The work of Jerry Pendergast, Chicago poet, poetry slam emcee, and contributor to the Revolutionary Poets Brigade Facebook group, has regularly been featured in our National Poetry Month posts. His work is influenced by jazz, Irish cultural identity, urban observation, and a keen sense of social justice. Today’s verse is inspired by his Irish roots.
If Talk Could Exalt a Nation
“We Irish are too Poetic to be poets…We are a nation of brilliant failures.
But we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks”. Oscar Wilde
If a stanza a river long
could sink a battle ship
If a run on sentence
taking a hearer through the mess u ages
could make a regiment
charging through a city street
drop their rifles.
If a tail end
of a narration
could disable a tank.
Wheels falling
with each change
Each embellishment
If an O’Carolan Concerto
Could misdirect a Cavalry
Put their commanders in a trance
If pipers could melt swords
Would Ireland be free?
Would it ever have been conquered?
If master fiddlers could make clergy
and officials scatter their thoughts
Dance like there were no floor director
Would Ireland imprison Wild Earnest Men?
Force young Women into work houses
for being young woman like?
or victims? Tell them their sins
are washed down the sink.?
Ban novels that win international awards?
Or would the state and the church
Be more well rounded.
Like the Ethiopian and Celtic crosses.
—Jerry Pendergast
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