A Timely Poem By Dick Allen, Poet Laureate of Connecticut

Dick Allen, Poet Laureate of Connecticut, recently shared this poem that he wrote some years back, plus this quote from John Hickenlooper, Governor of Colorado: “I refuse to say his name, in my house, we’re just going to call him Suspect A.”

A Curse

We will not toss a fig to, nor remember

The thieving CEO, the slipshod builder,

Dope-pusher, crack-smoker, Mafia mobster.

We want to hear their names no more.

 

Smudges on the landscape, insects in dogs’ fur,

The drunken driver, the occasional wife beater,

The sniper crawling out from under God knows where,

We want to hear their names no more.

 

Mad or not, the serial axe-murderer,

The airplane hijacker, the suicide bomber,

Who cares what sad lost shapes their childhoods were?

We want to hear their names no more.

 

Let them be swept up by some janitor

And never mentioned in a single prayer.

Let every feature of them disappear.

We want to hear their names no more.

 

For they are dung and spit and gelatin and scar,

The dribble soaked into a chewed cigar,

Old knots in dirty hair, crepuscular.

We want to hear their names no more.

 

                                      -Dick Allen

                                        Present Vanishing (Sarabande Books, 2008)