Category Archives: poems

Powerless

"Rob Roper", poem, poems, poetry, ,

Powerless (poem)
by Rob Roper 1st Draft May 25, 2017

It’s a kangeroo court

Those in authority can lie
They can invent evidence
They can falsely accuse me of things
They can say I said this or that

What they say
is gospel truth
Whatever I say
is disregarded
Their lies are accepted
my truth is rejected

They can
convict me of crimes I didn’t commit
They can
take my money
They can even beat me
and they’ll get away it
they’ll win
They always win

Those in authority have always abused me
It’s happened over and over
all my life
And there’s nothing I can do about it
nothing I can do.

People say, “Yes there is!
You can unite with others
against the people in authority!”

But they never unite.
Nobody ever backs me up.
They leave me standing all alone
to fight the powerful
It’s a losing battle

For I am powerless
I am in the class of losers, the rejects

And you wonder
why I have no confidence
you wonder
why I have no hope
It’s the result of experience
lessons learned the hard way

This is what I’ve learned:
Superior force always wins
Justice always loses

I have no power
They always win
I always lose

always lose

always lose

always lose.

My People

"Rob Roper", poem, poems, poetry, Uncategorized, ,

My People (poem)
by Rob Roper 1st Draft May 26, 2017

I have no use for the winners
The frat boys
now yuppies
with their careers
and families
Taking the baby out for a stroll
with their expensive pure-bred dog
(probably ordered him online)
and their boring mainstream clothes
mainstream haircuts
mainstream facial hair
according to the current fad
staring at their mainstream stupidphones
their boys and girls on bicycles with
training wheels
but wearing helmets anyway
living in their big yuppy triplexes with
3 living rooms
5 bedrooms
and 4 baths
where a small house from the 1950’s once stood
generic boring
shrubs and grass planted by
Mexicans
hired by
the developer landscape company
not a single flower to be seen anywhere
all neat and orderly
like their haircuts.
I have no use for these people.
They bore me.

Give me the losers
the misfits
the rejects
rejects
not because society rejected them
but because they rejected society.
Those who
worked odd jobs all their lives
and never had a career
because all careers seemed boring to them.
Those who never made it
due to lack of enthusiasm for “it”

Bring me the failures
those who have been searching all their lives
but never found it
The wannabe poets, artists and musicians
Well-read
with and a sick and twisted sense of humor
and a healthy dose of cyncism
who know that American politics is corrupt
and whose taste in music
is a rejection
of the mainstream
and an embrace of the subversive

These are my people.
People like me.

New Poem “The Switch”

poem, poems, poetry, ,

The Switch
by Rob Roper Jan 29, 2017

I used to think
I would never
be one of the prisoners
who dug his own grave
before being shot.

I would never
be one of those Jews
who meekly boarded the train
to the concentration camp
to be gassed.

No, not me!
I would have refused
to let them
degrade and humiliate me.
I would have said,
“Shoot me now, motherfucker!”
I would have died bravely
and with dignity.

But then I remembered.

“Get me a switch,”
my Mom would say
after I had committed
some infraction.
(It seemed like this happened everyday when I was little.)

I would have to go into the backyard
and break off a branch
from a row of bushes
that divided our property
from the next-door neighbor’s.

I would strip the twigs off the branch
leaving nubs
that made it hurt even more.

Since it was green
it was flexible
so it would wrap around my legs a little
when she struck.

I remember thinking
the one advantage I have
is that I get to choose the weapon
of my punishment.
I remember
trying to figure out
which is better:
a long or short branch?
smaller or bigger diameter?
But I never figured that out.
I resigned myself to the fact
that they would all hurt about the same.

I would bring my selection inside
hand it to Mom
bend over
and she would lash me across the back of my thighs
no doubt
all the while
chastising me for my crime
whatever it was
whatever awful crime
a six-year-old can commit.

So now I know.
I would dig my own grave
I would meekly board that train

Because, afterall
I got my own switch.

Didn’t I?

My Slow Methodical Ways (Poem)

poem, poems, poetry

My Slow Methodical Ways
by Rob Roper July 29, 2016

Like a soldier awaiting orders
He stood ten feet away
and answered my attempts at conversation
with four-word sentences.

It was clear he didn’t want to be friends.

He was impatient.
He wanted to go home.
My methodical concern for doing things right
drove him crazy.

Like all people of this type
he cut corners
he did things without verifying
which, of course, cost him
and resulted in taking longer to fix the problem
than it would have
if he had just left it to me
and my slow methodical ways.