Good and Honest People Can Do Evil

 

A poem for Bastille Day about how idealistic ends can inspire brutal means:

 

Good and honest people can do evil
As just ends can inspire brutal means.
In politics, a saint can be a devil,

Calculating what might be the level
Of suffering the greater good redeems.
Good and honest people can do evil

As well-honed ideologies give ample
Right and cause to murder for one's dreams.
In politics, a saint can be a devil,

Romantic as the idealistic rebel,
Tyrannical as truth splits at the seams.
Good and honest people can do evil,

Reducing life's complexities to simple
Slogans that are best conveyed by screams.
In politics, a saint can be a devil,

More saint, more devil, a hammer on an anvil
That shapes the willing faithful into fiends.
Good and honest people can do evil.
In politics, a saint can be a devil.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Cantus Firmus Monks. By Doug Maxwell, Media Right Productions. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/goodan.html. For more poems for Bastille Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/bastilledaypoems.html .

July

 

A calendar poem for July:

 

July lies lazy, like a muddy river
Unconscious of its slow slide to the sea.
Life seems like it just goes on forever,
Yet deeper currents know it cannot be.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Allégro. By Emmit Fenn. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/july.html. For more calendar poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/calendarpoems.html .

Just Think of How It Was That Hot July

 

An American Independence Day poem about what it might have been like on July 4, 1776:

 

Just think of how it was that hot July
Under threat of being hanged for treason.
Let yourself have faith enough to die,
Yet let that faith be in the power of reason.
Feel the heady fear of rash rebellion,
Of chaos, blood, death, vengeance, mayhem, blight.
Unleash with noble words that ancient hellion
Reigning cruelly over years of night.
They turned out to be right, those bold, brave men.
However, think what terrors faced them then.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: E Minor Prelude. By Frederic Chopin. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/justth.html. For more poems for American Independence Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/july4thpoems.html .

I Can't Believe I'm Marrying My Grandma's Paper Boy

 

A wedding poem about love at first sight:

I can't believe I'm marrying
My grandma's paperboy!
She said that you were "dreamy"
And the sort I would enjoy.

My grandma! Well, I humored her
And took a look at you,
And saw, those many years ago,
That what she said was true.

But not so fast, because we lived
A continent apart,
And were too young to comprehend
The wisdom of the heart.

We needed time to grow into
The truth that we had seen,
And let some others stampede through
The years that came between.

But Grandma always said that you
Were just the one for me,
And now we all are gathered here
To publicly agree!

How often can we say that love
Was truly at first sight?
But since I first laid eyes on you,
I've known Grandma was right!

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Sharp Senses. By Ugonna Onyekwe. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/icantb.html. For more wedding poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/weddingpoems.html .

Fantasies Find Flower in What's Real

 

A Father’s Day poem about how having a family gives life purpose:

 

Fantasies find flower in what's real --
A wife and children waiting at the door.
Though there is much, perhaps, one would repeal,
How sweet it is to know what one is for.
Enduring love is like an organ tone
Resounding 'neath the restless notes of home,
So beautiful one could not ask for more.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Pachabelly. By Huma Huma. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/fanta3.html. For more Father’s Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/fathersdaypoems.html .

Remember When We All Were Young Together

 

A poem for a high school or college reunion:

 

Remember when we all were young together,

Each a part of each’s life forever?

Uniting now to touch that time again,

Nostalgic for the years so quickly gone.

In a present hijacked by a past

Offering a grace too deep to grasp,

Now we pause to gather and remember.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: No.6 In My Dreams. By Esther Abrami. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/remem6.html. For more poems for special occasions, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/occasionspoems.html .

June

 

A calendar poem for June:

 

June is promise bent on a reward,
Unsparing in his self-inflicted vow,
Not knowing that the golden time is now,
Ever the bright dream he struggles toward.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Borderless. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/june.html. For more calendar poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/calendarpoems.html .

Make a Little Time for Public Mourning

 

A Memorial Day poem about the need for a day of public mourning:

 

Make a little time for public mourning,
Easing the harsh pangs of hidden grief.
Maybe ritual tears will bring relief,
Offering a role for one's dark calling.
Remember the utility of sharing,
Inviting cloistered hearts to come outdoors
And dance with us along our barren shores,
Lost within the music of our longing.
Death requires our collaboration
As we render due commemoration,
Yielding sorrow to the common cause.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Nocturne. By Asher Fulero. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/makeal.html. For more Memorial Day poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/memorialdaypoems.html .

Mai Is Well Aware She Is the Future

 

A psychological poem for Mai about how her identity is shaped by her generation:

 

Mai is well aware she is the future

And much depends upon who she becomes.

If someone took her generation's picture,

Mai knows its beauty would be everyone's.

One is rooted deeply in one's time,

New source of seed and leafmeal for the soil,

The graceful iteration of a rhyme,

Equally a prototype and foil.

Clearly, what each does induces all

Alike to turn, to model, and to change.

Remember that as one we rise and fall,

Lest pride our hearts from our shared selves estrange.

Our choices, all of them, confused or clear,

Sustain a common moral ecosphere.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: No.1 A Minor Waltz. By Esther Abrami. Music free to use at YouTube. Illustration Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/mai.html. For more psychological poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/psychologicalpoems.html .

