Tag Archives: poetry

Diner Waitress

diner waitress

on occasion,
bits of her broke free.
they slipped onto
greasy platters
piled high with
thick cured bacon and
fluffy scrambled eggs.
were made palatable
with a gloss of
sweet cream butter
or a slathering
of strawberry jam.
washed down
behind strong
hot coffee slurped
from never empty
cups which sat atop
the cool laminate
counter top
behind which-
she existed.

A while back I was involved in a comment conversation that revolved around the idea that certain classes of people seem only to exist in the setting in which they are familiar to us. I believe this piece to be an off shoot of that conversation.

 

The push-broom murder

homage-to-heroes-cp

CCC #64

Little Evie Sorensen
Was born of drunken stock
To a man who drove a push-broom
And a woman with one frock.

She grew up cold and hungry
But she never shed a tear
When she went without her supper
So her parents could have beer.

She had no friends to speak of
‘Cause they moved from room to room
So she’d while away the hours
Playing horsey with dad’s push-broom.

And a gallant steed he was
That push-broom horse with her astride
As they left behind the squalid walls
Of this week’s cramped bedside.

Nights she waited at the window
Not for her dad, but for her roan
Till one night she saw her drunken dad
Stumbling up the street alone.

“They grabbed me in the park there
Near Lord Nelson’s monument
And before I knew what happened
I was eating the cement!”

“One grabbed and swung my push-broom
But, thank god, it hit the garden wall
Or he’d a split my head clean open
Whew! Was that ever, a close call!”

As daddy raved and mommy wept
Cause he’d come home with no beer-
Little Evie Sorensen
Shed her first real tear.

This is my response to the photo prompt provided by Crispina Kemp on this weeks Crimson’s Creative Challenge.

Next meal

the-poor-fisherman-by-pierre-puvis-de-chevannes

The Poor Fisherman by Pierre Puvis de Chevannes (1881)

We cling together
Like starving fishermen
Pulling up stones.
Casting nets by day
Lots by night
Crooked tooth smiles
flash. As short
straws are drawn.

This verse was inspired by the two phrasal prompts offered by the OLWG this week. The phrases were: we cling together and fishermen pulling up stones.

For Rent, an encore presentation

Photo credit 3 trailers

Don’t much wanna go to heaven
wouldn’t know no one there, no way
as the kind that I holds near and dear
won’t be a gettin’ thru them pearly gates.

There’s a better chance you’ll find me
sittin’ round a fire ring somewheres
talkin’ loud and smoking Marlboro’s
next to a tub a ice cold beer.

Wearing an old King Diamond tee shirt
and a pair a too tight jeans
sittin’ on some ol’ boys lap, feelin’ frisky-
in the trailer park o my dreams…

Where on every space there’s a double wide
and the lot rents paid in full
and my sister’s- ex-fi-ance’s -brother-in-law
has done his last parole.

So when I exit life’s long lost highway
don’t you be a worrin’ ’bout where I’ve gone
’cause I’m sure there’ll be a For Rent sign
on a nice li’l trailer in the great beyond….

 

When Chelsea Ann Owen’s put out a call for Terrible Poetry inspired by my take on heaven, I knew I had to repost this piece. Terrible or not, I still believe this to be my definitive view of heaven.

An Alaskan Winter

hoar frost in Anchorage

Hoar frost in Anchorage via Reddit

 

There’s nothing bleak about midwinter in Alaska
Nothing bare denuded or exposed
Nothing unsheltered unprotected or unshielded
Every piercing raw stinging second of it
Glimmers and glows glistens and glitters
With a resplendency rival to that of a sun

A sun who would rather sink and simper
just below the line of the horizon,
than harm one hoar frost hair
on an Alaskan winter’s crystalline head.

This poem is my entry into Chelsea Ann Owen’s Terrible Poetry Contest. This weeks theme is The Bleak Midwinter.