POETS ON THIS PAGE: * YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA * FRANK O’HARA * GWENDOLYN BROOKS * TED HUGHES * ANDREW HUDGINS * WALTER de la MARE * WENDY COPE * JUDITH ORTIZ COFER * LEWIS MACNEICE * LAWSON FUSAO INADA * ROBINSON JEFFERS * X. J. KENNEDY
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FACING IT
My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't, dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way--the stone lets me go. I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
by Yusef Komunyakaa
THANKS
Thanks for the tree between me & a sniper’s bullet. I don’t know what made the grass sway seconds before the Viet Cong raised his soundless rifle. Some voice always followed, telling me which foot to put down first. Thanks for deflecting the ricochet against that anarchy of dusk. I was back in San Francisco wrapped up in a woman’s wild colors, causing some dark bird’s love call to be shattered by daylight when my hands reached up & pulled a branch away from my face. Thanks for the vague white flower that pointed to the gleaming metal reflecting how it is to be broken like mist over the grass, as we played some deadly game for blind gods. What made me spot the monarch writhing on a single thread tied to a farmer’s gate, holding the day together like an unfingered guitar string, is beyond me. Maybe the hills grew weary & leaned a little in the heat. Again, thanks for the dud hand grenade tossed at my feet outside Chu Lai. I’m still falling through its silence. I don’t know why the intrepid sun touched the bayonet, but I know that something stood among those lost trees & moved only when I moved.
by Yusef Komunyakaa
THE DAY LADY DIED
It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
by Frank O’Hara
From Lunch Poems. City Lights Books, ©1964.
PERSONAL POEM
Now when I walk around at lunchtime I have only two charms in my pocket an old Roman coin Mike Kanemitsu gave me and a bolt-head that broke off a packing case when I was in Madrid the others never brought me too much luck though they did help keep me in New York against coercion but now I'm happy for a time and interested I walk through the luminous humidity passing the House of Seagram with its wet and its loungers and the construction to the left that closed the sidewalk if I ever get to be a construction worker I'd like to have a silver hat please and get to Moriarty's where I wait for LeRoi and hear who wants to be a mover and shaker the last five years my batting average is .016 that's that, and LeRoi comes in and tells me Miles Davis was clubbed 12 times last night outside birdland by a cop a lady asks us for a nickel for a terrible disease but we don't give her one we don't like terrible diseases, then we go eat some fish and some ale it's cool but crowded we don't like Lionel Trilling we decide, we like Don Allen we don't like Henry James so much we like Herman Melville we don't want to be in the poets' walk in San Francisco even we just want to be rich and walk on girders in our silver hats I wonder if one person out of the 8,000,000 is thinking of me as I shake hands with LeRoi and buy a strap for my wristwatch and go back to work happy at the thought possibly so
by Frank O’Hara
From Lunch Poems. City Lights Books, ©1964 by Frank O’Hara.
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SADIE AND MAUD
Maud went to college. Sadie stayed at home. Sadie scraped life With a fine-tooth comb. She didn’t leave a tangle in. Her comb found every strand. Sadie was one of the livingest chits In all the land. Sadie bore two babies Under her maiden name. Maud and Ma and Papa Nearly died of shame. When Sadie said her last so-long Her girls struck out from home. (Sadie had left as heritage Her fine-tooth comb.) Maud, who went to college, Is a thin brown mouse. She is living all alone In this old house.
by Gwendolyn Brooks
from Selected Poems (Harper & Row, 1963). Reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.
THE RITES FOR COUSIN VIT
Carried her unprotesting out the door. Kicked back the casket-stand. But it can't hold her, That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her, The lid's contrition nor the bolts before. Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even now, surmise, She rises in the sunshine. There she goes, Back to the bars she knew and the repose In love-rooms and the things in people's eyes. Too vital and too squeaking. Must emerge. Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss, Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is.
by Gwendolyn Brooks
From Blacks. Copyright © 1994 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Reprinted by permission of Estate of Gwendolyn Brooks.
