The Man Who Had Bird Knees
I once knew a man…
Who had knees…
That bent backwards, like a bird’s…
And this man…
Could only walk…
Like a limping, lame old duck.
The children all laughed…
And pointed at him…
When he passed them in the park…
And it made him smile…
And laugh to himself…
That his handicap made them happy.
Every single night…
He oiled his weary knees…
And tried to fight the pain…
And every single day…
He used his silly legs…
To do the Chicken Dance for kids.
And then there came a day…
When the bird legs came no more…
To be noticed by kids at the park…
And the parents all learned…
That the poor man had died…
And the whole world brought him flowers.
The next day in Heaven…
St. Peter saw a man…
Whose knees bent backwards like a bird’s…
And all of Heaven laughed…
As he did the Chicken Dance…
While angels clapped in Heaven.



The thing I find to be most witlessly true about both poetry and life is that things can be funny, and make you laugh, and at the same time make you cry on the inside. Humor is hard to write because it can be both happy and sad at the same exact moment. How do you define that quality? The bitter-sweet nature of nature? That’s saying it in a way that is both contradictory and odd. It can give you a wry smile at the same moment it both confounds and confuses you. So better just to shrug your shoulders and tell yourself you know it when you see it… and this either is or isn’t it. Sorry if I made you think too hard, cause I know that sometimes thinking hurts.
Mickey at the Wishing Well of Souls
I found a country well, and I thought I had a quarter,
But I fished in pockets hard, and found nothing for the warter,
And since I had to warp a line to make the poem rhyme,
I figured I would just look in, because I had the time.
I looked into the warty water which sat there still and deep,
And could not see the bottom, and I began to weep.
The water was clear and dark and black,
And the only thing I saw… was Mickey looking back.
And nothing of the wishing well, its magic could I see,
For only there just staring back, the secret thing was me.

I apologize for inflicting poetry on you when you probably came here looking for goofy stuff to laugh at. But my poetry is just like all my word-mangling and picture-crayoning. It tends to be goofy and weird and walking a tightrope over a shark tank between chuckle-inducing and tear-jerking. You probably can’t even tell which is the poetry and which are the burbled brain-farts of commentary that pad this thing out to five hundred words. Four hundred and ninety six, actually.

Get Up and Do!
It is daunting when bad fortune comes in waves, drowning us in debt, suffering, disabling illness, financial reversals, and so many more things I have been through this last year personally, so that we want to lie down and never get up.
But, I am not dead yet…Â and there is poetry to be lived.
I say that as one of the world’s fifty worst poets who ever lived.  (In my defense, I am a humorist, and I write bad poetry on purpose.) My inspiration for the living of poetry comes from reading and living good poetry.  I live because there is poetry by Walt Whitman. Of course, also Shakespeare… whoever he really was. And I understand that much of what I have learned in my brief and stupidly-lived 61 years comes from the poetry of the visionary poet I pictured above. Do you know him? If you have never read his poetry, you haven’t truly lived the poetry you need to live.
This poet taught me that “Being, not doing, is my first love.” Of course, if I am satisfied with just sitting on my bed and “being” through most of my day, I will starve to death and not “be” anymore. But he has taught me that what is essential is already within me. There is wisdom and power in Uncle Ted’s poetry. (Yes, I know I am not really related to him, but that’s only physical and overlooks the spiritual.) I must partake of it to live.
If you are bored by poetry about plants in a greenhouse under bright lights, or you can never understand what the poet means when he says, “My father was a fish”, then you need to practice reading poetry more. You don’t truly understand what poetry is, and what it is for… yet.
And I am sure you have probably concluded from all of this that I am a fool and a bad poet and I have no right to try to tell you who and what a truly great poet is. But, fool that I am, I know it when I see it. It is there in the verse, the hideous and horrible… the beautiful and the true. And if I know anything at all worth telling about the subject, it is this; Ted Roethke is a great American poet. And he writes poetry that you need to read… and not only read but live.
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Filed under artists I admire, commentary, insight, inspiration, poetry, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as living poetry, poetry, Theodore Roethke