Sample Poems by Frederick Turner

Father Philip Kelly

My Lord, it's not that I'm not grateful for
The times, oh beautiful, You showed Yourself
Shining in light that came down from the window
And fell upon the altar during Mass;
The time I walked out there among the people
And that Nigerian girl with plaited hair,
Just five years old, would not let go my hand;
The time I saw my brother at the ranch
Before we knew that he had HIV,
And all the live oaks shone in the red sun
As it went down behind the misty hill;
It's not that I don't see the tips of heaven
That poke through into every shade of life.

It's all those times of dead, unshaped exhaustion,
The loneliness without a wife or child,
The noonday devil, that's acedia,
The moods that unabsorbed sweep over me
And feed themselves upon their former selves;
The long sad waiting for the gates of heaven,
When waiting wasn't what I'm called to do;
It's when I see the blank incomprehension
On Joseph's face when I speak of my faith,
And wonder if I'm caught in a delusion,
And maybe there's no me and there's no You.

Dr. Joseph Guttman

It's odd how Father Kelly seems
Sometimes to miss his chance at chess,
As if his strange religious dreams
Distract him when there is no stress;

It's been the same since college when
We practiced for the tournaments;
He'd take the pawn and lose his queen
Just when he'd shattered my defense.

I think Phil finds my unbelief
Troubling in such a longtime friend;
He's never given any grief
Or tried to play the reverend,

But I've been cutting bodies since
I can't remember, and it's plain:
If the soul's got a residence
It's only in the waking brain.

And when I think of Mrs. Jones,
Whose breasts, that suckled Kate and Kai,
Nurtured the cancer in her bones,
How can I pray to Adonai?

And Abdul told his friend, my Noah,
How all his Palestinian kin
Were dead or jailed in this "new Shoah";
What God are you to solace in?

And whom am I now talking to?
Has Father Kelly got to me?
And if I'm just a brain, then who
Is talking so obsessively?

Dave Bradley

The night after the "spygate" show
I had a vivid dream:
Nonsense, but it won't let me go,
It shakes my "self-esteem".

My God, you know my talk show tries
To tell what truth it can.
The liberals were full of lies,
And I got partisan.

I dreamed of my young hot-rod days
But now, not as of old,
The cars we souped up for the race
Were radio-controlled.

The other racers broke the rules:
Bore spacings weren't stock,
They'd canted valves and faked the shells,
And milled the heads and block.

So I had kluges of my own:
I'd tweaked the pins and cams,
Lightened the brakes and scaled her down,
Put in carb tunnel rams.

The lights blipped down, the rubber screamed,
Chase cars were left behind,
But not one of the racers seemed
To worry or to mind;

There was a little township there;
Blue lights went round and round;
Smoke and child's weeping filled the air„
I'll not forget that sound.

What have I done? Has rhetoric
Got out of our control?
Has partisanship made us sick?
O God, protect my soul.

Perhaps now the Dave Bradley Show
Should lay off of Islam;
I'll let that Arab student go:
Rule one is "Do no harm."
Gustavo Herrera

Blessed Mary, ever-virgin,
Intercede for me,
Help me come to my decision,
Show me what my course should be.

Should I tell the conversation
That I overheard?
Abdul is my friend, my roomie,
I'm not sure of what occurred.

When I hung with the Black Angels
There was one big rule:
Never snitch on camaradas,
Tio Taco isn't cool.

How much have I changed in college?
Who's that other guy?
Was it really bombs he mentioned?
Should I go and testify?

Father Kelly got me in here,
He's a real good priest.
If I tell it in confession,
I can sleep again at least.

Tara Bickle

He's got just two days to invite me,
By now he can't help realize
That I won't go except on the arm of
The boy with the cornflower eyes.

He's the one who likes fencing and singing,
Who never will self-aggrandize,
Who knows how I'm feeling, and shows it,
The boy with the cornflower eyes.

The others just want me for something
You get with sweet-talking and lies;
All I've got is this soul and this body,
And You, Jesus, gentle and wise;

And if I should ever have babies,
And nurse them with soft lullabys,
May he be their daddy, dear Jesus,
The boy with the cornflower eyes.

I've picked out my prom-dress already:
It's blue as the North Texas skies
When the wheatfields are gold with the harvest,
To go with his cornflower eyes.