Author: poetryfest

There.

Walking through the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
On my way to Iowa.

Spoke to Gertrude Stein.
Spoke to a harlequin.
Came to the painting titled Guernica.

Stopped.

I’d seen a picture of the painting
On a postcard that my art
Teacher showed me once.

Now I could see that picture
Was like a small printed map
Of this painting.

Schematic.

And I saw the people
And the people came and went,
And the people were dead.

They had marked the children.
They held the children
The children were dead.

There.

-by Janet Daily, August 1980

I searched for her
Past the starts
Through different realms.
Each path ended
in silence.
The stick spoke through the silence
Not with words,
But with pulses
I held it
And I knew
She is gone.

Her eyes –
tiny wooden coffins,
wrapped up in spider webs.
Inside – unnecessary staff,
memories and corpses.
Her hands – broken fins,
they flew too much.
The legs – dead branches,
blown by sad storms,
the leaves, the warmth – gone.
Hair – hurricanes of ash,
scattered inside others’ lifes.
She is a total disaster,
she is the nature.
All the grief
inside her.

Hold your son in your hands and
Watch him struggle to breathe.
Tell him you love him, but
“It’s okay, you can leave.”
Weep for lost time
As you cradle his head,
Weep, too, for his brother
Who came already dead.

One year later
Return to that room
Say goodbye to your daughter
Who danced in the womb.
Because of that energy
you named her for flames.
That one was special,
But you love all their names.

Nearly two days later
Another bundle of joy.
He fights for an hour;
He’s such a strong boy.
When passed to his mother,
He fades away fast.
Was he waiting for her?
Is that how he held fast?

No more waiting;
Now the final goodbye.
Do you even have
More tears you can cry?
The baby of babies,
Your heart in a whirl.
Her mother then whispers
“Fly high, baby girl.”

With that, she is gone,
The pain comes unfurled.
You just survived,
The end of the world.

As time passes you question,
An endless stream of whys.
Those close will support you,
Just don’t open their eyes.

On their birthdays, take time,
Bake their memory a pie.
Try not to let go

a seashell found sunk,
in sand like crumbs in cushions.
once it was a home.

my home felt yellow,
before my dad died in there;
alone, unjustly.

it was yellow from
laughter as our oxygen.
now it’s so quiet.

it’d be nice to say
it’s yellow for a new child
now, but it’s mine still.

alive in my head —
my dad, alone in his bed;
my seashell found dead.

i know he’s with me.
shells in sand can nest again,
but in crimson red;

red like cardinals.
he sends me signs, still i miss
my yellow, my shell.

so, i’ll scream my grief.
i will not pretend it ends.
i’ll make us a home

that’s orange.

By taylor dorothy

Listen.
Not with your ears,
but with the cracks in your ribs,
the hollow places that still echo
with the names of those
who mistook your love
for a game they could win.

I’m not talking to the you
that smiles and says, “I’m fine.”
I’m talking to the you
that knows love shouldn’t taste
like blood on your tongue
from biting back the words,
“Why am I never enough?”

Slow down.
The love you’re starving for,
the kind that stays,
the kind that doesn’t flinch
when your storms roll in,
doesn’t come dressed in apologies
or half-hearted promises.
It doesn’t scream.
It doesn’t beg.
It doesn’t leave.

It comes like dawn,
silent, inevitable,
painting the sky in colors
you forgot existed.

I know what you’ve been told:
That love is supposed to hurt,
to leave you gasping,
to make you prove your worth
over and over and over.
They’re gonna love you ’cause you’re beautiful,
but it’s another reason why they wanna hurt you.
I’ve seen what that does to a soul,
how it turns a heart into a battlefield,
how it makes you kneel
at the feet of those
who never learned to pray.

Your light?
It terrifies them.
Because you don’t just shine,
you expose.
And some people
would rather live in shadows
than face the brilliance
of what they could be
if they ever dared to try.

So, hold your cards close.
Not out of fear,
but because you’ve learned
not every hand deserves your truth.
Let them earn the right
to see your scars,
not as proof of your pain,
but as maps to your survival.

Wait.
Not for the one who says “I love you”
between drinks and empty hands,
but for the one who stays
when the music stops,
when the crowd leaves,
when the world goes quiet
and all that’s left
is the raw, unpolished truth of you.

Wait for the one
who doesn’t just love your fire,
but guards it,
feeds it,
kneels beside it
on the nights you forget
how to burn.

This isn’t about luck.
This is about knowing
when to walk away from the table
when the stakes are your soul.
This is about recognizing
that the right love
doesn’t leave you trembling,
it steadies you.

