Love Song For Donny

 He calls himself a cheerer upper

that drooling simp,

that cretinous, sludge-blooded

syphilitic pimp.

"Come on get happy

and make it snappy

or just shovel shit

if your hair is nappy."

We've had enough

of fatty with the golf cart

with the cabinet he got

on sale at Walmart.

The baby in chief

is just illusion super sized

whose stupid cryto coin

has 'em all hypnotized.

He's filling his diaper

at his ghost town parade

afraid that we're hip to

his strongman charade.

He's a crying, crapping, superannuated fake

with his spineless, goggle-eyed, parroting rummies

who will blow themselves up like fingerless rubes--

his red-hatted cosplay crash test dummies.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--The Catcher In the Rye

Word Garden Word List--The Catcher In The Rye

 

Hello my little outsiders, and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! This week we have a source novel that needs no introduction--The Catcher In the Rye  by J.D.Salinger.

I first read it in high school. My best friend had to read it for class and it sounded interesting. Now, at that point in my life, I was reading less than I ever had before or ever would again, but I read this novel and loved it. I loved Holden tap dancing on the floor of the dorm bathroom, crowing, "I'm the goddamn governor's son!" I thought it was tremendously funny and also poignant.

I read it again when I was around forty, married, and raising a son. This time, it made me want to help Holden in all of his confusion and hurt. I wanted to mother him. I had been where he was once, and hadn't forgotten. I read the book a third time last year, and once again it hit me differently than the first two times. I kept thinking of the song Ripple  by the Grateful Dead.

There is a road, no simple highway

between the dawn and the dark of night

and if you go, no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own, Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then make your wandering way back home. This prompt remains active until next Sunday.

And now, your List:

aspirin

bores

celebrity

cheerer upper

clock

corny

drooling

entertaining

glued

incognito

limping

madman

museum

nervous

record

school

sleepy

snappy

terrific

wuddyacallit

Travel Advisory

 

In Denver, poems stay up in the Rockies at night

only rolling down Colfax Avenue in bright afternoon,

hanging out in the vanished record store with

Allen Ginsburg, waiting for night to howl at the moon.

In Toronto, you can catch a touristy rickshaw

or hustle some change at night on Yonge street

depending where on the grayscale you fall,

and the poems there wear boots and are desperate/sweet.

In Manila you can take your poem to a fine hotel

or share Italian in a restaurant where they let you write on the wall,

then get starry/holy at one of the cathedrals

and set out before dawn to hunt up some warm pan de sal.

But in London there are no poems, they've all

fallen into the gap, been run over by trains,

gotten rat-tired of curry and black-coat robots.

Nerves fried, orphan-empty, they sick in the streets, 

cut out their tongues, and die whenever it rains.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

Music: Leo Kottke Eight Miles High

Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

 

Hello my little travelers across space and reality, and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List. This time our source is Allen Ginsberg's Iron Horse. The poem is part of his The Fall of America: Poems of These States sequence of poems, and uses the locomotive as a symbol for the destructive nature of modern society and the loss of individuality.

Allen Ginsberg

My copy was published in 1973 by Coach House Press of Toronto, Canada, but I bought it on a swing through California at about that time. In 1992 I met the author and he signed my copies of Howl  and Iron Horse. He asked me where I had gotten the latter and then went through it and corrected three mistakes with the same pen he had used to sign my book. He knew exactly where they were. I still have both of the collections he signed.  In fat, I still have every poetry collection I ever bought, that meant something to me, and I bought a lot of them when I was young. Not much has survived with me through all the years, but my poetry books have. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then travel by train across America. 

And now, your List:

actors

baton

bulletins

busted

electronic

empty

hamburgers

leafy

nap

nerves

orphan

phantom

poem

public

robots

slag

stale

starry

train

voice

Winter & Wanting

 

You wanted

To break my cold reserve

To be a flame on the frozen stream

I wanted

To protect my stillness

To be snow in the presence of May

Charming one

You remind me of me

When I was hopeful and still believed

I thank you

For the moment's respite

When you touched my sleep with honeyed light.

______

For Dverse MTB "A Lover as Second Nature" hosted by Laura B.

Music: Jai Jagdeesh In Dreams

Ice

 

Winter went too far that year

like a friend who shows her ugly side,

as heedless as some smartphone fuck in a bookstore

as numb and hard as a cop's baton.

Southern beauty, transplanted lady

brought here as a baby, 

my English walnut tree was shivered--shocked--

a dazed involuntary wandering the halls of summer for years after.

This year, unfed, the bandit squirrels stopped knocking down 

her new growth bouquets.

This year her gown is lush, her branches heavy with baubles,

the first walnuts in five years.

I love to sit beneath her, bathed in green

and the susurration of her clustered feathers.

No silent era star wearing ostrich plumes

could compete with her now--she preens in the pleasant weather.

This spring, she is an Impressionist lady 

holding a parasol over me as I am shivered--shocked--

by my country showing her ugly side

my sanctuary soft and sweet, the future hard as a cop's baton.

________

for Dverse--"A View of One's Own" hosted by Dora. 

The images are taken by me, of the walnut tree in my yard. 

Music: Glee cast Don't Make Me Over

Word Garden Word List--Anne Sexton

 

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List poetry prompt. I'm a day early with it since I didn't post one last week. Our source this time is Anne Sexton's collection entitled To Bedlam and Part Way Back. 

Anne Sexton

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. This prompt remains active through next Saturday. 

Your List:

animals

begat

calling

carvings

cures

elephants

erasers

hotel

jackpot

madness

mine

noon

poets

postmarks

radio

roller coaster

rowboat

silk

spoons

wooden