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For a BBC documentary on Ted Hughes [CLICK HERE]
HAWK ROOSTING
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.
by Ted Hughes
ESTHER’S TOMCAT
Daylong this tomcat lies stretched flat As an old rough mat, no mouth and no eyes. Continual wars and wives are what Have tattered his ears and battered his head. Like a bundle of old rope and iron Sleeps till blue dusk. Then reappear His eyes, green as ringstones: he yawns wide red, Fangs fine as a lady's needle and bright. A tomcat sprang at a mounted knight, Locked round his neck like a trap of hooks While the knight rode fighting its clawing and bite. After hundreds of years the stain's there On the stone where he fell, dead of the tom: That was at Barnborough. The tomcat still Grallochs odd dogs on the quiet, Will take the head clean off your simple pullet. Is unkillable. From the dog's fury, From gunshot fired point-blank he brings His skin whole, and whole From owlish moons of bekittenings Among ashcans. He leaps and lightly Walks upon sleep, his mind on the moon Nightly over the round world of men Over the roofs go his eyes and outcry.
by Ted Hughes
Hughes reads his poem “The Thought-Fox”:
WIND
This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye. At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as The coal-house door. I dared once to look up-- Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope, The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace, At any second to bang and vanish with a flap: The wind flung a magpie away and a black- Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house Rang like some fine green goblet in the note That any second would shatter it. Now deep In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought, Or each other. We watch the fire blazing, And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on, Seeing the window tremble to come in, Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
by Ted Hughes
Thistles
Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men Thistles spike the summer air And crackle open under a blue-black pressure. Every one a revengeful burst Of resurrection, a grasped fistful Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up From the underground stain of a decayed Viking. They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects. Every one manages a plume of blood. Then they grow grey, like men. Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear, Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.
by Ted Hughes
Her Husband
Comes home dull with coal-dust deliberately To grime the sink and foul towels and let her Learn with scrubbing brush and scrubbing board The stubborn character of money. And let her learn through what kind of dust He has earned his thirst and the right to quench it And what sweat he has exchanged for his money And the blood-weight of money. He’ll humble her With new light on her obligations. The fried, woody chips, kept warm two hours in the oven, Are only part of her answer. Hearing the rest, he slams them to the fire back And is away round the house-end singing ‘Come back to Sorrento’ in a voice Of resounding corrugated iron. Her back has bunched into a hump as an insult. For they will have their rights. Their jurors are to be assembled From the little crumbs of soot. Their brief Goes straight up to heaven and nothing more is heard of it.
by Ted Hughes
The Howling of Wolves
Is without world. What are they dragging up and out on their long leashes of sound That dissolve in the mid-air silence? Then crying of a baby, in this forest of starving silences, Brings the wolves running. Tuning of a viola, in this forest delicate as an owl's ear, Brings the wolves running--brings the steel traps clashing and slavering, The steel furred to keep it from cracking in the cold, The eyes that never learn how it has come about That they must live like this, That they must live Innocence crept into minerals. The wind sweeps through and the hunched wolf shivers. It howls you cannot say whether out of agony or joy. The earth is under its tongue, A dead weight of darkness, trying to see through its eyes. The wolf is living for the earth. But the wolf is small, it comprehends little. It goes to and fro, trailing its haunches and whimpering horribly. It must feed its fur. The night snows stars and the earth creaks.
by Ted Hughes
Full Moon and Little Frieda
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket--
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming--mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath--
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.
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Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead
One day I'll lift the telephone and be told my father's dead. He's ready. In the sureness of his faith, he talks about the world beyond this world 5 as though his reservations have been made. I think he wants to go, a little bita new desire to travel building up, an itch to see fresh worlds. Or older ones. 10 He thinks that when I follow him he'll wrap me in his arms and laugh, the way he did when I arrived on earth. I do not think he's right. He's ready. I am not. I can't 15 just say good-bye as cheerfully as if he were embarking on a trip to make my later trip go well. I see myself on deck, convinced his ship's gone down, while he's convinced 20 I'll see him standing on the dock and waving, shouting, Welcome back.
by Andrew Hudgins
In the Well
My father cinched the rope, a noose around my waist, and lowered me into the darkness. I could taste my fear. It tasted first of dark, then earth, then rot. I swung and struck my head and at that moment got another then: then blood, which spiked my mouth with iron. Hand over hand, my father dropped me from then to then: then water. Then wet fur, which I hugged to my chest. I shouted. Daddy hauled the wet rope. I gagged, and pressed my neighbor's missing dog against me. I held its death and rose up to my father. Then light. Then hands. Then breath.
by Andrew Hudgins
Dead Christ
There seems no reason he should’ve died. His hands are pierced by holes too tidy to have held, untorn, hard muscles as they writhed on spikes. And on the pink, scrubbed bottom of each foot a bee-stung lip pouts daintily. No reason he should die–and yet, and yet Christ’s eyes are swollen with it, his mouth hangs slack with it, his belly taut with it, his long hair lank with it, and damp; and underneath the clinging funeral cloth his manhood’s huge and useless with it: Death. One blood-drop trickles toward his wrist. Somehow the grieving women missed it when they bathed, today, the empty corpse. Most Christs return. But this one’s flesh. He isn’t coming back.
