Oscar Hummel

Related poetry:

1. Jeduthan Hawley There would be a knock at the door And I would arise at midnight and go to the shop, Where belated travelers would hear me hammering Sepulchral boards and tacking satin. And often I wondered who would go with me To the distant land, our names the theme For talk, in the same week, for […]...
2. Lost Kitten Two men I saw reel from a bar And stumble down the street; Coarse and uncouth as workmen are, They walked with wobbly feet. I watched them, thinking sadly as I heard their hobnails clink, The only joy a toiler has Is to get drowned in drink. A kitten on a wall, A skinny, starving […]...
3. The Town Marshal The Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal When the saloons were voted out, Because when I was a drinking man, Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede At the saw-mill near Maple Grove. And they wanted a terrible man, Grim, righteous, strong, courageous, And a hater of saloons and drinkers, To keep law and […]...
4. He scanned it staggered He scanned it staggered Dropped the Loop To Past or Period Caught helpless at a sense as if His Mind were going blind Groped up, to see if God was there Groped backward at Himself Caressed a Trigger absently And wandered out of Life....
5. Jack McGuire They would have lynched me Had I not been secretly hurried away To the jail at Peoria. And yet I was going peacefully home, Carrying my jug, a little drunk, When Logan, the marshal, halted me, Called me a drunken hound and shook me, And, when I cursed him for it, struck me With that […]...
6. O Daedalus, Fly Away Home (For Maia and Julie) Drifting night in the Georgia pines, Coonskin drum and jubilee banjo. Pretty Malinda, dance with me. Night is juba, night is congo. Pretty Malinda, dance with me. Night is an African juju man Weaving a wish and a weariness together To make two wings. O fly away home fly away Do […]...
7. The Blind Girl Kind Christians, pray list to me, And I’ll relate a sad story, Concerning a little blind girl, only nine years of age, Who lived with her father in a lonely cottage. Poor girl, she had never seen the blessed light of day, Nor the beautiful fields of corn and hay, Nor the sparrows, that lifted […]...
8. The Whipping The old woman across the way is whipping the boy again And shouting to the neighborhood her goodness and his wrongs. Wildly he crashes through elephant ears, pleads in dusty zinnias, While she in spite of crippling fat pursues and corners him. She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling boy till the stick breaks In […]...
9. Indian Weavers WEAVERS, weaving at break of day, Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . . Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild, We weave the robes of a new-born child. Weavers, weaving at fall of night, Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . . Like the plumes of a […]...
10. John Ballard In the lust of my strength I cursed God, but he paid no attention to me: I might as well have cursed the stars. In my last sickness I was in agony, but I was resolute And I cursed God for my suffering; Still He paid no attention to me; He left me alone, as […]...
11. No. 6 I’ll settle for the 6 horse On a rainy afternoon A paper cup of coffee In my hand A little way to go, The wind twirling out Small wrens from The upper grandstand roof, The jocks coming out For a middle race Silent And the easy rain making Everything At once Almost alike, The horses […]...
12. Hemlock and Cedar THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs… near the shingle mill… winter morning. Falling of a dry leaf might be heard… circular steel tears through a log. Slope of woodland… brown… soft… tinge of blue such as pansy eyes. Farther, field fires… funnel of yellow smoke… spellings of other yellow in corn stubble. Bobsled […]...
13. Eight O'Clock He stood, and heard the steeple Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. One, two, three, four, to market-place and people It tossed them down. Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck....
14. De Ligurra YOU fear, Ligurra – above all, you long – That I should smite you with a stinging song. This dreadful honour you both fear and hope – Both all in vain: you fall below my scope. The Lybian lion tears the roaring bull, He does not harm the midge along the pool. Lo! if so […]...
15. A. D. Blood If you in the village think that my work was a good one, Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards, And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett, In many a crusade to purge the people of sin; Why do you let the milliner’s daughter Dora, And the worthless son of Benjamin […]...
16. The Avenue Now that we’ve come to the end I’ve been trying to piece it together, Not that distance makes anything clearer. It began in the half-light While we walked through the dawn chorus After a party that lasted all night, With the blackbird, the wood-pigeon, The song-thrush taking a bludgeon To a snail, our taking each […]...
17. Conscripts ‘Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more Attractive attitudes! Dress by the right! The luminous rich colours that you wore Have changed to hueless khaki in the night. Magic? What’s magic got to do with you? There’s no such thing! Blood’s red, and skies are blue.’ They gasped and sweated, marching up and […]...
18. Lip-Stick Liz Oh Lip-Stick Liz was in the biz, That’s the oldest known in history; She had a lot of fancy rags, Of her form she made no myst’ry. She had a man, a fancy man, His name was Alexander, And he used to beat her up because he couldn’t understand her. Now Lip-Stick Liz she loved […]...
19. It's Forth Across The Roaring Foam IT’S forth across the roaring foam, and on towards the west, It’s many a lonely league from home, o’er many a mountain crest, From where the dogs of Scotland call the sheep around the fold, To where the flags are flying beside the Gates of Gold. Where all the deep-sea galleons ride that come to […]...
20. It tossed and tossed It tossed and tossed A little Brig I knew o’ertook by Blast It spun and spun And groped delirious, for Morn It slipped and slipped As One that drunken stept Its white foot tripped Then dropped from sight Ah, Brig Good Night To Crew and You The Ocean’s Heart too smooth too Blue To break […]...
