A Successful Poet Is Selling Poetry
He has really nailed it this time, he is fairly sure. No matter what the workshop junkies said about his old “limpdick collection.” Forget all those auto-rejections from Poetry magazine. (Nearby, Pike Place salesman smack halibuts down on ice.) He’s got a whole new approach this time, and these babies are jaunty as hell. His talent’s leaping all over the page, even Karen wouldn’t disagree. (A few feet away a man props up a crate of rhubarb.) He checks his cell phone. No calls. It is 5:36am.
He arranges his books in a semi-circle. Rearranges them in a grid. He stacks some of them like festive party napkins, off-kilter. He smiles very big, like a poet. It is a beautiful day, he reminds himself, to be a poet. And he’s really done it. Bound his work himself, scratched a title—Limericks, Contemporary—in a pink pen onto every cover. He stares into the sun. Clutches an old dog collar in his pocket. Today, or by the end of the week at least, everyone will take him very seriously.
(He will be selling poetry on the corner of Pike & 1st for as long as the sun holds.)
The World Is Ending (in Divorce)
HA HA he exclaimed HA HA
as he stuffed an old shirt with straw.
Drew a smiling face.
Set a dinner place.
Then he saw what the scarecrow saw.
Dog Person
My dog is very shy.
Won’t bark at the mail guy.
When I call his name,
he hides all the same!
It’s crazy to think that one day he, like each of us upon this dancing planet, will die.
Poet of the Year
My favorite poet smokes a pipe
and his sideburns are like racing stripes.
His Pontiac, indeed,
has never been keyed.
All day he just smiles and laughs and types.
Some Compliments from My Friends
Hilarious, you are so hilarious!
I never met a man this gregarious.
Your style is great,
and your face I don’t hate.
And your writing, especially various.
Kayaking in Lake Washington
“It’s better than therapy,” I crow
when my gym buddy pauses his show.
“Water’s sliced by the boat
like my ex’s bare throat.”
I laugh, “That’s a joke, hey don’t—”
All Therapy is Rehabilitative or Preventative
My therapist’s named is Jan
and she says I have planned a good plan:
One, work on my rages.
Two, finish these pages.
Three, don’t vandalize Karen’s van.
A Trip to the Grocery Store
Need milk and cereal, sea salt, rope,
kale, canned beans, a pillowcase, soap,
chocolate chips, a jar of whey,
chloroform, dry chardonnay,
beef stock, cherries, Bisquick, cantaloupe…
Just Kidding!
My ideation is out of whack.
Jan says to cut myself some slack.
Daydreaming she
is in shock therapy
is just that, a dream. I won’t crack.
Missing You (and Your Queso Dip Recipe)
I’m going to get really slim
at the gym, did I mention the gym?
I have been working out.
Oh, and I downloaded Klout!
Just some changes. I miss you. Love, Jim
We Regret to Inform You
We regret to inform you that your
autobiographical novel’s a bore.
And why does the wife
die and come back to life
and die twice? Please don’t write anymore.
Ode to the Limerick
To a poet a poem can be
as real as you or me!
Especially when
he is single again,
a limerick is good (your physical warmth your smell the gentle golden curve Oh) company.
Purgatory
He rowed and rowed and rowed
and rowed and rowed and rowed.
And rowed and rowed
and rowed and rowed
and he never budged. He rowed.
[Image via Wikimedia]
Tags: limericks, poetry, sorrow, tyler mccabe
Related Posts
The last poem should be called “Erging.”\
(rowing joke, will anyone get this, anyone, oh please)
I don’t, but I’m going to pretend I do because it seems like it would have been funny.
It is funny (ergs are instruments of torture utilized by rowing coaches.)
got it.
I insist that you run, Karen, run!
At Pike’s Market, there sets the sun!
Soon Jim will approach,
The space ‘twixt you he’ll broach
With not a damn book, but a gun.
dont know that i’ve ever read such heartbreaking limericks? these are awesome!
Sad limericks? This sure seems more like ‘ex-wife stalker/wife-beater’ limericks. I just tire of reading things like this (a man, daydreaming of harming his ex) and feel like I’m being expected to applaud the writing. I know the author is not the protagonist (antagonist?) and that everything doesn’t need to appeal to everybody, but I was just really disappointed to see this on The Toast.
I don’t know, I guess it hits a little bit too close to things that might happen in reality.
I am also disturbed. I do like how his self-justification is transparent, and many people in his life find what he’s saying completely unacceptable – but it does seem like the same old story of murderous narcissistic rage. Yaaay.
Is there a clever joke I’m missing?
I’m happy it’s on The Toast. I could relate to both the self-congratulatory daydreams and the murderous daydreams, and I’m a lady. I also liked the experiments with such a jokey form of poetry.
I guess I could relate too, and if they were from a woman, I would be charmed. That’s strange.
I think I have a fight or flight reaction to “I want to murder my ex” coming from a man. Like Mallory said, every heterosexual woman must think on her wedding day, “If I get murdered now, statistically it’s going to be him.”
I think what bothers me about this poem is that, while this guy is definitely NOT portrayed as a hero, it doesn’t quite come across strongly enough how troubled he is for me, despite the noted trips to the therapist. Perhaps it’s the jokey overall tone or his very explicitly noted plans for murdering/harming his wife.
It reminds me of the difference I take away when I read Bukowski and Nabakov (in Lolita) vs when I read Dostoyevsky (in Crime & Punishment). While all of the them have troubled and terrible protagonists in their work, with Dostoyevsky, you’re really left understanding what a horrible person Raskalnikov is and aren’t invited to be overly sympathetic with him. Wiith Bukowski and Nabakov, and I feel like in this poem here, the reader is really asked to sympathize with something terrible, when so often in the real world these types of protagonists DO get pity and get away with terrible things. It feels to me like on some level those works and this poem kind of silently sanction that? It’s one thing to have terrible thoughts, it’s quite another to take that step of ideation, or planning it out, and I guess I resent being asked to sympathize with that.
Or maybe more succinctly put, I prefer it when the ‘joke’ is *very clearly* on people in power, and the sympathy is *very clearly* meant to be with those traditionally lacking in power…
I kind of see where you’re coming from. I guess I jsut don’t require my poetry to be in balck and white. I’m comfortable making my own moral decisions, I don’t need the poet to do it for me.
:O( Of course, but that doesn’t make a poem exempt from criticism… Anyhow, it’s just how I read it. I know there are divergent viewpoints…
Sorry for the flippant tone and multiple errors! I wrote that last comment in haste. I didn’t meant o suggest that the limericks were immune from criticism. what I meant was that I think the poems would be ess interesting if the author was going to pains to point out the moral failings of the narrator. Sometimes we daydream about things that are not morally correct, I think it is unnecessary to point that out to the reader.
But, of course, we can disagree on this point. But you likely won’t convince me that Crime and Punishment is as enjoyable to read as Lolita 🙂
Tyler is my hero. These are hysterical!
I didn’t even know you had to download Klout, I thought it just…appeared, or something.
Congratulations you have earned extra Klout points for not downloading it therby cultivating cool indifference. Claim your points by downloading HERE (link)).