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Poems
Jordan Frances Apr 2016
Prayer
Jordan Frances
Apr 2016
My prayer looks like I stutter in front of the dinner table
My prayer looks like thankyouforthisfoodamen
My prayer looks like gets nervous talking in front of people
My prayer looks like two-faced ***** who can't be trusted
My prayer looks like a God I've been taught not to relate to
My prayer looks like I'm cherry picking the Bible
My prayer looks like justifying my queerness
My prayer looks like I'll die trying
My prayer looks like why is my theology less legitimate than yours?
My prayer looks like wound in the flesh
Looks like begging God to stop boys from abusing me
Looks like begging God to strengthen the tendons in my wrist so I can fight back next time
Looks like begging God to put an end to the next times
My prayer looks like plucking fists out of my father's mouth
My prayer looks like domestic violence is not just physical
My prayer looks like ****** violence is not just ****
My prayer looks like I want to call the boy who assaulted me a ******
My prayer looks like I want a better word for what he did to me
My prayer looks like I wish he hurt me and left cuts and bruises
My prayer looks like maybe then, they would have believed me
My prayer looks trying to explain **** culture to my daddy
My prayer looks like fighting back tears when he says victim blaming is over exaggerated
My prayer looks like fighting back tears when his next sentence is how women need to be more careful instead
My prayer looks like forgetting how to pray
My prayer looks like losing my faith
My prayer looks like mourning for what I have lost
My prayer looks like fearing my father
My prayer looks like loving my father
My prayer looks like I just want someone to believe me
My prayer looks like I've only been taught to be sorry
My prayer looks like it is not my fault anymore
My prayer has been decorated in doilies and daffodils
My prayer is told it's just a little girl, to sit down
My prayer has been told it won't change anything
My prayer holds a loaded gun
My prayer can change the world
My prayer isn't sorry anymore
My prayer isn't sorry.
My prayer looks like thankyouforthisfoodamen
My prayer looks like gets nervous talking in front of people
My prayer looks like two-faced ***** who can't be trusted
My prayer looks like a God I've been taught not to relate to
My prayer looks like I'm cherry picking the Bible
My prayer looks like justifying my queerness
My prayer looks like I'll die trying
My prayer looks like why is my theology less legitimate than yours?
My prayer looks like wound in the flesh
Looks like begging God to stop boys from abusing me
Looks like begging God to strengthen the tendons in my wrist so I can fight back next time
Looks like begging God to put an end to the next times
My prayer looks like plucking fists out of my father's mouth
My prayer looks like domestic violence is not just physical
My prayer looks like ****** violence is not just ****
My prayer looks like I want to call the boy who assaulted me a ******
My prayer looks like I want a better word for what he did to me
My prayer looks like I wish he hurt me and left cuts and bruises
My prayer looks like maybe then, they would have believed me
My prayer looks trying to explain **** culture to my daddy
My prayer looks like fighting back tears when he says victim blaming is over exaggerated
My prayer looks like fighting back tears when his next sentence is how women need to be more careful instead
My prayer looks like forgetting how to pray
My prayer looks like losing my faith
My prayer looks like mourning for what I have lost
My prayer looks like fearing my father
My prayer looks like loving my father
My prayer looks like I just want someone to believe me
My prayer looks like I've only been taught to be sorry
My prayer looks like it is not my fault anymore
My prayer has been decorated in doilies and daffodils
My prayer is told it's just a little girl, to sit down
My prayer has been told it won't change anything
My prayer holds a loaded gun
My prayer can change the world
My prayer isn't sorry anymore
My prayer isn't sorry.
jake aller Aug 2019
gun poems
jake aller
Aug 2019
I don't get it
I don’t Get It
Mr. Speaker I admit I don’t get it
How does prayer Stop gun violence?
Prayer did not work in Texas.
26 people were murdered while praying.
God if he exists Obviously does not care
About the poor people
Who died in his church
Because a mad man
Got a gun
And no they were not praying To be delivered from death
No one deserves to die like this
So my prayer to you
Is simply this
Get off your rear end
Rally the country
And do something
About gun violence
That’s a prayer I hope works
Dear Speaker Ryan
I want to tell you something
The dead don’t want your prayers
The dead don’t care that you pray for them
They are dead after all
And you and your so-called Christians
Are to blame
You refuse to do anything Anything at all
to stop the carnage In our streets
The U.S. is flooded with guns
And more are sold every day
Millions of people don’t have health coverage
Millions are barely surviving
And your answer
Our dear great compassionate Speaker
Your answer
Is Prayer works Government action does not
You act as if the gun violence Plaguing our country
Was like the weather Beyond our control
So here’s my prayer for you
And your colleagues
When you die I pray that God Will send you
And your friends Straight to hell
Where Satan and his demons Will use you for target practice
That’s my prayer to you And as you know Prayer works
Mr. President You are wrong once again
You said that the tragic events
in Texas And Las Vegas were not “gun situations”
But rather were mental health problems
And that in Texas
if there had been no gun controls
Perhaps fewer people would have died
Mr. President
I know you a smart man
The smartest man in the world
According to you
So please contemplate this fact
According to the latest findings
It is a gun situation
In fact, the reason the U.S.
Has so many gun deaths
Is because we have so many guns
45% of the worlds guns in fact
And 33 percent of the world’s shooters
Are Americans killing other Americans
And most of them
the majority of them
Are White men killing other people
Not Islamic terrorists
Most are in fact
Self-proclaimed Christians
So Mr. President
When will you come to your senses
And do what 90 percent of the public wants
Enact nation wide effective gun controls?
And tell the NRA
they can take their blood money elsewhere
When Mr. President
When will you act
When will you take charge
And become a President of the people
Instead of the President of the NRA?
Like (0) 0
← Previous1 2 345…75Next →
Virginia Beach Massacre Never Again
Virgina Beach
In a night of horrific scumbagery violence
Rarely seen in this jaded age of ours
Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery violence I
In just a few short minutes
Nothing more than that
In just a few moments
All 12 victims were murdered
By a disgruntled employee
Every one he knew was shot
And killed for no reason
Caused by the demons
His soul was so infected
Murderous demonic voices
All in his head
Screaming **** them all
**** them all
Screaming none stop violence in his head
All the time
Causing him to start shooting
everyone he saw
Regardless of who they were
or where they were
Everyone must die
screamed the demonic voices in his head
No one can be left alive
Everyone must die
Virtually all must die
in his internal video game
Everyone must die
Regardless of who they were
or where they were
Again just another day
Gone horribly wrong
All across America In
every town
No where is safe anymore
Virgina Beach massacre
Virgina Beach massacre
Just another
Average night in America
An Active Shooter
scumbagery violence
Rarely seen
in this jaded wild world Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery
In just a less than 30 short minutes
Nothing more than
In just a few short 30 moments
All the victims
were murdered while at their daily
work wrong place wrong time
act of a demotic deranged madman
voices screaming ****
The voices scream
death to all humans
All must be killed
The voices scream over and over All must die now
Just another night in America
Land of the Brave
Home of the free
More Guns for Everyone in the World
The NRA has decided
That the best solution to global problem
Of rampant violence and crime everywhere
Is for the rest of the world
To become like the U.S.
Where anyone can buy a gun
As an armed society is a polite society’
And so the President i
s about to announce
A global campaign against gun control restrictions
As these restrictions
are an undue burden
On the rights of the US arms manufactures
To sell their guns
everywhere in the world
As everyone wants what we have to sell
The best weapons in the world
Instead of trying to limit the damage
That unrestricted gun sales
Have done to the U.S.
