Verse

So seriously, I am in love with Blogs Are For Dogs and Josh’s Short Story Saturday. This week’s story was “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by DH Lawrence, which can, of course, be found in the Norton Anthology of something or other. I remember reading it in one of my undergrad classes. Lawrence was a shocking fellow in his time, but now he and Lance Bass could run off together and no one would think anything about it. But don’t think about it that way, or all the frustrated lust will just drain right out of Lawrence’s prose.

At any rate! A few of my faithful readers know what I majored in — let me enlighten the rest of you. Poetry. Yep … I got an MA in creative writing and contemporary American poetry. Yes, I’ll wait while you break out the “you want fries with that” joke. I can write rings around ya, buddy, but you’re right, it’s not marketable. If I had to go back and do it again, I would become an occupational therapist so I could help my son. However, at the time I had no children and no real expectation of them, and so I did what I loved. I wrote thirty poems for my thesis… it took about two years. But I loved graduate school.

All this is a long way of saying that whenever Josh’s short story comes up on my RSS reader, it will remind me to post a poem (not one of mine, don’t worry, and a short one). And I’ll include a song. Dessert after you eat your peas, right? Not really, cause I’m not there to look over your shoulder. Just eat your damn peas. They’re good for you. Don’t make me come over there.

Bricklayer Love
by Carl Sandburg

I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer
and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.

I don’t care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I
used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.

When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the
mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.

(1918)

The Be Good Tanyas – Rowdy Blues