BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #19 ("Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz)

I first heard of the poet Hal Sirowitz in the PBS series The United States of Poetry. This was the poem that introduced me to Sirowitz. I met him once at a small reading in the Village and he signed his Poetry in Motion poster (see it here).

I love his matter-of-factness, that masks deep-rooted parental issues that I think some of us (not all of

Crumbs

                  Don't eat any more food in your room,
            Mother said. You'll get more bugs.
          They depend on people like you.
        Otherwise, they would starve.
       But who do you want to make happy,
     your mother or a bunch of ants?
    What have they done for you?
  Nothing. They have no feelings.
They'll eat your candy.  Yet
you treat them better than you treat me.
You keep feeding them.
But you never offer me anything.

Listen: "Crumbs" (m4a) by Hal Sirowitz.

Read more Sirowitz here, here, and here.

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#20, "This Is Just to Say," by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok