Free Very Bad Poetry by Kathryn Petras Page A

love and with a smile,
Bade me her promises forget;
   Toying with glittering rings the while.
(But tell it not.)
    ….
    “If it must be, if cherished bliss,
Is lost to me forever,” I cried,
   “Give me one last, sweet, parting kiss,
To soothe my passion’s injured pride.”
   (But tell it not.)
    With pretty gestures like a bird
   In her rare loveliness unique,
She, smiling, rose, without a word,
   And gently kissed my lips and cheek.
(But tell it not.)
    That peerless beauty, chaste and proud,
Lies in her sumptuous coffin now!
   Her sweet limbs hidden in a shroud,
With spotless lilies on her brow.
   (But tell it not.)
    Friend, there are ways of pain and dread
   To veil youth’s dawn in sad eclipse;
She
could not see the
poison spread
   On my pate cheeks and livid lips!

(But tell it not.)
    This selection shows Saltus at his cynical best—exposing the worst traits of human nature in the person of a circus ringmaster.
from
The Masters
    1.—A Circus Master Speaks to the Clowns
     … Come! show your jolly tricks, and be possessed
   Like devils with mad laughter!
   What are you crying after?
Your child is dead?
Bah! Jump right in the ring.
A whining clown forsooth’s a silly thing.
   Turn twenty hand-springs right away,
   Or else, by God! I’ll stop your pay.
from
Two Loves Found Refuge
A Mood of Madness
    Two loves found refuge in my happy heart,
One for my bride, one for the healing art;
Each of my spirit claimed an equal part.
    ….
    But, as my talent rose and waxed mature,
Love for my bride became more insecure,
Love for anatomy more deep and pure.
    ….
    She was a
subject
to my eyes alone;
Not woman, forsooth, but so much flesh and bone,
Sinew, and blood, and skin, which were my own.
    And I had lawful right, with foul intent,
I who for progress on this sphere was sent,
To use her body for experiment.
    So in her wine I dropped consuming blight,
One moaning, shadow-haunted winter night,
And, watching, clutched my scalpel’s handle tight.
    Then, ere her eyes, that agony expressed,
Had closed forever, with impatient zest,
My hands were red dissecting her white breast.

GEORGE ROBERT SIMS
(1847-?)
    A popular playwright, poet, and essayist, George R. Sims was especially noted for his letters to the
Times
on the condition of the poor in London, which sparked a Royal Commission to study the problem, so beginning the never-ending series of government commissions studying urban poverty.
from
Beauty and the Beast
    He gazed on the face of the high-born maid,
And saw the mark where the tears had been;
He knew that a daughter had wept and prayed,
He knew that a mother had feared a scene—
Had torn herself from the weeping girl,
Whose love was away o’er the distant sea,
And had sold her child to a titled churl
Who had just got round from a bad d.t.

SLOCUM SLUGS, ESQ.
(fl. 1857)
    L ittle is known of the poet who wrote “I Saw Her in Cabbage Time” but his alliterative pen name—Slocum Slugs, Esq. Published in the Greensboro (North Carolina)
Patriot and Flag,
March 27, 1857, this poem is probably one of the few American poems about the time-honored task of cutting sauerkraut … and certainly one of the most compelling.
I Saw Her in Cabbage Time
A Dutch Melody
    I saw her first in Cabbage time,
   She was a-cutting kraut—
She’d stop the cutter, now and then,
   To turn the head about;
And as she’d salt it in a tub
   And stamp it down awhile,
Upon her fresh and rosy lip
   Reposed a witching smile.
    I saw her next in Winter time,
   And still she gaily smiled;
For there upon the cooking-stove
   Her grub was being boiled;
Around the huge and greasy pot,
   The steam came pouring out;
And from the smell I knew that she
   Was cooking “speck” and kraut.
    When next I saw her, in the Spring,
   She smiled not as before;
A heavy weight was on her heart—
   The kraut was “all no more!”
The pot she used to cook it in
   Was eaten up