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Best Poems Written by Thanks Returns

Below are the all-time best Thanks Returns poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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“It’s all in a day’s work
Tryin’ hard to defend
The time that I spend alone.”
~ Chaka Khan, “What ‘Cha Gonna Do For Me” from the album UNSUPPORTED CODE What ‘Cha Gonna Do For Me UNSUPPORTED CODE (1981)

We drop him off at daycare
And pick him up at night,
Then television programs air –
He watches them till night.
We’re busy with our business
And friendly with our friends;
He cries too much – for these fits
That’s why they make playpens.
At night when we’re all tired
We stick him in his room,
In mornings he’s attired
To hit the road – zoom zoom!
We look at him and smile,
A cute and lovely sight –
No worries all the while
Since everything’s all right.

He never sucked from boobies,
The milk had too much fat;
Besides, the office cubies
Just weren’t the place for that.
Breasts are a bad suggestion,
He did just fine on grain;
If it caused indigestion
The experts would explain,
So baby food would clearly
Have left them out. He knows
We care for him as dearly
As any one of those
Few moms who tried breastfeeding –
Milk isn’t fancy wine –
He got what he was needing
And everything’s just fine.

The trouble’s with the teachers
These kids cut up so much
He sits beneath the bleachers
To hide from jerks and such.
They shoved him down a stairway
And left him in a cast,
Another school will someday
Make all of it the past.
He’s had his tonsils pulled out
And his appendix too,
His doctors are good, no doubt:
They charge enough for two.
Some scars and scrapes don’t matter
Each day we rise and shine
Won’t bring a silver platter
But everything’s just fine.

We wouldn’t treat him as a friend.
The reason’s plain to see.
We’ve got to train him to contend
All independently.
The sooner he learns what’s allowed
And lets all else just be
The sooner that he’ll make us proud
In this society.
We also wouldn’t spare the rod
If it would be the way
To make his soul all well with God
And teach him to obey.
The weather’s not been anything
But pretty, fair, and bright.
There’s nothing worth remembering
But just what’s gone all right.

We hardly see him these days,
He’s got his own career
Though he knows he could always
Stop by here every year.
We’d like to meet his daughter
Before she’ll be all grown;
At least for now we’ve bought her
Some books to call her own.
We could’ve gone ourselves there –
The flight’s long, we expect –
But we’ll sit home and won’t care
Till he shows more respect.
We sure raised him to be good,
To stand up straight and fight
On his own feet, and that should
Make everything all right.

Details | Thanks Returns Poem

Peace

Peace

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”
    ~ Attributed to Francis of Assisi

How many years
Of Sunday sermons taught me
How easily
I can get away with it all
How terribly unfortunate
Some Jew took the hit
How comfortable
My soul and how
Small
O God
Why not indulge me
Can’t I be so bloated
I’ll support the dropping of bombs
On third-world rejects
So I can afford to drive a vehicle
Big enough I can drag into it my
Weighty carcass
Can’t I be so busy so drunk so drugged
I’ll never have to know
About anything regrettable
Can’t I amass a fortune
Skim off a soup of hedge funds
Leave a world of debt
What money’s left in foreign accounts
Tax free
But hey there’s still sales tax
Isn’t there
Racial superiority
Can’t I speak in ebonics to prove
Ebony rules
Can’t I don white sheets to prove
White’s better
Can’t I evade the border patrol to prove
Medical help’s free
Who’ll they follow back
To Tijuana
To remorse
To the cross
To alt.sex.bondage
Not me
How many years
Of indifference taught me
The usefulness of
Looking aside
Giving up
Coolness
No worries
Peace
    ~Thanks Always Returns

Details | Thanks Returns Poem

Feminized

Feminized

“This subversion was accomplished by taking advantage of two kinds of vulnerability that women raised in our society tend to have. The first is the quality of self-sacrifice, a learned willingness to set their own interests aside and be used and even used up by the community...
 The second kind of vulnerability trained into women is a readiness to believe messages of disdain and derogation.”
    ~ Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life, p. 54, First Plume Printing, October, 1990

In the moment at which her lovely shoe has just reared back
After I’d come to a stop atop it
My temerity in having been shoved down the flight of steps
At the bottom of which she stands
Having resulted in annoying her dainty foot
What inspiration’s thrusting it forward
To bury itself amid ribs
No longer mine?

