The Artist

The Artist

Sitting at the counter with the crew

Drawing in a pad – and he was gifted -

Drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes.

Of the lot, he seemed the most in tact.

People passed and looked and praised his pictures.

Modestly he sloughed. And someone always

Asked him whether he had had a showing.

He had a standard answer. He had not

Fully finished a portfolio.

He seldom spoke, and always very low,

Guttural and quiet and assured.

He was older than the rest of them,

And it's been over twenty years since then.

Now where is he? And where are his pictures?

Does nature throw her geniuses away,

Like children of The Lord's Resistance Army?

8-31-13

 

A Plan

Something that the Christian Yankee likes

Less than homosexuality

Is poetry, and what the world once called

Music. When the lot of them are dead -

Yankees, Christians, music, verse and gays -

Killed by bastards with an M-16

From almost every country on the sphere -

God may start the universe again,

According to a different design.

8-31-13

The New Culture

Tattoos, Facebook, Amazon and rap -

Have supplanted – ARE the culture now.

Verse and music rouse the savage breast

In a land that has no gun control.

And why has it no gun control? Because

Republicans and Christians have their reasons.

My sister who is rigid for her god

While supporting Proposition 8

Is looking for a song that doesn't have

“Sh-t” and “m-f” in the lyric.

I am simply looking for a song.

8-31-13

Poems

Bondage

Out of bondage! Liberate

The white man from his prejudice

And see the rancid horror of his soul!

Racists, Christians, homophobes,

Muslims and the Taliban -

Life is short

And bigotry is longer.

8-31-13

 

An Aria

When at last you make amends

With your past, you miss your friends.

Over 40 years ago.

Even recollection ends.

Gentle friends, just a few,

Who'd never think of hurting you.

Brown was nasty.

Buck was nasty.

Charlie! Jesus Christ in hell!

Rene just hated everybody.

Leave them where the nightmares dwell.

The rolling mist in places clears

Revealing moments in the years,

Happiness that's without care

Or so it seems, then disappears.

8-31-13

 

Euck!

Arrogant and pompous,

Tattoos, guns and smirks,

Three cops, and one a fat one.

Behind their badges, jerks.

The customers and waiters -

Everybody stops

(Tete a tete with god)

And sucks up to the cops.

8-31-13

The New Denny's

I found another Denny's. It will take

A while til I consider it a home.

It's quiet. And the waitresses and waiters

Don't snow you with absurd solicitations

And ask about your children and your health.

After midnight, when the manager

Departs, the cook from somewhere doesn't turn

Up the volume on his radio

And wake the city streets at 2 a.m.

With gangster rap. The servers do not throw

Spitballs up the aisles and leave you sitting

Wishing for a second cup of coffee.

Silly devils celebrating freedom in their hell!

8-31-13

 

Epitaph

I've written all the poems I can write

Before the universe puts out my light.

(How grandiose!). I must find a way

To get my verse to friendly eyes today.

I'll be celebrated if I do.

My verse is god. A feeling that is new.

But if at death the job was never done,

I'll be nothing, poesy just fun.

8-31-13

 

A Metaphor

My ship's in dock. It isn't moving yet.

The sail's are furled. The course is dreamt, unset.

Waiting for the god of the machine,

Or else to disappear, for aye unseen.

I have no chart. I only have a star,

And it's a wish that will not take me far.

I'm self-published. Anyone can be.

Some philanthropist has made it free

To everyone. But still I'm not at sea.

I'm alone. Just poesy and me.

It's not enough to drag the saint from hell,

The bard must be a businessman as well.

8-31-13

 

Changes

I hold back the water of the sea

With a hand held out in front of me,

Both feet settled deeply in the sand.

And breakers flood the shore back to the land.

I am poesy. That is my name.

Joyce said poetry is just a game.

Frost compared it to a tennis match,

And laid a book of eggs that will not hatch.

I have written verses, some that seem

Beautiful to me. So does a dream

Until I wake. But I just wrote them down.

Where'd they come from? Somewhere in a clown.

The poesy is done. Will there be more?

Will age and nature close another door?

I was 10. My first attempt to try it.

At 67 will somebody buy it?

I don't want the money, but I'll take it.

