Poems

-->

Bob

A pretty little melody

By Bacharach – the 60s.

You greeted it with horror.

When I tried to name the piece

Of music you were playing, you

Indignantly said – stop!

The sensitive don't like to know

The name of what they're hearing.

Sensitivity – your flag

Upon a sinking ship

In a sea of crudity.

How well I can remember

In the barracks where we met,

You sat upon a pillow

And laughed at someone crazy

Who was rolling on the floor.

When I saw you last – back in New Jersey -

Both civilians -

You jeered at me and said that you

Were waiting – just to die.

All the greatest music

Is composed of melodies.

6-29-13

-->

Bottom Line

Hear the people talk.

No ifs or ands or buts.

They say it with both pleasure and aplomb.

Reagan was a hawk

Who gouged a sick man's guts,

And used the bucks to build another bomb.

6-29-13

  -->

IHOP

In Yankee banks and restaurants

They simply don't play music.

The people wouldn't like it.

They haven't got the brains.

Just simple melodies

With simpler harmonies,

And if they're loud and ugly,

Even better.

And all the songs have words.

That's traditional.

And Yankees love tradition.

Illiterate and mindless.

6-28-13

  -->

Subjects

More than just a flower -

More than just the sea -

Something I can think about

In my poesy -

More than just a feeling

Past or present tense -

More than just a picture

Grown in common sense -

6-28-13

  -->

Sleeping In Denny's

I shut my eyes in Denny's

And suddenly I sleep.

Then I start. The fantasy

Absorbing me is gone.

The table's dull and cluttered,

A glass, a book, some keys.

The light inside the building

Makes a refuge from the night.

6-28-13

-->

The Guests

I can't sleep in Denny's

Forever, though I tried.

I'm back among the liars and the thieves

That euphemistically you call your friends.

Ugly music. Tattooed bodies.

Born to arrogance.

They oozed into the house and they

Surrounded and consumed.

6-28-13

  -->

Description

Shall I describe the ocean,

The moon in midnight skies,

A once and former lover

Who in his slumber lies?

There's nothing else I like

Enough to put in verse,

Except the constant effigies,

A tumbril or a hearse.

6-28-13

  -->

Albion

The glitter and glamor and regal fuss!

God bless the queen who reigns over us!

Reaching through history far away,

Like Hollywood's Beverly Hills today.

The glory of England completely defiled

By reading the bio of Oscar Wilde.

The patriotism of Britain is quaint.

Its past as horrible as they paint.

A foggy island, an icy sea,

The former throne of poetry.

Ancient buildings, cobblestones -

Ghosts in the castles, spectral moans -

6-28-13