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Best Poems Written by Lawrence Strauss

Below are the all-time best Lawrence Strauss poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

A Song Sent Back Home From the Western Frontier

Hello people I know
I know the people we are
the kind of people from here
passed out in a shack
with a butt and a beer
or outside in the road.
And the wind cries and drives
one of us to his knees
while the moon lights up
a line of pine trees
that might give some relief
but he's ready to freeze
in a song sent back home, dear, 
from the western frontier.

Hello people I know
I know the people we're not
the kind of people from here
who say that things change
and you can go anywhere
and start over again.
And with no money at all
and too old to get hired
when's the ship coming in?
where's the ocean, the pier?
It's all dust everywhere
and banknotes all our years
in a song sent back home, dear, 
from the western frontier.

Hello people I know
I know what we hoped
the kind of people from here
with cudgels and cutters
and "peace, man" and "cheers"
who mean well and don't.
And the reason we left
used to be very clear
and that's just how it is
and it's just what we feared
we would see if we caught
ourselves in a mirror
in a song sent back home, dear, 
from the western frontier.

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

No More Did the King

The king was incandescent,
In the brocades and creped damasks,
His knights and his attendants 
All surrounded his gilt throne.

A multitude was gathered,
For the seasonal oration,
Warming sons and fathers
By his sure and sovereign tone.

The king was still at speaking,
When the son entered the palace,
With his retinue and meaning,
So the people turned to see.

The son, he uttered nothing,
But stood waiting for his moment,
The king stuttering his telling,
Told the instability.

Studded gold and diamonds 
Graced his chain of office,
He looked from the medallion 
To the son who was the heir.

He’d tried to give his scion
The respect for the appointment,
Was everything a cipher,
But a thing to bring despair?

The son banged on a table,
In a growing faster rhythm,
So the king commanded able 
Men to step and defend.

The son left in defiance,
Knights and others, too, departed,
And the stones echoed the silence
Of the beginning of the end.

Around a corner of the palace,  
Beyond hearing, down a hallway,
The salvers and the chalices  
Were clanging for the feast.

A servant and her daughter, 
The girl was only seven, 
Were among the cooks and slaughterers,  
Of fish and fowl and beast.

Nearly overladen platters 
Left the kitchen for the gentlemen
Who will argue burghal matters,
But will drink until it's moot.

The girl saw fascinated,
That a single seed bounced at her,
The cook said, "you can eat it",
As he knifed the bloody fruit.

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

Sedentary

Surely God is good,
Surely to Israel,
Surely God is good to Israel, 
Surely God to pure hearts,  
(please don’t call me Surely)
Soitenly God-Blessed are the dear-heart folks?
Who shall have attended God?

But 
As for me

I slipped, I stumbled, I hit the ground running to heavens to Betsy to pieces
See! 
Laugh!
Sinners are much more
Unchained!
Untied to the wheel-death 
Love-death has them unlocked up in chains.

Lo chains
Lo kemia-metas
Lo scissom
Lo mela 
Lo mayonc
Lo kolojimalta
Lo maya
Lo mahlimn
Lo emf
Lo ma

Where are their boils?
Their scabs?
Their bedsores?
Their scars?
Their bites?
Their necks’s burnt-red-rope burns?
Their chains?
Where are their knock-kneed pigeon-toed lame-brain lariat at?
What are they seeing with their fat-swallowed eyes?
What are they feeling, clothed with outward-pointing fingers,
Torn off beggars’s hands?

They break, they berate, they belittle, they bully, they beat, they badger, they kick us when we’re down, they go tell it from the cell towers and satellites, through vines of shielded cables carpeting the ocean floors, in the now-in-mega-size, radio-wave singing bowls, in the bitty ears of moles and pigeons and apples.

They twirl twin cigars lifted through the heavens, inevitable fallout, ashes to ashes of homes of gentle people, and they cough smoke over the face of earth.

Impressive.
Are you not impressed?

But 
As for me 

I thank them for their time.

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

It Is the Chicken Skin Wounds

It is the chicken skin wounds
by the nets every day 
for a bird in a cage
hey, someone's gotta pay

It is the situation expectation 
brokers seeing red
so whip it out, mete it 
out on some calf's head 

It is the agonizing shrieks
of a mother for a son
missing milk of human kindness
sold out for a different one

It is the height of the bench 
and the weight of the bent 
twisted corpse of the sow
dropping on the cement 

It is the dark, cramped cell
where they're fed till they're freight
ready flesh so the bones 
cannot lift their own weight

It is the gun from the wall
see the rounds be replaced
from the vice for the head
till the shot in the face

It is the heart about to burst
pounding terror in the eyes
watching next in line in front of her 
another cries and dies

It is the good tail grip
to help her move down the track
that will shine brown and bruised 
when the skin is torn back

It is the stain on our hands
from the marking of the beast
wasn't there a verse on 
how you did it to the least?

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

Today I Caught That Fat Rabbit

Today I caught that fat rabbit
Back again
Eating the daisies I'd planted.

Biting their sad little black-eyed Susan heads off,
Leaving the decapitations on my blacktop driveway.

He kept his head up and
moving side-to-side
All the time his mouth was ripping, nibbling.

And he held that wide-open stare.

I banged on the window,
he hopped and hid under the hastas. 

