So You Think You're A Poet (Marcus Bales)

Apollinaire, Gedicht aus den Calligrammes.

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So you think you’re a poet: you’re handsome enough
that your photograph gives you that look;
some publisher prints your unedited stuff
and calls it a postmodern book.

You dress for success in new prosperous clothes
and you flirt with the straights and the gays;
you read out your craftless expressions of prose
for the meager amount that it pays.

But free verse is not about poems at all –
it’s fronts, masquerades, and facades:
they print up whatever you happen to scrawl,
and the audience always applauds.

The audience always applauds, but those claps
aren’t judging poetic details;
performance is different from writing -- perhaps
you’re not good at poems, but sales.

It turns out the living’s in getting a job
to lecture kids younger than you:
to teach them to join in the free versing mob
then lecture yet younger kids, too.

You blurb and you lobby to win one good prize
so your books won’t remain on the shelf
while caressing your pupils with only your eyes --
and keep your old hands to yourself.

You’ve got to keep track of whose student is whose
as you blurb and you blurb and you blurb
it takes only one fragile ego to bruise
and your hunger is kicked to the curb.

The prizes are out there, so don’t relax yet
lobby and blurb for that call --
keep prosing and posing, and never forget
the poems don’t matter at all.

So you think you’re a poet, still handsome enough
that your photograph still has a look;
and publishers still print unedited stuff,
but now the prize makes it a book.

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Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in The New Yorker or The Atlantic.

Poem is copyright and all rights reserved by Marcus Bales and has been published with permission.

Sordid Scene (Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, a.k.a. as the Earl of Lytton, 1831-1891)

Pale
Thro' the thick vagueness of the vaprous night,
From the dark alley, with a clouded light,
Two rheumy, melancholy lampions flare.
They are the eyes of the Police.
In there,
Down the dark archway, thro' the greasy door,
Passionately pushing past the three or four
Complacent constables that cluster'd round
A costermonger*, in gutter found
Incapably, but combatively, drunk,
The woman hurried. Thro' the doorway slunk
A peaky pinch'd-up child with frighten'd face,
Important witness in some murder case
About to come before the magistrate
To-morrow.
Misery.

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*Costermonger = seller of fruit on the street

Note: Is it any wonder that a contest involving purple prose is named in the good Earl's honor?

The Chimney Sweeper (William Blake, 1757-1827)

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry "'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

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From Songs of Innocence, 1789

Ding, Dong, Bell (Anonymous)

Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy’s in the well.
Who put her in?--
Little Johnny Lin.
Who pulled her out?
Dog with long snout.
What a naughty boy was that,
To drown poor pussy-cat,
Who never did any harm,
But killed the mice in his farmer's barn.

Modern version:

Ding, dong, bell,
Pussy’s in the well.
Who put her in?
Little Johnny Green.
Who pulled her out?
Little Tommy Stout.
What a naughty boy was that,
To try to drown poor pussy cat,
Who ne’er did him any harm,
But killed all the mice in the farmer's barn.

Ding, Dong, Bell is a popular English language nursery rhyme.

Thanatopsis (William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878)

Image adapted from a painting by Hans Baldung-Grie, circa 1484-1545
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To him who, in the love of Nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language: for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart--
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice:--Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements;
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thy eternal resting place
Shalt thou retire alone--nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulcher. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks,
That make the meadows green, and, poured round all,
Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man! The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning--pierce the Barcan wilerness,
Or lost thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there!
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone!
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men--
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side,
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
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1814

There Was a Crooked Man (Anonymous)

There was a crooked man,
and he went a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence
against a crooked stile:
He bought a crooked cat,
which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together
in a little crooked house.