Best Dumpster Poems
Sanity meted in batches
With healthcare served up in patches
It’s a dumpster dive
Just staying alive
To rely on raccoons playing with matches
You get to a point where
you can’t read them anymore
and consider yourself a grown-up.
But it wasn’t until I was fifty-two
that I threw them away.
How long could they hide
in a high school brief case
next to a box of sweaters
in the attic?
So…into the Dumpster Doodle-Doo
they went: her Wuthering epistles,
and my Heathcliff’s angst
Risen to the “beep beep beep”
of a trash trawler’s chaw.
By then she was a preacher’s wife
in Pennsylvania, and I was running
Manufacturing trades for a defense
plant in Rhode Island,
a job for which I was
wholly unsuited
They were two new skins
for the both of us
only one of which
had been redeemed.
So, Justin Trudeau's gonna retire
(something Canadians did desire).
But he's left a big mess,
and Trump's causing stress!
It's a political dumpster fire!
Her hands gnarled and knotted
slumping as she walked
some called out when she was spotted
her shout name was Lady Dumpster
as she staggered along, she talked
folks tried to help her—she balked
When she was a girl, she was plump
family lived near the dump ground
her dad called her “the big lump”
everything they owned was found
from digging in the garbage dump
Maggie never finished school
rumor floated round the town
(pregnant by a family member)
her brother said to be so cruel
someone made her sister drown
No baby, no Maggie!
sadly lost from the start
an elusive character no longer human
years later, out she came pushing her cart
her dignity and mind were now subhuman
Her saga does not end well
life for her, a living hell
under a bridge lay Maggie quite frozen
holding her dead cat—
So it goes--how fortunate for that
she died in a place that she had chosen
This a true story with literary license. © a year ago, Carol Davis
What a poor dateless chap was young Chad.
Dumpster fires were the clothes that he had.
Pants that hung in the back
showed the world his azz-crack
and not one single shirt wasn’t plaid.
Douglas Dempster the Dumpster King
Hates to be called Doug Dumpster
But he's to blame if that's his name
Denying it is a real stumper.
Mashes the trash, burns it to ash,
Recycles all that's allowed;
A self-made man with a garbage can
That ought to make him proud.
Dougy Dumps whines and grumps
"Nobody gives me respect!
If not for me the world would be
Garbage-bedecked! Cluttered and wrecked!
Sad and neglected, infested, infected
But thanks to me it all gets collected!"
Well thank you Doug-in-a-Dumper
For keeping our alleyways bright
Put on your very best jumper
And we'll take you out tonight.
Once the police began to ban
all social gatherings, we decided
to reignite the ritual of barbarism
crucial at the core of survival
without compassion or cause of
duty, simply to have something
destructive to do that didn't land
us behind the grid to be silenced.
Cruelty gets harnessed in fists
compressing the void like the
nothings we were always deemed
to be on our side of normalcy,
just parallel to every other street
named after a plague or society-
collapsing fire or market tumble,
running ramshackle into destiny.
As the lines of communication get
tossed aside by fearful minds raiding,
even the act of standing firm becomes
a challenge to the status of plenty.
Each sting rebuilds my structure
anew in memory and scar tissue
to capture the element not boxed
for barter or sale: my immortality.
I threw out all of you
smashed all the CD's
trashed every sweatshirt that smelled of you
ripped up diary pages of admiration
letters and pictures burnt
only ashes that can't say 'I love you' anymore
and then you wanted me back
but I'm not going dumpster diving
Temperature dropped, slippery ice road.
Many animals partying had slowed.
Dumpster fire started to warm,
All stayed close before the storm.
Steadily came again, it snowed and snowed.
My friends, I am at the end of my rope -
all because I'm an incredible dope.
I thought two girlfriends was better,
but, when I sent them a letter,
I put each one in the wrong envelope.
Dumpster-Diving Deity
By Mark D. Stucky
Dirty, broken, and forgotten,
discarded as worthless junk
at garage sales and trash collections,
were treasures I have rescued.
Where others saw rubbish,
the eye of this beholder
saw creative potential.
After repairing, cleaning,
and polishing or painting,
the old items were resurrected
into new lives and new homes
with myself and others.
Likewise, the Word-made-flesh dumpster-dove
into the bloody wreckage of our world,
to rescue us from our garbage heaps,
repair our hopeless brokenness,
scrub our grimy hearts,
polish our potential,
and find us forever homes
within divine community
in this world and the next.
(First published in Calla Press, 25 May 2022. See also my poems “Broken Beauty,” “Purgatorial Perceptions,” “God Around the Corner,” and “Quantum Spiritualities.”)
(Image collage from images by Pexels and Noupload on Pixabay.com.)
Dumpster Fire Poetry Contest
Margarita Lillico
Sally's husband's infidelity trashed
Into a lit dumpster, their marriage dashed
A wife is left saddened
And the ashes blackened
Because he lit the wrongful flame and crashed
N/A
Note-Sometimes I think readers don't understand me. First line husband
has an affair. Lines 2-4 marriage is on the rocks, certainly a dumpster fire.
Line 5-Of the husband's two flames that of his wife's and his girlfriend's
the husband choose the wrong one (LIT)... by choosing the wrong flame resulting his and his marriage crashing. I need to give up.
Down in the dumpster
Life is so unfair
Why the haves gotta
Look down on the nots
There's enough pies for everyone
To take a piece and survive
The Dumpster Hero
There once was a fire in a dumpster
But nobody knew where the pumps where
Then a girl found a hose
To the challenge she rose
But the hose coiled back and it thumped her
In a dumpster at a house close to me
were the contents of a home bourgeoisie.
In the night, it caught fire,
which did fill me with ire;
was gonna dive for a velvet settee!