John Schwartz Poetry

Haven’t posted in 2 1/2 months. Not positive anyone reads these haha. (If you do and you’d like to see more, shoot me an email at john@ichthusmhk.org.)

So my poetry writing output has slowed WAY down from when I first started in November 2017. I wrote 165 poems in the first seven months, but in the last seven, just over 30. Various reasons for that–some valid, some that reflect the constant resistance on the creative process that artists told me about. But I still love to do it. And I have thought happily a number of times of how fun it would be to take a retreat just focused on writing poems.

So I finally did it! Well, sorta. I came to KC yesterday for about a 24-hour period (scrunched some by having to take insurance claim pictures of my daughter’s vehicle that got speared by a Leawood snowplow recently–there is always something!) and decided to take maybe half of my productive hours to do poetry-related things. Not exactly a long retreat–but certainly better than nothing!

Anyway, I got tired yesterday before I’d done much, so I decided to take a nap at 4pm. Yeah, I then woke up at 10:30pm. I guess I was tired, eh? (I won’t even tell you about the bizarre dream I had. I did write a poem about it, but it probably won’t make it here LOL.) Anyway, I grabbed some lovely QT coffee and worked til about 5 am … and I had a ball. Such fun. Wrote about 6 1/2 poems, including one I collaborated with some friends on in the brainstorming process about a month ago, and I thought I’d share a short one inspired by a recent movie I saw. Enjoy!

LIVING WITH THE ACCOUNTANT
I like incongruity
He said with one of his seven smiles
If he’s willing he could like himself
These tender Mr Darcys
how do you pluralize that
please don’t say it’s an apostrophe
but I digress
Foreboding gray waters
Teeming with life
A world unseen
Awaiting a lover’s eye
Lest it die denied
Or dormant lie

I wrote this one when I was reading The Anatomy of the Soul by Kurt Thompson. I found that book fascinating–as I find most every book about the brain, how the mind and brain interrelate, etc., fascinating. The particular thing I was struck by that made its way into this poem was Thompson’s picture of the brain as a train station and how we can be hijacked by experiences that get us functioning primarily in our limbic system and not using our prefrontal cortex. A regular theme of Thompson’s book is of the need for our brains to be integrated … spotlighting the often great dis-integration of my own brain. God made us with a whole brain, to beautifully work in tandem. I love that he’s doing that in me.

THE STATION WILL BE TRULY GRAND
Left brain left brain left brain right
Crooked march into the night
Left brain left brain left brain more
Soul hands bloody on the door

Split distracted crashing trains
Shouting louder ‘bout their pains
Confused conductor losing heart
Wringing hands oh where to start

Urgent pressure fear and shame
Grasping wind to rest in name
(his and mine they intertwine
I’m in him the branch in Vine)

Oh I’m wrecked oh what a mess
Hebbian chokehold full court press
The day of trouble yes indeed
Seek the one thing to be freed
Be set high upon a rock
The Lord’s temple has no clock

Now I lay my panic down
The peace of peace will be my crown
Where sin increases grace abounds
Soul hands thrust forth praise resounds
Oh your beaming constant face
Integrate my splintered race

So I’m having fun posting these. It’s funny though because as I read through my poems, I want to post a bunch of them. Not because I know if they’re “good” or not — who decides that? what criteria? many of my poems have me thinking they’re terrible and pretty decent within a two-hour (or two-minute!) period — but because I just like them. And when you like stuff, you want to share it with people. So here we go–another one.

(Before I go on, I will say that if you want to be able to make comments, you have to click on the actual post and not just read it from the main page … maybe y’all knew that, but I didn’t and had to ask the guy who set this all up for me haha.)

OK, so this one I like because it’s a Bible one. I memorized Psalm 27 with a student a few years ago and it (like pretty much almost all the longer-than-a-few-verses stuff I’ve memorized) ended up being pretty meaningful and powerful in my life. And then at one point I decided to write a poem inspired by it. Poem inspired by a poem. Here you go…

FINDING JOHN DAVIDSON
Not hiding from
But hidden with
No downcast eyes
But beauty gaze
No fearing heart
But bold in hope
No panicked screams
But shouts of praise
No orphaned pit
But embraced aid
No rabbit zag
But firm tracks laid
No leering foe
But face of flow
The roaring tumult
Far below

Oh Yahweh, Yahweh
Rock that’s true
Such is the way
That’s found in you
The light the space
The goodness now
Oh help me wait
And trust somehow
Hear my voice
And stoop to meet
Me in my chaos
With mercy sweet

Deciding which poem to share first isn’t easy. To read through all 250+ poems I’ve written would take a while, and even then there’s so many of them I love, but is that just because they’re mine and not because objectively people will benefit/enjoy them, and blah blah blah. So I just decided to pick one that K-Staters will especially appreciate and just came up yesterday in a conversation. My friend Steven Moser is an artist, and in an unplanned conversation at Bluestem Bistro, he talked about light — and specifically illustrated what he was saying by pointing to a painting (see above) that he’d done of Danforth Chapel, a beautiful place here on the campus of Kansas State University. (Steven’s art often hangs on the walls of Bluestem and in fact this one is there right now as part of a show!)

His picture reminded me of a poem I wrote about Danforth in 2017, a couple weeks after I started writing them. Well, actually the first phrase, “stained glass hands,” just came to my mind without reference to Danforth and I really liked its feel in my mind, so I wrote it down first and then what ended up coming out was a poem about the chapel, a place where I spent a bunch of hours when I was a student (occasionally sleeping on the heated floors under a pew between classes) and have also done a ton of prayer things over the years related to Ichthus.

I say the poem is about Danforth Chapel, and it is sorta, but then it’s really about much more than that. See what you think and feel free to comment below; that’s what people do, right? Or don’t. We’re all free here haha.

DANFORTH
Stained-glass hands
Silent, outstretched
Cool caresses
To yearning soul

Past the chatter
Mind oasis
Still small voice
My heart’s home

No one sees us
Johnny stays out
Delicious quiet
I’ve known you long

Why seek cisterns
Broken, failing
Liquid presence
Still at hand

I need to decide my first post. Something I’ve written? Something I should write for the occasion? Oops, there’s that ‘should’ word. We are studiously avoiding that one for this blog haha.

How about…

I had a cat

He ate a rat

It made him fat

And that was that

Just kidding. I didn’t even write that one; my mom told me that when I was a kid I think. (Yes–just confirmed it with my mom, like two years after I wrote this post. Apparently it was a poem my grandpa made up for my aunt when she had to come up with a poem for her class and was totally striking out haha. Good ol’ Grandpa. You know, I ought to write a poem about him…) Anyway… thanks for coming to the site, and check back in the next few days!