I checked the time,
and went back to my kitchen 
and my coffee 
and my Bronstein book
and hoped that no one catches me.

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

The Awl

Lawrence Strauss, based on The Nazarene by Sholem Asch

The Rabbi saw in the hand of a man an awl,
Such as a driver would use to pierce an animal’s skin, 
And not let the wound be healed,
But whenever the creature refused to move
The driver would stab the awl again into the raw flesh.
The Rabbi took from the hand of the man the awl.

Treat others how you would like to be treated, 
That is the Torah and the Prophets, a
And if treating others well is bound to those who may repay, 
Are you different than the unbelieving, 
who expect the return of what they have lent? b
But you, love, and put no bounds on your love, 
As your Heavenly Father puts no bounds on His. c

And every beast belongs to God, 
And He hears the cries of the beasts, d
When God entrusts a beast to a man, 
The man is held to account, e
So when a man torments a beast, 
The Holy One will want judgment.
As a man gives mercy, God gives mercy. f 

a Matthew 7:12, b Matt. 5:46,  c I Corinthians 13:7-8, Matt. 5:48,  d Psalms 50:10,  147:9, e I Cor. 4:2,  f  Matt. 7:2

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

And When Man Is Done

And when man is done,
and rolls over and falls asleep,
the tides will overwhelm the shores,
the walls of the cities will weep,

Till the cities sink and the reactors melt down,
And the land will be stripped bare
by the beasts of the field,
And the poisoned fish will foul the air,

And the birds will swarm around the dying,
And the wind turbines will break,
There will be no good water left to drink,
And babies will cry from their stomachs' ache,

And the gentlest of men
will eat his own young
While wild dogs stare and wait,
teeth bared around their hanging tongues,

And there will be cracks in the earth,
And whole cities will be swallowed,
And the batteries and clocks will die,
And no one who knows how to fix them will follow,

And the sun will flare,
And the trees will ignite,
And the sun will fall dim,
And the brightness of day will be winter twilight,

And the earth will at last be unchained,
As the sun relaxes its hand,
to roll over and fall asleep,
the sleep of a grain of sand.

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

Ineffable Queries From a Hospital Bed

Do you hear the hillbilly truck driver singing, 
while the Black man's driving the slapped low ringing
in the background and you say I'm rigid in my points-of-view, 
but these dead seem to still hold their sway over you?

Do you think the tree is white, too, remember
our perennial cure, the yard quitting its slumber,
so do things like flowers mean a thing anymore anyway,
like these mums that are wilting away on the tray? 

Did the nurse put down the remote on the table
out of reach I am sick of the daytime babble 
and your sour-faced glower that might steer me clear of a fray 
or chance asking what might put you out of your way?

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

All the Gravity In the World

Remember how you loved me
till we lost all our control?     
Our tender, whispered secrets 
now coldly go untold.
I find only this feeling
to the pit of my soul:
I am falling, I am falling inside a black hole
with all the gravity in the world.

I am shivering all over
without your warm embrace,
for me there is no sunlight,
no smile on your face,
I am left alone here feeling
at the absence of grace:
I am falling, I am falling through the blackness of space
with all the gravity in the world.

If you would only answer 
again I confess
till I lost you I was thoughtless,
I squandered love's success.
Don't abandon me to feeling
what words barely can express:
I am falling, I am falling in the blackest emptiness
with all the gravity in the world.

Details | Lawrence Strauss Poem

Just Like Sunlight

And way too early for her night before, 
Came banging trucks outside her door,
She wrapped up in a robe to meet the cold
forestry men with the powered saws,

Twenty minutes later the maple tree was gone,
Fifty years of progress shorn
down to a stump that's still bleeding sap, 
So should never have been treated anything like that.

Gone is any echo of the morning's strife,
But the mockingbirds still looking for their former life,
Come sundown she'll go out into this February night,
Looking for the freedom of the song that she'll be singing just like sunlight.

She'd finally got a decent job that day,
Then her boss came by and took it away,
And gave it to the office superstar,
She'd understand it's best this way,

She's a real team player, with an eye fixed on the clock,
Only her friend's playful knock,
On her cubicle, to go and get a bite, 
Reminds her she thinks, deep down people are alright.

Two kids got off a school bus, she was stuck behind,
One called to the other, and he paid no mind.
She's tired, but she'll go out on this early, darkened night,
Looking for the freedom of the song that she'll be singing just like sunlight.

When she was little, from the doorway,                                            
She watched her mother in the mornings,   
Work the colors with her expert hands,         
And she never saw the dread behind the smile to spend the day to work the phones
She only wondered if she'd ever be grown up to take the world on, like her mother, on her own.

Now through the window and the winter haze,
She tries to find just one of the sun's last rays,
Its clouded dimming makes it really feel
a hundred million miles away.

And though she'll never this life find the freedom that she seeks,
Sometimes she thinks she gets somewhat at peaks,
But still feels there's much to be done
to try, and just remain in the shadow of the sun.

And the tulips on the table in the failing light,
Bend and turn and wend, each in a silent fight,
She gets her coat and gloves and heads out on this winter's night,
Looking for the freedom of the song that she'll be singing just like sunlight.

Give her her freedom where she finds it,
And she'll be shining when she finds it,
Just like sunlight.