by Andrew Hudgins
THE LISTENERS
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:— ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,’ he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone.
by Walter de La Mare
NAPOLEON
‘What is the world, O soldiers? It is I: I, this incessant snow, This northern sky; Soldiers, this solitude Through which we go Is I.’
by Walter de La Mare
THE SCARECROW
All winter through I bow my head beneath the driving rain; the North Wind powders me with snow and blows me black again; at midnight 'neath a maze of stars I flame with glittering rime, and stand above the stubble, stiff as mail at morning-prime. But when that child called Spring, and all his host of children come, scattering their buds and dew upon these acres of my home, some rapture in my rags awakes; I lift void eyes and scan the sky for crows, those ravening foes, of my strange master, Man. I watch him striding lank behind his clashing team, and know soon will the wheat swish body high where once lay a sterile snow; soon I shall gaze across a sea of sun-begotten grain, which my unflinching watch hath sealed for harvest once again.
by Walter de La Mare
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AFTER THE LUNCH
On Waterloo Bridge, where we said our goodbyes, the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes. I wipe them away with a black woolly glove And try not to notice I've fallen in love. On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think: This is nothing. You're high on the charm and the drink. But the juke-box inside me is playing a song That says something different. And when was it wrong? On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair I am tempted to skip. You're a fool. I don't care. The head does its best but the heart is the boss-- I admit it before I am halfway across.
by Wendy Cope
The Waste Land: Five Limericks
I In April one seldom feels cheerful; Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful; Clairvoyants distress me, Commuters depress me-- Met Stetson and gave him an earful. II She sat on a mighty fine chair, Sparks flew as she tidied her hair; She asks many questions, I make few suggestions-- Bad as Albert and Lil--what a pair! III The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep; Tiresias fancies a peep-- A typist is laid, A record is played-- Wei la la. After this it gets deep. IV A Phoenician named Phlebas forgot About birds and his business--the lot, Which is no surprise, Since he'd met his demise And been left in the ocean to rot. V No water. Dry rocks and dry throats, Then thunder, a shower of quotes From the Sanskrit and Dante. Da. Damyata. Shantih. I hope you'll make sense of the notes.
by Wendy Cope
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Quinceañera
My dolls have been put away like dead children in a chest I will carry with me when I marry. I reach under my skirt to feel a satin slip bought for this day. It is soft as the inside of my thighs. My hair has been nailed back with my mother’s black hairpins to my skull. Her hands stretched my eyes open as she twisted braids into a tight circle at the nape of my neck. I am to wash my own clothes and sheets from this day on, as if the fluids of my body were poison, as if the little trickle of blood I believe travels from my heart to the world were shameful. Is not the blood of saints and men in battle beautiful? Do Christ’s hands not bleed into your eyes from His cross? At night I hear myself growing and wake to find my hands drifting of their own will to soothe skin stretched tight over my bones, I am wound like the guts of a clock, waiting for each hour to release me.
by Judith Ortiz Cofer
ESPERANZA
My name mocks me for I was born at the cost of my mother’s life, earning my father’s hatred with my first breath. All my life I have scoured a house soiled with the thick soot of his resentment. It has left its mark on the walls, in his eyes, and on me. All of it I have tried to wipe away. In my hands I hold a broom, in my heart— ashes, ashes.
by Judith Ortiz Cofer
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BAGPIPE MUSIC
It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of
python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of
bison.
John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whisky,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty.
It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.
Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It’s no go your maidenheads, it’s no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture.
The Laird o’Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife ‘Take it away; I’m through with
over-production’.
It’s no go the gossip column, it’s no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother’s help and a sugar-stick for the baby.
Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn’t count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.
It’s no go the Herring Board, it’s no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.
It’s no go the picture palace, it’s no go the stadium,
It’s no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It’s no go the Government grants, it’s no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.
It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall forever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.
by Louis MacNeice
© Louis Macneice. Reproduced with permission of David Higham Associates
The poem above is about the London Blitz , when the city was bombed for 57 successive nights from September 1940, destroying more than a million houses. It was written in 1941.
Agag was the title of the king of the Amalekites and it means “flame”. The reference to Agag may be more complicated than that.
Louis MacNeice was an Irishman.