In the quiet conversations betwixt Sunday school and service
What inspiration’s guiding the gossip
About yet another young man
Following a call of seduction
Followed by a call to the police
And the final call to a court that believes her every word
No longer his?

In the august halls of corporate consummation
Where products once designed to last
Crafted to provide quality service over years
Via jobs that straddled whole careers
What inspiration’s driving the quarterly cycles
Moody and impertinent as menstrual periods confined
No longer home?

In the light like it’s like light of heavenly grace
Where before an audience of like familiar litsos rolls or sidles
The most lovely young devotchka you could ever hope in all your jeezny
Whom Alex the large would like to have right down there on the floor
With the old in-out real savage
What inspiration’s coming skorry as a shot
Making him want to like heave in entrailing keeshkas
No longer his?

In the society rendered bereft of male vigor and energy
What inspiration’s asserting steady direction
Toward care and heartfelt protection
Of those weaker more wayward of less physical capacity
Shifting drifting changing winds in exchange for brash audacity
Armchair sports the glib vestige of masculinity
A world that once could’ve had a purpose
No longer ours?
    ~ Thanks Always Returns

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I-95

I-95

“Ya got the horse race
 Ya got the dog race
 Ya got the human race —
 But this is a ratrace”
    ~ Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Ratrace” from the album Rastaman Vibration (1976)

Across Boynton Beach ran a popular road known as Gateway Boulevard.
Commuting to work on it each weekday morning the traffic moved like lard
Cruising past Motorola, eastbound vehicles mostly went single-file
In the right lane starting at Congress Avenue, dragging through all the half-mile
Along Quantum Boulevard and High Ridge Road, where long stoplights delayed the dull drive
Until the right turn to the onramp that dropped to the highway called I-95.

We’re getting on I-95, in line, we’re getting on I-95
The road never ends but as long as we’re friends we’re all getting on I-95.

Florida drivers were cool and unhurried; some surely could be terribly slow.
Old codgers wearing old hats had no clue they impeded the old traffic flow.
I’d blow past all of them, taking the left lane; I most every day made the pole
Up at the High Ridge Road light.  Once it turned, I’d just kick it in and quickly roll
Forward, ahead of the slouch to my right, so that at the onramp I’d arrive
Long past the long line of travelers waiting to turn onto I-95.

We’re getting on I-95, my friends, we’re getting on I-95
It makes us feel proud to be part of the crowd all for getting on I-95.

In the South Bay there’s no waste of a chance to exploit the available lanes.
Drivers move quickly to block one another from realizing possible gains
That may have been realized, had lane-changing tactics let somebody else take the lead,
Yet for all that I have nothing to say of this crowd in its ruthless stampede
Than that it’s just like that past Florida crowd in the sense that it’s no more alive
In any real way, whether faster or meaner, than those back on I-95.

You’re getting on I-95, old crew, you’re getting on I-95
All throughout life, in each gladness and strife, you’re just getting on I-95.
    ~ Thanks Always Returns

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Exorcism

“It’s hard to eat shit, without having visions,
 & when they have eyes for me it’s Heaven.”
    ~ Allen Ginsberg, “Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo” (1955)

Begone bland corporate effigy
Woman bearing
Little
Hint of satisfied smile
Thank God
There were no good old days
    ~ Thanks always returns

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Vow Out

“One of the biggest kicks a person can have is a feeling of righteous indignation.”
     ~ Alan Watts, in a recorded talk titled “Reality, Art, and Illusion” (1965)
	
If gay folks can marry, is marriage worth less?
Your love and attachment worth nothing, of course
Or maybe those just don’t exist – let’s confess
You’d rather they cheapen the cost of divorce.

If gay folks can marry, does that mean God failed?
Deny they came out swinging as you despise – 
Makes sense to assert that God would’ve prevailed
Had man skipped the paperwork that sanctifies.

If gay folks can marry, say who is worse off?
The billions of us, dear, engaging in sex?
Our billions more children won’t have room to scoff
Or private space left to repeat such prospects.