Our President, our great leader
Wants to sell more guns
Everywhere in the world
And there are eager buyers
Lining up around the world
Eager to buy the best guns
The world has ever seen
We want to export
The gun madness
That has infected our society
Leaving behind so many dead bodies
The dead were not consulted
For they remain dead
They do not vote They have no voice
For the guns silenced them
For good just as the guns intended
Just doing their gun thing after all
Humanity has evolved From stones to arrows
To guns T o nuclear, biological weapons
And the U.S. While proclaiming itself
A champion of Human Rights
Remains nothing
but a country
Of gun runners Merchants of death And destruction
NRA Please Stop Talking
Another day
Another mass shooting
Another incident
of domestic terrorism
another gun man
killing people
because just because he can
and he wants to **** people
The NRA And their stooges
Come out
Flood the airways
With their noxious
Poisonous weasel words
The NRA says
Mass shootings
Are like the weather
You can’t control them
You can’t predict them
And you can’t prevent them
Just have to accept
It is all god’s will
Guns don’t **** people
IF guns were outlawed
Only outlaws would have guns
Only solution Is more guns
For everyone
An armed society
they say Is a polite society
Support for gun control I is
socialist/communist/fascist/anti-Am erican/anti-Christian nonsense
The beginning of tyranny
If only the Jews had guns
The holocaust would not have happened
Jesus would want us all
to be armed with machine guns
To protect us against the evil doers
It is the Christian thing to do
To blow away evil doers
With heavy arms
In America
Land of the free
Home of the brave
We can’t do anything
At all
About the mass carnage
Unleashed by madmen with guns
Who walk among us
Searching for their next victims
Any restriction of the right
To bear arms
Is tyranny at its worst
The nanny state run amuck
Talking about gun control
After a tragic event Is
just not the appropriate time
We only need prayers
and meaningless thoughts
Universal background checks
Too onerous
Registering guns
Too burdensome
Researching gun violence
waste of tax payer money
banning military style assault weapons r
Restricts my right
to blow away
Bambi the deer with a M16
the NRA will keep talking
talking and talking
preventing anything
from being done
and we will have another
Mass shooting event
Before the day is out
So my plead
This day To the NRA A
and their stoogies
Talk is cheap
Your comments Are not helping
If you can’t
Be a part of the solution
Just stop talking
Please stop talking
And let the rest
Of us figure out
How to stop
The madness in the streets
And stop the carnage
So NRA
Please just stop talking Now
military assault weapons are locked up
yet in America
the land of the free
home of the brave
everyone and his cousin
must have their gun
guns for everyone
cries the NRA
that’s the solution
The president a
and his supporters
deny the obvious
guns **** people
That’s all they do
it is a gun thing
you would not understand
Guns just do
what guns gonna do
**** people
Mr. President
You can take your words
your empty platitudes
Your empty promises
Your prayers
straight to hell
and back
where with any luck
Satan will use you
as target practice
Chief of Staff You are Absurd
the President’s chief of staff
said the other day
it was absurd
to suggest that the president’s words
had anything to do
with recent mass shootings
yet is it absurd
to see the lengths
to which the President’s supporters
will twist and turn
spinning awa y
the inconvenient truth
President Trump is a racist bigot con man
who some how conned his way
to become President
he call immigrants criminals, vermin, animals
invaders infesting the country
the El Paseo shooter
said that he went to the border
to shoot the invaders
and said that he was a big Trump fan
it is not absurd to connect these two huge dots
The President’s words
have real world consequences
Yes Mr. Trump is a racist pig a
and his supporters are being absurd
to suggest otherwise
36
Jake Aller
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Jake Aller
239 followers 893 following 333
Message Follow
https://theworldaccordingtocosmos.com
John (Jake) Cosmos Aller
Novelist, Poet, Foreign Service Officer
Tel: 703-436-1402
Email: authorjakecosmosaller@gmail.com
John (“Jake” ) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department in ten countries - Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Korea, India, St Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincent, Spain and Thailand. and traveled to 45 countries during his career. Jake has been an aspiring novelist for several years and has completed two novels, (Giant **** Spiders, and the Great Divorce) and is pursuing publication. He has been writing poetry all his life and has published his poetry in electronic poetry forums, including All Poetry, Moon Café and Duane’s Poetree. (under the name Jake Lee). He is looking forward to transitioning to his third career – full-time novelist and poet after completing his second career as a Foreign Service officer, and his first career as an educator overseas for six years upon completion of his Peace Corps service in South Korea.
He served in a wide variety of positions running from Consular management, Fraud investigation and managing the consular overseas computer support desk, to economic and political reporting positions, international labor diplomacy, commercial diplomacy - promoting American business overseas- international organization diplomacy serving as the deputy permanent representative to the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, to management positions including program management, evaluation and contracting management, and environmental and science diplomacy including promoting renewable energy solutions. He taught courses at the Foreign Service Institute and overseas in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Kathmandu on consular fraud and consular Systems issues.
Senior program evaluator overseeing the implementation of the Department's evaluation program enabling the Department to develop a robust program evaluation system.
Coordinated training program training over 200 people in three years
Launched community of practice (CoP) web page (word press) with over 300 participants, greatly expanding the ability of State program evaluators to conduct program evaluations.
Conducted meta-evaluation of completed foreign assistance evaluations insuring that the Department’s evaluations provided critical program improvement data.
Deputy Political Economic chief, - Bridgetown, Barbados
Served as the deputy political economic chief covering political, economic, labor , environment and science and commercial diplomacy efforts in the Eastern Caribbean.
Received labor officer of the year award for work in setting up regional training programs in occupational safety issues, and meeting with labor leaders in all seven countries greatly expanding our labor diplomacy outreach;
Initiated two American Chambers of Commerce organizations,
Conducted fund raising in support of Embassy’s July fourth celebrations, the first time held in multiple countries, raising $100,000 over a three year period;
Conducted training programs in all seven countries demonstrating to hundreds of locals on how to access U.S. Government export financing programs .
.
CA/FPP Deputy Training Team Coordinator – Washington, DC,
Taught consular fraud prevention courses at the Foreign Service Institute, and in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, greatly increasing knowledge and skills in fraud detection.
Launched Lexus Nexus public record database access for consular officers worldwide, therefore dramatically improving consular fraud prevention efforts,
Initiated first interagency Fraud Working Group coordinating fraud efforts among Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Labor.
Received Cash Award.
Deputy Consular Chief, - Mumbai, India
Oversaw American citizen services, immigration visas in fifth largest operation in the world and fraud prevention programs greatly improving management of each.
Supervised and mentored 15 junior officers and 50 local staff resulting in each unit receiving group cash awards.
Received two cash Meritorious Honor awards for my work helping American citizens facing crises including helping American citizens whose family members died in India, or were arrested.
Organized task force that dealt with aftermath of worst earthquake in 50 years.
Read more →
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My Poems (224)AutorankLinks
I don't get it
I don’t Get It
Mr. Speaker
I admit I don’t get it
How does praye
Stop gun violence?
Prayer did not work in Texas.
26 people were murdered while praying.
God if he exists
Obviously does not care
About the poor people
Who died in his church
Because a mad man
Got a gun
And no they were not praying
To be delivered from death
No one deserves to die like this
So my prayer to you
Is simply this Get off your rear end
Rally the country
And do something
About gun violence
That’s a prayer I hope works
© 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Read more →
Like (0) 0
Dear Speaker Ryan
Dear Speaker Ryan
I want to tell you something
The dead don’t want your prayers
The dead don’t care that you pray for them
They are dead after all
And you and your so-called Christians
Are to blame
You refuse to do anything
Anything at all
to stop the carnage In our streets
The U.S. is flooded with guns
And more are sold every day
Millions of people don’t have health coverage
Millions are barely surviving
And your answer
Our dear great compassionate Speaker
Your answer
Is Prayer works
Government action does not
You act as if the gun violence
Plaguing our country
Was like the weather
Beyond our control
So here’s my prayer for you
And your colleagues
When you die
I pray that God
Will send you
And your friends
Straight to hell
Where Satan and his demons
Will use you for target practice
That’s my prayer to you
And as you know Prayer works
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Read more →
Like (0) 0
It’s a Gun Situation, Mr. President
Mr. President You are wrong once again
You said that the tragic events
in Texas And Las Vegas were not “gun situations”
But rather were mental health problems
And that in Texas
if there had been no gun controls
Perhaps fewer people would have died
Mr. President
I know you a smart man
The smartest man in the world
According to you
So please contemplate this fact
According to the latest findings
It is a gun situation
In fact, the reason the U.S.