When genius dies, the philistine can't fake it.

Deluded and benighted, I have written

What no one writes. I used to love a kitten.

8-31-13

Poems

Cynicism

She said cynicism! Too much cynicism.

Every second poem is an aphid in the rose.

I don't know what cynicism is.

Perhaps I should go through the book,

Delete some cynicism

And make the planet pretty,

Call the volume “Arcady”.

Tear out Egypt, Syria,

The Lord's Resistance Army,

Gun control (there isn't any),

Homophobia,

The Taliban, Republicans,

The swift decay of art,

The absence of all music -

And write about tattoos.

8-29-13

Dislikes

It's tragic to dislike someone

That everyone dislikes.

But to feign affection

Makes the situation worse.

8-29-13

 

The Secret

Following the blast

And subsequent collapse,

A single wall was standing.

Did Jesus spare me that?

I never told the heinous bitch

That I wrote poesy.

Had I, I can hear the words

So typical of her.

“That's silly. You are 29.”

Forever in my head.

From Olympus pompously pronounced.

She's dead. She didn't say it.

However Doctor Kelly

Nailed me with a sack

Of concrete shit -

“It's so poetical!”
Acerbic and sardonic and contempt!

Her bullet tore the flesh away.

Wounded, I still write.

Both of them are gone,

But it is always yesterday.

8-30-13

A Bad Moment

No one's strong,

And no one knows the answers.

Guru, preacher, shrink or cop!

Most of us keep going.

Though everything will perish in the end.

Psychiatrists get paid for doing nothing.

Cops and judges do not give a damn.

Mommies have their motives.

Sometimes daddies love.

Not everyone is zeroed in

On self-perpetuation.

8-30-13

Poems

Funny Old Men

Old men can be witty.

I hear then at it now

In the booth behind me.

It gives me hope somehow

That I am funny too

When I want to play

In my advancing state

Of imminent decay.

8-29-13

Strength

I haven't got a god

To help me through the storm.

People now called poets

See anathema in form.

I've only the encouragement

That frequently I find

In forgotten loving faces

Buried in my mind.

8-29-13

 

The Witch

She stood against the post,

Terrified and chaste,

A sign above her head,

A rope around her waist.

And lettered on the sign

Was “Heretic and Witch”.

In her mind she pushed away

These accusations which

Crushed her remnant consciousness

To little, like a stone.

She cried, “I am not evil!”
But she was alone.

8-29-13

 

Wearing

At 21 I found him,

Rapt, enchanted, once!

Enspelled among the brambles,

I became a dunce.

Junkets! Keats! My hero!

I read him all I could.

Now at 67

I wonder what was good.

8-29-13

 

Sleep

Sitting here in Denny's

In the gravity of sleep,

The ice is melting in my tea

(Raspberry). I'm dozing.

I about to sleep, by god!

I've got to get me home.

Though midnight is a sanctuary,

I require sleep.

8-29-13

 

Stranded

Stranded between Broadway

And the meanings of great poetry,

I'm probably incapable

Of either and of both.

The music of great poetry,

The cleverness of Broadway -

No one's writing either now.

The sewer's in the sea.

8-28-13

 

Were it not for poesy

Were it not for poesy

I would die insane,

Lying in a casket,

Sleeping in the rain.

Hear the ocean distant

Splash against the shore.

See the moon approach.

What is darkness for?

A little bit of madness -

A little bit of truth -

Age and death commit

The larceny of youth.

8-28-13

Poems

Sleazy Doctor Kelly

Therapy destroyed me.

A siege became a rout.

The bitch is in my head,

And I can't get her out.

Sleazy Doctor Kelly!

The subject doesn't stale.

If she sues for libel,

I shall go to jail.

Once I was a person,

Somewhere, sometime, somehow.

She put an end to that.

My thoughts are quiet now.

8-28-13

 

Jessica

A manager at Denny's -

Once I made her laugh -

I left her for a Denny's

That's quieter by half.

She asked me why I changed.

I had too much to say.

I cussed her noisy restaurant,

And she just walked away.

Enigmatic Jessica -

Only here a while -

Surveys the situation -

The Gioconda smile -

And now she's leaving Denny's.

