Yesterday morning, I realized a lot of poems I like end with the word “life.” I even have one I wrote years ago that ends, “and hurriedly—so I wouldn’t be caught—I began to make my life.” There is an innate appeal to a poem that ends with “life.”
Category: Poems
Poetry from Oklahoma
Groan
This is the rain man crying –
sane man bleeding but
red dirt has no love.
Kurt Cobain, your feedback
promised me release, but
the fuzzy orgasm is yet
to come.
Working at the Tom Mix Museum
The big white hat has grayed in its case,
Next to 2-inch spiked spurs banned even then
And dried-up lassos and embroidered leather gloves
That would disintegrate if taken out of display.
The suitcases of death are stacked beside a saddle
With the TM logo stamped on the side.
The shiny metal cases have a few dents in them,
Perhaps one in the shape of his head,
As the case flew forward when his convertible crashed.
While the West disappeared around him,
He died on the side of the road, tossed
From a vehicle he would never learn to master.
–Shaun Perkins
Isolde
On the ship, we watched whales sound,
the rise and fall, the spray plunging into foam
Into something new. We have not spoken,
But we are watching the same scene.
I stood behind you as you spoke to the crew,
As you gave instructions, the muscles of your back
Rising as you took in air, shoulder blades creasing
The material I wanted to touch. You knew I was behind
Merlin’s Last Art
The heart becomes the master after all
–Even with my first and last art
of fire—blazing or smoldering,
identity is not known.
Heart smothers the flame.
Water banishes it.
And the smoke rising
in the air and the weightless
ash that drifts into the trees
are someone else’s gifts.
I have slept through
the exchange.
–Shaun Perkins
For More Info.
The charges still held,
And he waited for the day his life
Would be taken in exchange
For $800 and a life ended
In the robbery gone wrong.
No one visited him,
A man no longer needed
In the family. Even his lawyer,
Who petitioned the supreme court,
Asked only for a 30-day reprieve OBO.
–Shaun Perkins
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 