With the blood of a hundred camels, I wash my fetid hands of this corner of the world.
Dripping puss and raining sweat with arthritic twists are they now knurled.
A thousand fretting troubles thou may juggle in thy abandoned hands,
But my ears are deaf, my eyes drip blood and I am off for other lands.
Cry your bleating, worried moans of lonely isolation.
No longer will I weep and swoon before your angry instigation.
For year after horrid, weighted year and days as dark as the grave,
This wretched slave has stood this post: abused, forlorn, a grief sodden knave.
No more!
I doth flee with accursed freedom, released with no place of worth to go.
Broken flesh to wander aimlessly craving the eternal beatings and so…
Say thy final words to me: “Begone o’ senseless pungent fool,
We have no dire need for thee and when thou art gone no eyes will pool.”
(This little ditty was written in 1993 at the closing of Sears Outlet Store #1440. I served at that time as the clerk in charge of “mark outs”, thereby responsible for every broken piece of merchandise that must be eliminated. This is the earliest poem I wrote still in my possession. I have changed nothing from the original first and only draft.)
Comments
Hi Wes
Without the explanation one would think this was about some ancient slave being cast out........hmmmm.....it kind of was wasn't it lol..........stan
Hey Wes
What a great piece you got cooking here.
Fresh with a twist in it great through & through my friend.
As Stan said...
I would have thought that this was a story written by Poe, about an old slave no longer able to work and being cast out to make his own way in the world. It has that flavor and I like it! ~ Gee.
.
sounds like
you didn't like the place all that much.
I don't think it will make it into an anthology of 20th century poems, but it was fun to read. Probably not as much fun to write as the venom in your eyes probably caused them to burn a bit...
Even then you were keen on rhyme...except of course "No more!"
Here's a recent lyric by Paul Simon, written as a prose poem:
It's a dead end job, and you get tired of sittin". And it's like a nicotine habit you're always thinking about quittin'. i think about quitten' every day of the week. when i look out my window it;s brown and it's bleak. Outta here. How am i gonna get out of here..."
Glad you got outta there.
sounds like
you didn't like the place all that much.
I don't think it will make it into an anthology of 20th century poems, but it was fun to read. Probably not as much fun to write as the venom in your eyes probably caused them to burn a bit...
Even then you were keen on rhyme...except of course "No more!"
Here's a recent lyric by Paul Simon, written as a prose poem:
It's a dead end job, and you get tired of sittin". And it's like a nicotine habit you're always thinking about quittin'. i think about quitten' every day of the week. when i look out my window it;s brown and it's bleak. Outta here. How am i gonna get out of here..."
Glad you got outta there.
It was a bad influence on me.
But I actually liked the job. I had my own little cubby hole and drank on the job.
This was written when the store was closing. There were no more mark downs. Everything went straight back to the selling floor. We were sort of a goodwill type store selling everything Sears couldn't sell.
This was posted at my site to tell everyone not to put mark down merchandise there anymore. It was supposed to be a simple sign that said don't leave merchandise there, but I wrote this goofy poem. It was years before I started to write and just came out of an untrained imagination.
Stan, you will probably like it because I had no rules to follow. It was free form in the worst way.
I guess I was an old slave being cast out.
Poe huh? Quite the compliment (for a non poet especially).
One more thing.
I was drunk when I wrote this, but haven't had a drink in over ten years. Of course this was written thirty years ago and there was a lot of drinking in between. Sometimes alcohol produces the strangest things.