Tag Archives: poem

There’s An Empty Desk Today—a poem from my youth

Posted by Caleb Coy on

[The following is a poem I wrote in high school in reflection on the suicide of a classmate]


There’s an empty desk today
And yet the textbooks are still open
The chalk is still in motion
The class is still in session,
The space cannot be filled
For the presence is forgotten
A parent’s own begotten
A youth’s demise is rotten,
Was he more a ghost
In the present or the past
A living outcast
Life ceases way too fast,
The others shrug their shoulders
There goes another one
It cannot be undone
Bless the little son,
Sadness will fade slowly
Nothing will be the same way
The kids will always say
There’s an empty desk today.

Week People—a poem

Posted by Caleb Coy on

[The following poem was originally published in Versewrights.]

WEEK PEOPLE

Monday morning hates his job
a case of himself
saying hi to Bob in the hall
who says hey back to him in the hall.
The coffee percolates, drips
a long day inaugurates a long week
and it all goes downhill from there.

Meet the sisters of the arch:
Fat Tuesday, Hump Wednesday, Thirsty Thursday
drinking martinis round a table every afternoon
and sleep heavy that evening
after they hang up the phone
full of the day’s daily review.

Friday announces herself
steals the show
is twenty-three years old and
addicted to coke.

Saturday morning wakes up late
does not remember Friday or
what he did to her.
He sits in the house all day in his socks
when he’s not running marathons
or out of town.

Sunday afternoon is an old Brit sleeping
in a musty armchair
a wooden cross hung limply on the wall behind him
a glass of brandy forming condensation by his side
as he snores
the game blaring on the telly.