Millay & Poetry

Millay

Millay makes beautiful phrases

I wish that could sing,

Bittersweet and gentle

That seldom mean a thing.

I cannot write a poem.

I never had the knack.

And I couldn't think of phrases

If I were on the rack.

My first and foremost hero

In poetic art

Was a clever, troubled dwarf

Whose name was Larry Hart.

8-4-13

What?

Phrases aren't my bailiwick.

Images my bane.

Senses are a bore to sit

And render into words.

What then am I writing?

Meters and a thought,

Irreverent, iconoclastic,

Sacrilegious, mine.

8-4-13

Religions

All religions can't be right.

Unless they're homicidal,

Most of them are interesting.

Anthropology.

Religions are imagination.

Fancy has no bounds

But those imposed upon it

By the gods of yesterday.

8-4-13

Beauty & Truth

Everybody has a point of view.

If you can't be beautiful be true.

Homogenized and lost among the crowd,

Selling your autonomy

For music that is loud

That everybody rhapsodizes,

Nobody is proud,

Your individuality,

The craziness that's you,

To join the camaraderie

And buy a new tattoo.

Keats chose beauty in the spring of youth.

But the idiosyncratic

Has a certain kind of truth.

8-4-13

 

Nothing

Must a poem be about

Anything at all?

There's nothing in the sky

Or beneath the pall.

Can I write a poem

Of nothingness benign?

The words are from a dictionary,

All the thoughts are mine.

8-4-13

 

The Same

I'm tired of my poets.

All I like to read is me.

A poem about something

Isn't really poetry.

When I read a song I wrote

Long and far away

It seems as though I'm reading one

I just wrote yesterday.

8-4-13

 

Life

Her son was murdered by a gun.

She went before the House

To appeal for gun control.

The politician said,

“You don't care about your son

To drag his corpse through politics

In support of your belief.”

She said that was the cruelest thing

He could have said. He answered,

“Not cruel. It's the truth.”

8-4-13