Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
quote by Alan Bennett
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Tin Of Sardines
A tin of Sardines.
Mother by an assembly line putting tiny sardines into tins,
a machine did the rest, a squirt of oil and a lid stamped on.
Sardines side by side, in total darkness, wait to be eaten.
But first of all the sardines had to be smoked, the smoker
my mother’s lover, he visited her every Sunday afternoon,
and I was sent out to find a place that sold ice cream, even
when it rained. Rusting sardine cans, littering the wayside,
don’t walk barefoot in the grass at summer time. Mother
by an assembly line, putting sardines into tins, the smoker
had another girlfriend now and I got no Sunday ice cream.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Why I Am Not A Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
poem by Frank O'Hara
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I Don't Recommend Sardines
I use to love my cabbage with potatos,
Buttered and baked.
And with fired pork chops!
Crispy too!
And that's what I ate.
Until I rediscovered,
A fresh salad with tomatos.
And...
With a slice of pound cake.
To me this was great.
But I don't recommend sardines,
For certain people.
Or acquiring a taste for rare steak...
Served to drip,
With a bleeding done on paper plates.
No...
I don't recommend sardines,
For certain people.
Or acquiring a taste for rare steak...
Served to drip,
With a bleeding done on paper plates.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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A Busy Life
THE busy days are here
crowding themselves
packed like sardines
but there is still joy somehow
in this fast paced
life,
reading between the lines
amidst this crowd,
the poems keep on whistling
they have a beautiful world
within and
i keep on listening
still abreast
as alive as
a fledgling about
to fly
away
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Broremann The Fisherman
Broremann the Angler
On the pier where fishing vessels were tied up my brother
sat fishing all the while seagulls kept swooping and shrieking,
he blissfully ignored them. He had no hook at the end of his
line and when asked why he said, I don´t like to hurt the fish.
But crafty little Broremann was not as innocent as you may
think, he didn´t like fish, all those horrible tiny bones,
his mother had sent him down to the pier to try catch some
fish for lunch. He liked sausages with mashed potatoes and
stewed peas, now he could go home tell his mother fish didn´t
bite today, but made sure to put the hook on the line so his
mother could see he was really trying. An old fisherman gave
him two sardines wrapped in a newspaper, but wouldn´t you
know it the pair of sardines somehow slipped out of the paper
and made their way back to the sea.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.
quote by Eric Cantona
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Peanut Butter Conspiracy
By: jimmy buffett
1973
Lookin back at my hard luck days
I really do have to laugh
Workin in a dive for twenty six dollars
Spendin it all on grass
We were hungry hard-luck heroes
Tryin just to stay alive
Wed go down to the corner grocery
This is how wed survive
Chorus:
Whos gonna steal the peanut butter
Ill get the can of sardines
Runnin up and down the aisle of the mini mart
Stickin food in our jeans
We never took more than we could eat
There was plenty left on the rack
We all swore if we ever got rich
We would pay the mini mart back
Yes sir! yes sir!
We would pay the mini mart back
It was a two man operation
Had it all down on a note
Ricky would watch that big round mirror
And Id fill up my coat
Then wed head for the check-out aisle
With a lemon and a bottle of beer
Into the car, got to make it on home
Suppertimes getting near
Chorus:
So whos gonna steal the peanut butter
Ill get the can of sardines
Runnin up and down the aisle of the mini mart
Stickin food in our jeans
Never took more than we could eat
There was plenty left on the rack
We all swore if we ever got rich
We would pay the mini mart back
Yes sir! yes sir!
We would pay the mini mart back
I guess every good picker has had some hard times
I sure had my share
Its really kinda funny to laugh at em now
But I dont want to go back there
So every now and then when Im in the grocery
Ill take a little but not much
cause you never know when those hard timesll hitcha
And I dont want to lose my touch
Chorus:
So whos gonna steal the peanut butter
Ill get the can of sardines
Runnin up and down the aisle of the mini mart
Stickin food in our jeans
We never took more than we could eat
There was plenty left on the rack
We all swore if we ever got rich
We would pay the mini mart back
Yes sir! yes sir!
