Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Vernon Mooers writes



                                                        Words 

                                      Alden Nowlan said
                                      he could confess to murder in a poem.
                                      He, from a paper-shacked small town
                                      where raccoons come out at night
                                      where a black bear is the only enemy,
                                      never lived in the middle east.

3 comments:

  1. Aldan Nowlan was a noted 20th-century Canadian writer. He dropped out of school after 4th grade and began a career at hard labor. But at 16 he discovered the regional library in Nova Scotia and began walking or hitching the 18-mile-each way trip from his home to the books every weekend. "I wrote (and read) in secret, My father would as soon have sen me wear lipstick." Lying on his resume, he got a job on a newspaper at 19 and began writing poetry. He became one of Canada's most respected authors before his death in 1983.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Fair Warning" by Aldan Nowlan

    I keep a lunatic chained
    to a beam in the attic. He
    is my twin brother whom
    I'm trying to cheat
    out of his inheritance.
    It's all right for me
    to tell you this because
    you won't believe it.
    Nobody believes anything
    that's put in a poem.
    I could confess to
    murder and as long as
    I did it in a verse
    there's not a court
    that would convict me.
    So if you're ever
    a guest overnight
    in my house, don't
    go looking for
    the source of any
    unusual sounds.

    ReplyDelete

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