Has so many gun deaths
Is because we have so many guns
45% of the worlds guns in fact
And 33 percent of the world’s shooters
Are Americans killing other Americans
And most of them
the majority of them
Are White men killing other people
Not Islamic terrorists
Most are in fact
Self-proclaimed Christians
So Mr. President
When will you come to your senses
And do what 90 percent of the public wants
Enact nation wide effective gun controls?
And tell the NRA
they can take their blood money elsewhere
When Mr. President
When will you act
When will you take charge
And become a President of the people
Instead of the President of the NRA?
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
← Previous1 2 345…75Next →
Virginia Beach Massacre Never Again
Virgina Beach
In a night of horrific scumbagery violence
Rarely seen in this jaded age of ours
Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery violence I
In just a few short minutes
Nothing more than that
In just a few moments
All 12 victims were murdered
By a disgruntled employee
Every one he knew was shot
And killed for no reason
Caused by the demons
His soul was so infected
Murderous demonic voices
All in his head
Screaming **** them all
**** them all
Screaming none stop violence in his head
All the time
Causing him to start shooting
everyone he saw
Regardless of who they were
or where they were
Everyone must die
screamed the demonic voices in his head
No one can be left alive
Everyone must die
Virtually all must die
in his internal video game
Everyone must die
Regardless of who they were
or where they were
Again just another day
Gone horribly wrong
All across America In
every town
No where is safe anymore
Virgina Beach massacre
Virgina Beach massacre
Just another
Average night in America
An Active Shooter
scumbagery violence
Rarely seen
in this jaded wild world Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery
In just a less than 30 short minutes
Nothing more than
In just a few short 30 moments
All the victims
were murdered while at their daily
work wrong place wrong time
act of a demotic deranged madman
voices screaming ****
The voices scream
death to all humans
All must be killed
The voices scream over and over
All must die now
Just another night in America
Land of the Free
Home of the free
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
More Guns for Everyone
More Guns for Everyone in the World
The NRA has decided
That the best solution to global problem
Of rampant violence and crime everywhere
Is for the rest of the world
To become like the U.S.
Where anyone can buy a gun
As an armed society is a polite society’
And so the President i
s about to announce
A global campaign against gun control restrictions
As these restrictions
are an undue burden
On the rights of the US arms manufactures
To sell their guns
everywhere in the world
As everyone wants what we have to sell
The best weapons in the world
Instead of trying to limit the damage
That unrestricted gun sales
Have done to the U.S.
Our President, our great leader
Wants to sell more guns
Everywhere in the world
And there are eager buyers
Lining up around the world
Eager to buy the best guns
The world has ever seen
We want to export
The gun madness
That has infected our society
Leaving behind so many dead bodies
The dead were not consulted
For they remain dead
They do not vote T
hey have no voice
For the guns silenced them
For good just as the guns intended
Just doing their gun thing after all
Humanity has evolved
From stones to arrows
To guns T o nuclear, biological weapons
And the U.S. While proclaiming itself
A champion of Human Rights
Remains nothing
but a country
Of gun runners Merchants of death
And destruction
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
NRA Quit Talking
NRA Please Stop Talking
Another day
Another mass shooting
Another incident
of domestic terrorism
another gun man
killing people
because just because he can
and he wants to **** people
The NRA And their stooges
Come out
Flood the airways
With their noxious
Poisonous weasel words
The NRA says
Mass shootings
Are like the weather
You can’t control them
You can’t predict them
And you can’t prevent them
Just have to accept
It is all god’s will
Guns don’t **** people
IF guns were outlawed
Only outlaws would have guns
Only solution Is more guns
For everyone
An armed society
they say Is a polite society
Support for gun control I is
socialist/communist/fascist/anti-Am erican/anti-Christian nonsense
The beginning of tyranny
If only the Jews had guns
The holocaust would not have happened
Jesus would want us all
to be armed with machine guns
To protect us against the evil doers
It is the Christian thing to do
To blow away evil doers
With heavy arms
In America
Land of the free
Home of the brave
We can’t do anything
At all
About the mass carnage
Unleashed by madmen with guns
Who walk among us
Searching for their next victims
Any restriction of the right
To bear arms
Is tyranny at its worst
The nanny state run amuck
Talking about gun control
After a tragic event Is
just not the appropriate time
We only need prayers
and meaningless thoughts
Universal background checks
Too onerous
Registering guns
Too burdensome
Researching gun violence
waste of tax payer money
banning military style assault weapons r
Restricts my right
to blow away
Bambi the deer with a M16
the NRA will keep talking
talking and talking
preventing anything
from being done
and we will have another
Mass shooting event
Before the day is out
So my plead
This day To the NRA A
and their stoogies
Talk is cheap
Your comments Are not helping
If you can’t
Be a part of the solution
Just stop talking
Please stop talking
And let the rest
Of us figure out
How to stop
The madness in the streets
And stop the carnage
So NRA
Please just stop talking Now
another gun stop © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
← Previous12 3 456…75Next →
guns **** People
Guns **** people g
Guns do **** people
it is not mental illness
it is not video games
it is not a million other things
it is simply this
a gun is a weapon
a weapon designed to **** people
That is what guns do
guns don’t care
they do as they are told
If you pull the trigger t
They will **** the victim
that is what guns do
that is why in a civilized society
military assault weapons are locked up
yet in America
the land of the free
home of the brave
everyone and his cousin
must have their gun
guns for everyone
cries the NRA
that’s the solution
The president a
and his supporters
deny the obvious
guns **** people
That’s all they do
it is a gun thing
you would not understand
Guns just do
what guns gonna do
**** people
Mr. President
You can take your words
your empty platitudes
Your empty promises
Your prayers
straight to hell
and back
where with any luck
Satan will use you
as target practice
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
Chief of Staff You are Absurd
the President’s chief of staff
said the other day
it was absurd
to suggest that the president’s words
had anything to do
with recent mass shootings
yet is it absurd
to see the lengths
to which the President’s supporters
will twist and turn
spinning awa y
the inconvenient truth
President Trump is a racist bigot con man
who some how conned his way
to become President
he call immigrants criminals, vermin, animals
invaders infesting the country
the El Paseo shooter
said that he went to the border
to shoot the invaders
and said that he was a big Trump fan
it is not absurd to connect these two huge dots
The President’s words
have real world consequences
Yes Mr. Trump is a racist pig a
and his supporters are being absurd
to suggest otherwise
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (1) 1
Mr. President Words Matter
Mr. President Words Matter
Mr President
Words matter
your words matter
your words of hate
your words of division
your words calling fellow human beings ****, vermin,
invaders, animals matter
they matter a lot
and is it little wonder
that people listen
to the hate you sprew forth
and some deranged people
take action on your call for action
against the invaders
on the border
they march to the border
to **** the invaders
your words matter
Mr. President
and your false words of regret
fool no one
the damage has been done
the hate has been spread
just as you intended
and you have the gall
to call yourself A Christian
you are the anti-Christ
you are not a Christian
so please quite pretending
to be what you are not
please man up
accept your responsibility
set things right
apologize
the dead though
don’t need your prayers
they need action
they need leadership
and you are the president
so please start acting
like you give a ****
and if you do so
perhaps you will find
people will follow you
but please quite the words of hate
the words that hurt
and quit calling immigrants invaders
and vermin
they are human beings
they are deserving of respect
this I ask of you In Jesus’s name even though I am not a Christian another day, another shooting
Another Day Another Shooting
another day in paradise
just another day in Americal
Land of the free
Home of the brave
and gunshots,
lots of gunshots more guns for all cries the NRA
yes another day
another gun battle another white man
who just wants to ****
the President sends his condolences Thanks the law enforcement for an incredible job well done It was horrible
Hate has no place
in our country
and we will take of it
and do what ever we can do
condolences nothing but false words empty words
lots of things to do
it is mental illness problem
but he fails to mention
the words gun at al
not at all
and tomorrow and tomorrow
but he at least finally
said hate has no role in country nothing but prime BS
in my humble opinion
he did not mention white supremacy his rhetoric had nothing
nothing to do
about this at all
and so tomorrow
I will turn on the TV and we see
nothing at all
and the dead will remain dead the guns will fire again
nothing will be done
welcome to America land of the free home of the brave
I don’t Get It
Mr. Speaker I admit I don’t get it
How does prayer Stop gun violence?
