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My cousin, Kate Casey, sitting with me at my mother's recent wake, read one of my poems and reminded me: There is a story behind every poem.
Thank you for visiting my web site! The purpose of the site is to showcase and sell my collection of poetry from more than forty years of writing.
Take a look at the poems in my "Featured Poems" window. They will always be the latest I've been working on, and since Kate's reminder, I will now begin adding a little of the story behind each one of them that appears there. I will also be changing them out fairly frequently, so I'll try over the next few weeks to add those bits of narrative to poems in the buy windows where you can often find poems that have been featured.
Otherwise, you can take a look at some of the lead-ins to the poems, and if you like what you see, buy one or two to take a closer look. Then come back to the site and buy some more.
I must disclose a caution for one poem in a buy window: "Love Poem: The Male." It is my only poem my relatives have labeled a "dirty poem," but, of course, some have extended the label to the rest of my poems on this site.
I can assure you that poem is the only "dirty poem" for sale here, the only one you might find objectionable. Avoid it if you wish.
I’ll be adding new poems to buy windows on the site as soon as I figure out how to do that.
I am also writing about the Colorado literary community as the Denver Literary Examiner at Examiner.com. Check me out there, too. I am writing about small business, politics, my own development as a writer and other topics on my blog, Schwab on Anything. If you would like to check it out, click here.
To learn more about me and the vision of RobertSchwabPoet.com, which is changing all the time, click here.
Thanks again for visiting.
Doonesbury
You go Gary Trudeau!
Keep popping bubbles
of the powerful and rich.
You cartoon journalist.
Swing a fist at the pompous
for us the disabled many
who have no weapons
to wield.
Not much story here. Read Sunday, June 21, 2009, strip and appreciated how long Trudeau has been going after the rich and powerful, which is what a journalist is supposed to do.
Mother's Day
"Now sit there!"
in that straight-back
dining-room chair
beneath the copied Parisian.
"And not a sound!"
she scolded.
We giggled at her frown,
and earned an added
crack across our bottoms.
She must have hurt inside --
to have her children laugh
like that. Her pride,
the object of their scorn.
Her love so lightly borne
in childish souls.
But had she known
how deep she burned
her mark upon us,
she should have cried
at her success
before she died.
I read "Mother's Day" at my mother's funeral June 8, after having promised her I would do that when I sent it to her fifteen years ago as the only Mothers Day present I could afford at the time. The picture of the Parisian was a framed, cheap copy of a segment of a Monet or Manet piece I have not since been able to identify, that hung on the wall in our dining room in the house where Lorraine Schwab raised her five children, at 8018 S. Franscisco Ave., St. Thomas More Parish, on the South Side of Chicago. My mother never said more than, 'Thank you' about the poem. I like it, and have only broken the poem into stanzas here in this window. It appears whole, without breaks, both in the buy window below and in the program for my mother's funeral Mass where it was printed on the inside cover.
Other Poems by Robert Schwab |
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Tattered Man
1 Poem
An aged, tattered man,
stands in his mind
before the bookstore
in San Francisco, the old
anxiety hangs
on the threads and patches
of his frayed coat...
Price: $ 0.89
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Blades & Evolution
2 Poems
Oh! The sharp sparks
we strike: they glitter
as they flash
off each other
… or would we rather
lose our edge …
Price: $ 0.89
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Because she was lovely
& Love ‘ya
2 Poems
Because she was lovely,
Lovely and sweet, a soul
who cared about me
for a time...
Price: $ 0.89
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“Painted Veil,”
Poetrybiz &
Nugget
3 Poems
The tarp my daughter Catherine paints
to shroud a high-school-age worldly disaster,
that needs addressing. Her talent wasted
in blobs of bright light, illuminating shadows...
Price: $ 0.89
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The Gun & Your Art!
2 Poems
The gun lies wrapped
in a shoe-shine rag
in a box in a closet,
with a bunch of bullets...
Price: $ 0.89
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Church Ladies &
Love Poem: The Male
2 Poems
Don’t you just love
the guys
who use God
to jump...
Price: $ 0.89
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Two Women & Rebecca
2 Poems
Now you’re back again,
you who put me out
like wash on a clothes line
to slap and dry…
Price: $ 0.89
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Terrible Beauty, and
Roused
2 Poems
Roused at the memory of her kiss:
I feel her tongue
like fruit insider her mouth …
Price: $ 0.89
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Barbie Dream and
Sonnet to Byron & Keats
2 Poems
I’ll have no plastic doll for a lover,
My woman cooks with onions and garlic.
I want her wetness …
Price: $ 0.89
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No Time for Apocalypse
1 long poem
The final decade is about to begin
Jesus Christ is risen again.
Bury the decade in a common grave,
forget it all.
Dress for the dance
Save money for the ball …
Price: $ 1.95
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Three Poems:
Thief
Daffodils
Short Poems
Death claims our lovers
As a thief snatches
jewels in the night…
Price: $ 0.89
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Black Holes, I and II
2 Poems
"I am an explorer
sent to the center
of space…"
Price: $ 0.89
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My Love, I and II
2 Poems
Wyoming you are to me
white sand beauty
a land of hard edges…
Price: $ 0.89
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Colorado Millennium
1 Long Poem
A new round of time
spins the Mayan calendar:
the millennium is come,
another thousand years.
Colorado’s busy, bustling
engines warm.
The trucks outside
the Conoco, their drivers
huddled over coffee…
Price: $ 1.95
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Catherine &
“Not Marble, Nor …”
2 Poems
Even now,
at three,
parting seems
to tear
her heart
apart.
...
Price: $ 0.89
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After &
Mother’s Day
2 Poems
The world is flying apart,
gravity fails; my heart, too.
Birds fall with fever,
blue smoke rolls over
the harbor of our souls.
...
Price: $ 0.89
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