Poems

His Mother

She beat him and she screamed at him.

At night when he had dreams,

He called to her.

She sat beside his bed.

Now she's in a grave.

He doesn't care.

7-5-13

 

Opera

Puccini, Verdi, Offenbach,

Donizetti – these

Have so much fairy power,

Such magic they can please

Another thousand years

As they have two centuries -

Drama, thought and song -

Until another genius comes along.

7-5-13

 

Matisse

When he was young, he was a gifted painter,

Beautiful, profound and such detail.

His pictures glowed with genius. He was great.

Then he caught the spirit of the age,

Ceased to paint, and took the easy way,

Knocked out things the Disney studios

Could recreate in 20 minutes flat.

So he fulfilled the Yankee aspiration -

Fortune, fame, ephemeral and fast,

Everything but immortality.

7-5-13

 

Fragment On Keats

How could ever I have worshiped Keats?
Phrases, lines and stanzas – nothing more.

Not sufficient to be canonized.

Except the good is deep and beautiful.

He tapped his soul and wrote a fist of phrases.

I will not let myself be hooked again

And dangle out of water like a fish.

But if not Keats, then who? Millay and Brooke.

Millay affected, Brooke with vanity.

The nature of the poet's unimportant.

All that matters is the poetry.

A poet is the least poetic men.

So said Keats. It simply isn't true.

Another generality of death.

7-5-13

 

Arnold

Earth offers nothing but a shallow joy

When two who love are laughing. When alone

A troglodyte who craves his solitude

Gets it. Neither cure nor anodyne

Has been discovered for psychotic minds.

And those who know – or think they do – get rich

Selling riddles, making mad men worse.

Technology makes toys to please the people.

Politics and countless gods make war.

Death, the one escape, and it will come,

A door that has a knob, oblique and charred,

Crumbles at a touch. How slight is love!

7-5-13

 

Freddy The Left Wing Kitten

Freddy who is not a Red

Hops beside me on the bed.

If he lands upon my right,

Freddy who is very bright

Pads around (his step is deft)

And settles down upon my Left.

7-5-13

 

Waking From A Fantasy

I cup my face in Denny's here,

And sleepy fantasies appear.

Are they shallow? Are they deep?

In a moment I'm asleep.

As if reacting to a shake,

Suddenly I am awake.

I look up and what I see

Is fully alien to me.

7-4-13

 

Everyman

How many men hallucinate

And only tell their wives?

Never see a doctor.

Doctors ruin lives.

And those who have delusions

Confide them to a book?

Psychiatry's an ocean.

The fish avoids the hook.

And the common crazy

With nobody to tell

And no one who will listen

Accepts the lesser hell.

7-5-13

 

Democracy

Genius is rare. Democracy

Has no effect on that.

If every soul in Christendom

Wrote a couple books,

Universally

They'd all be bad.

And everyone writes poetry

Because he has a soul.

It takes more than suicide

And god to make a poet.

But just suppose that everyone

Had talent. Then the world

Might have a lot of operas,

And not a lot of wars.

7-5-13

 

Animals

Animals are independent.

Such autonomy!

They do not need support or fear

The loneliness of night.

They do not get tattoos or cry

For camaraderie.

They do not need a god to give them

Courage in their battles,

Or comfort them or give them wealth

Or promise them salvation.

7-5-13