Brass Spittoons

B
Clean the spittoons, boy.
Detroit,
Atlantic city,
Palm beach.
Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.
Hey, boy!
A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar,
Two dollars a day.
Hey, boy!
A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar,
Two dollars
Buy shoes for the baby.
house rent to pay.
Gin on Saturday,
Church on Sunday.
My god!
Babies and gin and church
And women and Sunday
All mixed with dimes and
Dollars and clean spittoons
And house rent to pay.
Hey, boy!
A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord.
Bright polished brass like the cymbals
Of King David’s dancers,
Like the wine cups of Solomon.
Hey, boy!
A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord.
A clean bright spittoon all newly polished—
At least I can offer that.
Com’mere, boy!
Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

Soliloquy on an Empty Purse by Mary Jones
Mary Jones
Alas, my Purse! how lean and low!
My silken Purse! what art thou now!
One I beheld—but stocks will fall—
When both thy ends had wherewithal.
When I within thy slender fence
My fortune placed, and confidence;
A poet’s fortune!—not immense:
Yet, mixed with keys, and coins among,
Read Poem
0
127
Rating:

from The Triumph of Love by Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey Hill
I

Sun-blazed, over Romsley, a livid rain-scarp.


XIII

Whose lives are hidden in God? Whose?
Who can now tell what was taken, or where,
or how, or whether it was received:
how ditched, divested, clamped, sifted, over-
laid, raked over, grassed over, spread around,
rotted down with leafmould, accepted
as civic concrete, reinforceable
base cinderblocks:
Read Poem
0
126
Rating:

Speech: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
(from Henry V, spoken by King Henry) Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
Read Poem
0
150
Rating:

Auden's Funeral by Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
I
One among friends who stood above your grave
I cast a clod of earth from those heaped there
Down on the great brass-handled coffin lid.
It rattled on the oak like a door knocker
And at that sound I saw your face beneath
Wedged in an oblong shadow under ground.
Flesh creased, eyes shut, jaw jutting
Read Poem
0
287
Rating:

from Odes, Book Three, 15 by Horace
Horace
I

A Tower of Brass, one would have said,
And Locks, and Bolts, and Iron Bars,
Might have preserv’d one innocent Maiden-head.
The jealous Father thought he well might spare
All further jealous Care.
And, as he walk’d, t’himself alone he smiled,
To think how Venus’ Arts he had beguil’d;
And when he slept, his Rest was deep:
But Venus laugh’d, to see and hear him sleep:
She taught the am’rous Jove
A magical Receipt in Love,
Which arm’d him stronger, and which help’d him more,
Than all his Thunder did, and his Almightyship before.
Read Poem
0
113
Rating:

A Death in the Desert by Robert Browning
Robert Browning
[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene:
It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth,
Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek,
And goeth from Epsilon down to Mu:
Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest,
Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth,
Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered Xi,
From Xanthus, my wife's uncle, now at peace:
Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name.
I may not write it, but I make a cross
To show I wait His coming, with the rest,
And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]

I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine,
"And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,
Read Poem
0
185
Rating:

The Reading Club by Patricia Goedicke
Patricia Goedicke
Is dead serious about this one, having rehearsed it for two weeks
they bring it right into the Odd Fellows Meeting Hall.
Riding the backs of the Trojan Women,
In Euripides’ great wake they are swept up,

But the women of the chorus, in black stockings and kerchiefs,
Stand up bravely to it, shawled arms thrash
In a foam of hysterical voices shrieking,
Seaweed on the wet flanks of a whale,
Read Poem
0
119
Rating:

Sonnet 64: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
Read Poem
0
95
Rating:

The Secular Masque by John Dryden
John Dryden
Enter JANUS
JANUS
Chronos, Chronos, mend thy pace,
An hundred times the rolling sun
Around the radiant belt has run
In his revolving race.
Behold, behold, the goal in sight,
Spread thy fans, and wing thy flight.

Enter CHRONOS, with a scythe in his hand, and a great globe on his back, which he sets down at his entrance
CHRONOS
Weary, weary of my weight,
Let me, let me drop my freight,
And leave the world behind.
I could not bear
Read Poem
0
171
Rating:

The Pearl by George Herbert
George Herbert
MATTHEW xiii I know the ways of learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the press, and make it run;
Read Poem
0
112
Rating:

Sonnet 65: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
Read Poem
0
139
Rating:

Smokers of Paper by Cesare Pavese
Cesare Pavese
He’s brought me to hear his band. He sits in a corner
mouthing his clarinet. A hellish racket begins.
Outside, through flashes of lightning, wind gusts
and rain whips, knocking the lights out
every five minutes. In the dark, their faces
give it their all, contorted, as they play a dance tune
from memory. Full of energy, my poor friend
anchors them all from behind. His clarinet writhes,
Read Poem
0
120
Rating:

Skipper Ireson’s Ride by John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
Of all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme, —
On Apuleius’s Golden Ass,
Or one-eyed Calender’s horse of brass,
Witch astride of a human back,
Islam’s prophet on Al-Borák, —
The strangest ride that ever was sped
Was Ireson’s, out from Marblehead!
Read Poem
0
93
Rating:

An Hymn Of Heavenly Beauty by Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Rapt with the rage of mine own ravish'd thought,
Through contemplation of those goodly sights,
And glorious images in heaven wrought,
Whose wondrous beauty, breathing sweet delights
Do kindle love in high-conceited sprights;
I fain to tell the things that I behold,
But feel my wits to fail, and tongue to fold.
Read Poem
0
186
Rating:

The Pillar of Fame by Robert Herrick
Robert Herrick
Fame’s pillar here at last we set,
Out-during marble, brass or jet;
Charmed and enchanted so
As to withstand the blow
O fo v e r t h r o w ;
Norshalltheseas,
Or o u t r a g e s
Ofstorms,o’erbear
What we uprear;
Tho’kingdomsfall,
Thispillarnevershall
Declineor waste atall;
Butstandfor everbyhisown
Firmand well-fixed foundation.
Read Poem
0
116
Rating:

Middle Passage by Robert Hayden
Robert Hayden
I

Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:

Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
horror the corposant and compass rose.

Middle Passage:
voyage through death
to life upon these shores.
Read Poem
0
160
Rating:

The Messenger by Eleanor Wilner
Eleanor Wilner
The messenger runs, not carrying the news
of victory, or defeat; the messenger, unresting,
has always been running, the wind before and behind him,
across the turning back of earth, leaving
his tracks across the plains, his ropes
hanging from the ledges of mountains;
for centuries, millennia, he has been running
carrying whatever it is that cannot be
Read Poem
0
118
Rating:

In the House of Wax by John Haines
John Haines
I

Far-sighted into yesterday
they stand, gripping
their charters and speeches,
the presidents and kings,
masters of unconscious evil.

Their deputies are here —
judges, robed executioners,
Read Poem
0
162
Rating:

The Homer Mitchell Place by John Engels
John Engels
The mountains carry snow, the season fails.
Jackstraw clapboard shivers on its nails,
the freezing air blows maple leaves and dust,
a thousand nails bleed laceries of rust,
slates crack and slide away, the gutters sprout.
I wonder: do a dead man’s bones come out

like these old lintels and wasp-riddled beams?
I ask in simple consequence of structure seen
Read Poem
0
100
Rating:

Buckdancer’s Choice by James L. Dickey
James L. Dickey
So I would hear out those lungs,
The air split into nine levels,
Some gift of tongues of the whistler

In the invalid’s bed: my mother,
Warbling all day to herself
The thousand variations of one song;

It is called Buckdancer’s Choice.
For years, they have all been dying
Read Poem
0
99
Rating: