Hanslichek

Hanslichek

He nearly called me an ass

For putting “doth” in a poem.

No serious poet since 1920

Had done a thing like that.

He was a college teacher

And ostensibly a poet.

At last I read Millay, but he

Is many years away.

It isn't worth an effort.

It isn't worth a fight.

But a sweet and bitter victory

To know that I was right.

But whether I was wrong

Or ever will be read,

Hanslichek is published

And I will soon be dead.

8-15-13

The Rich Man's Game

Little psychiatric games

Rich folk like to play.

“Feel a bit obsessive.”

What do doctors say?

Seeing their psychiatrists.

A tune-up or a pill.

They played the game as troglodytes,

And they play it still.

They see their shrinks for stress.

They help them to relax.

Moreover it's deductible

From their income tax.

8-16-13

 

MK

Whether she is living

Or old or only dead,

Let this hateful therapist

Hang by what she said.

Instead of an amorphous

Rant of pain and rage,

Let the bitch specifically

Collapse upon the stage.

8-15-13

The Sparrow

When your warmth's rejected, you recoil,

Affection misbegotten. To despoil

An urge to understand and sympathize

Is to kill a sparrow as it flies.

And a sparrow with a broken wing

Lying in the dirt desists to sing

And starts to die, but without understanding,

Relinquishing alone and undemanding.

Everybody dies. It's like a dream.

Yet you never hear the people scream.

Is this what modern music is about?

A single dying turned into a rout?

8-15-13

 

Art

I love to be with him when he is happy.

However he is happier with them.

But when I read a poem I have written,

Unshared, unshown, that pierces like a flame -

Poignant and perfection in a verse -

It doesn't matter whether I'm in love.

Beaten to a ripped and ragged cloth

By the hateful music that I hear

In Denny's or at home – they call it music -

Fair enough – it isn't mashed potatoes -

I crave a quiet and translucent silence

Where only Cziffra, Bach and Chopin play.

Such a place! The ancients called it heaven

Years before Tchaikovsky was a word.

8-15-13

 

Hope?

Will someone with sincerity and sense

Say that what you listen to is music?

Spare me taste and age and generation!

Spare me Pavarotti's malediction!

Screaming like a banshee at the darkness

And banging things won't soothe the savage breast.

Your music is equivalent to Kern

Like Stephen King's a writer next to Proust.

Never mind. You wouldn't understand it,

And less agree. A renaissance? Oh god!

The shit keeps getting deeper every day.

Whence the genius who will dig us out?

8-15-13