21. The Epic Stars The heroic stars spending themselves, Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle, They must burn out at length like used candles; And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home her heroes. There is the stuff for an epic poem This magnificent raid at the heart of darkness, this lost battle […]...
22. The Saginaw Song In Saginaw, in Saginaw, The wind blows up your feet, When the ladies’ guild puts on a feed, There’s beans on every plate, And if you eat more than you should, Destruction is complete. Out Hemlock Way there is a stream That some have called Swan Creek; The turtles have bloodsucker sores, And mossy filthy […]...
23. The Recruit Leave your home behind, lad, And reach your friends your hand, And go, and luck go with you While Ludlow tower shall stand. Oh, come you home of Sunday When Ludlow streets are still And Ludlow bells are calling To farm and lane and mill, Or come you home of Monday When Ludlow market hums […]...
24. Aisling I was making my way home late one night This summer, when I staggered Into a snow drift. Her eyes spoke of a sloe-year, Her mouth a year of haws. Was she Aurora, or the goddess Flora, Artemidora, or Venus bright, Or Anorexia, who left A lemon stain on my flannel sheet? It’s all much […]...
25. Victory Stuff What d’ye think, lad; what d’ye think, As the roaring crowds go by? As the banners flare and the brasses blare And the great guns rend the sky? As the women laugh like they’d all gone mad, And the champagne glasses clink: Oh, you’re grippin’ me hand so tightly, lad, I’m a-wonderin’: what d’ye think? […]...
26. Sam Hookey I ran away from home with the circus, Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada, The lion tamer. One time, having starved the lions For more than a day, I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus And Leo and Gypsy. Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me, And killed me. On entering these regions I […]...
27. Baby Lazarus When I got home I went out into the garden Liking it when the frost bit My old brown boots And dug a hole the size of a baby And buried the clothes I’d bought anyway, just in case. A week later I stood at my window And saw the ground move And swell the […]...
28. Harry Carey Goodhue You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River, When Chase Henry voted against the saloons To revenge himself for being shut off. But none of you was keen enough To follow my steps, or trace me home As Chase’s spiritual brother. Do you remember when I fought The bank and the courthouse ring, For pocketing the […]...
29. The Loom of Dreams I broider the world upon a loom, I broider with dreams my tapestry; Here in a little lonely room I am master of earth and sea, And the planets come to me. I broider my life into the frame, I broider my love, thread upon thread; The world goes by with its glory and shame, […]...
30. What Have the Cavalry Done? What have the cavalry done? Cantered and trotted about, Routin’ the enemy out, Causin’ the beggars to run! And we tramped along in the blazin’ heat, Over the veldt on our weary feet. Tramp, tramp, tramp Under the blazin’ sun, With never the sight of a bloomin’ Boer, ‘Cause they’d hunted ’em long before That’s […]...
31. Enoch Dunlap How many times, during the twenty years I was your leader, friends of Spoon River, Did you neglect the convention and caucus, And leave the burden on my hands Of guarding and saving the people’s cause? Sometimes because you were ill; Or your grandmother was ill; Or you drank too much and fell asleep; Or […]...
32. They dropped like Flakes They dropped like Flakes They dropped like Stars Like Petals from a Rose When suddenly across the June A wind with fingers goes They perished in the Seamless Grass No eye could find the place But God can summon every face Of his Repealless List....
33. 'Out, Out &#039 The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and […]...
34. Yellow One pearly day of early May I strolled upon the sand, And saw, say half-a-mile away A man with gun in hand; A dog was cowering to his will, As slow he sought to creep Upon a dozen ducks so still They seemed to be asleep, When like a streak the dog dashed out, The […]...
35. Graceland TOMB of a millionaire, A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen, Place of the dead where they spend every year The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars For upkeep and flowers To keep fresh the memory of the dead. The merchant prince gone to dust Commanded in his written will Over the signed name of his last testament […]...
36. The City of Dreadful Thirst The stranger came from Narromine and made his little joke “They say we folks in Narromine are narrow-minded folk. But all the smartest men down here are puzzled to define A kind of new phenomenon that came to Narromine. “Last summer up in Narromine ’twas gettin’ rather warm Two hundred in the water bag, and […]...
37. The wanderer Upon a mountain height, far from the sea, I found a shell, And to my listening ear the lonely thing Ever a song of ocean seemed to sing, Ever a tale of ocean seemed to tell. How came the shell upon that mountain height? Ah, who can say Whether there dropped by some too careless […]...
38. Was It You? “Hullo, young Jones! with your tie so gay And your pen behind your ear; Will you mark my cheque in the usual way? For I’m overdrawn, I fear.” Then you look at me in a manner bland, As you turn your ledger’s leaves, And you hand it back with a soft white hand, And the […]...
39. Jacob Godbey How did you feel, you libertarians, Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons Around the saloon, as if Liberty Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar Or at a table, guzzling? How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you, Who almost stoned me for a tyrant, Garbed as a […]...
40. Tom Merritt At first I suspected something She acted so calm and absent-minded. And one day I heard the back door shut, As I entered the front, and I saw him slink Back of the smokehouse into the lot, And run across the field. And I meant to kill him on sight. But that day, walking near […]...