Her sentiments are yon.

She said she's going home,

And Thursday she'll be gone.

8-28-13

 

Authorities and editors

Authorities and editors

Of trashy magazines

Tell you what's permissible

In poetry today.

And nothing that I write

Survives the litmus test.

I take a pen and paper

And empty out my head.

Like sitting in the morning

Groggy on the john -

Phrases, rhymes and rhythms

And clever turns of thought.

8-28-13

Morning In The Other Denny's

The universe is big.

My world is very small.

A couple cups of coffee

Is not a world at all.

67 years

Doing what I do -

Always a beginning -

Little ever grew.

Some men just walked in Denny's -

My age or maybe less -

Knowers of the world -

All I do is guess.

One is in a cap

That indicates a war -

His life and its achievement.

He'll die, and nothing more.

8-28-13

 

Recall

The hours and the paper!

Poetry with guts!

Am I making music,

Or am I merely nuts?

The madness and the pain!

The humor is not grief!

Adrift upon an ocean

Clinging to a leaf!

Many years behind,

Nothing understood,

I finally imagine

That what I write is good.

It only takes a hump

To make a man a dad.

50 years of poesy,

And every poem bad!

8-28-13

 

That Sentence

All she ever said

Was “You are getting better.”

No matter what I did.

And all the neighbors let her.

Her curse was like a prophecy

Simply said because

She saw my great potential

And really thought I was.

Such crap and such palaver!

Pardon me! I'll barf!

She used to call me “Fido”,

And all I said was “Arf!”

This messed up thing, my mother,

A sad and stupid clod,

Who oversaw the universe

And put her trust in god.

8-28-13

 

The Visitors

Ridiculously stupid

And covered with tattoos,

I'm sure they love like bunnies.

They all belong in zoos.

They populate the planet.

You pick them off like lice.

Paradise awaits them.

They're cheap at half the price.

8-27-13

 

While Driving

I hate the signs on buses.

Honey, no one's going to die.

“Assisted living.” “Grow together.”

Life is pumpkin pie.

The verse I wrote I'm reading

Seems interesting, rare.

But I read nothing current

And so I can't compare.

In every line and phrase

I perceive a pearl.

But like Frederick in “Penzance”,
I've never seen a girl.

Again I'm going crazy.

A fast collapse of mind.

Don't pick among the rubble.

There's little there to find.

When a woman has a man

To love, she's in her heyday,

And punctually phones him

Every week on payday.

8-27-13

 

Defeat

Self-publishing! A graveyard

Of pretentious dreams and tragic hope.

But writing puts some fleece inside

The collar of the rope.

Get rich quick with gore and sex!

Goodreads, Kindle, Amazon.

Stories of success are legion.

Read today, tomorrow gone.

But he who cares about his craft,

Dreams of more than just a buck,

Unamerican is laughed

Off the market, out of luck.

8-27-13

Need

Need

“Need.” It is an alibi

For what you want to do,

And excuse for taking

What other people have.

It gets you into places

Where you are not wanted,

Satisfies psychiatrists,

And justifies it all.

8-26-13

Burst

The dam is cracking. The memories

Of 67 years

Are coming into my feelings

And my consciousness.

A movie projector has gone awry

And celluloid unreeling

In countless miles of ribbons of film

Lies tangled on the floor.

Ancient scenes I don't recall

And recent scenes I do!

This I think is hyperbole

That's very much like the truth.

Now the sea is at the shore

With more of the ocean coming.

Is this relief or insanity?
Can I stay afloat?

8-26-13

 

Lamia

I am sick. I'm very sick.

Who to tell and what to say?
Like a cavern that's collapsing

Making dust of iron pyrite,

So my mind. But just today

I learned that someday I shall die.

This is sudden? This is new?
Death's a constant factor.

What to grasp to? What to grip?

Who's immortal I can tell?
Like a section of a rocket

Part of me has dropped away.

Everything that ever lived -

The cats, the enzymes, Jesus Christ

Reached an end, a fell defeat.

I don't know what to do.

8-26-13

 

The Great Poets

Great poets – very rare -

Sappho, Shakespeare -

The only pair.

Because the truths of poetry

Are simple human honesty

And blessed form like a storm

Of phrases, rhyme and simile.

Like Rupert Brooke – in the fray -

How true the poet's heart will sing -

A German blows his head away

And Rupert cries, “God save the king!”

Self-effacement will not save

Lack of talent. Or the brave

That shows its enemies a grave

And writes a sonnet. Or the slave

That cowers meekly in a cave.

Honesty and genius are

Perfect as a dying star.

Imagination makes the night

Brighter for a single light.

8-26-13

 

The Assignation

He said he'd stop by Denny's

In a little while.

I was writing poems.

Sudden, with a smile,

Alive, alert and happy,

He asked for coffee, iced,

In the booth across from me.

Gandhi, Zeus and Christ,

Harvey Milk and Reagan,

New York City whores!

Republicans are coming.

Double-bolt the doors!

8-27-13

“Bouche”

Shatter walls and let my soul

Accept the book of verse I wrote,

Not just under Denny's lights,

The only place that I emote,

But anywhere. I'll put the book

Of poems that I made with care

On a shelf. And the result

Of all that I can do is there.

I wrote those stanzas yesterday.

Now there's only one encore.

Glancing through the book again,

I don't like it anymore.

8-27-13

For Jill

I'm so sorry for what I said.

What can I say?

I'm sorry it's true?

No one else has ever read

My poesy as much as you,

Or thought it good

Or half so fine.

Nothing else on earth is mine.

Moreover you're a poet too -

Images! Each verse a sign

Of what the human heart can do.

8-27-13

Poems

Poems

“This be the verse”

Larkin wrote it.

It's his immortality.

Perfect sense

Perfect said,

Intense in its frugality.

“The Cliffs of Dover” Arnold left

A golden treasure in the weeds.

One can search for more but find

Naught despite how long one reads.

“The Soldier” A verismo bard

When verse and music were expiring.

Who when in a battle shot

Would think these thoughts while guns were firing?

Beloved Oscar wrote a weal

That makes contemporaries pale.

Despite the beauties of his better

Verse they sing The Reading Gaol.

8-25-13

 

Not Larkin

My poesy is so naïve

And immature I can't believe

Somebody wrote a word.

Not Larkin whom the Brits revere,

Articulate and grown and clear.

Existence is absurd.

8-25-13

Three Men

How casual the death ignorer

Jaunted down the street.

Jesus in his pocket,

Someone ravishing to meet.

How vehement the Yankee is

Conversant with his rights,

Yes on Proposition 8,

Running through red lights.

He smoothly in dark glasses walks

Into a dim lit room,

Hair across his forehead,

Too pretty for a tomb.

8-25-13

The Carnival

Every life is sacred.

Since childhood I have thought so.

I am eating chicken.

The flesh is very warm.

Composing takes intelligence,

Imagination, genius.

Sounds evincing none of these

Are sung throughout the world.

Pain as if a portal to

Another life on earth

Was put in Man to keep him safe.

In flicks and television

Replicas of agony

Enthrall the hungry throng.

8-25-13

Death

Death the ineluctable

Is waiting.

Someone said it.

She said it and I panicked.

But I'm not dying now.

Relax my nonexistent soul

Into your former status quo.

You are breathing.

Breathe some more.

And let this evening come.

An hour at Denny's in the darkness.

Home to give the cat her pill.

Come familiarity

And resurrect my world.

Restore the hope, the happiness

And artificial calm.

The wars are in another place.

Commiserate. Don't die.

8-25-13

 

Apostasy

I agree with Gandhi

But not with Jesus Christ.

Every life is sacred.

But that's impossible.

Never did a mortal

Creep across this soil

More terrified of death,

More doubtful of his worth.

Remove the contradictions

He cannot contradict,

See how quick the doubter

Would crawl back in the nest.

8-25-13

 

Morning

Denny's in the morning -

6 o'clock or 8 -

Is quiet, cool and peaceful.

Life is just a wait.

Awake all night and busy,

Now half asleep in Denny's,

What place is good for drowsing?

I would say that any's.

8-25-13

Poems

Larkin

Larkin's poems have no warmth,

Just icy English chill,

Cynical and bittersweet,

As the Muses will.

