Friday, March 12, 2010

The Price is Right!


My friend, the incredibly lovely,  Molly Gaudry, was rejected from an MFA program and found herself broke-assed and down in the dumps sent out a message

* For $1.00, I WILL WRITE YOU A POEM and post it here and on our friend, Facebook. * So here is mine for that ridiculous cheap price.



A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings


What no one knows about old Knut Hamsun
is how handsome he was. Poverty was pretty
when Knut wore her, and like a corner whore
she claimed him as her own--hungry sultress.

Outcasts, vagabonds, aggression. Melancholy
resignation. The themes of his life and work,
according to Nobelprize.org. The Intellectual
Life of Modern America is a rare, gone thing.

Hunger is not. We know it now in every sense
of its belly-aching, tongue-tensed clinging
ringing, hollowed, as whatever pride we had;
I do not lie. Nor do you. We know this, right?

Like that childhood Pan, like that garden, risen
and Grown of the Soil, like a funny Game of Life
with no Sunset because, Under the Autumn Star,
there is a different view, offered by A Wanderer

[who] Plays on Muted Strings while all around
The Wild Chorus, the Children of the Age, the
unhappy inhabitants of Segelfoss Town and their
many ragged Vagabonds, every August, remind us

that if we take it The Road Leads On, and if
we don't The Ring is Closed to those who refuse
to climb in and fight at the height of their sorrow,
their sagging, aging faces power-limned with rage.



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