And when it comes?
You won’t have to ask,
“Is this it?”
You’ll know.
Not because the world stops,
but because for the first time,
you realize
it’s finally safe
to let it spin.

Only God gives free grace

God made me and knows all my weakness
He knows where I come from, good and bad
And my sin, being hurt then hurting you.
Although he knows me, his love never ends.

In his love, he sent us his only son
To heal our hurting and sinful souls
Made one in him, to bring us love and peace
Because he paid the price, he always says

“I forgive you.”

Your brother comes to you seeking mercy.
Jesus did not pay my price for your sin,
Nor pay, you may now say, your price for mine.
Jesus did not cover my pain and loss.

Your words and acts brought me great suffering
God’s gifts of love and peace within me died
And left me only pain and fear of you.
You can be sure my price is very high!

Nothing is free in this life.

But you have now lost any value to me
If I thought you might be in my future
Jesus’ blood might cover your debt to me
Or I might let you pay me full price.

But you are now useless to my future
The pain of keeping you is just too great
So you will never pay me any price
Except the one thing you are still good for:

We all need somebody to hate.

I have made myself fully blind to you
All that remains is my bitter memory
How can I ever forgive you, seeing
To me you will never again exist?

A life of quiet, hidden bitterness
Is worth it, if I can hold you to pay!
I have been told that everyone does it
No one forgives unimportant people.

No one is free in this life.

Friend, my life is now near reaching its end
Your life has only just barely begun
You do not yet know the great destruction
Quietly harbored bitterness can bring.

For my few short days I will mourn daily
The destruction I have brought to your life
Praying you will someday say to me
The most blessed words I shall never hear:

“I forgive you.”

© 2025 by Ian Bruce Johnson

Was Jesus sent only to nice people
Those accepted by their own as like us
To make life on our own terms easier?
Or was he sent to the bothersome
The dirty, the poor, the troublemakers
To those by their own people discarded?

The untouchable lepers Jesus touched
Those shunned for their contagious uncleanness
Being made to warn others they were coming
Because their very presence could defile
Jesus approached and by his touch made clean
They were cleansed, and Jesus not made dirty.

The poor woman by twelve years in her blood
Defiled, so that none could be in her place
To touch or even sit where she had sat
Snuck up to Jesus so she could touch him
She touched and was healed, fully restored
Jesus gave her his peace without reproof.

Jesus received the outpouring of love
Given him by the immoral woman
In front of the Pharisee who despised
All of her kind, but did what he would not
Bathing Jesus’ feet with perfume and tears
Forever is her kindness remembered!

In that foreign woman from Phoenicia
To whose people Jesus had not been sent
Who asked healing for her afflicted son
Knowing that the Jews saw her as a dog
Jesus saw faith greater than that of all
His own people, and granted her request.

Jesus’ people had hated the whole race
Of the woman at the well a long time.
Samaritans returned the Jews’ hate, too.
And the woman was an adulteress.
But the woman found the water of life
Jesus gave her to share with her people.

Levi the tax collector, who was shunned
And hated for defrauding his people
That same Levi Jesus called away from
His tax booth to follow him for three years
Taught him to follow as his disciple
And gave Matthew the book we all still read.

With tax collectors who for the hated
Romans robbed their own people
Jesus sat and ate and offered pardon
A place with him for those who believed him
And to him turned from seeking their profit
So he took their shame before the people.

Jesus was himself by his own discarded
Hung naked on a cross where all his shame
All my shame all the world might clearly see
Yet he kept for the thief who believed him
Though for his own bloody crime put to shame
This day, the hope of seeing paradise.

And, Oh! That murderous Pharisee Saul
Caused so many saints to be put to death
Surely he is one all of us should shun!
To that same Saul came the risen Jesus
Appeared visibly in all his glory
Accepting Paul as one of his Apostles!

As one also shunned as too much trouble
Lord, teach me to comfort the discarded
To take on myself your shame, not my own
Touching in love the hated and the shamed
Those shunned because they don’t seem just like us
Or, like me, they others too much bother.

© 2025 by Ian Bruce Johnson

A guide used long ago by many in the church
Tells me of people with needs of different kinds
All these my Lord for my good in my world has placed:
The one who has things and accolades that tempt me,
My neighbor, and the one who my soul and heart hurts;
Those I would kill with my words and those I would hate;
The ones whose bad and harmful deeds I must reprove;
The ones for whose growth into full life I must pray;
The ones I shall love more than I love my own life.

