robert dickerson Poems

(he'd been to the premier of Figaro) , all the sounding fountains; incomparable Budapest, the pearl of the Orient; the jingle of sleigh bells; candle glimmer; intermezzi; and dear Scriabin-an affable dinner guest-(one of 'us' you know) '. 'No, I didn't', I replied, 'really'.
'All that complexity, all that simplicity-gone', he mourned. 'But one must be modern'. Trends-how he hated them: rock, rap, the presses' fault-Americans, or something. Patience gone, he paused. I yawned. We talked for an hour. Strange to say, I found myself charmed, whether by his pallor, his linen, his obvious antiquity or his boredom, I don't know. Or the mink-like hairs of his head? He seemed to me a lovely anachronism, mothish, totally alone, the saddest man I ever saw. We agreed to meet again, sometime.
'Wait a minute', I said before we packed it in-'is everything you told me the truth'? - it all seemed so preposterous.
...

My mother was a dirty spoon
My father was a knife all bright
And I was born between the morn
And the preceding night.
...

</>There was a young lady named Muffet
Who was frequently seen on a tuffet
Who took in a boarder
Who paid her but bored her
...

Gardener, poor gardener, you
who knew what you knew
gardener so rough at whom dogs only bark,
gods only laugh, the plot depends on you.
...

So heavy is her purse that Elfie
trips and stumbles with the weight of it;
Laudable attempts to shake her burden free
drive her desparately from shop to shop:
...

</>You never know
the chick you feed
with tender hopes
and constancy;
...