Adam Hoagland
Adam Hoagland Poems
(a parody of Rudyard Kipling’s far-superior, but somewhat shorter, poem “If…”)
If you can go to bed with no assurance
that, when the daybreak comes, you’ll get a call,
...
There are old country chapels set back from the times
whose quaintness enlivens the heart
and inspires the cadence of old country rhymes
or the light in that old country art.
...
The flaccid verses etched up on this screen,
The spawn of more productive days before,
'neath dust that seeks to stain the cathode's gleam
and dull the dried-up sentiment they store.
...
The New Year's oft depicted on the page
the same way every time in comic panes.
A spent curmudgeon vacating the stage,
to let the newborn babe assume the reins.
...
(song parody only, to be fitted to the tune of the song 'Pepper.')
Claudius killed his brother,
Gertrude married Claude;
...
Of late, I'm oft envious of Theseus,
Sent into the Minotaur's maddening milieu,
With his secreted blade held at ready,
And a princess's promise to carry him through.
...
Stiffening and gorged on fouled air,
Stubbornly occupying a squatter's rights plot
of tar-snake tempted asphalt,
Setting to a fetid pudding
...
With our myriad ‘scopes at ready, men explore the enigmatic,
And no feature of all nature dodges focused, sharpened prod;
When our models and equations push electrons, we’re ecstatic,
When they fail, we bow and consecrate the question marks to God.
...
A memory from childhood, both fond and bittersweet,
when eyes were big but stomach still was small;
Dinner out, a rib-eye steak, a rare and pricey treat,
one I now desired not to eat at all.
...
Oh, when you’re young,
when your body is young,
and there’s no rigor you can’t abide;
you’re fit and you’re active
...
Shriveled petals fall
as the sharp-edged clock hands sweep
through fields of lilies.
...
Waste three hours
and several dead dinosaurs
screaming at the screamers
and threatening to turn around.
...
In wide-open skies, the sparrows are soaring,
whichever direction they please.
Beneath them, the slump of the bumper-to-bumper
is thumping the throng to its knees.
...
The Best Poem Of Adam Hoagland
If (For Substitute Teachers)
(a parody of Rudyard Kipling’s far-superior, but somewhat shorter, poem “If…”)
If you can go to bed with no assurance
that, when the daybreak comes, you’ll get a call,
If you can keep a room of antsy students
from walking out or climbing up the wall,
If you can hand out sheets for “on your own” work,
and then collect them back again as well,
If you can trumpet, “Finish this for homework,
if you don’t get it done before the bell, ”
If you can press down “Play” and “Stop” and “Rewind, ”
and watch the same “Bill Nye” tape seven times,
If you can spend your day perched on your behind,
or dashing like you’re fleeing from your crimes,
If you can talk a talk that you’re not versed in,
If you can sling the bull and have it stick,
If you can teach the class that you did worst in,
and make it sound like it was your first pick,
If you can do your job each day for peanuts,
and then for shells when peanuts prove too dear,
If you can blow your top but never mean it,
and repeat that stunt each school-day of the year,
If you can park where parking ‘s not inviting,
but not get dinged or ticketed, the same,
If you can write a bad kid up for fighting,
when you can’t, on your life, recall his name,
If you don’t fear your sense of self will flounder,
If you don’t feel your ego fade away,
When everyone you casually encounter
asks, pleasantly, “So, who are you today? ”
If you can fake some knowledge or refinement
from high-school’s echoes bouncing ‘round your head,
Then help your charges finish their assignment
and not just get ‘em more confused instead,
If you can follow plans that are provided,
be they tomes or post-its strewn across the room,
Or, if no plans are left, make it decided
that study hall ‘s the best plan to assume,
If you can eat three-dollar taco salad,
If you can wait until your prep to pee,
If you can tell when hall passes are valid,
but then allow them unequivocally,
If you can make your telephone a lover,
and sleep beside her loyally each night,
So if, at six A.M., she rings, above her,
instinctively, will grasp your groping right,
If you can cruise through four long years of college,
for a job a trained orangutan could loathe,
If you don’t run and hide from all this knowledge,
You’ll sub, like me, and Heaven help us both!
- ARH 2/14/11
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4/18/2024 2:51:30 AM # 1.0.0.1119
