the weather is hot on the back of my watch

t
the weather is hot on the back of my watch
which is down at Finkelstein’s
who is gifted with 3 balls
but no heart, but you’ve got to understand
when the bull goes down
on the whore, the heart is laid aside for something else,
and let’s not over-rate the obvious decency
for in a crap game you may be cutting down
some wobbly king of 6 kids
and a hemorrhoid butt on his last unemployment check,
and who is to say the rose is greater than the thorn?
not I, Henry,
and when your love gets flabby knees and prefers flat shoes,
maybe you should have stuck it into something else
like an oil well
or a herd of cows.
I’m too old to argue,
I’ve gone with the poem
and been k.o.’d with the old sucker-punch
round after round,
but sometimes I like to think of the Kaiser
or any other fool full of medals and nothing else,
or the first time we read Dos
or Eliot with his trousers rolled;
the weather is hot on the back of my watch
which is down at Finkelstein’s,
but you know what they say: things are tough all over,
and I remember once on the bum in Texas
I watched a crow-blast, one hundred farmers with one hundred shotguns
jerking off the sky with a giant penis of hate
and the crows came down half-dead, half-living,
and they clubbed them to death to save their shells
but they ran out of shells before they ran out of crows
and the crows came back and walked around the pellets and
stuck out their tongues
and mourned their dead and elected new leaders
and then all at once flew home to fuck to fill the gap.

you can only kill what shouldn’t be there.
and Finkelstein should be there and my watch
and maybe myself, and I realize that if the poems are bad
they are supposed to be bad and if they are good
they are likewise supposed to be—although there is a minor
fight to be fought,
but still I am sad
because I was in this small town somewhere in the badlands,
way off course, not even wanting to be there,
two dollars in my wallet, and a farmer turned to me
and asked me what time it was
and I wouldn’t tell him,
and later they gathered them up for burning
as if they were no better than dung with feathers,
feathers and a little gasoline,
and from the bottom of one pile
a not-quite-dead crow smiled at me.

it was 4:35 p.m.
645
Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

A Terre by Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
(Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.) Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell.
Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.
Read Poem
0
617
Rating:

Our God, Our Help by Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts
Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home:

Under the shadow of thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting thou art God,
To endless years the same.

Read Poem
0
459
Rating:

from The Seasons: Winter by James Thomson
James Thomson
See, Winter comes to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train—
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought
And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
Congenial horrors, hail! With frequent foot,
Pleas’d have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nurs’d by careless solitude I liv’d
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleas’d have I wander’d through your rough domain;
Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst;
Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew’d
In the grim evening-sky. Thus pass’d the time,
Till through the lucid chambers of the south
Read Poem
0
704
Rating:

Traveler, your footprints by Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Read Poem
0
559
Rating:

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse by Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.

The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling cauldron broods.

Swift rush the spectral vapours white
Read Poem
0
724
Rating:

Felonies and Arias of the Heart by Frank Lima
Frank Lima
I need more time, a simple day in Paris hotels and window shopping.
The croissants will not bake themselves and the Tower of London would
Like to spend a night in the tropics with gray sassy paint. It has many
Wounds and historic serial dreams under contract to Hollywood.
Who will play the head of Mary, Queen of Scots, and who will braid her

Hair? Was it she who left her lips on the block for the executioner,
Whose hands would never find ablution, who would never touch a woman
Again or eat the flesh of a red animal? Blood pudding would repulse him
Until joining Anne. That is the way of history written for Marlow and
Shakespear. They are with us now that we are sober and wiser,

Not taking the horrors of poetry too seriously. Why am I telling you this
Nonsense, when I have never seen you sip your coffee or tea,
In the morning? Not to mention,
Read Poem
0
584
Rating:

The Dreamer by Eva Gore-Booth
Eva Gore-Booth
All night I stumble through the fields of light,
And chase in dreams the starry rays divine
That shine through soft folds of the robe of night,
Hung like a curtain round a sacred shrine.

When daylight dawns I leave the meadows sweet
And come back to the dark house built of clay,
Over the threshold pass with lagging feet,
Open the shutters and let in the day.
Read Poem
0
490
Rating:

Hotel François 1er by Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
It was a very little while and they had gone in front of it. It was that they had liked it would it bear. It was a very much adjoined a follower. Flower of an adding where a follower.
Have I come in. Will in suggestion.
They may like hours in catching.
It is always a pleasure to remember.
Have a habit.
Any name will very well wear better.
All who live round about there.
Have a manner.
The hotel François Ier.
Just winter so.
It is indubitably often that she is as denied to soften help to when it is in all in midst of which in vehemence to taken given in a bestowal show than left help in double.
Having noticed often that it is newly noticed which makes older often.
The world has become smaller and more beautiful.
The world is grown smaller and more beautiful. That is it.
Yes that is it.
Read Poem
0
595
Rating:

The Tower by William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
I

What shall I do with this absurdity —
O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
Read Poem
0
810
Rating:

The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats
John Keats
St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;
Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,
And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,
Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:
The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
Read Poem
0
787
Rating:

Under Ben Bulben by William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
I

Swear by what the Sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the cocks a-crow.

Swear by those horsemen, by those women,
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long visaged company
Read Poem
0
652
Rating:

War Mothers by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
There is something in the sound of drum and fife
That stirs all the savage instincts into life.
In the old times of peace we went our ways,
Through proper days
Of little joys and tasks. Lonely at times,
When from the steeple sounded wedding chimes,
Telling to all the world some maid was wife—
But taking patiently our part in life
Read Poem
0
630
Rating:

A Ballad of Death by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.

O Love's lute heard about the lands of death,
Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;
O Love and Time and Sin,
Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,
Read Poem
0
674
Rating:

Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

II
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
Read Poem
0
972
Rating:

Speech: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
(from Julius Caesar, spoken by Marc Antony) Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
Read Poem
0
811
Rating:

Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning
Robert Browning
But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,
Treat his own subject after his own way,
Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
And shut the money into this small hand
When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?
Oh, I'll content him,—but to-morrow, Love!
I often am much wearier than you think,
This evening more than usual, and it seems
As if—forgive now—should you let me sit
Here by the window with your hand in mine
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,
Read Poem
0
886
Rating:

Paradise Lost: Book  8 (1674 version) by John Milton
John Milton
THE Angel ended, and in Adams Eare
So Charming left his voice, that he a while
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixt to hear;
Then as new wak't thus gratefully repli'd.
What thanks sufficient, or what recompence
Equal have I to render thee, Divine
Hystorian, who thus largely hast allayd
The thirst I had of knowledge, and voutsaf't
This friendly condescention to relate
Things else by me unsearchable, now heard
With wonder, but delight, and, as is due,
With glorie attributed to the high
Creator; something yet of doubt remaines,
Which onely thy solution can resolve.
When I behold this goodly Frame, this World
Read Poem
0
742
Rating:

Stanzas by Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë
I'll not weep that thou art going to leave me,
There's nothing lovely here;
And doubly will the dark world grieve me,
While thy heart suffers there.

I'll not weep, because the summer's glory
Must always end in gloom;
And, follow out the happiest story—
It closes with a tomb!

And I am weary of the anguish
Increasing winters bear;
Weary to watch the spirit languish
Through years of dead despair.

Read Poem
0
485
Rating:

Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
PART I
'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;
Tu—whit! Tu—whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

Read Poem
0
791
Rating:

Thyrsis: A Monody, to Commemorate the Author's Friend, Arthur Hugh Clough by Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks—
Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men
To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Read Poem
0
525
Rating: