways everywhere,
And steel will take you where you will be sent.
Electric light will make midday of night
And Russia’s soul will be great big machines!”
“Machines, and louder guns, and better clocks -
All these will make for better men, you’ll see.
You young fellows will live to see it; I won’t,
But what a happy land your Russia will be!”
And the cart rattled on, the horses tired,
Longing for the day’s end, and hay, and rest;
The prisoners made old jokes in laughing rhymes,
Begged ‘baccy from the carter, and wondered.