Two themed poems by Jack T. Marlowe
Two poems
by Jack T. Marlowe
amazing grace
some years ago
a lady friend asked
why i don't smile more
and i explained:
"Every day
is a dark hell
of desperation
and every night
a festering
loneliness"
and she
not knowing
how to offer
comfort, said
"Just remember
that God loves you."
"Well, assuming
that there is
a God--" i said
"which I don't--
it might be true
that God loves me
but that love
won't kiss me
goodbye
in the morning
before I go
prostitute
my life away
for eight
wretched
hours
and that love
won't greet me
when I get home
from work
and it won't ask
how my day was
and that love
won't wrap
its arms
around me
and hold my
ragged body
as I slip off
to sleep
and that love
won't give me
a piece of ass
when I wake up
with a hard-on
at 6:00 a.m.
WILL IT?"
"I suppose we can
change the subject?"
she asked
and amazingly
i felt better
already.
++++++++++++++++++++
these days, even Death gets dissed
"I'm not half the man
I used to be," said Pluto
a rather odd thing
for him to say
considering
that he wasn't
a man
and had never been
a man
being the god
of the dead and ruler
of Hades
but he was feeling
somewhat slighted
having heard the news
about his namesake
being demoted
from planet to dwarf
all on the whim
of some mere mortals
called 'astronomers.'
It would have been
less insulting
if they'd named it
"Mini-Me,"
Pluto thought
almost laughing
in the cold, dusty
and otherwise
dead air.
Author bio:
Jack T. Marlowe is a gentleman rogue from Dallas, Texas. A writer of poetry and short fiction, he is also a veteran of the open mic, including the Outlaws of the Spoken Word series. His writing has agonized the pages of Underground Voices, Zygote in My Coffee, Words Dance, The Smoking Poet, remark, Cause & Effect, and elsewhere. Jack also maintains an online presence at www.inkandblood.net.
1 comment:
Hello Jack,
After having read almost all of the poems on The Clockwise Cat for February, I find myself stronlgy pulled back to your poem "Amazing" because of the power in the basic
words and the raw emotion that strikes through, of the very human need for close love that abstract religious statements can never fill. Also life's disillusionment and the agony of the poem's narrator comes through almost too painfully harsh.
About the only part of the poem that didn't reach me was the rather crass--though typical it seems of modern poetry--equating sexuality to selfish lust, as if a woman were only a vulgar object for men and sexuality were only a 'knee' jerk reaction. But maybe, even here, the narrator is hiding his truly relational needs behind macho vulgarity.
Your poem spoke to more than the last 100+ poems I have read, and that is something, since I am from the opposite side of the tracks from you; I am one of those lousy Christians, that get all of the bad press these days (often justifibly so given how often we fail to be the loving compassionate beings we claim Christians are).
Thanks,
Daniel Wilcox
Post a Comment