At first he refused to deliver junk mail because it was stupid, all those deodorant ads, money-making ideas and contests. Then he began to doubt the importance of the other mail he carried. He began to randomly select first class mail for nondelivery. After he had finished his mail route each day he would return home with his handful of letters and put them in the attic. He didn't open them and never even looked at them again. It was as if he were an agent of Fate, capricious and blind. In the several years before he was caught, friends vanished, marriages failed, business deals fell through. Toward the end he became more and more bold, deleting houses, then whole blocks from his route. He began to feel he'd been born in the wrong era. If only he could have been a Pony Express rider galloping into some prairie town with an empty bag, or the runner from Marathon collapsing in the streets of Athens, gasping, "No news."

We Real Cool
By Gwendolyn Brooks

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike stright. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die Soon.

Another Poem By Gwendolyn Brooks

Two Hands
By Anne Sexton

From the sea came a hand,
ignorant as a penny,
troubled with the salt of it's mother,
mute with the silence of the fishes,
quick with the altars of the tides,
and G-d reached out of His mouth
and called it man.
Up came the other hand
and G-d called it woman.
The hands applauded.
And this was no sin.
It was as it was menat to be.

I see them roaming the streets:
Levi complaining about his mattress,
Sarah studying a beetle,
Mandrake holding his coffee mug,
Sally playing the drum at a football game,
John closing the eyes of the dying woman,
and some who are in prison,
even the prison of their bodies,
as Christ was prisoned in His body
until the triumph came.

Unwind, hands,
you angel webs,
unwind like the coil of a jumping jack,
cup together and let yourselves fill up with sun
and applaud, world,
applaud.

Read More Poems By Anne Sexton

Well, it's late. Time to be off to bed. I hope you enjoyed the poems.