This, by Arthur Smith, from his collection, "The Late World," published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002. He's a wonderful poet and I'm sure would be very happy if you did yourself a favor went to your local bookstore and bought this paperback, thank you.
More Lines On a Shield Abandoned During Battle
The one time I said something
Awful to someone
I didn't know the meaning of,
It hardly mattered to him how empty
My head was
As his three younger brothers jumped
Down from the barn loft they slept in
And closed ranks behind him.
The hen he'd been about to kill
Rejoined a few others feeding
Near the stump.
--Are you talking to me? he said.
And it's true --
As you and anyone who's ever scattered knows,
And usually sooner -- someone or something
Will ask what you mean --
The quicker
The world lives in a person,
The earlier he learns
To ask.
I'm trying
To imagine racing over
Someone's countryside, and making off with its riches --
As you and your brief nation did --
Then coming up
Face to face
With one of them better armed.
I'm glad we ran, both of us, having
Straddled that line
Beyond which
There are only dogs' jaws
Candid
About the river of death,
And how there are no limits to its length,
And how someone had better live
To tell the others.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
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6 comments:
Great segue poem from your last post in the opinion just below. The poem makes it so relatable to one's self, as a good poem should.
Apparently Ann thinks poems are more important than Cooper.
This is the stupidest website in the entire county. shut it down.
Oddly a posting called "unhappy hour" on a website two days ago caused me to check the date, and in fact; Sept 13th 2010 is when Louise Ida Holmes, Baywood Icon and for a long time Merrimakers Bar owner, passed away.
This is for her, instructions on how to get there are in the poem.
This is called
Unhappy Hour.
----------------------
Sure Barkeep
Line me up with;
A pint of pain
A quart of quatrain
A bottle of brined brain
A pre-frontal refrain
And that half lime, right there in the drain
A jigger of grog
A late morning Fog
A wink and a nod
A sob and a laugh
And the pessimistic half of a persimmon cognac carafe
A bolt of upright white lightning
a moment of clarity, frightening
A sex on the pier, delighting
A colder shoulder to fondle
And a Hanoi Jane absinth, to forget all my sins, with
The pride of Baywood
The scribing of Beardwood
The of stem of Rosewood
Entwined in a wormwood wine snifter
And a shot of Carb cleaner and a Hurst dual shifter
A fifth of Santa-Maria
A corner of second
The first of three brick houses
A Mountain of Gold
A goblet of sherry for a maker of merry
A malted helter skelter
A random shooter
A liberal smattering of smack
A lick of lascivious latitude
And a drained-white pale Mary, in a run-over cup
A tequila mockingbird
A rummy disposition
A smidgen of smug cosmopolitan
A long draw of awe
And a chaser chalice of cool cherry cherished chastisement
And push over that pail of pretzels of provocative punishment, while you are at it...
what a moron
Anonymous said...
This is the stupidest website in the entire county. shut it down.
9:54 AM, September 13, 2012
Delete
Hmmm, let's see. There you were, Anon 9:45 a.m. sitting at your computer, minding your own business, when suddenly, out of the blue, on its own, your computer suddenly jumped to this blog. Even stranger still, the keys on your keyboard started typing the above comment into the comment section, even though your fingers never touched the keyboard. It was some kind of weird magic, totally out of your control.
Oh, wait. No, that didn't happen. Instead, you took the time out of your busy, valuable morning, to deliberately visit this blog and deliberately leave this comment whining about how awful the blog is.
That's funny.
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