Poems 43 and 44

[class]

Two poems, one tray of brownies and maybe some other rewards! Memorize which one or both that you like!

footnote upon the construction of the masses: - Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994)

some people are young and nothing else

and some people are old and nothing else

and some people are in between and

just in between.

and if the flies wore clothes on their backs

and all the buildings burned in golden fire,

if heaven shook like a belly dancer

and all the atom bombs began to cry,

some people would be young and nothing else

and some people old and nothing else,

and the rest would be the same

the rest would be the same.

the few who are different

are eliminated quickly enough

by the police, by their mothers, their brothers,

others; by themselves.

all that’s left is what you see.

it’s hard.

________________________________________________

Central School – Jay S. Paul

From the bus garage beside the river, where motors

idle like the middle of stories, the road

labors uphill to street signs, the faces growing.

You stand in headlights, climb into the certainty

of acceleration, stagger between the lines of jokes,

You want a small place at the end of a seat,

hoping not to be noticed, not to weep when your shoe

flies from shout to shout and against a window. 

Leaving the houses to speed along fences, the road

brakes into daily screams at the steep bank, the turn

above the invisible pasture. You name

each day by the wrong they do, reciting

days all day till counting loses count. One year

the shoe they hand is small. They hand it to you.