A Poem Thread

"Let me live in a house
by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner’s seat,
Or hurl the cynic’s ban;-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man."---Sam Walter Foss

pRA1QOj.jpeg
 
"Hey farmer farmer put away that DDT now.
Give me spots on the apples but leave me the birds and the bees.
Pleeeeeeeeeaaase!"

I think Joni would approve of GM crops. No pesticides.
 
"This morning Teresa sleeps
in the doorway of the plasma center.
Teresa of the rotten teeth
and sweet smile. Teresa
of diseased sex and raped dreams.
The cops can’t arrest her because
she’d infect the other prisoners
and no social service will touch her.
She blows winos for drinks of cheap wine
and screws anyone for a glass of beer.
and a quarter for the jukebox.
Her grin is black, the stumps
of her teeth framed by scarlet lipstick.
She told me once
how she wanted to dance
dance into the grave
with music coming out
of every hole in her body."
-- Kell Robertson
 
A flea and a fly were
trapped in the flu.
The flea said let's fly,
The fly said let's flee.
And they fled
Through a flaw in the flu.

(Traditional.)
 
Father and Son
by Irving Feldman, 1975

Set against each other, ready to butt
and struggle, with the same glaring look
of the eye and fiercely vivid anger,
son and father, isolated together
in daily deadlock, their form of murder.

Not sacrifice: murder. For it maters
that no command has brought them hither,
the proud and loving father, the eager son,
mercurial and defiant, his image,
or ordered the day and brushwood for the fire.
This is no test, but plainly real,
this Moriah where, unsanctioned, unblessed,
unpunished, sons and fathers pause and wait,
and nothing is revealed.

Will no miraculous ram now come
bleating, trotting, wagging its head
like a slow wisdom on an antique page
misleading death for the future's sake
and calling back the pair in pity
of the boy's innocence, the father's love?

No ram. None. Wildly, the father casts
about the rocky field, and grapples for
imagined horns to wrestle out a ram
from nothingness, as if to drag a god
into the stunned impenetrable world
and feel the rough material horn,
the rank fur, the uncomprehending staring eye,
and behind it the startled air's commotions
where invisible hooves are bracing―while,
almost glowering, the pitiless son looks on.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top