Your Love Is like the Arizona Sun

 A Mother’s Day poem from an adult child about the difficulty of expressing their love:  

 

Your love is like the Arizona sun:
Always there, no matter what I do.
Bathed in light, I feel my love for you,
But words are gone before I have begun.
I don't know why I find it hard to say
The things that rest so deeply in my heart.
It seems almost impossible to start,
As though they're too ungainly to display.
I cherish you and what you feel for me.
I'm lucky that I have you for a mom.
I love you with a love that's sweet and calm,
And vast, like some unending inner sea.
You're the one I'm with when I'm alone;
You're the place within my heart that's home.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Heart Strings. By Coyote Hearing. Music free to use at YouTube. Photo Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/arizon.html. For more poems for Mother’s Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/mothersdaypoems.html .

 

May

 A calendar poem for May:

 

May is innocent and hot to breed,
Alternately chaste and ruled by need,
Yielding to the wisdom of her seed.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Chords of Harmony. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube. Photo Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/may.html. For more calendar poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/calendarpoems.html .

Here Is Neither Here nor There

 

A philosophical poem about the mystery of being:

 

Here is neither here nor there;

Now's eternity.

In every meaning that has meaning,

There is mystery.

 

Nothing is a pseudo-concept:

Nothing can be nothing.

Being, then, must be eternal:

Always, ever, something.

 

How might that be? I have no clue

What it is or how

It came to be. I only know

The miracle of now.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Bike Sharing to Paradise. By Dan Bodan. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/herei5.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

Having Walked the Tight-Lipped Jersey Streets

 

A poem for Easter about suburban life, death, and love:

 

Having walked the tight-lipped Jersey streets,
A house to every inward-turning love,
Peaceful, neat, above all else secure,
Pausing, I am ravished by their beauty.
Years will tell the stories of these streets;
Each house, the joy of its secluded love,
As children come and go, indulged, secure,
Singed or not by life's most awesome beauty.
There is no quarter on these death-strewn streets,
Each house the scene of terror, pain, and love,
Redeemed alone by the passion of its beauty.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Nocturne. By Asher Fulero. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/having.html. For more poems for Easter, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/easterpoems.html .

Part of Being Jewish Is a Choice

 

A Passover poem about how each Jew’s participation in Jewish ritual enabled Judaism to survive two thousand years of exile:

 

Part of being Jewish is a choice
As one becomes an act of preservation.
Seders start the stream of admonition,
Stories meant to bind one to the past.
On words alone the exiles had to last,
Verses reified by repetition,
Each an heirloom of a generation
Reared to give those ancient words a voice.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Mysterious Sorrows. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/partof.html. For more Passover poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/passoverpoems.html .

April

 

A calendar poem for April:

 

April is quite conscious of his beauty,
Poised to sing a more idyllic song.
Regrettably, he sometimes gets it wrong
In coming on delayed a bit too long,
Losing all sense of his springtime duty.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Dancing Star. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube.

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/april.html. For more calendar poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/calendarpoems.html .

Each Moment Is like Sunlight on the Heart

 

A poem for Eid al-Fitr about returning to the holiness of ordinary life at the end of the greater holiness of Ramadan:

 

Each moment is like sunlight on the heart,
Infinity within infinity.
Descend now from the whole back to the part,
As fast gives way to feast, and One to me.
Love is worship, as is pure, chaste pleasure;
Food is worship, music, dance, delight.
Immersed in talk, we savor what we treasure,
The days of fasting fading fast from sight,
Returning, turning, burning through the night.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Parzival. By William Rosati. Music free to use at YouTube. Photo Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/eachm2.html. For more Ramadan poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/ramadanpoems.html .

Adela Removes the Writing on the Wall

 

A name poem for Adela, who despite the odds is determined to shape her own future:

 

Adela removes the writing on the wall,

Determined to replace it with her own.

Even though no fate may heed her scrawl,

Like a god she wills what will befall,

A prophet staking claim to the unknown.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: One Step Closer. By Aakash Gandhi. Music free to use at YouTube. Photo Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/adela.html. For more name poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/namepoems.html .

Sublimation Is a Transformation

 

A poem for St. Patrick’s Day about the virtue of priestly celibacy:

 

Sublimation is a transformation,
Turning objects of one's lust to souls,
Perhaps not wholly holy -- priests are human,
And even Christ knew hunger and desire.
The vow of celibacy, like that of marriage,
Restricts as it enormously enriches,
Inhibits as it frees, resolves, renews,
Celebrates love, all love, every love,
Knots the nots that open wide the heart.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Emotional Love Theme. By Biz Baz Studio. Music free to use at YouTube. Photo Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/sublim.html. For more poems for St. Patrick’s Day, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/stpatricksdaypoems.html .

Purified of Arabs or of Jews

 

A poem for the Jewish holiday of Purim about the need to share the Holy Land:

 

Purified of Arabs or of Jews,
Until the phantoms fade, the land will scream,
Remembering the slaughter of the dream,
In which dark deeds that only madmen choose
Made room for those no blessing could redeem.

 

© by Nicholas Gordon

 

Audio and Video Music: Don’t Look Inside. By Biz Baz Studio. Music free to use at YouTube. Photo Credit: AI

 

To see this poem on my site, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/purifi.html. For more poems for Purim, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/purimpoems.html .