Do you have untethered snippets of novels and poems floating around in your brain? I do. They drive me to distraction.
I was a seriously geeky kid. Part of that involved competing on my high school’s National Forensic League team in prose/poetry reading and debate. One year I recited an excerpt from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which scarred my brain forever. The year before, I recited a poem that I only ever knew as Lump of Clay. I performed the poem every few weeks for a year, then never encountered it again. That poem has been niggling at me every since.
About ten years ago, I started looking for a copy of the poem hoping to get it out of my head. Every few months, I would google “I am a lump of clay” and never found the poem – until this week. A high school in Iowa posted the poem on their English department website. Beyond the text, I can’t find anything out about it. I would like to know more about the poem and its author. I have pasted the text of the poem below. If you recognize it, please tell me whatever you know.
“The Plea”
by Josef Rodriguez
I’m just a lump of clay
Scooped out of the riverbank
And molded to the shape of a natural man.
I’m just a lump of clay
A handful of water and a fistful of sand
And a warm exhalation from
God.
Fifty per cent
God
And fifty percent just plain old river mud,
That’s me ….
Sometimes I wonder if maybe
God
Isn’t beginning to wonder
If it wasn’t all just a waste of breathe on
His part ….
Mud being Mud
And
God being God ….
I’m just a lump of clay ….
A seething bundle of great aspirations
And expectations
A juxtaposition of countries and nations
And their innovations …
A shifting kaleidoscope
Of religions and races ….
Changing chameleon-like their color of skin
With each shift of terrain;
And with gentle irreverence,
With innocent and collossal conceit,
Changing the color of their ….
God ….
For
Man must Worship a
God
In his own image it seems ….
I’m just a lump of clay
And I’ve been fooled and tricked
And taken again and again ….
Through all the long dying ….
Through all the long howling and crying of war …
I’m just a lump of clay …
And I’m cornered at last in a time
Where the sky threatens to fall on me
For all of eternity …
Cornered …. Holding in my hands and heart
One last desperate simple plea ….
For peace.
I’m just a lump of clay
And I’m alone and afraid …. Do I have to be?
Listen to me …. I don’t have to be!!
Not while I can reach out to you
And cry ….
“Neighbor, neighbor, you and I
Were born together beneath the same sky:
Chinaman, African, Russian
We’ll hold up the sky and it won’t fall
Yes, I’m just a lump of clay,
But put me together in a mass
And there is weight there enough
To level a forest, drain a sea
Change the course of a universe
Or of a war ….
And so
Kings, Dictators, and rulers of nations
Don’t tell me my world’s going to end !!!!
Why, I haven’t seen enough ranibows
Reached for enough stars
Or kissed enough pretty young girls
Under the smoked silver sliver of the moon;
So don’t you scream at me
About killing and dying
When I haven’t even begun to live yet!!!
Listen, Tender, Sparkers who ignite
The fire of war ….
I, the lump of clay …
Am a stubborn, song and sinew thing and I won’t step out
Of your way
Not while I have hands to plead
And a voice to cry …
For peace!
Peace …
That is my plea …
I ask it humbly …
After all,
I’m just a lump of clay …
Scooped out of the river bank
And molded to the shape
Of a natural man …
I’m just a lump of clay …
A handful of water and a fistful of sand
And a warm exhalation from God …
Fifty per cent God
And fifty per cent
Just plain old river mud, that’s me …
Sometimes I wonder if maybe
God
Isn’t beginning to wonder
If it wasn’t all just a waste of breath on His part
Mud being Mud
God being God.
I’m just a lump of clay …
And I’m cornered
And alone and afraid,
But if you’ve listened to me
If you’ll answer my plea …
Do I have to be?
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