Prayer did not work in Texas.
26 people were murdered while praying.
God if he exists Obviously does not care
About the poor people
Who died in his church
Because a mad man
Got a gun
And no they were not praying To be delivered from death
No one deserves to die like this
So my prayer to you
Is simply this
Get off your rear end
Rally the country
And do something
About gun violence
That’s a prayer I hope works
Dear Speaker Ryan
I want to tell you something
The dead don’t want your prayers
The dead don’t care that you pray for them
They are dead after all
And you and your so-called Christians
Are to blame
You refuse to do anything Anything at all
to stop the carnage In our streets
The U.S. is flooded with guns
And more are sold every day
Millions of people don’t have health coverage
Millions are barely surviving
And your answer
Our dear great compassionate Speaker
Your answer
Is Prayer works Government action does not
You act as if the gun violence Plaguing our country
Was like the weather Beyond our control
So here’s my prayer for you
And your colleagues
When you die I pray that God Will send you
And your friends Straight to hell
Where Satan and his demons Will use you for target practice
That’s my prayer to you And as you know Prayer works
Mr. President You are wrong once again
You said that the tragic events
in Texas And Las Vegas were not “gun situations”
But rather were mental health problems
And that in Texas
if there had been no gun controls
Perhaps fewer people would have died
Mr. President
I know you a smart man
The smartest man in the world
According to you
So please contemplate this fact
According to the latest findings
It is a gun situation
In fact, the reason the U.S.
Has so many gun deaths
Is because we have so many guns
45% of the worlds guns in fact
And 33 percent of the world’s shooters
Are Americans killing other Americans
And most of them
the majority of them
Are White men killing other people
Not Islamic terrorists
Most are in fact
Self-proclaimed Christians
So Mr. President
When will you come to your senses
And do what 90 percent of the public wants
Enact nation wide effective gun controls?
And tell the NRA
they can take their blood money elsewhere
When Mr. President
When will you act
When will you take charge
And become a President of the people
Instead of the President of the NRA?
Like (0) 0
← Previous1 2 345…75Next →
Virginia Beach Massacre Never Again
Virgina Beach
In a night of horrific scumbagery violence
Rarely seen in this jaded age of ours
Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery violence I
In just a few short minutes
Nothing more than that
In just a few moments
All 12 victims were murdered
By a disgruntled employee
Every one he knew was shot
And killed for no reason
Caused by the demons
His soul was so infected
Murderous demonic voices
All in his head
Screaming **** them all
**** them all
Screaming none stop violence in his head
All the time
Causing him to start shooting
everyone he saw
Regardless of who they were
or where they were
Everyone must die
screamed the demonic voices in his head
No one can be left alive
Everyone must die
Virtually all must die
in his internal video game
Everyone must die
Regardless of who they were
or where they were
Again just another day
Gone horribly wrong
All across America In
every town
No where is safe anymore
Virgina Beach massacre
Virgina Beach massacre
Just another
Average night in America
An Active Shooter
scumbagery violence
Rarely seen
in this jaded wild world Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery
In just a less than 30 short minutes
Nothing more than
In just a few short 30 moments
All the victims
were murdered while at their daily
work wrong place wrong time
act of a demotic deranged madman
voices screaming ****
The voices scream
death to all humans
All must be killed
The voices scream over and over All must die now
Just another night in America
Land of the Brave
Home of the free
More Guns for Everyone in the World
The NRA has decided
That the best solution to global problem
Of rampant violence and crime everywhere
Is for the rest of the world
To become like the U.S.
Where anyone can buy a gun
As an armed society is a polite society’
And so the President i
s about to announce
A global campaign against gun control restrictions
As these restrictions
are an undue burden
On the rights of the US arms manufactures
To sell their guns
everywhere in the world
As everyone wants what we have to sell
The best weapons in the world
Instead of trying to limit the damage
That unrestricted gun sales
Have done to the U.S.
Our President, our great leader
Wants to sell more guns
Everywhere in the world
And there are eager buyers
Lining up around the world
Eager to buy the best guns
The world has ever seen
We want to export
The gun madness
That has infected our society
Leaving behind so many dead bodies
The dead were not consulted
For they remain dead
They do not vote They have no voice
For the guns silenced them
For good just as the guns intended
Just doing their gun thing after all
Humanity has evolved From stones to arrows
To guns T o nuclear, biological weapons
And the U.S. While proclaiming itself
A champion of Human Rights
Remains nothing
but a country
Of gun runners Merchants of death And destruction
NRA Please Stop Talking
Another day
Another mass shooting
Another incident
of domestic terrorism
another gun man
killing people
because just because he can
and he wants to **** people
The NRA And their stooges
Come out
Flood the airways
With their noxious
Poisonous weasel words
The NRA says
Mass shootings
Are like the weather
You can’t control them
You can’t predict them
And you can’t prevent them
Just have to accept
It is all god’s will
Guns don’t **** people
IF guns were outlawed
Only outlaws would have guns
Only solution Is more guns
For everyone
An armed society
they say Is a polite society
Support for gun control I is
socialist/communist/fascist/anti-Am erican/anti-Christian nonsense
The beginning of tyranny
If only the Jews had guns
The holocaust would not have happened
Jesus would want us all
to be armed with machine guns
To protect us against the evil doers
It is the Christian thing to do
To blow away evil doers
With heavy arms
In America
Land of the free
Home of the brave
We can’t do anything
At all
About the mass carnage
Unleashed by madmen with guns
Who walk among us
Searching for their next victims
Any restriction of the right
To bear arms
Is tyranny at its worst
The nanny state run amuck
Talking about gun control
After a tragic event Is
just not the appropriate time
We only need prayers
and meaningless thoughts
Universal background checks
Too onerous
Registering guns
Too burdensome
Researching gun violence
waste of tax payer money
banning military style assault weapons r
Restricts my right
to blow away
Bambi the deer with a M16
the NRA will keep talking
talking and talking
preventing anything
from being done
and we will have another
Mass shooting event
Before the day is out
So my plead
This day To the NRA A
and their stoogies
Talk is cheap
Your comments Are not helping
If you can’t
Be a part of the solution
Just stop talking
Please stop talking
And let the rest
Of us figure out
How to stop
The madness in the streets
And stop the carnage
So NRA
Please just stop talking Now
military assault weapons are locked up
yet in America
the land of the free
home of the brave
everyone and his cousin
must have their gun
guns for everyone
cries the NRA
that’s the solution
The president a
and his supporters
deny the obvious
guns **** people
That’s all they do
it is a gun thing
you would not understand
Guns just do
what guns gonna do
**** people
Mr. President
You can take your words
your empty platitudes
Your empty promises
Your prayers
straight to hell
and back
where with any luck
Satan will use you
as target practice
Chief of Staff You are Absurd
the President’s chief of staff
said the other day
it was absurd
to suggest that the president’s words
had anything to do
with recent mass shootings
yet is it absurd
to see the lengths
to which the President’s supporters
will twist and turn
spinning awa y
the inconvenient truth
President Trump is a racist bigot con man
who some how conned his way
to become President
he call immigrants criminals, vermin, animals
invaders infesting the country
the El Paseo shooter
said that he went to the border
to shoot the invaders
and said that he was a big Trump fan
it is not absurd to connect these two huge dots
The President’s words
have real world consequences
Yes Mr. Trump is a racist pig a
and his supporters are being absurd
to suggest otherwise
36
Jake Aller
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Jake Aller
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https://theworldaccordingtocosmos.com
John (Jake) Cosmos Aller
Novelist, Poet, Foreign Service Officer
Tel: 703-436-1402
Email: authorjakecosmosaller@gmail.com
John (“Jake” ) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department in ten countries - Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Korea, India, St Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincent, Spain and Thailand. and traveled to 45 countries during his career. Jake has been an aspiring novelist for several years and has completed two novels, (Giant **** Spiders, and the Great Divorce) and is pursuing publication. He has been writing poetry all his life and has published his poetry in electronic poetry forums, including All Poetry, Moon Café and Duane’s Poetree. (under the name Jake Lee). He is looking forward to transitioning to his third career – full-time novelist and poet after completing his second career as a Foreign Service officer, and his first career as an educator overseas for six years upon completion of his Peace Corps service in South Korea.
