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Sad, Thomas McAfee, in English Clear filters

SadThomas McAfee

The Porch of My Grandparents

They built destruction in disguise: bleached gray, Long-splintered, marked with ragged rain-drop stains, This porch that sags, and dips us when we walk, Towards all the underneath grotesqueries: Sick powder earth long years untouched by sun, Black beetles, fortresses of spider webs. And what we could not sweep away, That slipped unnoticed underneath the broom, Between the cracks: the dirty string, dead flies, The vulgar yellowed paper. Cheap magazines Are here beneath this honest porch. Pathos And obscenity remain of what we thought Was truly tragic, truly Grecian. But now the sloping boards recall for us What really was and what remains, what is, We cannot rip away with axe and hammer
SadThomas McAfee

The Day Before My Mother's Funeral

The lawn was cut, but thorny weeds bloomed by The red verbena. We had a sunny sky. The women had forsaken me: sister, Aunts and cousins, hidden back somewhere To weep, to whisper, to see that coffee perked. "Not-there," stranger-at-home, I fairly lurked On our front porch, the rouge-tile freshly mopped. That was Cousin Abram? The one who chopped His finger off, on a bet? "This one who chopped His finger off is Cousin Abram; this is . . ." Ill-dressed in a tight, stained skirt, she said, "Mrs. Crantenwell," blew smoke, "I used to rent From y'Mother. Five years or more. They sent The corpse?" Her ankles were dirty and her legs Could have used a shave. Poor woman was town-dregs.
SadThomas McAfee

In Time of Sickness

Two years ago, counting back from January. . . In Alabama a kind of wintry, wary Spring had begun. Next month camellias would open, In March the jonquils, then anything could happen As far as flowers were concerned. You yearned For them that spring, I know it, Mother, Lying on patched hospital sheets, smothering (Cold, cooped up) in a dinky room, its walls Tranquility-gray. You lay there, a hand-knitted shawl, The color of honey, around your shoulders; It was wintry in Alabama, ever colder As camellias budded and suddently burst. Though icy, this was the warmest of the worst Three winters you knew. Your flowers were worked by the man (He talked to himself; so what?) you used to stand
SadThomas McAfee

The Photograph of My Grandparents

To hide the sooted fireplace stood their youth, A photograph within an ornate frame. Whatever meaning pictures have, what truth To last beyond a life, was here to blame. Posed beside her, taller, and serene, He was defiance for the hardest year; And she, dressed in a gown that once was clean, Looked fiercely straight into the far and near. When I saw the picture last, her gown Was speckled with the ash of many fires; And dust and web-cracks made a smiling clown Of that serenity which time admires. Search out the farthest rooms and you will find Not anywhere the action and the guilt. The photograph is stored away, and kind To them. This is the falling house they built.
SadThomas McAfee

Dirge

Confused as Abelard, Castrated and in love, I lay cross-shape on our front yard And watched the oaks. Worlds happened in my body. I cried dry salt; I was blind to flowers. I spent my days lying down, drinking Cokes And hunting for girly shots in magazines. It always took the sun a year to make its arc. Verbena turned anemic, ferns fell flat; Motorcycles kept the pavement squealing. My mind was lichen, tousled— To me as to my father. Summer moved Slower than winter, winter than summer. Everything seemed to be dying While hair grew on my body.
SadThomas McAfee

Youth and the Tragic View

At the age of thirty I found fewer defensive walls. Insecticide had killed the locusts But where were the trees? Where was the grass? One drink was my undoing. When the others at the party Came to ice a drink And said, "What are you doing out here?" I studied the kitchen sink And said I didn't know. The year that I was thirty All this happened. I called it my time of angst. Time has blooded my passionate youth, My clean despair.
SadThomas McAfee

Greatness Tends to Slink

Greatness tends to slink In times of stress, And men grow cold Within the moment waited for. The hour of dawn is always less Than what it seemed to be before. Children see Heroic fathers pale, And mothers sometimes leave Their babes to burn. The mind is stern till blinded by its tears. The eyeless heart cannot endure its years.
SadThomas McAfee

Poem to Myself, from an Ordinary Scene

The scene from a window may excite a guilt, Snow and smoke together towards the street. In a warm room sometimes the cold is a quilt To ease whatever wrong and help repeat The wrong. Today, my novel put aside, Another man's adventure gives no calm, For I have hurt my brother, even tried His heart. His bleeding wound is in my palm.
SadThomas McAfee

Alas Poor Hogan

Poor Hogan wept so wearily At everything's transparency: Hearts and lovers, pretty faces, All that cruel Time erases; But Hogan wept more wearily At his own transparency: No heart, no love, no pretty face, Nothing at all Time could erase.
SadThomas McAfee

The Unhappy Few

Most of us spend most of our lives Climbing in and out of wombs, Bitching about bad coffee and too wet Martinis. Most of us lust for, more than love, Our wives, waitresses, and celluloid sirens. But a few seem to move to the total horror Of ennui, to wake tired at morning, To be glad to face another alley, rather Than to go on for another hour with the sheets, Fighting the nightmares that gang up. Those few are real and positive. They know What misery and terror really are. They're usually the very last ones to bitch. They go off somewhere to drink in a bar Or cry or quietly to kill themselves.

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