Over My Head

I guess I must be feeling a little overwhelmed at work these days because I've been re-reading the following two poems.

He said:

Robin Robertson

Waves

I have swum out too far
out of my depth
and the sun has gone;

the hung weight of my legs
a plumb-line,
my fingers raw, my arms lead;

the currents pull like weed
and I am very tired
and cold, and moving out to sea.

The beach is still bright.
The children I never had
run to the edge

and back to their beautiful mother
who smiles at them, looks up
from her magazine, and waves.


She said:

Stevie Smith

Not Waving, But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Pour chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.


It's been a while since I've done a "he said" "she said" blog, comparing poems by male and female poets. Yes, Robin is a male poet, and Stevie is a female poet.

Barbie is 50

I never had a Barbie doll. I did go to a Janis Joplin concert once.

Here is a poem for Barbie:

Hippie Barbie

Barbie couldn't grasp the concept
of free love. After all, she was born
into the world of capitalism
where nothing is free. And all she had
to choose from was a blond or dark-haired Ken
who looked exactly like Midge's boyfriend Alan.
Ken wouldn't even get bell-bottoms
or his first psychedelic pantsuit
until it was way too late, sometime in the mid-seventies.
And then, whenever Barbie tried to kiss him
his peel-off lamb-chop sideburns loosened
and stuck to her cheeks. There were no black male dolls yet
so she guessed a mixed-race love-child
was out of the question. Barbie walked her poodle
past the groovy chicks who showed their bellybuttons
and demonstrated against the war. She couldn't
make a peace sign with her stuck-together fingers.
She felt a little like Sandra Dee at a Janis Joplin concert.

Denise Duhamel

Signifying Nothing

I planned to write about Rush Limbaugh, but decided he wasn't worth the trouble. He's just a celebrity, like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, only he eats more. He claims to have 20 million listeners. A lot of people read the Star magazine, too, but that doesn't make it gospel.

A bit of Shakespeare seems to relate:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

From MacBeth

Small Pleasures

My father has always taken pleasure in small things.
He loved sardines in a can that opened with a key.
He loved the way a well-crafted hand tool fit in his palm and did its job.
He loved a mug of steaming black coffee.
He loved shoes that fastened with velcro.

For many years he took pleasure in having a job and working.
After he retired, he took pleasure in that.
He always lived within his means - never had a new car, never had a car payment.
He took pleasure in what he could afford.

The following poem is about one of life's small pleasures. In Bermuda they call it "tinned cream" and put it in tea or make Ovaltine with it. I like it on a bowl of cereal or fruit.

Carnation Milk

Carnation Milk is the best in the land;
Here I sit with a can in my hand—
No tits to pull, no hay to pitch,
You just punch a hole in the son of a bitch.

Anonymous

Uncle Jim

There are some really interesting characters in my family.

I had an Uncle Herb, who worked at a brewery and drank free beer all day. My mother didn't approve of him, needless to say. Us kids were fascinated by him because he was funny, and because he gave us dimes and quarters whenever he saw us. He named his dog Lucky, which we thought was a pretty cool name. Lucky ate Uncle Herb's dentures one night and survived. I guess he was a lucky dog.

My kids have 2 Uncle Jims - one on each side of the family - neither particularly like the man in the following poem, but I had to share it, because every family has its share of members who don't quite fit the mold.

I heard the poem on "The Writer's Almanac" on NPR Radio one morning this week.


Uncle Jim

What the children remember about Uncle Jim
is that on the train to Reno to get divorced
so he could marry again
he met another woman and woke up in California.
It took him seven years to untangle that dream
but a man who could sing like Uncle Jim
was bound to get in scrapes now and then:
he expected it and we expected it.

Mother said, It's because he was the middle child,
and Father said, Yeah, where there's trouble
Jim's in the middle.

When he lost his voice he lost all of it
to the surgeon's knife and refused the voice box
they wanted to insert. In fact he refused
almost everything. Look, they said,
it's up to you. How many years
do you want to live? and Uncle Jim
held up one finger.
The middle one.

By Peter Meinke