He served in a wide variety of positions running from Consular management, Fraud investigation and managing the consular overseas computer support desk, to economic and political reporting positions, international labor diplomacy, commercial diplomacy - promoting American business overseas- international organization diplomacy serving as the deputy permanent representative to the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, to management positions including program management, evaluation and contracting management, and environmental and science diplomacy including promoting renewable energy solutions. He taught courses at the Foreign Service Institute and overseas in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Kathmandu on consular fraud and consular Systems issues.
Senior program evaluator overseeing the implementation of the Department's evaluation program enabling the Department to develop a robust program evaluation system.
Coordinated training program training over 200 people in three years
Launched community of practice (CoP) web page (word press) with over 300 participants, greatly expanding the ability of State program evaluators to conduct program evaluations.
Conducted meta-evaluation of completed foreign assistance evaluations insuring that the Department’s evaluations provided critical program improvement data.
Deputy Political Economic chief, - Bridgetown, Barbados
Served as the deputy political economic chief covering political, economic, labor , environment and science and commercial diplomacy efforts in the Eastern Caribbean.
Received labor officer of the year award for work in setting up regional training programs in occupational safety issues, and meeting with labor leaders in all seven countries greatly expanding our labor diplomacy outreach;
Initiated two American Chambers of Commerce organizations,
Conducted fund raising in support of Embassy’s July fourth celebrations, the first time held in multiple countries, raising $100,000 over a three year period;
Conducted training programs in all seven countries demonstrating to hundreds of locals on how to access U.S. Government export financing programs .
.
CA/FPP Deputy Training Team Coordinator – Washington, DC,
Taught consular fraud prevention courses at the Foreign Service Institute, and in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, greatly increasing knowledge and skills in fraud detection.
Launched Lexus Nexus public record database access for consular officers worldwide, therefore dramatically improving consular fraud prevention efforts,
Initiated first interagency Fraud Working Group coordinating fraud efforts among Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Labor.
Received Cash Award.
Deputy Consular Chief, - Mumbai, India
Oversaw American citizen services, immigration visas in fifth largest operation in the world and fraud prevention programs greatly improving management of each.
Supervised and mentored 15 junior officers and 50 local staff resulting in each unit receiving group cash awards.
Received two cash Meritorious Honor awards for my work helping American citizens facing crises including helping American citizens whose family members died in India, or were arrested.
Organized task force that dealt with aftermath of worst earthquake in 50 years.
Read more →
8 stories • 1 lists • 1 lists • 5 groups
My Poems (224)AutorankLinks
I don't get it
I don’t Get It
Mr. Speaker
I admit I don’t get it
How does praye
Stop gun violence?
Prayer did not work in Texas.
26 people were murdered while praying.
God if he exists
Obviously does not care
About the poor people
Who died in his church
Because a mad man
Got a gun
And no they were not praying
To be delivered from death
No one deserves to die like this
So my prayer to you
Is simply this Get off your rear end
Rally the country
And do something
About gun violence
That’s a prayer I hope works
© 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Read more →
Like (0) 0
Dear Speaker Ryan
Dear Speaker Ryan
I want to tell you something
The dead don’t want your prayers
The dead don’t care that you pray for them
They are dead after all
And you and your so-called Christians
Are to blame
You refuse to do anything
Anything at all
to stop the carnage In our streets
The U.S. is flooded with guns
And more are sold every day
Millions of people don’t have health coverage
Millions are barely surviving
And your answer
Our dear great compassionate Speaker
Your answer
Is Prayer works
Government action does not
You act as if the gun violence
Plaguing our country
Was like the weather
Beyond our control
So here’s my prayer for you
And your colleagues
When you die
I pray that God
Will send you
And your friends
Straight to hell
Where Satan and his demons
Will use you for target practice
That’s my prayer to you
And as you know Prayer works
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Read more →
Like (0) 0
It’s a Gun Situation, Mr. President
Mr. President You are wrong once again
You said that the tragic events
in Texas And Las Vegas were not “gun situations”
But rather were mental health problems
And that in Texas
if there had been no gun controls
Perhaps fewer people would have died
Mr. President
I know you a smart man
The smartest man in the world
According to you
So please contemplate this fact
According to the latest findings
It is a gun situation
In fact, the reason the U.S.
Has so many gun deaths
Is because we have so many guns
45% of the worlds guns in fact
And 33 percent of the world’s shooters
Are Americans killing other Americans
And most of them
the majority of them
Are White men killing other people
Not Islamic terrorists
Most are in fact
Self-proclaimed Christians
So Mr. President
When will you come to your senses
And do what 90 percent of the public wants
Enact nation wide effective gun controls?
And tell the NRA
they can take their blood money elsewhere
When Mr. President
When will you act
When will you take charge
And become a President of the people
Instead of the President of the NRA?
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
← Previous1 2 345…75Next →
Virginia Beach Massacre Never Again
Virgina Beach
In a night of horrific scumbagery violence
Rarely seen in this jaded age of ours
Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery violence I
In just a few short minutes
Nothing more than that
In just a few moments
All 12 victims were murdered
By a disgruntled employee
Every one he knew was shot
And killed for no reason
Caused by the demons
His soul was so infected
Murderous demonic voices
All in his head
Screaming **** them all
**** them all
Screaming none stop violence in his head
All the time
Causing him to start shooting
everyone he saw
Regardless of who they were
or where they were
Everyone must die
screamed the demonic voices in his head
No one can be left alive
Everyone must die
Virtually all must die
in his internal video game
Everyone must die
Regardless of who they were
or where they were
Again just another day
Gone horribly wrong
All across America In
every town
No where is safe anymore
Virgina Beach massacre
Virgina Beach massacre
Just another
Average night in America
An Active Shooter
scumbagery violence
Rarely seen
in this jaded wild world Gone in one hour
In a spasm of horrific scumbagery
In just a less than 30 short minutes
Nothing more than
In just a few short 30 moments
All the victims
were murdered while at their daily
work wrong place wrong time
act of a demotic deranged madman
voices screaming ****
The voices scream
death to all humans
All must be killed
The voices scream over and over
All must die now
Just another night in America
Land of the Free
Home of the free
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
More Guns for Everyone
More Guns for Everyone in the World
The NRA has decided
That the best solution to global problem
Of rampant violence and crime everywhere
Is for the rest of the world
To become like the U.S.