We would pay the mini mart back
Yes sir, yes sir
We would pay the mini mart back
song performed by by Jimmy Buffett
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Why Can't I Come From The Bay Of The Mouth
most ignorantly I ask
it's a wonderful bay and it's got a lot to say
and you don't even have to put it big letters
the sardines almost extinct would not mind
and even if they did
they would be silent about that
yes, I come from the bay of the mouth
I openly say and if it's a crime
one should say it aloud
or keep their mouth shut
and do nothing about my place of origin
poem by Miroslava Odalovic
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There Is Nothing Much To Go Deeper Into Life...
everything has a synonym
life has
a synonym for good food,
sushi,
uni, atami
a platter of jasmine rice,
beside a
hot chocolate
sardines with lots of
tomatoes
fried
in fact the synonyms have
become substitutes
for our definition of something
good and beautiful
less the garnishing of truth
to make
a synonym of a perfect day
just a pinch of sunlight
in my forehead
and then a bigger shade of
the penumbra of trees and
horizons
less the butterflies
that flit and then gone....
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Fell
Stars fell on the trenches last night.
Sardines in the mud
Waiting for the light.
Men and boys
Will never see wife or mother again.
Waiting for the whistle
Rum, prayers and rain.
Men fell on the battlefield this morn.
Some lay in the wire
Hanging on their crosses at dawn.
Wives and mothers
Will never see their men again.
Leaders gorge
And drink whiskey
In safety
In warmth
Insane.
poem by Kevin East
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Contrails
With my Navajo friend Johnny,
Sitting on a dune of red sand
In Monument Valley, Utah,
And partaking in a little cotraband
Whiskey, we gazed up high,
Squinting in the air toward the sun
Where there was the vapor trail
Of a jumbo jet.
'Where are all those people
'Havin' to go? ' he asked.
'Packed up like those fishies,
Those, um, sardines in a can.'
Told him I did not know.
We rolled cigarettes
And enjoyed being landbound,
Down in the dumps,
Not double-daring gravity
And the jackrabbit horizon.
poem by Stan Petrovich
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Vanishing Future
The Vanishing Future
The lake we swam in, as children, is now
a sea of knee high thistles, in summer
evenings, that had no night, we fished for
trout, now I see empty tins of sardines
blinking in fading sunlight
I had travelled long to get here fifty years
or so, my old home was an oblong square
on ugly ground, but I did find a rusty
spade to dig my tiny space while smoking
a last cigarette or two.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Sonnet: Isn’t Something Really Wrong
When man just fails behaving like a man,
When humanistic norms are thrown to wind,
When man puts others like sardines in can,
His conscience and soul, he did rescind.
When force is used on hapless men in sleep,
When age and cadre, don’t mean anything,
When in the name of duty, all can peep!
Where have the basic rights gone for earthlings?
Which society treats all as criminals?
What is the use of hard won freedom then?
When there is access not to urinals!
We better are called ‘beasts’ than rather men.
Don’t be a beast while doing your duty;
A humane touch gives every man beauty!
7-2-2001
poem by John Celes
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A Least...
when the night is darkest
because the rains are heavier
when we are packed like
sardines inside this cave
uncertain about what happens
next, fears pile, and beats of
the heart get too tense,
let us not talk about the future
set aside the past and
suspend the present, at least,
we can speak about the moon and
the stars
how the stars drink space
and how the moon wades
on the waves of time
and then perhaps we shall be
ready about the storms
that are still coming
lest one of you, once lovers
tell the love of
soft sunshine.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Persecution Complex
What to do when ghosts appear at noon? Coming up the lane
to my retreat, where I have been hiding for twenty years, from
wife her eight children, five horses and a pack of howling dogs.
They are coming to take me away. Camp outside my cottage
knock on windows looking in calling my name want to come in.
How long can I hide behind the sofa the floor is stone hard?
