Get Your Premium Membership

Best Poems Written by Dave Mcgahan

Below are the all-time best Dave Mcgahan poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

View ALL Dave Mcgahan Poems

123
Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

I Am Embarrassed To Write a Poem

Anyone would wish that they were immune to being embarrassed
You put your name behind something people might read, and hell,
there is no way, you have any right to even attempt to write down a poem.
That's not even you. Nothing is.
But you do it anyway. It has nothing to do with drawing attention. I think it is the exact opposite, I have all my life struggled to draw attention away from myself, and it has been easy to do so. I like that comfort zone. I love it.
Immensely. Words could never describe how much so.
Peace!

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2019



Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

I Wish Cesar Chavez Was Here

I wish Cesar was here 
now
Someone who know how important
farm workers are, giving them a strong
voice,
You got to see this empire
and how it has exploited all the life
that built it,
And all the money spent to fight needless
wars, 
And all the reasons why the rich invest
all their money in stocks and bonds,
And maybe try working in the fields
just for a day
And they grow wild flowers and
when the honey bees come in
they sing aleluya 
just because they are wild

I just wish you trouble yourself
to know, that they know
that they are no different 
that you

Aleluya Aleluya Aleluya
tell me about math
tell me about 
all this life in the universe
I just wish 
you cared enough to 
worry about thee
Like Cesar, and John Steinbeck 
did.
Is that even possible
Trust me when I tell you this
Aleluya yes it is.

Peace!

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2019

Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

Picnic

all these kids on vacation 
it was their summer 
their vacation
and they mixed in with parents
and down by the river
with waterfall one kid fell 
in and one parent thought
well, that river is pretty gnarly,
if I jump in after the kid, which
I will do over saving myself, it
might not do any good, it 
could even make matters worse
A pensive hesitation, 
then she popped out of the rushing
waters and he saw her, and
quickly he was able to grab
her and bring her ashore.
And all the wide expanses
in the pristine Great Lakes
back then.
We ate bag sandwiches
and drank Faygo Pop
and later on nestled 
in a dank cabin
And there is a lot of 
ta do, you have to 
trudge all this stuff along
and make an effort
sure, life can be tough
but if you figure that much
why not go the whole 
how many yards...

Peace!

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2018

Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

Silver Arrows, and Rickets

nonsense purity
polymer
a squeezing of something
out
a tri fold with scores
of plastic, so necessarily unfulfilled 
with pictorials
a social security card,
a card from the merchant marines
with a face
eleven dollars, a fiver
and six ones, 
and a diners card
weak elbows,
furrowing brow
the smell of a polish
delicatessen on
his breath
Oh come 
all ye faithfuls 
Mexico, Poland
Bolivia
He wears a 
Movado
Then craves
for bagels
with locks after
playing Polo

Peace!

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2018

Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

Education and Motivation

I think it is okay not to be the brightest bulb in the tool shed.
And I know I would only use that phrase in self assessment.
But I am talking about motivation. The motivation to learn and to take up the reigns of change. In the US we do live in an advanced very rich nation. And by that, it should mean the motivating factor should be about progress and not so much about being a mathematician who decides that you can make a lot more on Wall Street, an old guy like myself would only hope.
I wish I was only taught more about art and about how to live.
Somethings if you live long enough you appreciate. 
The sound of the owl who wakes you in the morning each night around
4AM more than the train that comes down the pike delivering freight. 
It could be more of a youth problem, life.
To envision enough to enjoy, and try to learn more about.
So that you could show beauty in words / words which by themselves
are not poetry. 
The fancy free rap does not come free, it is exhausted by cascading tumultuous
social circumstance, where beautifully brilliant minds find their capabilities letting loose I think.
I think a lot of things. And the surest thing I worried about early on was my own failings. Only later on did I realize I could not only help myself, but also help others. 
Education requires motivation.

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2019



Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

The Writers Box

So I write, I write and I write. 
I like to write. 
I like to write so I write.
There is no purpose 
There is no expenditure
There is no outcome
There is nothing other
than me writing.
I'm in a box now, writing
but I'm freaking out a bit
I never knew it would be like this.
I don't know what to write anymore
I'm in a box, in a box.
I've been in this box all this time.
I guess I should have known.
There was never anyway I could
write myself out of this box.
All this time I thought I could,
if only I was given half a chance.
But I was only lying to myself, 
or is it a lie, and I am fighting
back with the only thing that
makes any sense, the only 
endowment, the whole enchilada
yes, this big writing lying thing
is virtue that I thought I held
but never did, for it was me
And I was it.