Where anyone can buy a gun
As an armed society is a polite society’
And so the President i
s about to announce
A global campaign against gun control restrictions
As these restrictions
are an undue burden
On the rights of the US arms manufactures
To sell their guns
everywhere in the world
As everyone wants what we have to sell
The best weapons in the world
Instead of trying to limit the damage
That unrestricted gun sales
Have done to the U.S.
Our President, our great leader
Wants to sell more guns
Everywhere in the world
And there are eager buyers
Lining up around the world
Eager to buy the best guns
The world has ever seen
We want to export
The gun madness
That has infected our society
Leaving behind so many dead bodies
The dead were not consulted
For they remain dead
They do not vote T
hey have no voice
For the guns silenced them
For good just as the guns intended
Just doing their gun thing after all
Humanity has evolved
From stones to arrows
To guns T o nuclear, biological weapons
And the U.S. While proclaiming itself
A champion of Human Rights
Remains nothing
but a country
Of gun runners Merchants of death
And destruction
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
NRA Quit Talking
NRA Please Stop Talking
Another day
Another mass shooting
Another incident
of domestic terrorism
another gun man
killing people
because just because he can
and he wants to **** people
The NRA And their stooges
Come out
Flood the airways
With their noxious
Poisonous weasel words
The NRA says
Mass shootings
Are like the weather
You can’t control them
You can’t predict them
And you can’t prevent them
Just have to accept
It is all god’s will
Guns don’t **** people
IF guns were outlawed
Only outlaws would have guns
Only solution Is more guns
For everyone
An armed society
they say Is a polite society
Support for gun control I is
socialist/communist/fascist/anti-Am erican/anti-Christian nonsense
The beginning of tyranny
If only the Jews had guns
The holocaust would not have happened
Jesus would want us all
to be armed with machine guns
To protect us against the evil doers
It is the Christian thing to do
To blow away evil doers
With heavy arms
In America
Land of the free
Home of the brave
We can’t do anything
At all
About the mass carnage
Unleashed by madmen with guns
Who walk among us
Searching for their next victims
Any restriction of the right
To bear arms
Is tyranny at its worst
The nanny state run amuck
Talking about gun control
After a tragic event Is
just not the appropriate time
We only need prayers
and meaningless thoughts
Universal background checks
Too onerous
Registering guns
Too burdensome
Researching gun violence
waste of tax payer money
banning military style assault weapons r
Restricts my right
to blow away
Bambi the deer with a M16
the NRA will keep talking
talking and talking
preventing anything
from being done
and we will have another
Mass shooting event
Before the day is out
So my plead
This day To the NRA A
and their stoogies
Talk is cheap
Your comments Are not helping
If you can’t
Be a part of the solution
Just stop talking
Please stop talking
And let the rest
Of us figure out
How to stop
The madness in the streets
And stop the carnage
So NRA
Please just stop talking Now
another gun stop © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
← Previous12 3 456…75Next →
guns **** People
Guns **** people g
Guns do **** people
it is not mental illness
it is not video games
it is not a million other things
it is simply this
a gun is a weapon
a weapon designed to **** people
That is what guns do
guns don’t care
they do as they are told
If you pull the trigger t
They will **** the victim
that is what guns do
that is why in a civilized society
military assault weapons are locked up
yet in America
the land of the free
home of the brave
everyone and his cousin
must have their gun
guns for everyone
cries the NRA
that’s the solution
The president a
and his supporters
deny the obvious
guns **** people
That’s all they do
it is a gun thing
you would not understand
Guns just do
what guns gonna do
**** people
Mr. President
You can take your words
your empty platitudes
Your empty promises
Your prayers
straight to hell
and back
where with any luck
Satan will use you
as target practice
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (0) 0
Chief of Staff You are Absurd
the President’s chief of staff
said the other day
it was absurd
to suggest that the president’s words
had anything to do
with recent mass shootings
yet is it absurd
to see the lengths
to which the President’s supporters
will twist and turn
spinning awa y
the inconvenient truth
President Trump is a racist bigot con man
who some how conned his way
to become President
he call immigrants criminals, vermin, animals
invaders infesting the country
the El Paseo shooter
said that he went to the border
to shoot the invaders
and said that he was a big Trump fan
it is not absurd to connect these two huge dots
The President’s words
have real world consequences
Yes Mr. Trump is a racist pig a
and his supporters are being absurd
to suggest otherwise
another gun poem © 2 hours ago, john Cosmos Aller
Like (1) 1
Mr. President Words Matter
Mr. President Words Matter
Mr President
Words matter
your words matter
your words of hate
your words of division
your words calling fellow human beings ****, vermin,
invaders, animals matter
they matter a lot
and is it little wonder
that people listen
to the hate you sprew forth
and some deranged people
take action on your call for action
against the invaders
on the border
they march to the border
to **** the invaders
your words matter
Mr. President
and your false words of regret
fool no one
the damage has been done
the hate has been spread
just as you intended
and you have the gall
to call yourself A Christian
you are the anti-Christ
you are not a Christian
so please quite pretending
to be what you are not
please man up
accept your responsibility
set things right
apologize
the dead though
don’t need your prayers
they need action
they need leadership
and you are the president
so please start acting
like you give a ****
and if you do so
perhaps you will find
people will follow you
but please quite the words of hate
the words that hurt
and quit calling immigrants invaders
and vermin
they are human beings
they are deserving of respect
this I ask of you In Jesus’s name even though I am not a Christian another day, another shooting
Another Day Another Shooting
another day in paradise
just another day in Americal
Land of the free
Home of the brave
and gunshots,
lots of gunshots more guns for all cries the NRA
yes another day
another gun battle another white man
who just wants to ****
the President sends his condolences Thanks the law enforcement for an incredible job well done It was horrible
Hate has no place
in our country
and we will take of it
and do what ever we can do
condolences nothing but false words empty words
lots of things to do
it is mental illness problem
but he fails to mention
the words gun at al
not at all
and tomorrow and tomorrow
but he at least finally
said hate has no role in country nothing but prime BS
in my humble opinion
he did not mention white supremacy his rhetoric had nothing
nothing to do
about this at all
and so tomorrow
I will turn on the TV and we see
nothing at all
and the dead will remain dead the guns will fire again
nothing will be done
welcome to America land of the free home of the brave
poems about gun violence
LJW
Feb 2014
I've given poetry readings where less than a handful of people were present. It's a humbling experience. It’s also a deeply familiar experience.
"Poetry is useless," poet Geoffrey ****** said in a 2013 interview, "but it is useless the way the soul is useless—it is unnecessary, but we would not be what we are without it."
I was raised a Roman Catholic, and though I don’t go to Mass regularly anymore, I still remember early mornings during Advent when I went to liturgies at my parochial school. It was part of my offering—the sacrifice I made to honor the impending birth of the Savior—along with giving up candy at Lent. So few people attended at that hour that the priest turned on only a few lights near the altar. Approaching the front of the church, my plastic book bag rustling against my winter coat, I felt as if I were nearing the seashore at sunrise: the silhouettes of old widows on their kneelers at low tide, waiting for the priest to come in, starting the ritual in plain, unsung vernacular. No organist to blast us into reverence. No procession.
Every day, all over the world, these sparsely attended ceremonies still happen. Masses are said. Poetry is read. Poems are written on screens and scraps of paper. When I retire for the day, I move into a meditative, solitary, poetic space. These are the central filaments burning through my life, and the longer I live, the more they seem to be fused together.
Poetry is marginal, thankless, untethered from fame and fortune; it's also gut level, urgent, private yet yearning for connection. In all these ways, it's like prayer for me. I’m a not-quite-lapsed Catholic with Zen leanings, but I’ll always pray—and I’ll always write poems. Writing hasn’t brought me the Poetry Jackpot I once pursued, but it draws on the same inner wiring that flickers when I pray.
