Joe Larkin is a published poet, short story writer and stand-up comic, not necessarily in that order. Joe is tired of playing the "publish my poetry" game.
Joe says, "I don't want to waste any more time sending poems out to journals and waiting for months for them to be published or rejected. I'd rather spend my time writing and performing. I want my poetry to be read by as many people as possible, so I'll be posting poems here for all to read and enjoy. All poems are © Joe Larkin. Please respect my copyright."
Friday, June 12, 2009
New Poem
Hemingway at
In the morning sun, he is lime green
under the big banyan tree off the veranda.
In the papers, the world sings of him;
they love large men of large deeds;
it is no different here.
He eyes the six-toed cats
that mill around him absently;
he loves them, every one.
They steal along the porch,
curl about his ankles,
lick their paws assiduously.
The lizards keep to the rooftops
and the trees.
He drifts naked to the pool
she had installed while he was gone
shooting pigeons with the men on
fishing off the
"Take my last two cents, why don't you?"
he boomed as he threw down the pennies
that lodged there in the wet concrete
to remind her again and again
to honor him and be more frugal.
Fingers of Spanish moss hang
limp in muscular branches.
Soothing the wounds
of body and mind
he slides under the water, counting,
a big marlin tugs at his mind.
In the thick afternoon,
bottle of gin in hand,
he climbs to his lion's lair
above the pool house,
draws the rope bridge in behind himself,
reads what the columns say of him today,
"hero," "coward," "man's man,"
"the bravest man I ever met," said one,
"blustering blowhard
trailing women in his wake."
He paces, leopard to zebra skin and back,
trophies out of
the pain won't let him sit.
Now and then he stands cat still
staring to the future;
gin eyes tinged of shotgun shells,
he pens a word or two.
I Live On the Outskirts of Her Love
I live on the outskirts of her love,
secure, retired, protected in a gated villa
out beyond the stadium where green hills
trace the contours of her rude fortress town.
I see her skyline in the distance, her marble steps,
the streets where she shops for bullet-proof vests.
Nestled in the comfort of flowered beds,
I loll on the grass at the margin of the yard.
I live on the outskirts of her love,
on the bowered veranda where sometimes
we share a glass in the warm summer nights
when the moon flies high and talk about the children
we slew when we were young, mad emperors,
callow, selfish, unwilling to conceive of all love’s facets;
we cry in all its faces and tell ourselves the ones
who came after saved us, guaranteed redemption.
I live on the outskirts of her love.
We laugh around a table set with turkey and dressing,
candied yams and deviled eggs, telling stories
of dumb, daring chances we took out on our limbs --
the weed and whiskey, blind alleys, new worlds explored,
settlements with desert sands and stars pulsing all around,
gods looking down, forgiving, giving us youth to spare.
The walls and gates from here to town concede nothing;
her cobbled streets grow harder, my flowers bloom
in mad profusion under the weeping willows.
I repair to the garden to dig in the earth and eat turnips,
while she goes back to her cell and fights the guards.
I live on the outskirts of her love,
secure, retired, protected in a gated villa
out beyond the stadium where green hills
trace the contours of her rude fortress town.
I see her skyline in the distance, her marble steps,
the streets where she shops for bullet-proof vests.
Nestled in the comfort of flowered beds,
I loll on the grass at the margin of the yard.
I live on the outskirts of her love,
on the bowered veranda where sometimes
we share a glass in the warm summer nights
when the moon flies high and talk about the children
we slew when we were young, mad emperors,
callow, selfish, unwilling to conceive of all love’s facets;
we cry in all its faces and tell ourselves the ones
who came after saved us, guaranteed redemption.
I live on the outskirts of her love.
We laugh around a table set with turkey and dressing,
candied yams and deviled eggs, telling stories
of dumb, daring chances we took out on our limbs --
the weed and whiskey, blind alleys, new worlds explored,
settlements with desert sands and stars pulsing all around,
gods looking down, forgiving, giving us youth to spare.
The walls and gates from here to town concede nothing;
her cobbled streets grow harder, my flowers bloom
in mad profusion under the weeping willows.
I repair to the garden to dig in the earth and eat turnips,
while she goes back to her cell and fights the guards.
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