For these people I never need labor to search
As to me all these the Lord in His wisdom binds
In them I will find his will for me now is based
Because of them to learn more like my Lord to be.
The ones who in me his abundant love alerts
Following its voice both of us to elevate
That those who see may that same love in me approve
And some may therefore near to him in their love stay
And thus, with us be made one with the Lord in life.

There will be those whose wealth and notoriety tempt
Me to want what they have with a greedy desire
To envy them and to speak of them jealously
To seek to be like them because it seems that theirs
Is the way to money, acclaim and true success.
Oh, how much I often wish to run after them!
But I must not! To be content with what God gives
I must show them the grace to keep all that is theirs
While I for love of them keep the Lord who is mine.

My neighbor is one who needs me, none is exempt
Let not my neglect of some prove me a liar!
But reach out to each fearlessly and zealously
Like Jesus’ good Samaritan who, when he nears
The injured man who his people would never bless
By love overcame all his people’s hate to come
And does what the religious men would not: forgives
The enmity of the victim’s people and shares.
In the story of his love God’s love still does shine!

What can I say of the one who deeply hurts me?
Who hurts my body or takes away what is mine
Or, worse, violates my heart and injures my soul?
The ancient text counsels me “you shall bear no grudge.”
The one who hurt me so much remains my neighbor
One God has placed in my life to show me Himself
One to whom I am still to show the love of God
Though I must ask God to give wisdom to know how
My grudge must not cut off God’s love for them in me.

By some I am told I must now to hate be free
My friends and all the world say I must have a spine
The strength to hate those we tell ourselves wrongly stole
Our peace, our friends, our things, or those who us do judge.
But the counsel is clear, though it takes great labor
“Hate no one,” it says, as I must remind myself
When fear and rage me to contempt and hate do prod
Instead to ask God and work with the Spirit now
That we may together set free His love in me.

Hurtful words to my lips come all too easily!
Sometimes carelessly, sometimes plunged like a dagger
Into the heart of a friend of God, beloved
Or recklessly as gossip shot into the soul
Of one with whom I quarrel not, to make myself
Look good by degrading one made in God’s image.
I too know the pain of being spoken against.
Those in my world who speak evil I must still love
Speak well of them and not seek to retaliate!

Some in my world may need reproof, said lovingly.
Things that cause harm, errors in which they still stagger,
Must be set right by those by whom they are well-loved
But faced gently, by those who share with them the goal
To take the life of Jesus in them off the shelf
And let Him be seen by others now, in this age
His grace and love to all those they love well dispensed
That we together will show power from above
And the power of evil among us negate.

Some will need my prayers so that their needs will be
Met from the great treasure the Lord has given us.
Some needs we can see, but I must never neglect
That our need to know Him better we cannot see
To know His power, and the full depth of His love
That we, his people, are His abundant treasure
In our oneness he shares his abundant riches
Within each of us with others in His body
That His love will govern each in all of their life.

Only then do I see those given to teach me
The most how I am to be like my Lord Jesus.
They may not be friends; some may despise and reject
As some of His own nailed him to the cruel tree!
He gives me some to love as he did, from above
Although they made His pain their source of great pleasure,
He forgave, knowing some would join in His riches.
The one who teaches me most about His body:
The one I shall love more than I love my own life!

________________________________________

Explanation: The Didache (the “teaching”) is a short text — it fits within five pages of ordinary book text — that was written by an unknown author most likely sometime in the last quarter of the First Century, C.E. It was written as a treatise or “church order” on Christian ethics and church observances. It is not included in the Canon of Scripture, but nevertheless contains some interesting, useful and even beautiful ideas. My poem was inspired by this passage from the end of the second chapter, in which the last line appears to tie together all of the ethical statements that precede it:
“You shall not covet the things of your neighbor;
You shall not swear;
You shall not bear false witness;
You shall not speak evil;
You shall bear no grudge;
You shall not take evil counsel against your neighbor;
You shall not hate anyone;
But some you shall reprove;
And concerning some you shall pray;
And some you shall love more than your own life.”
Didache (Tr. Roberts) on earlychristianwritings.com.

Poem © 2025 by Ian Bruce Johnson.

Of what value is my reputation
If it is nothing but an illusion?
A lie, a falsehood crafted with care
To “sell” something to the world out there?

It surely cannot be my place
To create myself an unreal face
To “sell” myself to those who matter
When you, Lord, are my Creator!

And should I “sell” myself to you
The One who knows all that’s true?
You already see all that is within
All that will be or has ever been!

So what use is it to live a lie
To hide the good or what is awry?
Show all things that in me abide
And what is seen let You decide!

© 2025 by Ian Bruce Johnson