• • •
In the 2012 collection A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith, nineteen contemporary American poets, from Buddhist to Wiccan to Christian, discuss how their artistic and spiritual lives inform one another. Kazim Ali, who was raised a Shia Muslim, observes in his essay “Doubt and Seeking”:
[Prayer is] speaking to someone you know is not going to be able to speak back, so you're allowed to be the most honest that you can be. In prayer you're allowed to be as purely selfish as you like. You can ask for something completely irrational. I have written that prayer is a form of panic, because in prayer you don't really think you're going to be answered. You'll either get what you want or you won't.
You could replace the word "prayer" with "poetry" with little or no loss of meaning. I'd even go so far as to say that submitting my work to a journal often feels like this, too. Sometimes, when I get an answer in the form of an acceptance, I'm stunned.
"I never think of a possible God reading my poems, although the gods used to love the arts,” writes ***** Howe in her essay "Footsteps over Ground." She adds:
Poetry could be spoken into a well, of course, and drop like a penny into the black water. Sometimes I think that there is a heaven for poems and novels and music and dance and paintings, but they might only be hard-worked sparks off a great mill, which may add up to a whole-cloth in the infinite.
And here, you could easily replace the word "poetry" with "prayer." The penny falling to the bottom of a well is more often what we experience. But both poetry and prayer are things humans have learned to do in order to go on. Doubt is a given, but we do get to choose what it is we doubt.
A God in the House Book Cover
Quite a few authors in A God in the House (Howe, Gerald Stern, Jane Hirschfield, Christian Wiman) invoke the spiritual writing of Simone Weil, including her assertion that "absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." This sounds like the Zen concept of mindfulness. And it broadens the possibility for poetry as prayer, regardless of content, since writing poetry is an act of acute mindfulness. We mostly use words in the practical world to persuade or communicate, but prayers in various religious traditions can be lamentations of great sorrow. Help me, save me, take this pain away—I am in agony. In a church or a temple or a mosque, such prayerful lamentation is viewed as a form of expression for its own good, even when it doesn't lead immediately to a change of emotional state.
Perhaps the unmixed attention Weil wrote of is a unity of intention and utterance that’s far too rare in our own lives. We seldom match what we think or feel with what we actually say. When it happens spontaneously in poetry or prayer—Allen Ginsberg's "First thought, best thought" ideal —it feels like a miracle, as do all the moments when I manage to get out of my own way as a poet.
Many people who pray don’t envision a clear image of whom or what they’re praying to. But poets often have some sense of their potential readers. There are authorities whose approval I've tried to win or simply people I've tried to please: teachers, fellow writers, editors, contest judges—even my uncle, who actually reads my poems when they appear in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he used to work.
And yet, my most immersed writing is not done with those real faces in mind. I write to the same general entity to which I pray. It's as if the dome of my skull extends to the ceiling of the room I'm in, then to the dome of the sky and outward. It’s like the musings I had as a child lying awake at night, when my imagination took me to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But then I emerge from this wide-open state and begin thinking about possible readers—and the faces appear.
This might also be where the magic ends.
• • •
I write poetry because it’s what I do, just as frogs croak and mathematicians ponder numbers. Poetry draws on something in me that has persisted over time, even as I’ve distracted myself with other goals, demands, and purposes; even as I’ve been forced by circumstance to strip writing poetry of certain expectations.
"Life on a Lily Pad" © Michelle Tribe
"Life on a Lily Pad"
© Michelle Tribe
At 21, I was sure I’d publish my first book before I was 25. I’m past my forties now and have yet to find a publisher for a book-length collection, though I've published more than a hundred individual poems and two chapbooks. So, if a “real” book is the equivalent of receiving indisputable evidence that your prayers are being answered, I’m still waiting.
It hasn’t been easy to shed the bitter urgency I’ve felt on learning that one of my manuscripts was a finalist in this or that contest, but was not the winner. Writing in order to attain external success can be as tainted and brittle as saying a prayer that, in truth, is more like a command: (Please), God, let me get through this difficulty (or else)—
Or else what? It’s a false threat, if there’s little else left to do but pray. When my partner is in the ICU, his lungs full of fluid backed up from a defective aortic valve; when my nephew is deployed to Afghanistan; when an ex is drowning in his addiction; when I hit a dead end in my job and don’t think I can do it one more day—every effort to imagine that these things might be gotten through is a kind of prayer that helps me weather a life over which I have little control.
Repeated disappointment in my quest to hit the Poetry Jackpot has taught me to recast the jackpot in the lowercase—locating it not in the outcome but in the act of writing itself, sorting out the healthy from the unhealthy intentions for doing it. Of course, this shift in perspective was not as neat as the preceding sentence makes it seem. There were years of thrashing about, of turning over stones and even throwing them, then moments of exhaustion when I just barely heard the message from within:
This is too fragile and fraught to be something that guides your whole life.
I didn't hear those words, exactly—and this is important. For decades, I’ve made my living as a writer. But I can't manipulate or edit total gut realizations. I can throw words at them, but it would be like shaking a water bottle at a forest fire; at best, I can chase the feeling with metaphors: It's like this—no, like this—or like this.
So, odd as this sounds for a poet, I now seek wordlessness. When I meditate, I intercept hundreds of times the impulse to shape a perception into words. Reduced to basics, the challenge facing any writer is knowing what to say—and what not to.
• • •
To read or listen to poetry requires unmixed attention just as writing it does. And when a poem is read aloud, there's a communal, at times ritualistic, element that can make a reading feel like collective prayer, even if there are only a few listeners in the audience or I’m listening by myself.
"Allen Ginsberg" © MDCArchives
Allen Ginsberg
© MDCArchives
When I want to feel moved and enlarged, all I have to do is play Patti Smith's rendition of Ginsberg's "Footnote to Howl." His long list poem from 1955 gathers people, places, objects, and abstractions onto a single exuberant altar. It’s certainly a prayer, one that opens this way:
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and **** and hand and ******* holy!
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!
Some parts of Ginsberg's list ("forgiveness! charity! faith! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!") belong in any conventional catalogue of what a prayer celebrates as sacred. Other profane elements ("the ***** of the grandfathers of Kansas!") gain admission because they are swept up into his ritualistic roll call.
I can easily parody Ginsberg's litany: Holy the Dairy Queen, holy the barns of the Amish where cheese is releasing its ambitious stench, holy the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Internet. But reading the poem aloud feels to me the way putting on ritual garments must to a shaman or rabbi or priest. Watching Patti Smith perform the poem (various versions are available on YouTube), I get shivers seeing how it transforms her, and it's clear why she titled her treatment of the poem "Spell."
A parody can't do that. It can't manifest as the palpable unity of intention and utterance. It can't do what Emily Dickinson famously said that poetry did to her:
If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only [ways] I know it. Is there any other way.
Like the process of prayer—to God, to a better and bigger self, to the atmosphere—writing can be a step toward unifying heart, mind, body, universe. Ginsberg's frenzied catalogue ends on "brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul"; Eliot's The Waste Land on "shantih," or "the peace that surpasseth understanding." Neither bang nor whimper, endings like these are at once humble and tenacious. They say "Amen" and step aside so that a greater wordlessness can work its magic.
"Poetry is useless," poet Geoffrey ****** said in a 2013 interview, "but it is useless the way the soul is useless—it is unnecessary, but we would not be what we are without it."
I was raised a Roman Catholic, and though I don’t go to Mass regularly anymore, I still remember early mornings during Advent when I went to liturgies at my parochial school. It was part of my offering—the sacrifice I made to honor the impending birth of the Savior—along with giving up candy at Lent. So few people attended at that hour that the priest turned on only a few lights near the altar. Approaching the front of the church, my plastic book bag rustling against my winter coat, I felt as if I were nearing the seashore at sunrise: the silhouettes of old widows on their kneelers at low tide, waiting for the priest to come in, starting the ritual in plain, unsung vernacular. No organist to blast us into reverence. No procession.
