Glenn Bagshaw Poems

On Turning Twenty-One
(the sound, the fury)

With today, twenty-one years
...

Those given names when chosen seem to click
with promise when the child arrives. Then worn,
the name's a mirror not a blindfold pick!
Know they're like babies: needed, almost born
...

In doubles Romeo and Juliet
can back-spin bounce each Capulet.
For forty- love's one trouncing score
and love's all those Montagues abhor.
...

He spoke to her two days before he died
in the haunted room, now forever dark,
and told her of a dream that had replied
to the grief of their son's death by stark
...

I had a little chrome-faced clock.
I had a whirling dervish toy.
I had my dad. He delved deep rock.
'Some day you'll be like me, my boy.'
...

I’m in my great-grandmother's old photo album
from ninety years ago, and I seem much the same.
Sure, I'm gloss-finished, black and white, and yes, some frayed.
Yet not so bad for my age. Looking much like her,
...

Shriek away, clear away sound!
Loud! Loud! Disappear the clear
searing cry that deafens the ear!
So overburdened to feel?
...

There once was a fellow named Rye
woh did drinking with Jimmy Not-Dry.
Never once before gay, Jimmy was short on his pay,
and when dry he then swallowed down Rye!
...

So the steering wheel showed a ship
in my dad's coupe from years ago.
Cars in boys' mind-brakes just won't slip
so the steering wheel showed a ship.
...