My mother hated bridges. She hated driving; she would do it if she absolutely had to, but she would never drive across a bridge. She did not trust them to support her or she did not trust herself to drive straight across, afraid of a fatal tack to the left or to the right, into oncomingContinue reading “#170: Bridges”
Category Archives: Poetry
#169: Freshmen Boys
My 7th period class is chaos. Boys trapped in their teenage bodies don’t know how to do anything; even being human is too difficult. Listening, completely out of the question. Seriousness, a concept that doesn’t register. Respect, never heard the word before. Girls, poor things, are sadly outnumbered, know what’s up and ignore boys. They will wait,Continue reading “#169: Freshmen Boys”
#168: Barack Obama Speaks of Mirrors
Barack Obama Speaks of Mirrors What I see. Damn, I am handsome and my wife is beautiful and my children–exceptional. Hands down, I am the most handsome president in the history of these United States of America. I, too, am perhaps the funniest. Did you see my spiel at the White House Correspondents Dinner? Damn,Continue reading “#168: Barack Obama Speaks of Mirrors”
#167: Sir Spam A Lot (a found poem)
From time to time, believe it or not, I receive spam comments through my little blog site. They are often poorly written, sometimes hilariously so. And they remain a complete mystery to me: Where do they come from? What is their purpose? What could the originator of the message, be it a real live human orContinue reading “#167: Sir Spam A Lot (a found poem)”
#166: A Couple of Clerihews
Senator Elizabeth Warren– she won’t allow any snorin’ but neither will she give us our fun; she refuses over and over to run. Friedrich Nietzsche could not be seen with a pee-chee; a notebook guy, clearly it’s true– how else could he pen Zarathu stra Michael Jarmer has become quite the verse farmer, but attempting some Clerihew funContinue reading “#166: A Couple of Clerihews”
#165: Our Phones Are Too Much With Us
This was too damn hard. Finally, I had to abandon Wordsworth’s awesome rhyme scheme because almost nothing rhymes with seven. At any rate, “The World Is Too Much With Us” is one of my all-time favorite poems and now I’ve gone and ruined it. The poem, exactly as Wordsworth penned it, published in 1807, says asContinue reading “#165: Our Phones Are Too Much With Us”
#164: O Miranda
O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t. O Miranda O Miranda, I, too, have known tempests; I, too, have been separated from a father; I, too, know the feeling of beauty, goodness, or courage creeping through a bit atContinue reading “#164: O Miranda”
#163: Pastoral
I I’ve taught inside a classroom without windows for twenty-seven years. On the one hand, my work is done on the page and in the mind and with words moving through space between people in a room; through imagination and through language we bring the outside in. And yet, on the other hand, if IContinue reading “#163: Pastoral”
#162: Emerson’s The Poet (An Erasure)
Those umpires admired pictures beautiful souls They are selfish dry wood Some study of rules limited judgement It is a proof of beauty that men seem to put into our bodies the spirit and the organ the germination
#161: I’m Worried About Flo
I’m worried about Flo the Progressive Girl. Sometimes her eyes are all goofy and weird, huge, like those people in Margaret Keane’s paintings, the painter whose husband was trying the whole time to claim that his wife’s paintings were his own, and she must have been in cahoots with him because that’s what everybody thought andContinue reading “#161: I’m Worried About Flo”
michael jarmer 