If gay folks can marry, so what’s it to you?
The sanction of hedonists’ day in the sun
That you’d rather darken when this is what’s true:
You’re jealous to miss out on all of the fun.
    ~ Thanks Always Returns

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Token Hippies

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”
    ~ Proverbs 11:2 (NIV)

A popular topic ’mongst people of faith
Is whether among them are those who but sayeth
That they’ll abide by precepts that all claim
As theirs in that group.  Well, it sure is a shame
When participation is empty, and yet
The more people do this, the bolder they get,
Till crises of style emerge, upon when
All cower in fear of the littlest sin.

But who cares if hippies with dreadlocks a-flowin’
Would strum their guitars or speak of some great vision
Of proud peaceful Pepperland, of Puff the dragon:
He’s raw and organic, non-GMO, vegan –
Who cares if you’re scarfing fast food from that bag?
It isn’t for health nuts; why’s that such a drag?
Who cares if you go for expensive retreats,
Drink smoothies, take saunas, and live as elites?
Who cares if what’s inside that head of long hair
Is nothing profound but the attitude there?
I don’t look too special or act like I’m wise
And yet Kate Wolf’s voice I can fast recognize;
I seek the nontoxic, I grow fresh green herbs,
And strive for the thoughtful, not that which disturbs,
I learn T’ai Chi freely from folks in the park,
And meditate each time when I would embark
Upon my small vision quests that can’t stack up,
To greater things that I’m sure all fill your cup
Since you’re putting on such a beautiful show:
Is what’s not pretended just what you don’t know?
    ~ Thanks Always Returns

Details | Thanks Returns Poem

Loneliness

Loneliness

He sits at the table and watches the shoppers walk by
There aren’t many seats here, his half-hour limit’s long past
As one by one each worker chats with him; they know this guy
He offers them something for which they could never have asked
Is he all alone but for these times where these grocery carts
Roll blind past this spot where store patrons with sandwiches sit
How much does it matter: he touches the store workers’ hearts
As he in time opens his heart to them too, bit by bit

We need much more than loose companionship: each needs someone
Moment to moment – if you neglect this basic need
And find yourself lulled fast asleep in the Florida sun
The others who share the beach with you will pay you no heed
Your skin that was once yearning warmth having found itself burned
Though long you’d been caught in the thought that you hardly had much
Real need for another – your heart was blocked till you discerned
The pain forcing you to withdraw your own wound-healing touch

Loneliness thus begets loneliness through lack of flow
Leaving society toxic and cold, though aren’t we
Some of the most social creatures: you think we would know
Given the size of our brains that we’ll never be free
To live in our grand isolation – say is it not sad
That we who’ve accomplished so much remain cruelly alone
In safety behind our four walls or four doors, for we’ve had
So many a fear we may act like our hearts are of stone

Most folks are either religious or distant, I think
Though there sure is joy in connecting with someone untamed
If you can sell such on your pat ideas, you may well drink
One and all from the same cup; how could instinct be blamed
For scorn and exclusion of real individualists
Don’t we know strangers whose ways of life cause them to be
Left to themselves with their thoughts – why they’d hardly be missed
That’s why it’s trouble to live as a visionary

He sits at the table: what is he, a healer a saint
Or maybe Kieslowski’s calm witness of silent insight
Observing the Decalogue unfold without the least taint
Of any least judgment, since all of us know our own plight
If you would engage him in talk would you hear unique thoughts
Or would you yet cover him up in the news of the day
And squelch him clear out with a barrel of shoulds woulds and oughts
So leave him there lonely since he’ll never know you that way
    ~ Thanks Always Returns

Details | Thanks Returns Poem

Marathon

For Alicia Ann Lynch

“I don’t wanna die
 I’d rather dance my life away”
    ~ Prince, “1999” from the album 1999 (1982)

What purpose the celebration of this ritual
Wearing the fears that we face
The better to demonstrate our winning over them
Or the better reason for a party

What purpose the crafting of this message
Depicting the face of the terrorized
The better to make known the fears we must face
Or the better sense of crudeness

What purpose the shooting of this messenger
Firing not being good enough
The better to admit fears too big to face
Or better stick with denial

What purpose the floating of this apology
Passing judgment on a powerful symbol
The better to speed the mob on its witch hunt
Or better be sorry to lose the race
    ~ Thanks Always Returns

Best Poems Written by Thanks Returns

Where the Heart Is

Fair Weather Parents

Peace

Feminized

I-95

Exorcism

Vow Out

Token Hippies

Loneliness

Marathon