Monday, January 7, 2013


5 Poems by Gary Blankenburg


THE ELECTRIC BRICK

Having invented the electric brick,
William rested on his laurels.  Still,
airplanes and stars fell from the sky,
letters arrived laced with anthrax,
California shuddered, buckled, and cracked,
and wars continued to be waged and waged.

Crowds wailed,
Look what man has done to man!
Others cried,
Look what God has done to man!
And William?  He continued to believe
the electric brick would cure everything.


EVERYONE POOPS

            After Taro Gomi

Your mom and dad poop
as does your sweet old grandma.

Your teachers, ministers, doctors,
lawyers, and business men poop.

Politicians poop and so do
the President and First Lady.

Beauty queens poop as do
lions, tigers, bears, and snakes.

Even the Pope poops. Poets also
poop.  Some of them, I’m told,

even play with their poop and
then mail it out to magazines.


MID-JULY, MID-DAY

I’m lying in bed naked
with the dog, enjoying

her licking my toes
while the air conditioner

blows cold air across us.
Now she is concentrating

on the webs and doing
a very fine job of it.

I try not to become aroused.


I COUNT ALL THE CHARMS
ABOUT LINDA

Did I mention
her tight ass
and pussy
or
the tight wire
she walks
between
slut & lady
or
            the charm
                        of her kiss
upon
            my old wrinkled
                                    brow?


BIG STEVE

Big Steve was 6’8’’
and 200 pounds

back in high school,
and he never even

touched a basketball.
On hot summer

afternoons his tiny father
would scream at him—

so even the neighbors
could hear—Steve,

you big candy-ass, get
out there and mow the lawn.

And he would not.



Gary Blankenburg is a retired English teacher, poet, and scholar living in Sparks, Maryland. His doctoral dissertation at Carnegie Mellon University treated the “confessional” poets: Berryman, Lowell, Snodgrass, Plath, and Sexton. He is the author of eight books of poetry and short fiction, the most recent being Dancing with Strangers.  His new manuscript, The Times Theatre, is seeking a publisher.

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