It is dark now but they have flashlights shine into windows to
see sign of life, I have to try sneak into the kitchen they can’t
see me there, open a tin of sardines and drink cold water.
This is going to turn into a long siege. It’s three in the morning
they sleep in their tents, I sneak out take my scooter, and as
it is downhill all the way to the main road, they can’t hear me.
They can take my house, locus eat my land and sell my tractor.
I drive into summer dawn, free of domestic enslavement.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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~ Some Factors of If
if wishes could replace my tins of sardines
I'd be swimming so fast to you overseas
if lucky meant winning on spun lotto balls
I'd buy us an island but no shopping malls
if dreams could convey that doubts stay away
I'd hope for a plane ride and more than okay
if valuables stayed safe when carried on my back
I’d chose your soft naked as the only ting I’d pack
if depressions cut through valleys to pave waves for sun
we’d slide on down that mountain and radiate in free run
if time, my love, for us would hitch on hike to bring advance
we'd glide into infinity in sensuous, slow long dance.
poem by Pssive W Nker
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The Study In Aesthetics
The very small children in patched clothing,
Being smitten with an unusual wisdom,
Stopped in their play as she passed them
And cried up from their cobbles:
Guarda! Ahi, guarda! Ch’ è be’ a!
But three years after this
I heard the young Dante, whose last name I do not
know--
For there are, in Sirmione, twenty-eight young Dantes
and thirty-four Catulli;
And there had been a great catch of sardines,
And his elders
Were packing them in the great wooden boxes
For the market in Brescia, and he
Leapt about, snatching at the bright fish
And getting in both of their ways;
And in vain they commanded him to stafermo!
And when they would not let him arrange
The fish in the boxes
He stroked those which were already arranged,
Murmuring for his own satisfaction
This identical phrase:
Ch’ è be’ a
And at this I was mildly abashed.
poem by Ezra Pound
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Where The Northwesterly Blows
Where the Northwesterly Blows (memory of a town)
In the small park with gloomy trees, near where the factories used to be,
was a bust of a man’s image on a plinth. I think it was made of bronze,
the head was brown when not striped white by seagull droppings.
Mother said he had been a Mesèn; she liked using odd words, desperately
trying to keep afloat in a world of tinned sardines in oil and mackerel in
tomato sauce. I took it to mean a rich man kind to working people and had
donated this sad little park surrounded by damp factory walls; a place where
the workers could sit and enjoy the sun. The park was only open Saturday
Afternoons and Sundays, one couldn’t have people sitting there during work
week. A child climbed over its fence and drowned in a tarn of green algae.
The park was eradicated, just as the grim factories were thirty years later.
Life was bleak in my town, one neon lit advert, on the night sky “Jesus Saves.”
Competing with the stars, and a persistent rumour that the man in the suit
shop wore ladies underwear.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Fed Rights to Be Victims
Unwed mothers.
Raising kids.
And doing the same thing...
Their mothers and those before 'them' did.
Giving up their love,
To fatherless men!
And doing the best they can,
With no support at all from them!
Bragging punks on the corners stand.
Without clue or concept in their heads...
What it takes to be a man.
Who amongst them,
Comprehends this or understands?
Seeking to be understood.
These shiftless hoodlums,
In condoning neighborhoods.
With emotions kept deep within.
And some of them portraying thugs...
Depicted in video.
On TV and movies screens!
Believing acts to demean young women,
Gives them 'props'...
They can not drop,
Or intend to stop.
And inside their minds they are vacant of purpose.
Separate from...
The meaning of life itself.
Like a can of packed sardines,
Dusting...
On roach infested shelves!
Seeking to be understood.
These shiftless hoodlums,
In condoning neighborhoods.
With emotions kept deep within.
And fed to crave...
The rights to be victims.
They fight against change.
And the repeated sameness of these visions.
Fed rights to be victims!
Discipline with them did not begin.
With them there is a thirsting lust,
That seems to rush to a hushed dead end!
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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