Poignance, sense and perfect form

Exactly as they seem -

There's madness there. Or so oblique

They're useless as dream.

8-25-13

 

The ship

The prow of a ship gives water

Back to the sea!

Green and black and foamy

Swirls slip off

The deck, around the rope

That's coiled, the anchor.

And the mast near-horizontal

When the ship tips up

Bears a tattered rag that loudly flaps.

8-24-13

Lines

Grandpa looked old

When I was young.

Every soul that dies

Is a song so briefly sung

Under empty skies,

And forgotten finally among

Barrows where he lies,

Like any man who was ever hung,

And no one cries.

8-24-13

 

The Hand

Every time he suffered,

His brother reached a hand.

The hand was hit and knocked away.

More than understand,

The brother learned completely

To keep his hand away.

Twenty years thereafter

There may have come a day

That inwardly he suffered

And breathed a silent prayer

To feel his brother's hand.

The brother wasn't there.

8-24-13

 

Opinionated Poems

Are my poems any more

Than Liberal opinions?

Or rather than opinions only

Mad oblique ideas?
It takes so much to move the world

To obvious conclusions.

8-24-13

 

Haydn

I hear Haydn's piano sonatas -

Crystal water, stones in a brook.

The Muses selves are in the music -

They didn't inspire it,

They are the sounds.

Happiness at a superficial

And deeper level than the mind.

8-23-13

Poems

The ship

The prow of a ship gives water

Back to the sea!

Green and black and foamy

Swirls slip off

The deck, around the rope

That's coiled, the anchor.

And the mast near-horizontal

When the ship tips up

Bears a tattered rag that loudly flaps.

8-24-13

 

Good Advice

Don't give him your opinions.

Don't offer him advice.

Certainly not once.

Especially not twice.

Everybody knows

Somewhere in his mind

What will suit him best,

To what he's disinclined.

If his little derby

Fits perfectly his head,

Don't hand him your fedora

To warm his crown instead.

8-23-13

 

Safe Freedom

To live without permission

As if I'm unattached,

Unnoticed, unconsidered,

And there's no jeopardy.

The cat that I am petting

Moves beneath my hand,

Or even walks away,

Fearful of no loss.

Is there any hope

For one so caught in glue

He dreads a darkened chasm

Independently?

8-23-13

 

In Group

I sat in group and cried from start to finish

Every day. The counselor went on

With the group and left me to myself.

He never spoke to me. I never spoke.

Was he allowing me to let it out?

Or did he like the others think me so

Evil I deserved no consolation?

Finally the misery was gone

And I was empty. So much I suppose.

8-23-13

John

Was everything you said completely false?

Does the sun still circle round your earth?

Fabricating answers to all questions,

Silly and unpleasant in your world,

And pathetic, wanting just to die.

You never saw the truths about yourself,

Blessing your largesse with infancy.

Spoken to, but just because you're there.

8-23-13

 

At The Bus Stop

Sitting in the piercing heat

I'm waiting for a bus

And happen to be thinking now of Keats.

Things get so embedded

In my mind I can't forget them,

Which recognizance of them

Exacerbates.

Keats was such an idiot.

He wrote at 24

As simple minded

As a 10 year old.

His language was remarkable

And frequently a phrase

Or picture or sensation

Justifies his reputation.

His verse unlocked the chamber

And the heart of poesy

For me. However we are not

In any way alike.

8-23-13

 

The Past Recaptured

I don't want to read my verse.

I only want to write it.

Except enough to ascertain

That what I wrote is good.

8 a.m. in Denny's

Where the decent people are

Like 8 or 7 years ago

From midnight until dawn,

When Denny's was our Arcady,

A paradise of fun.

Yesterday is over,

But memory though dim

Was half recalled this morning,

A time as sweet as then.

8-23-12

 

Crying

You cry and I am helpless.

I don't know what to say.

Just sit and let it all come out

Until you go to sleep.

I envy you the depth

To which you feel your feelings.

I just have a replica

Of what I might have felt

Put down in poesy.

I wish that I could cry

Until the pain has ceased.

Maybe I'd relax

And smile at you again.

8-23-13

 

From Mom & Dad

You ruined my life when you were alive.

Don't ruin it when you're dead.

