Poems

Analysis

A thoughtless repetitious beat -

Violent concussions -

He pounds the drum -

And several men -

A thing that I was told

Many years ago

Is easily accomplished

By a teenage boy -

Grab the strings of four guitars

And gratify their souls -

And a singer with a voice

That isn't pretty anyway

Yet never learned to sing

Which is quite superfluous

As all he does is scream -

Take the crown from Clooney, Crosby,

Sills and Blossom Dearie.

8-14-13

 

No People

I don't write about the human race.

I can't look any deeper than I see.

I write about some entities from space,

Though neither do I know, or they know me.

Human beings congregate and play.

The youngest of them even understands.

If you are alone, or if you're gay,

The kindest ones just laugh behind their hands.

They think they're right. Oh Jesus! Do they ever!

Proposition 8. The south. And gore.

They laugh and smile. But nothing's very clever.

They have opinions, but they go to war.

8-14-13

 

Repression

He didn't tell the truth.

He never had.

Jeopardy.

Making someone mad.

Startled into terror,

Hiding fears,

He'd been like this for

67 years.

At last he said

(The question was abrupt),

“It bothers me when people interrupt.”
A twitch. A tremor.

He began to shake.

And then collapsed.

A horrible mistake!

Just once he told the truth.

He hadn't lied.

In a spasm suddenly he died.

8-14-13

 

Elizabethan

Without poetic diction,

Am I Elizabethan?

Careful introverted thought

And wry complexities.

Were Elizabethans mad

And hanging to their lovers?

Waiting to be taken to

The Tower and beheaded.

And did they understand

The people they reflected,

Or sit alone in coffee shops

With frequent apercus?

8-13-13

 

Death

I shall know – quite soon I think -

What's beyond the lifeless brink.

Death will lift the silent pall,

And sightless eyes see naught at all.

My poesy is written now,

Occasionally good in youth,

But all the same. To bathe the sow

In garbage mixed with lines of truth.

Books and poems through the years

Are scattered. As my thinking clears

I lately write – for just a span -

The best I could – or ever can.

They won't dig a hole for me

Because I cannot pay for it.

When nature rings a toll for me,

Pick a rainy day for it.

Humanity is more absurd

Than anything I can conceive.

Death! I loathe to say the word.

They fuck, destroy, believe.

8-13-13

Status

Ugliness makes beauty seem

Unnatural and odd.

America! No colleges

In the land of god.

Philistines who never knew

The beautiful was there,

And weather every crisis

With a pistol and a prayer.

8-13-13

 

A Fragment

People that you're fond of make you happy,

So you're nice. But people you don't like

Make you feel unhappy so you frown.

People that you wish would treat you nicer

Are people who don't want you there at all.

8-13-13