Bad Garden Poem

Having a Garden is great fun
The plants grow under the sunny Sun
But it’s not for Everyone,
Because Weeds grow by the ton.

Do you see
What’s happening to me
Because I must judge the contest of poetry?

Now I’m done
Look what I’ve become
I’ve wasted time
With shitty rhymes

I guess there are worse things
… sings
… rings

Etc


-Jim DuBois
June 28, 2016

Riding My Bike Back From the Mall

Yeah,
you knew this
was coming,
right?

I got a bike,
I write about
    everyday things,
and voila!

I know
it's not deep,
or obscure academic
    poetry.

It's comprehendable,
not dada-esque --
revered dada-esque.

It's not even
Charles Bukowski
drunk pathetic
poetry.

No metaphors,
no rhymes,
no special names of plants
or other things
no one really knows.

O Robert Frost,
this is not
your poetry!

I'm not counting
my syllables,
dear Haiku!
haha!

I'm not
going to a "slam"
to recite this
while I bob
back and forth
and angrily
try to make it
more than it is.

Instead, I'm telling
a simple story:

I rode my bike
  back from the mall
  and I was happy.


-Jim DuBois
June 19, 2013

I write these things down

I write
these things down,
because someone
should do it,
and I decided
it would be me.

I don't think
it needs to be
too clever,
or too dramatic.

It mainly
just needs doing.


-Jim DuBois
March 31, 2013

The Poet Answers

The Poet Says, Blackout Poem

you can't reach me

Oops!
My phone died

Now,
I'm out where
you
can't reach me,
a poet
watching the rain

Actually,
I left my phone
behind
on purpose.


-Jim DuBois
Nov 8, 2012

New Notebook

New notebook,
                ($3.99)
new one dollar pen,
new poem...

Argh! The pressure!
Don't crack under
the pressure, man!

Grrr....
alright, got that
outta the way.



-Jim DuBois
July 12, 2011

Art

Sometimes you have to
tell your story
through art or poems
just to get a sense
of how magnificent
it really was.

-Jim DuBois
June 25, 2011

gotta write a poem

gotta write a
gotta write a poem

      "When in the course of..."

No, no!
Not right

gotta write a poem

      "I think that I shall see..."

No!

Done



-Jim
Feb 20, 2011

The Earth's Last Poets

Scrawling defiant love poems
on the debris of a crumbling society

Flinging meaning-laden words
into the abyss of consumerism

Bearing the human standard
inches ahead of the flames of war


-Jim DuBois
Aug 1, 2005

More Hobbies of an Unemployed Poet (May 21, 2005)

I guess I'm
collecting feathers
again

And aimless moments.


Wandering in the lost places
again

like the hillside below the abandoned state hospital
and the broad empty lawns of Amherst College.


-Jim

Hobbies of an Unemployed Poet (c. 2000)

Looking for change
Beneath pay phones and parking meters

Sweating shirtless in the sun

Hanging out in parking lots
    and on sidewalks

Abandoning practicality
    to study the mysteries of
        life and death,

Abandoning practicality
    to study faith.



            - Jim DuBois

Dear Mr. Frost

Dear Mr. Frost,

I slapped some words
  on a page today
  and called it
  a poem.

I know you wouldn't approve,
  but you are dead
  and I
    am not.



        -Jim