Bag (a revision) by DjWhite

When it's done,

all that's left is what

I've carried


I'm an over looked

forgotten brown


oh  selfish  hedonist

you need me


and will find me

somewhere

Krogers

a State Store

hidden
at the end of check-out lines

smooth and flat.



My progenitors have been

gone for hundreds of years,

but, I'm still here

wasteful  wasted

dead as they are

dead as you


You won't remember me
and don't want too

So, cruel

your lessons learned,

narcissistic madness


such bankrupt morality
unfolds

my creases looking

for God

yet you


stuff the Y
of my thighs

with fifths of  E & J

or sweaty cans of  211s

then leave
parts of me


under a Canal street bridge

tenting

men in the middle of winter

or

emptied

crumbled

flapped up

against a neighbor's fence.

Wiring Home by Rita Dove

 RITA DOVE

Lest the wolves loose their whistles
and shopkeepers inquire,
keep moving, though your knees flush
red as two chapped apples,
keep moving, head up,
past the beggar's cold cup,
past the kiosk's
trumpet tales of
odyssey and heartbreak-
until, turning a corner, you stand,
staring: ambushed
by a window of canaries
bright as a thousand
golden narcissi.

**Rita Dove is a former US Poet Laureate** 

Modern American Poetry

Possibilities written by DjWhite

It's possible that I'll find

you stewing

on the stove

layered between bubbles

of beef and sour cream;

or maybe I'll see you

gripped frantically

at the end of the cat's tail

desperately holding

to self-preservation.

Often, I'll catch

you swagger through

the door

just behind my smarter half

around dinner time at 6PM

listen to you

snickering at the heated debate

between him and his zipper

over the frailty

of restraint's constitution.

But, normally, it'll be

on a rainy afternoon --

while I sit beside the window

in this oak rocker

creaking back and forth
to muse's rhythm

and listening to the pat, pat, pat

of double-paned complaints,

--  that you'll  peek

at me from Picasso's

or Monet's brush stokes

or flutter from Baudelaire's

bound thoughts

reminding  me

that they too,

were inspired

by someone else's

inspiration.

Selecting a Reader by Ted Kooser

First, I would have her be beautiful,

and walking carefully up on my poetry

at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,

her hair still damp at the neck

from washing it. She should be wearing

a raincoat, an old one, dirty

from not having money enough for the cleaners.

She will take out her glasses, and there

in the bookstore, she will thumb

over my poems, then put the book back

up on its shelf.

She will say to herself,

"For that kind of money, I can get

my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

-- Ted Kooser

[Ted Kooser is the 13th U.S. Poet Laureate. This poem is included in "Poetry I 80  -- A Turning Back To Poetry" an Anthology complied by Billy Collins. There are many wonderful contemporary poets within this book. Billy did a stand up job in compiling such wonderful poetry and prose.]

Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins

It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of the comics,

but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine, decides
to quit after lunch, the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored into the flow of the body's
rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow, and when I fill
the long flower boxes, then press
into rows the limp roots of red
impatiens -- the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth from the
sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then

the soil is full of marvels, bits of leaf
like flakes off a fresco, red-brown
pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the clouds
a brighter white, and all I hear

is the rasp of the steel edge against
a round stone, the small plants
singing with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next.

[I've said this before and I will reiterate -- I ADORE Billy Collins. His poetry is so fresh and alive. Vivid images pop, pop, pop like hot footed kettle corn in front of my eyes -- when reading his poetry. This poem is from his book "Picnic Lightning" If you don't have it go out and buy a copy. It truly is a wonderful addition to any library.]  

poetry, creative writing, collins billy

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