Before the arthritis set in

Related poetry:

1. Days of 1986 He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, But his erotic obsession, condemned and strictly forbidden, Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. Over sixty, and a father many times over, The objects of his attention grew younger and younger: He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; He […]...
2. Dream Song 104: Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one! Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one! I never cared for fifty, when nothing got done. The hospitals were fun In certain ways, and an honour or so, But on the whole fifty was a mess as though Heavy clubs from below And from—God save the bloody mark—above Were loosed upon his skull & soles. O love, […]...
3. Cahoots PLAY it across the table. What if we steal this city blind? If they want any thing let ’em nail it down. Harness bulls, dicks, front office men, And the high goats up on the bench, Ain’t they all in cahoots? Ain’t it fifty-fifty all down the line, Petemen, dips, boosters, stick-ups and guns-what’s to […]...
4. Washerwife The aged Queen who passed away Had sixty servants, so they say; Twice sixty hands her shoes to tie: Two soapy ones have I. The old Queen had of beds a score; A cot have I and ask no more. For when the last is said and done One can but die in one. The […]...
5. And you will claim And you will claim we need more births to keep Our population mix in check while nature’s truths Suggest there are too many of us yet? And you will make the claim with good intent, And wear the jeers precipitated by our peers, You’ll blame statistics for the deed no doubt, You’ll see the figures […]...
6. Restless Leg Syndrome After the burial We returned to our units And assumed our poses. Our posture was the new posture And not the old sick posture. When we left our stations It was just to prove we could, Not a serious departure Or a search for yet another beginning. We were done with all that. We were […]...
7. Annus Mirabilis Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) – Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP. Up to then there’d only been A sort of bargaining, A wrangle for the ring, A shame that started at sixteen And spread to everything. Then all at once the […]...
8. Peleg Poague Horses and men are just alike. There was my stallion, Billy Lee, Black as a cat and trim as a deer, With an eye of fire, keen to start, And he could hit the fastest speed Of any racer around Spoon River. But just as you’d think he couldn’t lose, With his lead of fifty […]...
9. The Way to know the Bobolink The Way to know the Bobolink From every other Bird Precisely as the Joy of him Obliged to be inferred. Of impudent Habiliment Attired to defy, Impertinence subordinate At times to Majesty. Of Sentiments seditious Amenable to Law As Heresies of Transport Or Puck’s Apostacy. Extrinsic to Attention Too intimate with Joy He compliments existence […]...
10. Governors On Sominex It had been four days of no weather As if nature had conceded its genius to the indoors. They’d closed down the Bureau of Sad Endings And my wife sat on the couch and read the paper out loud. The evening edition carried the magic death of a child Backlit by a construction site sunrise […]...
11. Hot she was hot, she was so hot I didn’t want anybody else to have her, And if I didn’t get home on time She’d be gone, and I couldn’t bear that- I’d go mad. . . It was foolish I know, childish, But I was caught in it, I was caught. I delivered all the […]...
12. The Potatoes' Dance (A Poem Game.) I “Down cellar,” said the cricket, “Down cellar,” said the cricket, “Down cellar,” said the cricket, “I saw a ball last night, In honor of a lady, In honor of a lady, In honor of a lady, Whose wings were pearly-white. The breath of bitter weather, The breath of bitter weather, The […]...
13. Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in […]...
14. Another barbeque tonight It rained throughout the night, a truly welcome sound That eases sleep although we barely slept – we were Distressed by other things. Today the kitchen’s centre ring, The kitchen of Anita’s dreams. It’s had a long gestation, Twenty years it’s taken just to reach this actual day (that’s in This iteration, there’s been some […]...
15. To Eliza Eliza, what fools are the Mussulman sect, Who to woman deny the soul’s future existence! Could they see thee, Eliza, they’d own their defect, And this doctrine would meet with a general resistance. Had their prophet possess’d half an atom of sense, He ne’er would have woman from paradise driven; Instead of his houris, a […]...
16. It's Raining In Love I don’t know what it is, but I distrust myself when I start to like a girl a lot. It makes me nervous. I don’t say the right things or perhaps I start to examine, evaluate, compute what I am saying. If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?” and she says, “I […]...
17. Cavalier Tunes: Marching Along Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing: And, pressing a troop unable to stoop And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, Marched them along, fifty score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. God for King Charles! Pym and such carles To the Devil that prompts ’em their treasonous […]...
18. Pennies A few long-hoarded pennies in his hand Behold him stand; A kilted Hedonist, perplexed and sad. The joy that once he had, The first delight of ownership is fled. He bows his little head. Ah, cruel Time, to kill That splendid thrill! Then in his tear-dimmed eyes New lights arise. He drops his treasured pennies […]...
19. The Days that we can spare The Days that we can spare Are those a Function die Or Friend or Nature stranded then In our Economy Our Estimates a Scheme Our Ultimates a Sham We let go all of Time without Arithmetic of him...
20. Dr. Siegfried Iseman I said when they handed me my diploma, I said to myself I will be good And wise and brave and helpful to others; I said I will carry the Christian creed Into the practice of medicine! Somehow the world and the other doctors Know what’s in your heart as soon as you make This […]...
21. Swinging the Lead Said the soldier to the Surgeon, “I’ve got noises in me head And a kind o’ filled up feeling after every time I’m fed; I can sleep all night on picket, but I can’t sleep in my bed”. And the Surgeon said, “That’s Lead!” Said the soldier to the Surgeon, “Do you think they’ll send […]...