A vestige of insanity

Lingers in my head.

If it weren't for the pills I take

I think that I would be

A drooling incoherent

On back ward number 3.

Like a darkling phantom

I move through life somehow.

And I am on the verge

Of the back ward now.

8-23-13

 

Grief

Music makes me cry.

People never do,

Unless I'm crying for the pain

Of someone that I love.

I hurt him when I left.

I put him in the wrong.

Discomfited and sad, I'm drinking

Coffee by myself.

But I am not alone,

Never by myself.

A pen, a pad and poesy,

And heaven is at hand.

8-23-13

 

Virtues

He told me I am strong.

My cousin years ago

Snarled that I am weak.

He said I make a judgment

That's usually just,

And I adhere.

He said I never cry.

I don't because I can't.

My heart is full of dust.

And the judgments that I want to make

Are violence and rap,

Tattoos, theft and homophobes.

I wish that I could cry.

Any praise is welcome. But

I wish instead of judgment

He liked my sense of humor

And my efforts as a friend.

8-23-13

Poems

The Triumph Of Virtue

Disregard and calumny -

His gold was in his heart -

Outcast from his family

Whose gold was in a cart -

No not in one, but many -

And they as by a curse

Governed an uncanny

Heartless universe.

He was altruistic,

And as things seemed to be

His kin ruled from a mystic

Meritocracy.

Then gathering his minions,

Virtuous as he,

The Phoenix spread his pinions

And rose above the sea.

Rapt in awe and wonder

His family bemoaned,

Staring, standing under

The son they had disowned.

And he usurped their earth.

The treasure in their carts

Took it's proper worth -

The dross inside their hearts.

They knelt and kept their eyes on,

Defeated as they lay,

Their son in the horizon

As he flew away.

A single stanza makes

This narrative complete.

His family discovered

That virtue can defeat.

8-23-13

 

Everybody

Everybody takes a shower

Probably at 8.

Everybody falls asleep

By the television.

Does someone really like to hear

The music that is playing?
Or hang Kandinsky the wall

Pretending it's a picture?

Does everybody have tattoos

And warmly think of Reagan?

Syria and Egypt are

Destroying half the world.

Does everybody hate the black

And homosexual?

People they have never met

And doubtless never will.

Does everyone like violence

In books and television?

My mother and my father did.

And they are everybody.

8-22-13

Echos

An echo of the verse I read

Continues in my brain.

Remembered in tranquility,

I needn't read the verse again.

Phrases, stanzas, memory

Of the sense I read

Linger but just out of reach -

What the poet said.

8-22-13

 

Upbringing

Teaching the kids to be thieves

So when they're grown they'll be

Wonderful fellows

And ladies and live on the

North side and die

Like the roaches that caper and

Play in their houses.

Nobody cares, not the

Cops who arrest them,

The priests who forgive them,

The parents who screwed.

8-22-13

God made love

God made love

And love made Nermal.

Nermal is a cat.

Big and sleepy.

Sleeps upon you.

Climbs to get there,

Doesn't jump.

I love that big and loving cat.

8-22-13

Rules

Marcel Proust, the greatest writer

The former century produced

Wrote a seven volume novel

Of a solitary sentence,

Lots of commas, semi-colons,

And a single period

At the end – the very end -

Of the seventh book.

I defy an English teacher -

American, degreed, credentialed -

To give Proust a failing grade.

Take heart, ye students of that teacher,

When he throws you out of class

For your run-on sentences,

You're in the best of company.

And Einstein flunked physics,

Though his pedagogue got As.

8-22-13

 

Syria & Egypt & The NRA

It hurt her to be cruel.

She would sit and cry.

It also made her happy.

Does Jesus Christ know why?

Have psychiatrists a notion

Why the chosen few

Wreak such bloody havoc?

Yes. Of course they do.

8-22-13

Poems

Lizzy

Lizzy spat at the judge.

Lizzy was insane.

He locked her up for 20 days

And there she shall remain.

8-22-13

Sitting By Fred

I sat beside the kitten -

A year ago, a kitten.

He didn't stir.

He lay beside my leg.

I pet him while he lay there -

Obsidian he lay there.

I am very big, and he is small.

8-21-13