Thomas Gray


It isn't nearly midnight.
The world is far away.
Rarely is a house alight.
I think of Thomas Gray.


Shadowless and dark.
I can hear the sea.
Good men are in bed.
The night belongs to me.


6-18-13


Verses


Each song an idea -
No home and no name -
Plethora of difference -
All the same -


Could I write a thousand
Volumes of verse -
And continue to write
As I lie in a hearse -


6-18-13

Order


No amorphous world for me -
I need predictability,
Picked up, orderly and neat.
My verse is good.  I don't compete.
Like something I heard Heifetz say,
Though I don't like to hear him play.


6-18-13

Dory Previn


Previn has the power to affect me,
Although her structure often goes awry.
The 60s – the beginning and the end -
Remembered and forgotten – like the sky.
The very decade when my life was young
In a nation ready to be hung.


6-18-13


Bodies


Blouses off and trousers down,
The carnival is still in town.
More tattoos like all the rest -
By god and countrymen they're blessed.
Native bodies in disguise,
All the same and no surprise.
Absorbed and swallowed by a sea
Of stupid blind conformity.


6-18-13

The Compromise


To a Texan – very wise -
A Missouri compromise -
Dicing Yankees.  Let's begin.
The country was conceived in sin.
This I'll vouch if you admit
To the other half of it -
Father, son and poltergeist,
It grew into Jesus Christ.


6-18-13

The Muse


I don't know how.  There are no gods.
The Muse is just a fantasy.
But a myth is requisite
For writing poetry.


Poets need a myth.
I ask myself, “Why must this be?”
Death and darkness and despair.
Then the poet's free.


6-17-13