Poems

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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

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Mendelssohn

Alone with lots of poetry,

And nobody is talking.

Perahia's playing Mendelssohn,

But Mendelssohn is dead.

Perahia is the medium.

A seance of sensation - only sound.

Fragile figures, colored, made of glass

Are sitting on the counters and the shelves.

And I'm a wrinkled woman with no love,

A granny, a Victorian

Who sits among her lace,

Looking at her treasures,

And trying not to die.

Alone with lots of poetry,

Many stacks of poetry,

All of it is beautiful,

And all of it is mine.

3-26-12

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Narcissus

Shall I write a song

That tells Narcissus he is ugly?
Point to all the blemishes

And pimples in his face?
Tell him he is foolish to

Lean gazing at the water?
And do it in old fashioned poesy?
Will that increase my following?

Confirmed, select and two.

Two people who see worth in what I write.

6-20-13

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Two Stanzas

See the beaming baby momma,

Formerly a slut.

See the white supremacist,

Superior to what?

See the brave Republican,

Satin cape and cowl,

Champion of rich men's rights,

Though common sense cries “foul!”.

6-22-13

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Happy well-adjusted shrinks

A happy well-adjusted shrink

Is handed many thou.

When a patient kills himself,

It isn't his affair.

Or sees a former patient

Walk the streets from dawn to dusk

In torn and dusty rags,

“He never wanted to get well.”

Or travels to a halfway house

(Noblesse oblige) to see

How Johnny in this ruin

Is progressing. He's asleep.

6-12-13

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The Garden

I'm a flower in a garden

That is overgrown with weeds,

Choked by the Duartes

With their overwhelming needs.

Ubiquitous! A flock of gulls

Advancing from the sea,

Their single prime directive -

To get everything for free.

All of them psychotic,
And a couple who would seem

Incurable, in roaches, filth -

Camelot, the dream.

6-12-13