STEVE:
The sea is a light turquoise blue near the shore with patches of yellow sand in the shallows where small waves are breaking. Farther out, the water is darker where porpoises dip in and out of the sea like rocking horses. A pair of oyster catchers with beaks as red as Crayolas stroll along where the foam makes a curving line which changes shape, expands and recedes over the rubble of shell and seaweed. A light breeze caresses my face. Everything is perfect. Except for these Goddamn flies. They're awful!


The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the Mexican coast
But now I only hear
The night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked tortillas of the world.

The Dover Bitch: A Criticism Of Life
By Anthony Hecht

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
the notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As sort of a mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
and finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come,
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d'Amour.


Many Many years ago in about 1961? my grandmother gave my mom a book by this person from Vermont. I remembered some of the poems and now I'll try to write them down from memory.




My Housekeeping Sins
Jean C. Killary

I
The washer is broke
The dishes are cloaked
With dirt up to their chins
The pudding is nubby
The floors are all cruddy
These are my housekeeping sins
Poems I can write
In dead of night
I'm filled with imagination
My friends call me poet
They say that they know it
But my house is in a state of stagnation
From cellar to attic
It all looks quite frantic
But I've published a book of verse slim
The house is a mess
I'm a poet I guess
So forgive me my housekeeping sins!

II
Yesterday I watched the kids
In my front yard at play
You'd think they'd stay at home
But that's not the children's way
The grass is often greener
Across a neighbor's fence
And though they're only children
They make a grown-up sense
Sometimes I find my own self
Wishing to change my lot
And the grass is often greener
In my next door neighbor's plot!

III
I swear to all the stars above
I always will believe in love
If I can cling to nothing else
I'll always cling to love that melts
The barriers that stubborn stand
Between ourselves and foreign lands
If we could learn to love one another
And call every man our brother
All racial clash and wars would cease
And we would find eternal peace

IV
He was a simple builder
Of cottages and barns
He nailed and hammered boards
On the outbuildings of farms
He thought his work was menial
That the returns were small
But into whatever thing he did
He gave his all and all
To me his trade's not humble
It was our Master's craft
And though people looked down upon him
And people even laughed
Yet he was the xxxx one (Chosen one, Sacred one? Perfect one?)
To whom nothing was too small
So our common work suffices
If we give our all and all.

THIS ONE JUST CAME TO ME BUT I CAN'T REMEMBER IT ALL. OKAY, IT WAS 1961 AND I WAS NINE OR TEN.

V
I love the little things
A small ceramic mouse
A pair of baby shoes
A little girl's doll house...

(Here there might be a China plate)
.......

So give me all the little things
The small and not the great

VI
There also was one about Echo I--I think. She put in parentheses (the satellite)

Richard Corey
by Edwin Arlington Robinson 1897

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.


I just ran across this poem. It tells the true nature of granite countertops. I believe it needs WORK. 
I, Tom Cole, am the author of this work of poetic majesty.
Read it. It goes humpty dumpty dump!

MY CRUSTY GRANITE COUNTERTOPS
By Tom Cole

Hear the story of my countertops
My countertops of granite,
A rock not quarried on the moon
Or on some other planet.
I used to have a better kind
Now I've got these goddamn it!
They came along with my new house
I didn't have to plan it.
And surely were I near a door
I know that I would slam it.
The countertops I used to have
Were not made out of granite
Nor crusty like ones I've got
I just can't unnerstan it!
Now all I've got's a little poem
That rhymes with pomegranate
A sticky, crusty kind of fruit
Perhaps that's what began it!
I hate my bloody countertops
My countertops of granite
And if they only had a hide,
I know that I would tan it!
A countertop that isn't stone,
That isn't made of granite
Surpasses any granite top
For it is better than it
So if I found a factory
Of countertops of granite
I'd quickly burn it to the ground
And hang the man who ran it

THE END


I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –
I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –
With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –
EMILY DICKINSON


THE END


Someone I columbia asked me to read this poem. I read it aloud as fast as I could because it is possibly the worst "Poem" yet written, my friends. Your inner hurl detector will go off. Plus it's ungrammatical. Literary license my eye! At least very other hubiera should be an habría! So there!

Si hubiera sabido que esa era la última vez que iba a verte, te hubiera dado un beso, un abrazo y te hubiera llamado para darte muchos mas,

Si hubiera sabido que esa era la ultima vez que iba a oir tu voz, hubiese grabado cada una de tus palabras para poder oirlas una y otra vez indefinidamente,

Si hubiera sabido que esa era la ultima vez que te veria....Te hubiera dicho que te amo mas que a mi propia vida, y no hubiera asumido tontamente que ya lo sabias,

Si hubiera sabido que esa era la ultima vez que te miraria a los ojos, hubiera acariciado tu mirada con mi alma,

Si hubiera sabido que todo se terminaria ese dia, hubiera hecho todo por detenerte, porque escucharas y te hubiera dicho, no me dejes....Que los amores como el nuestro ya no existen, que las voces ajenas son solo ecos de envidia mal direccionada, que nosotros dos eramos todo, no necesitabamos mas, lo nuestro fue y sera siempre lo mejor que nos pudo pasar...

Si hubiera sabido que ya nunca volveria a verte, te hubiera atado a mi corazon,

Si hubiera sabido que ese era el final, hubiera roto la pagina y hubiera escrito un nuevo comienzo para los dos….