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2022

Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

Last One, Lord of the Flies

In this world this feeling of being secluded and alone
with only a cadre of youth that represents innocence and
the wilderness 
In this whole wide world, the conch, the rule to speak 
some democracy, 
you can run fast, or you are easily upset, or you can take 
charge just so you can control, 
I guess the first order of business is to suss all this stuff out.
Maybe later, years later on Simon's son becomes more like Jack.
You know the avenue Piggy ventured from the start,
just what might just become like Roger
a purely sadistic sort.

An allegory 
Like Franz Boas searching for ice cream
The University of Heidelberg
1386

He became fascinated by the Baffin Island Inuit.
Where a learned man such as himself could never
survive because he was not equipped with the 
knowledge 

back in those days
that was a revolutionary thought

In many ways it still seems to be this way,
I think just now.

Peace!

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2019

Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

The Veins In the Leaf In a Dry Land

The veins in the leaf are molecules that transport water along with sugar - you say where, to the brain, to what, the nuclease of what the plant is, what?
The soil is only so deep, large trees dig deep, small flowers don't have the capacity.
There is a dichotomy, there is a richness, a beauty, a world in the mechanism of the plant life that surrounds everyone. 
Everyday you see the birds, the ground squirrels, the ants and spiders, the 
milkweed butterfly, the cloud in the sky, the rows of corn, the sheep and the goat, the cow, and the chick, fish, and the wheat,
but there is more.
The flowers, the clay, the bare Earth from water that filters down through.

People do not talk, at least not enough as history shows quite clearly
That is what I think.
I am not blaming the next, I never had before believed
that the solution would be left up to the few
but if you would, please take the pulse of the leaf each year,
just place a leaf down and push a crayon over it in order to show
it's imprint. Just do it as a simple experiment on your own.
Please.

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2022

Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

Is Science a Coherent Discussion To the Lay Person

Is the thought of Science a scary premise mixed with some progress and
 a whole lot regret, like oh that science, what will they think of next, or some
disgusting human made virulent virus that only the rich have the antidote
to block, is it only this, who the heck knows kind of guess.



The important thing to understand about science in the exploratory sense is that it requires the discipline of caring to effectively focus ones mind completely, and yes,
stuff goes bad, you know chemicals, molecules, bacteria, stars, time, Xrays, vacuums...
You name it, the list is long.
It's a lot of hard work and sweat mixed with some real concrete thinking,
man it is a total brain sweat and fun for those inclined.
Science is crazy man, it's common that people want to know stuff,
but it is not for the weak minded, to say the least.
John, the air you breath is mixed with water, oxygen, nitrogen, CO2 and a whole host of other trace compounds.
That's why we study trees, all plants really, even the tubers.
I like the potato, not just because of my Irish background,
it is somewhat climateric once it is pulled from its root - well 
actually its not a root, it's a tuber or stolon, sort of like a horizontal branch.
The potato grows off of shoots that grow horizontally, best in well drained loose soil. 
That's science, because there are a lot of potato.
They are most nutritious when baked whole alone by themselves, much less nutritious when cut into elongated strips and deep fried, or whole re-baked with gobs of cheese and bacon and sour cream and chive which adds several calories you may not be able to afford regarding your own fat intake that is.
A deeper knowledge of the best way to grow potato and how to cook the potato has made a lot of money, especially for large corporately owned farming conglomerates, not to mention fast food chains as I am quite certain
every lay person knows.
But enough about potato, when every poet knows that,
April is the cruellist month, mixing lilacs out of dead land
etc...
And that science is a field of knowledge that extends upon what is or was beauty to deconstruct in a sense of what was
lost or possibly could be found if one knew
or ever could know what true beauty truly meant --- but apparently they 
do not.

science should be coherent to the lay person, just like
art or obligation to love if one was to seek merit
it would be best to share however carefully disclosed
such as in a poem

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2022

Details | Dave Mcgahan Poem

I Think We Like Theodore Roosevelt's Spirit In Some Way

Standing tough, no matter the outcome. Sister Jean's 98, good to be backed and a school like Loyola Chicago, well they got some talented players, and now they are going into the final four.

Fight the good fight, stand up for the little guy, all this and more.

This kind of salutary, we come we go, they came they've gone; like an awakening in sleepy town, like a moonshot, we made it to the moon, someone took a picture of Earth, just what it 

looks like from space. 

I rubbed up against the butt of dog high upon the heavens and flipped the Earth's polarity 

so there was this rise and shine with nothing else to say, it's always the same, it's all gone mad

until you believe, what is it you believe

Thermodynamics: I wear this tight fitting spandex under my clothes, to help me run, like thermal underwear I would wear as a kid on the coldest of days.

Did you ever notice that when you wear thermal underwear underneath, that if you stand near anything, it reflects your own bodies warmth.

 

Peace!

Copyright © Dave Mcgahan | Year Posted 2018

123

Book: Shattered Sighs