Love Love is sweet when it is young

Love

Love is sweet when it is young,

But leaves a bitter aftertaste,

When it takes it all and doesn't

Care but only walks away.

Regardless of the wealth it costs them,

Lovers don't regret their loves.

How quickly do they change allegiance

When they fall in love again.

Love distorts or doesn't care

What it sees, or just forgets.

Precarious! And lovers go

Mad. It's better out of love.

 

The Goons

I woke up at 5 and saw the

Goons in my back yard,

Coming in as I went out.

The goons in my back yard.

While I'm gone, what will they take?

And when will they go home?

Oh the anger in my venom!

And I lost it all for love.

Censorship

Yankees will not lock you up

For saying what you think.

They will just make sure

That no one reads it.

And the wars go on forever.

Private voices do not speak.

“Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

Christians never tell the truth.

Bush, Obama, Clinton, Reagan

Didn't win because they're nice.

Big guys dominate and triumph

In the home and universe.

And the truth is paranoia.

Big guys are not nuts at all.

They take and keep and spit the seeds out.

What is love? How can they sleep?

Untitled "Network of death"

Bonnie

People who are crazy

Don't see themselves as fools.

For centuries, millenia

Breaking common rules

Has been the way to brilliance,

Innovation, art.

Then they die like everyone.

Even gods depart.

However it's not such esteem

For everyone who's mad.

Most of them are only just

Ridiculous and sad.

Trust

Trust is the issue,

In that you trust

She won't smack your head

For saying it wrong.

Mothers are loving

And Jesus is just.

Thus my ridiculous song.

 Untitled

“Network of death” -

Did Madison Avenue

Come up with that one?

“Iraqi Freedom” -

Now where is Iraq?

America gets a

Geography lesson

When a new president

Takes the throne.

Every eight years there's

A war with a country

Nobody here ever heard of before.

“Iraqi Freedom” - yes,

That was a good one.

Iraq was just fine until

Bush got there.

Trust Trust is the issue

Trust

Trust is the issue,

In that you trust

She won't smack your head

For saying it wrong.

Mothers are loving

And Jesus is just.

Thus my ridiculous song.

 

Morning Song

I love you now and I always will.

I just woke up. It's morning.

An editor of a magazine

Said never say forever.

Are feelings as legitimate

When you just wake up

As they are throughout the day

Or when you go to sleep?

12-9-13

Morning Poems

They are flocking into Denny's,

All well-dressed, aloof (ah money!)

For a meeting over breakfast.

And they stoop to tell the waitress

What they want, then disappear.

If they're so rich and classy

Why the hell are they at Denny's?

He is crazy. And the country

Lets him walk around at will,

And his very precious freedom

Is protected by the law.

Every day he's getting older,

Dirtier and sicker.

What's a better way? The doctors

Don't know what to do.

Denny's is so dull

As it gets later in the morning.

No one talks or laughs or jokes.

They eat their breakfasts and they go.

And driving home of course, a dozen

Patriotic Yankees

Run red lights and hit the gas

And they are gone.

The day begins.

 

Worlds

Facts about the universe

Contradict each other.

ISIS and tsunamis; or

A cat becomes unable

To walk the day his owner has stroke,

And then recovers when his owner dies.

Or just a tabby that befriends

A lover who's been jilted

And hasn't found a way to be alone.

Then the world is righted

And the two are back together,

But still the cat remains

And recognizes no one else.

And people who have visions from the grave -

About as understandable as god.

Does god want understanding?

Or just to be despised.

 

Thought

A person with compassion

Is going to hate god,

Whether he believes in god or not.

And a person with a mind requires

Something more to do

Than watch a 49er break a knee.

Worlds Facts about the universe

Worlds

Facts about the universe

Contradict each other.

ISIS and tsunamis; or

A cat becomes unable

To walk the day his owner has stroke,

And then recovers when his owner dies.

Or just a tabby that befriends

A lover who's been jilted

And hasn't found a way to be alone.

Then the world is righted

And the two are back together,

But still the cat remains

And recognizes no one else.

And people who have visions from the grave -

About as understandable as god.

Does god want understanding?

Or just to be despised.

 

Thought

A person with compassion

Is going to hate god,

Whether he believes in god or not.

And a person with a mind requires

Something more to do

Than watch a 49er break a knee.

 

The Loser

When I was a boy, I dreamt that

I would be a singer

Like Lanza, Jolson, Garland.

Then I planned to be a preacher.

Then I aimed to be an actor,

And that horrified my parents

(Actors have immoral lives).

Now I'm nothing but a mental case

(At that a very old one)

That tries to be a poet

In a nation that hates art.

I think I am a good one, but

No one will ever know.

F-ck It!

“Network of death” -

Did Madison Avenue

Come up with that one?

“Iraqi Freedom” -

Now where is Iraq?

America gets a

Geography lesson

When a new president

Takes the throne.

Every eight years there's

A war with a country

Nobody here ever heard of before.

“Iraqi Freedom” - yes,

That was a good one.

Iraq was just fine until

Bush got there.

Morning Poems

They are flocking into Denny's,

All well-dressed, aloof (ah money!)

For a meeting over breakfast.

And they stoop to tell the waitress

What they want, then disappear.

If they're so rich and classy

Why the hell are they at Denny's?

He is crazy. And the country

Lets him walk around at will,

And his very precious freedom

Is protected by the law.

Every day he's getting older,

Dirtier and sicker.

What's a better way? The doctors

Don't know what to do.

Denny's is so dull

As it gets later in the morning.

