Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry
Poetry of the People
Don’t fear the poem.
Baby take my hand.
We’ll be able to fly.
Don’t fear the poem.
La la la la la la la . . .
Apologies to Blue Oyster Cult. When I tell people I am a poet,
A. They run screaming far to uninhabited lands.
B. They want to share their own poems with me.
C. They make a hand gesture to ward off evil.
D. They stare blankly and then change the subject. Continue reading “Don’t Fear the Poem”
“Will did not know what to say, since it would not be useful for him to embrace her slippers, and tell her that he would die for her . . . it was clear that she required nothing of the sort. . .” –Middlemarch, George Eliot
Yet why not embrace her slippers?
Why not risk the possibility
Of saliva trickling upon satin
Or tapestry or whatever blessed
Shoe covering one might wear
In a 19th century novel weighing
In at 4.2 pounds, 852 pages? Continue reading “To Embrace Her Slippers”
I came to you after the scars, came to your skin
In our fifth decade when it wears its past,
Two pale circles at the base of your spine
Almost glowing in the dark, and on the other side,
Your navel gone, taken in the surgery that almost
Took you. I am beginning to know your skin, Continue reading “Your Skin”
DEFINITION
A field guide is a brochure designed to help the reader identify exhibits in a poetry museum or other objects of natural occurrence (e.g. minerals). It is generally designed to be brought into the ‘field’ or local area where such objects exist to help distinguish between similar objects. Field guides are often designed to help users distinguish poets and poems that may be similar in appearance but are not necessarily closely related. Continue reading “ROMP Field Guide”
Today, Feb. 1, is Langston Hughes’ birthday. I think he is one of America’s greatest poets, and I have always enjoyed his poetry. Even though he lived most of his life in New York, he was born not far from the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry, in Joplin Missouri, a town just across the border about 90 minutes away. Continue reading “Langston Hughes’s Birthday”
![PerilsOfPaulineTiedToRailwayTracks[4]](https://rompoetry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/perilsofpaulinetiedtorailwaytracks4.jpg)
He kicked me in his sleep,
But when he woke up,
He said he was kicking a bad guy
Who was trying to get me.
I am always being chased
By bad guys in his dreams,
And he is always saving me. Continue reading “I Beat Manuela”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 