10 Best Famous Ketchup Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Ketchup poems. This is a select list of the best famous Ketchup poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Ketchup poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of ketchup poems.

• All Famous Ketchup Poems

 my mother pushed my sister out of the apartment door with an empty 
suitcase because she kept threatening to run away my sister was sick of me
getting the best of everything the bathrobe with the pink stripes instead of 
the red the soft middle piece of bread while she got the crust I was sick with 
asthma and she thought this made me a favorite

I wanted to be like the girl in the made-for-tv movie Maybe I'll Come Home
in the Spring which was supposed to make you not want to run away but it 
looked pretty fun especially all of the agony it put your parents through and 
the girl was in California or someplace warm with a boyfriend and they
always found good food in the dumpsters at least they could eat pizza and 
candy and not meat loaf the runaway actress was Sally Field or at least
someone who looked like Sally Field as a teenager the Flying Nun propelled 
by the huge wings on the sides of her wimple Arnold the Pig getting drafted
in Green Acres my understanding then of Vietnam I read Go Ask Alice and 
The Peter Pan Bag books that were designed to keep a young girl home but 
there were the sex scenes and if anything this made me want to cut my hair 
with scissors in front of the mirror while I was high on marijuana but I
couldn't inhale because of my lungs my sister was the one to pass out
behind the church for both of us rum and angel dust

and that's how it was my sister standing at the top of all those stairs that 
lead up to the apartment and she pushed down the empty suitcase that
banged the banister and wall as it tumbled and I was crying on the other side 
of the door because I was sure it was my sister who fell all ketchup blood and 
stuck out bones my mother wouldn't let me open the door to let my sister 
back in I don't know if she knew it was just the suitcase or not she was cold 
rubbing her sleeves a mug of coffee in her hand and I had to decide she said I 
had to decide right then

 Straight-spined girl—yes, you of the glinting earrings,
amber skin and sinuous hair: what happened?
you’ve no business lunching with sticky children
here at McDonald’s.

Are they yours? How old were you when you had them?
You are far too dazzling to be their mother,
though I hear them spluttering Mommy Mommy
over the Muzak.

Do you plan to squander your precious twenties
wiping ketchup dripping from little fingers,
drowning your ennui in a Dr. Pepper
from the dispenser?

Were I you for one schizophrenic moment,
I’d display my pulchritude with a graceful
yet dismissive wave to the gathered burghers
feeding their faces—

find myself a job as a super-model,
get me to those Peloponnesian beaches
where I’d preen all day with a jug of ouzo
in my bikini.

Would I miss the gummy suburban vinyl,
hanker for the Happiest Meal on Main Street?
—Wouldn’t one spectacular shrug suffice for
begging the question?

 If Ezra Pound were alive today
 (and he is)
he'd be teaching
at a small college in the Pacific Northwest
and attending the annual convention
of writing instructors in St. Louis
and railing against tenure,
saying tenure
is a ladder whose rungs slip out
from under the scholar as he climbs
upwards to empty heaven
by the angels abandoned
for tenure killeth the spirit
(with tenure no man becomes master)
Texts are unwritten with tenure,
under the microscope, sous rature
it turneth the scholar into a drone
decayeth the pipe in his jacket's breast pocket.
Hamlet was not written with tenure,
nor were written Schubert's lieder
nor Manet's Olympia painted with tenure.
No man of genius rises by tenure
Nor woman (I see you smile).
Picasso came not by tenure
nor Charlie Parker;
Came not by tenure Wallace Stevens
Not by tenure Marcel Proust
Nor Turner by tenure
With tenure hath only the mediocre
a sinecure unto death. Unto death, I say!
WITH TENURE
Nature is constipated the sap doesn't flow
With tenure the classroom is empty
 et in academia ego
the ketchup is stuck inside the bottle
the letter goes unanswered the bell doesn't ring.