When I grow up
I think I’ll be a poet
and sit in my study
with my tea and my typewriter
and share my wisdom with the world
I’ll have a cult following
be a celebrated nobody
that English majors will recognize
in the coffee shop a few times a year
and be just as poor as I am now
but with a check in the mail from my publisher once a month
I’ll wear knitted vests and old blazers
and people will listen to all my bullshit
and pay me $300 to speak at their conferences
I’ll give the same advice writers have given since the beginning of time
but people will listen to it
because I said it
and one day when I’ve retired
and nobody has noticed
someone will pick up a tattered copy of my life’s work
from the bargain bin for fifty cents
and want to be just like me.
My driver’s license says I’m almost 30 now,
but I still plan on growing up someday,
and when I do, I think I’ll be a poet.
Tag Archives: write
a question
are poems ensconced somewhere inside my mind
like some hidden treasure I’m trying to find
or demons we summon with blood sacrifices
an addiction we feed with the rest of our vices
from erudite sex after months of gestation
or some kind of socially safe masturbation
are they sculpted completely in only a moment
or are we shaping slowly and don’t even know it
is a poem a seedling becoming a tree
or some captive bird that we have to set free
for some, I suppose, it’s a source of contention
but I think that most poems start out as a question.
Two little girls
Two little girls went out for a walk
in the chilly autumn air,
and they gathered handfuls of leaves as they talked,
and the leaves were as gold as their hair.
They followed the path that cut through the park
and wound with a slow little creek.
They never minded the frost on the bark
or the cold wind that bit at their cheeks.
They fed the ducks leaves from the withering trees,
but the ducks didn’t seem to care
I said with a sigh that ducks didn’t eat leaves,
but the girls only wanted to share.
A haiku (2/8/2016)
You’re a lovely book
set behind glass and the red
words “Do not touch.”
Passion
is a dog on a chain.
It runs around in circles,
whining for food and
barking it’s head off to be let loose—
and if chained up long enough
it’ll eat anything,
do anything
to get off.
Cave
I don’t remember ever
knowing darkness, but
I remember meeting
light.
Memory
Some day
soon
the wide
open spaces
where I spent my childhood
will be filled in
with people
and buildings
and time
and will only exist
in memory and
words.
Natural Mistake
The most disorienting mistake
that people ever make
is brutishly resisting that
they are animals.
The second seems just as rational,
until it’s taken too far;
it’s that of insisting that
animals are all that people really are.
Revelations
The tattered man fidgeted, uncomfortable,
with the noose around his neck and his hands roughly tied.
His gaze moved nervously around the square,
searching for eyes he could look into
to plead for mercy, or at least compassion.
He found there neither.
A pale preacher stood and read aloud the sentence
in a flawless, practiced, scriptural voice:
“You are hereby charged with heresy
for claiming that God does not exist.
For this crime you are to be hanged to death.
Do you have any final words?”
He nodded eagerly.
“Very well, but choose them wisely,” the priest replied.
“For they will be your last.”
He looked out hopelessly into the silent crowd,
and said in a croaking, timid voice,
“I didn’t say that God does not exist;
I know as well as you do that he does!
The question is:
Did God make us, or did we make hi-”
Either way, the man was the first to know.
Sam Bartholomew's Writing Blog 