Tag: Walt Whitman

O Captain! Some Captain!

By Mark Williams

after Walt Whitman 

O Captain! Some Captain! Our fearful trip’s not done,
The ship is foundering, front to back, the prize we sought’s not won.
The port is far, the chants I hear, the people all protesting,
While follow eyes the unsteady keel, the vessel grim and shaking;

But O heartless, heartless heart!
O the beating blood as red
As the MAGA hat that lies,
On your self-serving head.

O Captain! Some Captain! Rise up and hear the news;
Black Lives Matter flags are flung, for you the bullhorns shrill.
Not for you, bouquets and wreathes—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you we call, the marching masses, our angry faces burning;

Some Captain! Some leader!
You nearly fell on your head.
It’s a nightmare: if on this deck,
You wobble yet next year. O dread!

You Captain answer not our questions, your lips are pale, speak swill.
A leader who intends us harm, your pulse beats all for ill,
The ship’s not anchored safe and sound, its voyage far from done,
If from this trip this vanquished ship does not come in, you’ve won;

Exult not O shores, ring not O bells!
I walk with mournful tread, where
If you steer this ship next year,
our nation sinks cold and dead.

 

Mark Williams’s poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Rattle, Nimrod, New Ohio Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. His poems in response to the Trump administration have appeared in Writers Resist, Poets Reading the News, The New Verse News, and Tuck Magazine. He lives in Evansville, Indiana.

Photo by zhao chen on Unsplash.

Dear Captain

By Jennifer Shneiderman

after Walt Whitman

 

O Captain! my Captain!
our fearful trip has just begun.
Exit the door of no return –
grim vessel of horror,
the treasure chest,
black gold, first wealth and power –
America cannot go back.

But O heart! heart! heart!
the bleeding does not stop.
Black men struck down – life seeping,
fallen cold and dead.
How many ways are there
to sink a heart.

O Captain! my Captain!
rise up and see what has become of us.
The bugle is trilling,
soul of the country.
Bouquets, wreaths fly in the wind
ashes and flames
burned out buildings
broken storefronts
looted dreams.

Here father! dear father!
swaying masses call out for relief
from wretched rudderless elect.
Lips of justice pale –
a standstill, a dead fall.
The anchor sinks,
voyage done, heads bowed.
Exult no shores.
The bells are still

You are betrayed, my captain.
We mourn what could have been,
complicit in silence,
eyes averted.
Time to pay for the passage.

 

Jennifer Shneiderman is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a writer living in Los Angeles. She writes poetry and short stories about health and mental health. Her work has been published in Indolent Book’s HIV Here and Now and her short story, “Housekeeping in the Time of COVID-19,” was in the most recent issue of The Rubbertop Review. Her poetry will be included in the anthology, Poetry in the Time of COVID-19,  Variant Literature, and the Bright Flash Literary Review. She is the recipient of a Wingless Dreamer flash poetry prize. Currently, her teenage son is in quarantine and her emergency room doctor husband is on the front lines of the pandemic.

Photo by munshots on Unsplash.