Category Archives: Poetry

Poetry

Roethke is potted

The Geranium

-Theodore Roethke

 

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine–
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she’d lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)
The things she endured!–
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me–
And that was scary–
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

Poetry

A Spring View- Tu Fu

Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;
And spring comes green again to trees and grasses
Where petals have been shed like tears
And lonely birds have sung their grief.
…After the war-fires of three months,
One message from home is worth a ton of gold.
…I stroke my white hair. It has grown too thin
To hold the hairpins any more.

 

Tu Fu-750 AD

Poetry

Charles the Great

People

look at the people: elbows, knees,

earlobes, crotches, feet,

noses, lips, eyes, all the parts

usually clothed, and they are

engaged

in whatever they usually do

which is hardly ever

delightful,

their psyches stuffed with

used matter and propaganda,

advertising propaganda, religious

propaganda, sexual propaganda,

political propaganda, assorted

propagandas, and they

themselves are

dull and vicious.

they are dull because they have been

made dull and they are

vicious because they are

fearful of losing what they have.

the people are the biggest

horror show on earth,

have been for centuries.

you could be sitting in a

room with one of them

now

or with many of

them.

or you could be one

of them.

every time the phone

rings or there is a knock on

the door

I’m afraid it will be one of

the disgusting,

spiritually destroyed

useless

babbling

ugly

fawning

hateful

humans.

or worse, on picking up the

phone the voice I hear

might be my

own,

or upon opening the

door

I will see myself

standing there,

a remnant of the

wasted centuries,

smiling a

false smile,

having learned well,

having forgotten

what I am here

for.

-Charles Bukowski