John Holbrook Carter
A Poem
Like a Rose
You clench your age like a rose between your teeth
You wear those wrinkles and those scars like badges.
These are your service ribbons and your medals.
These are the carvings of a life lived full.
So now old man old woman if you have the guts for it
put your face to the mirror.
Observe the dewlaps and missing teeth and fallen leaves.
Observe the sea grown dark and a wind rising.
Observe the winter of you.
Stare at those ancient eyes that stare into yours.
Board that hidden boat.
Read the invitation. Read it and laugh.
Observe how ridiculous you are and by God laugh.
Greet yourself like a drunken shipmate.
Laugh!
Laugh at its tales and dance away to its music.
Observe now how every blessed thing takes on color
and the script is lost and so are all your masks.
Observe your soul standing naked in the wind.
Observe it as a thing of desire and a thing of dread.
Hear it tell the finality of life.
Hear it sing the grotesqueness of old lust.
Your laughter bursts like a young bull from its tethers.
What you gaze on there in that mirror
is a window thrown open and light pouring in and the music
of your wounds and the eyes grown ripe with gifts.
You stand in the presence of beauty.
You receive it and you find it more than good.
Where that window opens is into your heart.
On this day you can dance.
You have now a song for the road.
You have something to wear for when you shed your body.
John Holbrook Carter
John Holbrook Carter is a poet, playwright, and former merchant seaman, salesman, railroad man, and proposal writer living out of sight in Adams Morgan with his wife and dogs. His poetry has appeared in a variety of publications, including Poetry USA, Lactuca, Gargoyle, Visions, and Prisoner of the Night. Prose sales include a number of pulp fiction stories and a screenplay to Roger Corman Productions.
John’s plays include Where Three Roads Meet, a play about the turmoil surrounding Freud, Jung, the Oedipus Complex, the Libido, and the soul, premiered at the 2006 Midtown International Theater Festival in New York. It had the best box office of the festival. Feed the Beast, a review of John’s poetry and song lyrics was presented at the Amos Eno Gallery in New York with excerpts performed in Washington, DC at the Source Theater Festival and in the National Theater’s “Monday Night at the National” program. Lou, a solo, one-act play in which Lou Salome looks back on her vivid life, played in 2011 at the New York International Film Festival. Jack, played in 2013 at the DC Arts Center. In this play Don Juan escapes from hell and finds himself on bare stage in front of audience.
Acting experience includes cop roles in the film Disillusions, and the play Birdie’s Cage. John has presented his poetry both solo and with the bands Luna and Eros in various Baltimore and Washington, DC nightspots, art centers, and the Library of Congress. Media appearances include Pacifica Radio’s “The Poet and the Poem,” and television’s “Slumber Party.”
Born in 1930 in Cleveland, John grew up in Pittsburgh and received a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University, where he was recognized as the programs most promising poet. He went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas.