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HEALING GILA
for The People The people don't mention it much. It goes without saying, it stays without saying— that concentration camp on their reservation. And they avoid that massive site as they avoid contamination— that massive void punctuated by crusted nails, punctured pipes, crumbled failings of foundations . . . What else is there to say? This was a lush land once, graced by a gifted people gifted with the wisdom of rivers, seasons, irrigation. The waters went flowing through a network of canals in the delicate workings of balances and health . . . What else is there to say? Then came the nation. Then came the death. Then came the desert. Then came the camp. But the desert is not deserted. It goes without saying, it stays without saying— wind, spirits, tumbleweeds, pain.
by Lawson Fusao Inada
from Drawing the Line (Coffee House Press, 1997) . Copyright © 1997 by Lawson Fusao Inada. Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press.
The Grand Silos of the Sacramento
From a distance, at night, they seem to be industries—all lit up but not on the map; or, in this scientific age, they could be installations for launching rocket ships— so solid, and with such security, are they. . . Ah, but up close, by the light of day, we see, not “pads” but actual paddies— for these are simply silos in ricefields, structures to hold the harvested grain. Still, they're the tallest things around, and, by night or day, you'd have to say they're ample for what they do: storage. And, if you amble around from your car, you can lean up against one in the sun, feeling warmth on your cheek as you spread out your arms, holding on to the whole world around you, to the shores of other lands where the laborers launched their lives to arrive and plant and harvest this grain of history—as you hold and look, look up, up, up, and whisper: “Grandfather!”
by Lawson Fusao Inada
from Drawing the Line (Coffee House Press, c1997) Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press.
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CARMEL POINT
The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses— How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads— Now the spoiler has come: does it care? Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide That swells and in time will ebb, and all Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite, Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.—As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
by Robinson Jeffers, 1887 – 1962
From The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Three Volumes (edited by Tim Hunt). Stanford University Press. Copyright 1995.
Shine, Perishing Republic
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire, And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother. You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic. But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountains. And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master. There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught – they say – God, when he walked on earth.
by Robinson Jeffers, 1887 – 1962
From The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Three Volumes (edited by Tim Hunt). Stanford University Press. Copyright 1995.
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For Allen Ginsberg
Ginsberg, Ginsberg, burning bright, Taunter of the ultra right, What blink of the Buddha’s eye Chose the day for you to die? Queer pied piper, howling wild, Mantra-minded flower child, Queen of Maytime, misrule’s lord Bawling, Drop out! All aboard! Finger-cymbaled, chanting Om, Foe of fascist, bane of bomb, Proper poets’ thorn-in-side, Turner of a whole time’s tide, Who can fill your sloppy shoes? What a catch for Death. We lose Glee and sweetness, freaky light, Ginsberg, Ginsberg, burning bright.
by X. J. Kennedy
“For Allen Ginsberg” from The Lords of Misrule: Poems 1922-2001. © 2002 X.J. Kennedy. Reproduced with permission of The John Hopkins University Press.
In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day
In a prominent bar in Secaucus one day Rose a lady in skunk with a topheavy sway, Raised a knobby red finger–all turned from their beer– While with eyes bright as snowcrust she sang high and clear: ‘Now who of you'd think from an eyeload of me That I once was a lady as proud as could be? Oh I'd never sit down by a tumbledown drunk If it wasn't, my dears, for the high cost of junk. ‘All the gents used to swear that the white of my calf Beat the down of the swan by a length and a half. In the kerchief of linen I caught to my nose Ah, there never fell snot, but a little gold rose. ‘I had seven gold teeth and a toothpick of gold, My Virginia cheroot was a leaf of it rolled And I'd light it each time with a thousand in cash– Why the bums used to fight if I flicked them an ash. ‘Once the toast of the Biltmore, the belle of the Taft, I would drink bottle beer at the Drake, never draught, And dine at the Astor on Salisbury steak With a clean tablecloth for each bite I did take. ‘In a car like the Roxy I'd roll to the track, A steel-guitar trio, a bar in the back, And the wheels made no noise, they turned ever so fast, Still it took you ten minutes to see me go past. ‘When the horses bowed down to me that I might choose, I bet on them all, for I hated to lose. Now I'm saddled each night for my butter and eggs And the broken threads race down the backs of my legs. ‘Let you hold in mind, girls, that your beauty must pass Like a lovely white clover that rusts with its grass. Keep your bottoms off barstools and marry you young Or be left–an old barrel with many a bung. ‘For when time takes you out for a spin in his car You'll be hard-pressed to stop him from going too far And be left by the roadside, for all your good deeds, Two toadstools for tits and a face full of weeds.' All the house raised a cheer, but the man at the bar Made a phone call and up pulled a red patrol car And she blew us a kiss as they copped her away From that prominent bar in Secaucus, N.J.
Jeff Grinnell's Poetry Platform 