Austin’s Boggy Creek

For National Poetry Month: A mercifully short poem inspired by “In Flanders Fields”

National Poetry Month has been celebrated every April since 1996 by the Academy of American Poets.

I’ve never considered myself a poet. At all. I’ve been writing since third grade, but have studiously avoided poetry. I’ve also spent most of my life reading fiction, not poetry.¹ I don’t think it’s easy being a good writer if you aren’t a reader, and I probably had read a hundred poems in my entire life until recently, when it has picked up some.

Trigger warning: Poetry

I have much respect for those who have mastered the craft, and I hate to sully their works with my effort here, but as I’ve aged in this life, I’m less like a fine wine and more like a congealed, overaged presence that doesn’t care what people think as much as I once did.

So, back in 2024, I took a stab at a poem and posted it on the Medium platform. I was grateful that my poet friends there did not yell at me. As my regular readers might expect, the poem has an underlying social justice motif.

Without further ado, here it is…

Austin’s Boggy Creek

Along Boggy Creek tiny bayonets dangle from arms
Bodies collapse within shadows of a city's dancing charms
The low montage of trash and flesh harvested by rats and flies
While the well-dressed mingle in the glittering skies
Oblivious to the rampage of our harms.

It wants us dead, this glowering, glowing town
Eyes drawn by its long sanctimonious frown,
Its maestro a coiffed man in a suit
He hurries past as he breathlessly chases his loot
Mercilessly drops a quarter in a cup and calls me a clown.

Find us home on this once boggy creek
Its bed shriveled and drained under sparkling skies that shriek
Of commerce and progress and wondrous tech
Spying on our tents they howl to the city, "clean up this dreck!"
Mocking those whose lifespan spies its final week
On this, this once boggy creek.

Thanks for reading!

Go ahead. Restack it. I dare you.

1. I was reading stuff like The Brothers Karamazov and Great Expectations when I was in sixth grade. I was a weird kid.