[Julie Steiner]

Not Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are, who gives a rip?
I’m here to give the cops the slip.
They will not see me on the lam
With stolen trinkets in my grip.

My little ho won’t give a damn
When she observes how buzzed I am
Between the rotgut and the meth:
The longest time, she’s wanted glam.

She’s nagged and nagged me half to death,
So now, at least, she’ll pause for breath.
Cuz all I hear is pick, pick, pick.
I sympathize with old Macbeth.

The woods are lovely for this trick.
Can’t catch me, cop! Can’t catch me, dick!
For I am headed nowhere, quick.
For I am headed nowhere, quick.

[Marion Shore]

On Second Thought

There are roses and then there are roses...

[Gertrude Stein]

[Marion Shore]

As usual, once I start I can't stop!


Kilmer at Christmas


I think that I shall never see
a poem more irksome than a tree.
A tree you drag home every year
and lug up several flights of stairs;
A tree who's always falling down
And shedding needles all around;
A tree the kitties love to climb,
Whose lights keep shorting all the time;
Whose season comes and goes and then
You have to lug it down again.
And that is why this year, you see,
I bought an artifical tree.

[Roger Slater]

ANOTHER DRINKING SONG

Wine comes in at the mouth,
And love comes in at the crotch.
That's all we shall know for truth.
The same thing applies to scotch.
I lift the glass to my mouth.
I leer through the glass, and I watch.

[Roger Slater]

ICE

Some say the world will end in fire,
...... some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I mock the fools who favor fire.
The world will perish, but not twice.
I think I know enough of hate
to say that flames are far too nice
...... to be our fate.
...... It will take ice.
 
 
 
 

[RCL]

To a Poor Old Yeoman

sucking a thumb in
the field a filthy one
of them in his mouth

It tastes foul to him
It tastes foul
to him. It tastes
foul to him

You can see it by
the way he gives himself
to the filthy nail
still dark with dirt

Uncomforted
a cursing of raw thumbs
seeming to fill the field
It tastes foul to him

W.C. Williams
To a Poor Old Woman

[Martin Elster]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

Perhaps

bugger all depends
upon

Cue for legai joke. Judge asks if the prisoner has anything to say before he passes sentence on him

Prisoner (mumbling): Bugger all
Judge: What did he say?
Clerk of the Court: He said 'Bugger all', my Lord.
Judge: That's funny. I could have sworn he said something.

That's funny, John. Bugger all is too many syllables, though. Did you ever think that the W.C.W. poem can be reformatted to a pentameter couplet?

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

[John Whitworth]

Yes, oddly enough I did. But it's not the weird format that gets to me. It's the crackerbarrel philosophy which isn't philosophy at all. I keep seeing Walace Beery saying it. And spitting profoundly. That IS the guy |I mean, isn't it. The old guy in 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'?

This could be one of a short series - Great Works of Art I really dislike. Or a long series. Long enough to include all the works of Schoenberg for a start. Oh, and every painting by Mondrian except one. Any one since they are all inexactly the same. Oh, and that film, 'Hiroshima Mon Amour'. Oh and...

[Rory Waterman]

Originally Posted by Marion Shore

This is just to bitch

I have thrown out the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you probably
bought
at the supermarket

Goddammit
they were disgusting
so bruised
and so rotten


[This is just to say - William Carlos Williams]

Tom Leonard did a fun palinode of this. 'This Be the Verse' has been responded to umpteen times, most recently (and quite badly) by someone or other in that Duffy anthology.

I don't have one, so I'll go away now.

[Marion Shore]

On Second Thought ...or, There's Nothing Good on TV

Though the night was made for loving,
And the moon be still as bright,
Yet we'll go no more a'roving--
Well--maybe one more night.


[Byron, So We'll Go No More A'Roving]