22. Lover's Gifts XIX: It Is Written in the Book It is written in the book that Man, when fifty, must leave the Noisy world, to go to the forest seclusion. But the poet proclaims That the forest hermitage is only for the young. For it is the Birthplace of flowers and the haunt of birds and bees; and hidden Hooks are waiting there for […]...
23. The Healer “Tuberculosis should not be,” The old professor said. “If folks would hearken unto me ‘Twould save a million dead. Nay, no consumptive needs to die, A cure have I. “From blood of turtle I’ve distilled An elixir of worth; Let every sufferer be thrilled And sing for joy of earth; Yet every doctor turns his […]...
24. Archibald's Example Old Archibald, in his eternal chair, Where trespassers, whatever their degree, Were soon frowned out again, was looking off Across the clover when he said to me: “My green hill yonder, where the sun goes down Without a scratch, was once inhabited By trees that injured him-an evil trash That made a cage, and held […]...
25. A Song Of Sixty-Five Brave Thackeray has trolled of days when he was twenty-one, And bounded up five flights of stairs, a gallant garreteer; And yet again in mellow vein when youth was gaily run, Has dipped his nose in Gascon wine, and told of Forty Year. But if I worthy were to sing a richer, rarer time, I’d […]...
26. Come On In, The Senility Is Fine People live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa, But you don’t have to live forever to become a grampa. The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild, You only have to live until your child has a child. From that point on you start looking both ways over your shoulder, Because sometimes you […]...
27. Policeman G To Policeman G. the Inspector said: “When you pass the ‘shops’ you must turn your head; If you took a wager, that would be a sin; So you’ll earn no stripes if you run them in.” Mush-a-ring-tiy-ah, Fol-de-diddle-doh! To the House Committee, the Inspector said: “‘Tis a terrible thing how the gamblers spread, For they […]...
28. At the End In another time, a linen winding sheet Would already have been drawn About her, the funeral drums by now Would have throbbed their dull tattoo Into the shadows writhing Behind the fire’s eye While a likeness Of her narrow torso, carved And studded with obsidian Might have been passed from hand To hand and rubbed […]...
29. You Can Be A Republican, I'm A Genocrat Oh, “rorty” was a mid-Victorian word Which meant “fine, splendid, jolly,” And often to me it has reoccurred In moments melancholy. For instance, children, I think it rorty To be with people over forty. I can’t say which, come eventide, More tedious I find; Competing with the juvenile stride, Or meeting the juvenile mind. So […]...
30. The Stand-Ins In the dream The swastika is neon And flashes like a strobe light Into my eyes, all colors, All vibrations And I see the killer in him And he turns on an oven, An oven, an oven, an oven, And on a pie plate he sticks In my Yellow Star And then Then when it […]...
31. Pi The admirable number pi: Three point one four one. All the following digits are also just a start, Five nine two because it never ends. It can’t be grasped, six five three five, at a glance, Eight nine, by calculation, Seven nine, through imagination, Or even three two three eight in jest, or by comparison […]...
32. Motel Seedy The artisans of this room, who designed the lamp base (a huge red slug with a hole Where its heart should be) or chose this print Of a butterscotch sunset, Must have been abused in art class As children, forced to fingerpaint With a nose, or a tongue. To put this color Green exhausted grave […]...
33. If If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being […]...
34. A Catalpa Tree On West Twelfth Street While the sun stops, or Seems to, to define a term For the indeterminable, The human aspect, here In the West Village, spindles To a mutilated dazzle- Niched shards of solitude Embedded in these brownstone Walkups such that the Hudson At the foot of Twelfth Street Might be a thing that’s Done with mirrors: definition […]...
35. INFAMOUS POET I never did fit in – at six or sixty one – I stand out in a crowd, too young or old And gather pity like a shroud. “Is that real silk?” A teenager inquired. “As real as Oxfam ever is For one pound fifty.” The vast ballroom was growing misty And blurred with alcohol […]...
36. Home Fires IN a Yiddish eating place on Rivington Street… faces… coffee spots… children kicking at the night stars with bare toes from bare buttocks. They know it is September on Rivington when the red tomaytoes cram the pushcarts, Here the children snozzle at milk bottles, children who have never seen a cow. Here the stranger wonders […]...
37. To Edward Fitzgerald I chanced upon a new book yesterday; I opened it, and, where my finger lay ‘Twixt page and uncut page, these words I read – Some six or seven at most – and learned thereby That you, Fitzgerald, whom by ear and eye She never knew, “thanked God my wife was dead.” Aye, dead! and […]...
38. Rogue Elephant The reason to be autonomous is to stand there, A cleared instrument, ready to act, to search The moral realm and actual conditions for what Needs to be done and to do it: fine, the Best, if it works out, but if, like a gun, it Comes in handy to the wrong choice, why then […]...
39. Melancholia the history of melancholia Includes all of us. Me, I writhe in dirty sheets While staring at blue walls And nothing. I have gotten so used to melancholia That I greet it like an old Friend. I will now do 15 minutes of grieving For the lost redhead, I tell the gods. I do it […]...
40. Ghosts Some ghosts are women, Neither abstract nor pale, Their breasts as limp as killed fish. Not witches, but ghosts Who come, moving their useless arms Like forsaken servants. Not all ghosts are women, I have seen others; Fat, white-bellied men, Wearing their genitals like old rags. Not devils, but ghosts. This one thumps barefoot, lurching […]...