Every day, all over the world, these sparsely attended ceremonies still happen. Masses are said. Poetry is read. Poems are written on screens and scraps of paper. When I retire for the day, I move into a meditative, solitary, poetic space. These are the central filaments burning through my life, and the longer I live, the more they seem to be fused together.
Poetry is marginal, thankless, untethered from fame and fortune; it's also gut level, urgent, private yet yearning for connection. In all these ways, it's like prayer for me. I’m a not-quite-lapsed Catholic with Zen leanings, but I’ll always pray—and I’ll always write poems. Writing hasn’t brought me the Poetry Jackpot I once pursued, but it draws on the same inner wiring that flickers when I pray.
• • •
In the 2012 collection A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith, nineteen contemporary American poets, from Buddhist to Wiccan to Christian, discuss how their artistic and spiritual lives inform one another. Kazim Ali, who was raised a Shia Muslim, observes in his essay “Doubt and Seeking”:
[Prayer is] speaking to someone you know is not going to be able to speak back, so you're allowed to be the most honest that you can be. In prayer you're allowed to be as purely selfish as you like. You can ask for something completely irrational. I have written that prayer is a form of panic, because in prayer you don't really think you're going to be answered. You'll either get what you want or you won't.
You could replace the word "prayer" with "poetry" with little or no loss of meaning. I'd even go so far as to say that submitting my work to a journal often feels like this, too. Sometimes, when I get an answer in the form of an acceptance, I'm stunned.
"I never think of a possible God reading my poems, although the gods used to love the arts,” writes ***** Howe in her essay "Footsteps over Ground." She adds:
Poetry could be spoken into a well, of course, and drop like a penny into the black water. Sometimes I think that there is a heaven for poems and novels and music and dance and paintings, but they might only be hard-worked sparks off a great mill, which may add up to a whole-cloth in the infinite.
And here, you could easily replace the word "poetry" with "prayer." The penny falling to the bottom of a well is more often what we experience. But both poetry and prayer are things humans have learned to do in order to go on. Doubt is a given, but we do get to choose what it is we doubt.
A God in the House Book Cover
Quite a few authors in A God in the House (Howe, Gerald Stern, Jane Hirschfield, Christian Wiman) invoke the spiritual writing of Simone Weil, including her assertion that "absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." This sounds like the Zen concept of mindfulness. And it broadens the possibility for poetry as prayer, regardless of content, since writing poetry is an act of acute mindfulness. We mostly use words in the practical world to persuade or communicate, but prayers in various religious traditions can be lamentations of great sorrow. Help me, save me, take this pain away—I am in agony. In a church or a temple or a mosque, such prayerful lamentation is viewed as a form of expression for its own good, even when it doesn't lead immediately to a change of emotional state.
Perhaps the unmixed attention Weil wrote of is a unity of intention and utterance that’s far too rare in our own lives. We seldom match what we think or feel with what we actually say. When it happens spontaneously in poetry or prayer—Allen Ginsberg's "First thought, best thought" ideal —it feels like a miracle, as do all the moments when I manage to get out of my own way as a poet.
Many people who pray don’t envision a clear image of whom or what they’re praying to. But poets often have some sense of their potential readers. There are authorities whose approval I've tried to win or simply people I've tried to please: teachers, fellow writers, editors, contest judges—even my uncle, who actually reads my poems when they appear in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he used to work.
And yet, my most immersed writing is not done with those real faces in mind. I write to the same general entity to which I pray. It's as if the dome of my skull extends to the ceiling of the room I'm in, then to the dome of the sky and outward. It’s like the musings I had as a child lying awake at night, when my imagination took me to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. But then I emerge from this wide-open state and begin thinking about possible readers—and the faces appear.
This might also be where the magic ends.
• • •
I write poetry because it’s what I do, just as frogs croak and mathematicians ponder numbers. Poetry draws on something in me that has persisted over time, even as I’ve distracted myself with other goals, demands, and purposes; even as I’ve been forced by circumstance to strip writing poetry of certain expectations.
"Life on a Lily Pad" © Michelle Tribe
"Life on a Lily Pad"
© Michelle Tribe
At 21, I was sure I’d publish my first book before I was 25. I’m past my forties now and have yet to find a publisher for a book-length collection, though I've published more than a hundred individual poems and two chapbooks. So, if a “real” book is the equivalent of receiving indisputable evidence that your prayers are being answered, I’m still waiting.
It hasn’t been easy to shed the bitter urgency I’ve felt on learning that one of my manuscripts was a finalist in this or that contest, but was not the winner. Writing in order to attain external success can be as tainted and brittle as saying a prayer that, in truth, is more like a command: (Please), God, let me get through this difficulty (or else)—
Or else what? It’s a false threat, if there’s little else left to do but pray. When my partner is in the ICU, his lungs full of fluid backed up from a defective aortic valve; when my nephew is deployed to Afghanistan; when an ex is drowning in his addiction; when I hit a dead end in my job and don’t think I can do it one more day—every effort to imagine that these things might be gotten through is a kind of prayer that helps me weather a life over which I have little control.
Repeated disappointment in my quest to hit the Poetry Jackpot has taught me to recast the jackpot in the lowercase—locating it not in the outcome but in the act of writing itself, sorting out the healthy from the unhealthy intentions for doing it. Of course, this shift in perspective was not as neat as the preceding sentence makes it seem. There were years of thrashing about, of turning over stones and even throwing them, then moments of exhaustion when I just barely heard the message from within:
This is too fragile and fraught to be something that guides your whole life.
I didn't hear those words, exactly—and this is important. For decades, I’ve made my living as a writer. But I can't manipulate or edit total gut realizations. I can throw words at them, but it would be like shaking a water bottle at a forest fire; at best, I can chase the feeling with metaphors: It's like this—no, like this—or like this.
So, odd as this sounds for a poet, I now seek wordlessness. When I meditate, I intercept hundreds of times the impulse to shape a perception into words. Reduced to basics, the challenge facing any writer is knowing what to say—and what not to.
• • •
To read or listen to poetry requires unmixed attention just as writing it does. And when a poem is read aloud, there's a communal, at times ritualistic, element that can make a reading feel like collective prayer, even if there are only a few listeners in the audience or I’m listening by myself.
"Allen Ginsberg" © MDCArchives
Allen Ginsberg
© MDCArchives
When I want to feel moved and enlarged, all I have to do is play Patti Smith's rendition of Ginsberg's "Footnote to Howl." His long list poem from 1955 gathers people, places, objects, and abstractions onto a single exuberant altar. It’s certainly a prayer, one that opens this way:
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and **** and hand and ******* holy!
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!
Some parts of Ginsberg's list ("forgiveness! charity! faith! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!") belong in any conventional catalogue of what a prayer celebrates as sacred. Other profane elements ("the ***** of the grandfathers of Kansas!") gain admission because they are swept up into his ritualistic roll call.
I can easily parody Ginsberg's litany: Holy the Dairy Queen, holy the barns of the Amish where cheese is releasing its ambitious stench, holy the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Internet. But reading the poem aloud feels to me the way putting on ritual garments must to a shaman or rabbi or priest. Watching Patti Smith perform the poem (various versions are available on YouTube), I get shivers seeing how it transforms her, and it's clear why she titled her treatment of the poem "Spell."
A parody can't do that. It can't manifest as the palpable unity of intention and utterance. It can't do what Emily Dickinson famously said that poetry did to her:
If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only [ways] I know it. Is there any other way.
Like the process of prayer—to God, to a better and bigger self, to the atmosphere—writing can be a step toward unifying heart, mind, body, universe. Ginsberg's frenzied catalogue ends on "brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul"; Eliot's The Waste Land on "shantih," or "the peace that surpasseth understanding." Neither bang nor whimper, endings like these are at once humble and tenacious. They say "Amen" and step aside so that a greater wordlessness can work its magic.
From the website http://talkingwriting.com/poetry-prayer