Half A Good
---Jim/SP, s
Half As Good
---Jim/SP, s

---Jim/SP, s
When I die they will praise
---Jim/SP, s
my super generosity
---Jim/SP, s
I once tipped a cute bar woman
---Jim/SP, S
One mourner after another
---Jim/SP, s
will recall I was very kind
---Jim/SP, S
to the down-and-out on their luck
---Jim/SP, s
A few times I threw spare quarters
---Jim/SP, s
at in-your-face bold pestering
---Jim/SP, s
hungry beggars near my favorite
---Jim/SP, s
weekend restaurant to impress
---Jim/SP, s
and awe my gullible pretty date
---Jim/SP, s
Some will even eulogize
---Jim/SP, s
what a great contemporary poet
---Jim/SP, s
and modern day philosopher
---Jim/SP, s
they knew me to be all their lives
---Jim/SP, s
Don't contradict any mourners
---Jim/SP, s
but I have not published a damn thing
---Jim/SP, s
unless you call internet posting
---Jim/SP, s
world class publishing of our age
---Jim/SP, S
A funeral is a bad place
---Jim/SP, s
to shout down well-meanining dark-dressed
---Jim/SP, S
grieving people with a rare moist eye
---Jim/SP, s
as bold-faced ignorant damn liars
---Jim/SP, s
But if I am half as good as
---Jim/SP, s
those attending my funeral
---Jim/SP, s
will declare one after another
---Jim/SP, s
I will likely not turn in my
---Jim/SP, s
coffin as they lower me in
---Jim/SP, s
my final eternal abode
---Jim/SP, s

---Jim/SP, s
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---Jim/SP, s

---Jim/SP, s

---jimsp2@yahoo.com, s

---Jim/SP, s

Comments welcome. Even bad poets like to think someone reads their stuff ~ Jim
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interesting concept, it could use some work though. Not just syntax, but possibly language too.
-o-
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Thank you -o- for reading and evaluating the poem. Feel free to redo any line or the whole poem, to give us the benefit of what you have in mind ~ Jim
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ooh-ooh. Careful there. Are you sure you're a bad poet? I think not. I think you've got talent. I like the poem. I'm always impressed when someone implies in a poem rather than stating.
Are you young? I guess you are. You'd have probably been hanging around the North Beach gang in S.F. had you been that era.
Never call yourself a bad poet. Never. Let others do it for you, if they must.
My recent experience has been that I love to write poetry. The reactions of my readers are really important but the real thrill is the joy of writing. Plenty will denegrade you or ,worse, ignore you. DOn't do it to yourself. Keep yourself thinking YOU'RE MIGHTY GOOD.
Back to the poem. I a kind of "tongue in cheek" think, how generous YOU threw pittances to the less fortunate. "A quarter, no less."
Because you haven't published, Senor, does not make you any less great. Look at Emily Dickinson.
Good sense of humor.
All in all, you have a pretty good opinion of yourself as a person, if not as a poet, judging from your prediction of people's opinions of you at your future funeral.
As for me, I'll fly away, created over the sea or next to my love wherever he may lie before me. That was dark garbed mourners can't rejoice too much or weep too loudly at my departure.
What is the saying? When I die, half the people at my funeral won't give a damm, one way or the other, and the other half will be glad as hell?"
sg
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Good points. Thanks ~ Jim
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closed april2