Dark and, at times, amusing fiction from award-winning author Dave Zeltserman

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

A poem

I'm going through old papers and found a poem I had written many years. I don't know when I wrote it, but since I had used a typewriter, it would either have been in high school or college. In any case, here's my one and only attempt at poetry:


Tilling the Soil


The beast is in the yoke
And I at the harness
For together through muddy fields
of hope and ideas
We Plow

Through the hypocrisy
the stone strewned bureaucracy 
We toil
Turning over old phrases
To reveal implicit mazes
Which dissipate through the
Top soil

Man and beast we work
Scratching the earth
Preparing for next season's harvest
But wait
The beast wheezes and sneezes and
Oh Jesus
Freezes my glands as

Hairy thorns sprout
And tales of Germans flow out
Amidst this beastly transformation
So with a whirling and chirling
And new-born talons churning
The beats-monster is free from my service
To debauch my dreams
With random desire and
Frenzied malice deep in mire