Nolo Segundo, pen name of L.J. Carber, 75, in his 8th decade became published in over 130 literary journals in the U.S., England, Canada, Romania, Scotland, India, Australia, Portugal, Hong Kong, Sweden, and Turkey, and in 3 trade book collections: The Enormity of Existence [2020], Of Ether and Earth [2021] & Soul songs [2022] . Recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2022, he’s a retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia] who’s been married 43 years to a smart and beautiful Taiwanese woman.

 I Have Been To Places Of Great Death

I have been to places of great death:
Walking the battlefield of Gettysburg,
As a lusty young man of no firm belief 
Who stepped between the great rocks 
Of Devil’s Den and felt his soul shudder
as though he had been a soldier there, 
and died in fear a long, long time ago.

I taught my tongue to the gentle Khmers
As civil war raged and the killing fields
Were being sown—I left before the 
Heartless murdering began, the killing
Of over a million: teachers and students,
Doctors and farmers, the old, the young,
Each with a photo taken before dying,
Their pictures taped to classroom walls.

And when I visited Hiroshima, now myself
Chastened by death’s touch, and knowing
My soul real, knowing of meaning absolute
And of unseen forces that work good or ill,
As I stood at the first ground zero, I once 
Again shuddered to feel the pull of madness
(though I knew not if it was my own or some
Remains of that evil which brought the fire
And brimstone of a world wide war….)

But by then I knew I could pray, and so 
Opened my desperate heart and sought 
His mercy—and then I saw a sort of angel, 
Who took me from that place of insanity,
Healing me while we wandered by the
Beauty of the Inland Sea as my storm 
Calmed and left me, never to return….  

I have been to places of great death, and
I have felt death’s cold, careless hands.
But I know now what death itself fears:
The Light, the light eternal which carries
Souls beyond time itself, like the winds
Of a Love exceeding all understanding.

I SING TO ETERNITY

To an unmet friend:

You see the mortal world
And for you man is machine
Little more than a device
For the vagaries of evolution,
Faith is illusion, hope lacks
Weight-- and love? Can love 
Be other than mere sex,
Nature’s sole mandate?

And your science now tells
You: what can I ever know?
All is a quantum topsy-turvy,
And mother nature part 
Whore, part illusionist….
Your thinking breaks all
Down to little pieces, 
And nothing matters
As matter is all while 
Science the only god
Left for us to worship.

And we are nothing, 
Not even dreams
Anymore, just bits
And pieces to be 
Examined, classified
And then ignored—
For science is all,
And faith but a 
Refuge for fools.

You are honest,
I know—you see
Yourself as just
Another machine,
Destined for decay,
Then destruction—
Your sentience but
A cruel joke told 
Yet again—and 
No one laughs.

You and I, 
We breathe,
We think, 
We live—but
You would stop
At death while
I begin there….

I sing to the eternal,
Quell not my songs,
As they rise above
The despair born 
Of your vacant
World, following  
Stars streaming
Their wondrous
Light in a dead-
Cold universe.

I sing to Eternity,
I sing to my soul!

THE  LEAP

I was half-mad with despair,
Hopeless in love and life,
At the end of my rope--
so I chose to drown,
To cease all pain in
Sweet oblivion, to be
No more, to be gone….

And when I flung my
Young and strong body
Into that swollen river,
I thought that’s what 
Awaited me—nothing!
But oh I was so wrong,
For my agnostic mind
Could not foresee the
Awaiting vast blackness,
The pain beyond pain,
And the utter aloneness—
No other souls, none 
But my bodiless mind
That had spurned God
And love as well, and
Now roiled in torment,
Until I called out to Him
And was released 
From hell to return
To the world I had 
So recently spurned.

Some will discount
This as the ravings 
Of a young man
Breaking  apart—
It’s only fear, just
Imagined terrors,
Be brave they say,
Neither heaven nor
Hell awaits us, our 
Only fate, extinction.

                                                                                      
I might wish them 
To be right, but  
They are deluded—
As I once was, for
Now I know there
Is no way out, no
Escape from oneself,
From one’s mind,
From one’s soul….