Friday, February 04, 2011

Throwing Away the Alarm Clock

This is one of those poems I wish I had written.  Charles Bukowski was a big influence on my own little 2-year stint as a poet, and this is probably my favorite of his poems.  Enjoy.

Throwing Away the Alarm Clock


my father always said, "early to bed and
early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy
and wise."

it was lights out at 8 p.m. in our house
and we were up at dawn to the smell of
coffee, frying bacon and scrambled
eggs.

my father followed this general routine
for a lifetime and died young, broke,
and, I think, not too
wise.

taking note, I rejected his advice and it
became, for me, late to bed and late
to rise.

now, I'm not saying that I've conquered
the world but I've avoided
numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some
common pitfalls
and have met some strange, wonderful
people

one of whom
was
myself—someone my father
never
knew.

3 comments:

Trent N. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Trent N. said...

Its about time you posted! Although I loved the poem, I was hoping this would be the 1st of a 4 part series regarding that topic I "requested" last month. Ha Ha.

Oh well, there is always next month!

Keep up the good work!

Trent N.

Scott said...

It's in the works, I promise! I'm about half way through the essay, as a matter of fact. The ironic thing is that a book I've recently started reading on Paul discusses this very issue and provided some historical information I had never come across before. So I'm going to work this new material into the essay as well. Stay tuned!