Showing posts with label collaborative poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collaborative poem. Show all posts

Monday, August 24, 2020

The Last Words of the US Postmaster General


The Last Words of the US Postmaster General

There were some dirty mail boxes 
and shattered glass
beside the post office,
dirty disheveled streets—

Graffitied and nearly covered
with stickers and spray paint,
they roused his ire
and they cried out for removal,

he said. Gimme cleanliness—
They're an eyesore —lock them up.
The people don’t need them
for mail, ballots, medication,
or the delivery of baby chicks.

Give me something to destroy!
He said, Let me take you
to the back room, he said,
and after you’ve come to your senses,
you’ll see it was for the best.

When you’re Postmaster General
you can do as you please.
He smiled, Yes
you can do what you please, first
then, I can do what I please—

Oh, oh, DeJoy of it all, he cried
as the maintenance men
lifted the bar code sorters
and carried them to the hauler —
Is this what you call

progress?
By now his mind was made up—
Oh death to the post office
he said, death to the workers
sorting the mail by hand.

No overtime, he said, but I'll tell you
you don't know anything.
Then we started.
On the way

we passed a long row
of mail boxes. He looked at them
awhile out of
the window and said,

What are all those
funny looking blue boxes doing out there?
Well, I'm tired of them
and he rolled them away.

Give me something to destroy!
Let me take you
to the back room, he said
and after you are recovered,

you can do as you please.
He smiled, Yes
you do what you please first,
then I can do what I please—
Run it all into the ground.

a parody on WCWs poem

Wednesday, January 1, 1986

The weight of this poem... (collaborative poem with JOS)

The weight of this poem in air
floats away & away from the world
to settle in the outfields of the
unicorn whose syllables are
like steel teeth ready to
nibble on the cookie of your ear
in front of some sweet
flower or sunrise or factory
or even on this mountain where
nothing is real except
the air, and even the air
is heavier than this poem.

Maureen Hurley & John Oliver Simon

no idea as to date, but probably late 1985. Or 86.
I'll never know—unless I find the original in a journal.
so I'm adding it to 1/1/86, as 1986 has so few poems.

added 11/16

Monday, December 29, 1980

THE LAST POETRY READING









































collaborative poem, Maureen Hurley, Donna Champion, published in the Obligatory Hug, 7/1984