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A Polish Man Murders Fifty People In Galway

December 6, 2024 12 Comments

[Note: Originally from 2012]

They have been coached their whole live-long. They are eager to be put on the spot, because they do not recognize it for what it is. They are prepared to flense the hide from another with the edge of their tongue, but no target is proffered. They are put on another spot, one they prefer to keep at home in front of a mirror, cracked. But they warm to their task like devils.

It is a deformed and crazy uncle in the belfry. It must not get out or he will desolate the landscape, entire. They have been coached to say nothing, lest they answer everything. They go to the confessional and eagerly assent that they’ve stolen a pencil they’ve never touched, while the corpses are stacked like cordwood in the secret cellar of their heart. They smile but there’s a dab of lime on their cheek.

They regret everything, except their lack of regret. This they wear like a badge on their sleeve. The cannonballs of life have taken their arm and the sleeve hangs empty; they say it tingles still.

There is only one regret in this world and I don’t have it.

When You are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

–W. B. Yeats

We Nurse Them With Acetylene And Ultraviolet Light

January 7, 2013 3 Comments

SPANNERS
by: Sippican Cottage

Sun’s beaming in the window,
There’s rumbling from the floor,
We’re rollicking and pulsing
Boxes dancing out the door.

Oh how our muscles ripple,
We’re making twenty knots,
We’re alternating; current —
We’re glowing with the watts.

Pounding down the corridors,
With Bills of Lading, piled;
Our output’s put the boss on ice
We’re blowing out the dials.

They count the beans but can’t keep up,
We’re cooking with the gas;
Our arms are made from tempered steel,
Our heart is made of brass.

That brass is rolled to make a tube,
The tube is bent just so;
And when we blow that trumpet, Jack,
The girls get all aglow.

The whistle blows at five o’clock,
It’s twenty-three skidoo;
The guys and gals that made that stuff,
Go out for dancing too.

They box the compass of the steps
Then swing from chandeliers;
They leave the clerks there in the lurch
Then kick it up a gear.

They pound the floor into the ground,
They swing and then they sway;
They’d drink to all their troubles,
But they’ve long since gone away.

They close the places late at night,
And walk beneath the stars;
Arm in arm, exchanging charms
One’s Venus, one is Mars.

Mighty children spring from them,
To keep the flame alight;
They nurse them with acetylene,
And ultra-violet light.

They grow some whiskers when they’re old,
And sit down for a spell;
Their Ercoles will take their place,
And raise a little hell.

In Hardwood Groves

September 15, 2012 1 Comment 

In Hardwood Groves - Robert Frost 
 
The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers.
However it is in some other world
I know that this is way in ours.

Being Odd Is An Excellent Career Move

July 17, 2012 3 Comments 

cold nights on the farm, a sock-shod
stove-warmed flatiron slid under
the covers, mornings a damascene-
sealed bizarrerie of fernwork
        decades ago now

waking in northwest London, tea
brought up steaming, a Peak Frean
biscuit alongside to be nibbled
as blue gas leaps up singing
        decades ago now

damp sheets in Dorset, fog-hung
habitat of bronchitis, of long
hot soaks in the bathtub, of nothing
quite drying out till next summer:
        delicious to think of

hassocks pulled in close, toasting-
forks held to coal-glow, strong-minded
small boys and big eager sheepdogs
muscling in on bookish profundities
        now quite forgotten

the farmhouse long sold, old friends
dead or lost track of, what's salvaged
is this vivid diminuendo, unfogged
by mere affect, the perishing residue
        of pure sensation
 

–On The Disadvantages of Central Heating, by Amy Clampitt

O Eeys That Loke

June 12, 2012 1 Comment

O Eeys That Loke
by: Sippican Cottage

Banquo’s ghosts all shuffle in 
Take their chairs and we begin 
They whisper things incessantly 
Beyond the ken of men like me 
I want to speak but I am mute 
So they continue in cahoots 
Or I can speak but never dare 
To make a squeak while they are there 
They hold a mirror to my face 
While drawing marks to prove their case 
Regret is limned in every one 
Perish crosshatched when they’re done 
The statue’s broke, there’s no repair 
But broken now it cannot wear 
But I am worn down — there’s the rub 
Until I join their shady club 
There’s one among them I can’t stand 
I’ve felt the touch of his right hand 
If he ever looks me in the eye 
I’ll lay down on the ground and die 
It’s worse than that; he does not linger 
Or look my way or lift a finger 
I turned my back on him you see 
Can’t help but turn his back on me 
Now I wander all alone 
The seconds tick by like a loan 
I’ll sit and murmur in my turn 
While children fill my leaky urn

Tag: poetry

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sippicancottage

A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.

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