No one talks or laughs or jokes.

They eat their breakfasts and they go.

And driving home of course, a dozen

Patriotic Yankees

Run red lights and hit the gas

And they are gone.

The day begins.

Stanzas Now we're bombing Syria

Stanzas

Now we're bombing Syria.

Iraq (what's left of it)

In sympathy with Syria

Soon will bomb us back.

Europe (Paris, London, Rome)

Unearths the undead spectre

Of the hateful anti-Semite.

Europe only had

Cathedrals, beauty, art and cities.

When those things are gone,

The earth will be a globe of dirt

Swirling round the sun.

And the ones who made the cities

And the art were not the ones

Who are glad to blow it all

To nothing – like the Sphinx.

Beauty, death – war and art -

Are incompatible.

An Image

Withered and slimy – umbilical cord

Attached to the monster from hell -

A mocking, laughing caricature -

Cleft foot and puckered lips.

Grotesque and misshapen, a psyche of love

That slept in its father's arms,

Then woke to death and a life of pain,

Without a sense of love.

What is an infant? Most women can screw.

The illness was just a spark

That steadily grew to a conflagration,

Blind upon a beach.

TA

It's been over 40 years!

Gone and left behind

Confusion, grief, regret and tears,

And still it's in my mind.

Transactional Analysis!

The devil's therapy

For the brain! Paralysis

Is what it did for me.

Wisdom

To hell with those who understand

The world and all that's in it.

Autonomy and therapy

Won't hesitate a minute.

Argue with them. You will feel

Your mindless frigate sink.

You'll dismiss the way you are,

And what you thought you think.

 

Vanished

Raw bones and broken skulls -

Ancient ships with rotted hulls -

And overhead grey mottled gulls

Dip toward the sails -

Had I wrote the thesis

On Keats – or anything -

I'd be rich as Croesus

And my world would sing.

I might live in Britain,

Alone and mad, but free,

Where once my heart was smitten

With English poetry.

I'd see the mist, each building,

The cobblestones, the air,

Though it would take some gilding

To like the people there.

Kitty When I feed the cats

Kitty

When I feed the cats

I wash their water bowl

And pour two scoops of food

In a couple dishes.

Three of them come in

And hurry on short legs.

But a cat is missing,

Though I can see him there.

Kitty died last month.

His ghost walks in with them,

But Kitty is in heaven.

I don't want him gone.

Sick

Do not touch the status quo.

It won't fall, but you will.

Your momma will not fail, but

Everyone you ever knew will.

Worship at the synagog

Or chapel of your choice.

Americans are good. They say it

With a single voice.

They don't say “shit” in Denny's

Or get ribald in a bank.

For this you have your parents

And the status quo to thank.

Yankees live for ever. Like

Egyptians never die.

And gays can never marry, though

There is no reason why.

America is good,

Just divinely good.

Either an American's

Religious or a hood.

To make this statement forthright

The middle class is loth,

But religious or a villain?

Some Americans are both.

A college teacher told me I'm

Completely without class -

Like a clown on Mooney

With a tattoo on his ass.

The Barracks

The sweetest men I ever met

Were hired to be killed.

Today they call them warriors.

Many voices stilled -

For necessary purposes -

Oh my yes. Bet your life!

Too young to vote for presidents,

Drink or take a wife.

The sweetest men I ever met -

We knew each other well.

No one like the others.

Dangling over hell.

Adams

So Adams is a genius said

Somebody at the Met,

The glory of America

And opera and art.

Tunes – what tunes? -

Nobody will record.

Adams is as glorious

As Ives, another Yank.

Music is passe until

Somebody can compose it.

Kissed By Charlie

Lying on the upper bunk

I saw beside the bed

Charlie Dance, completely drunk

As usual. He said,

“I want to kiss you.” And he reached

Upward to my face.

Stranded like a frigate beached,

I lay still in place.

So beautiful was Charlie Dance,

Could this thing be true?

I thought as I lay in a trance,

“I want to kiss you too.”

Wishing for permission

I leaned to him my prow,

And without inhibition

He kissed me on the brow.

The Kid

Born rich perhaps and educated -

Well cut and put together -

He sits alone at Denny's

With tattoos and a bag.

Staring at the napkins -

Dead, inert and lifeless -

Did drugs destroy his reason?
Very, very young.

He seemed at first to be

Furiously angry.

He isn't. He is dead.

Not angry, but he's mad.

Now that I have seen

He's lifeless and not angry,

I wish he'd go away.

He's going, walking briskly.

Bandana on his head,

Music in his ears,

Jawline beard and handsome,

I wonder where he's going.

5-29-14

 

The King

The king deposed, depressed, deranged -

His woman is determined

To work because she wants to.

Man the only worker,

Like his dad before him

Reaching back into a cave.

The king aggrieved is seeking

The world that he was taught

By his dad and mother.

But the king believes he's gay.

To be allowed to happen

In Kentucky with the black folks,

Trampled in the tangles

With all the other truths.

And now approaching death

Initiates the madness,

Incipient, intrusive.

It confiscates his mind.

At the lawn that he admired

By the home he built and paid for

He stands snapping cigarette

Butts. It doesn't matter.

Now he is as crazy

As the son he never liked.

Mistakes Obama's going nuclear

Mistakes

Obama's going nuclear.

I voted for him twice.

Like fiddling with a gun

Or throwing loaded dice.

Romney only wanted

To tell us when to scr-w.

Obama wants to blow us

Far beyond the blue.

To impeach Obama

Before the bombs begin

In a war that Reagan

Said that we would win.