The Stone
When I was a teen
In the giant house on Crespi
Standing on the porch
I saw a stone,
A beautiful and strange
And multicolored stone.
Staring at the rock I
thought
That I could go insane.
Then I thought, “Why
bother?
No matter what occurs,
I am going to come back
To things as they are now.”
So I left the stone and went
away.
8-19-13
I used to be chaotic
I used to be chaotic
Before I got the money,
Changing jobs like changing lovers.
Then I finished college.
I don't know how I did it.
I just went, and then kept going.
Then my mother breathed her last
And left me where I'm living.
Now I'm sick and old and settled down.
And there's a new upheaval in my life.
I see no way to calm it.
It's not in my control.
Those who do not understand
Assure me that it is.
I think that it will see me out the
door.
So long as I have verses,
A place to sit and write them,
Although the place is shrinking,
I'll be lucid when I die.
8-19-13
Never go to Denny's
Never go to Denny's after midnight!
The manager goes home. The rock and
rap
Suddenly come crashing from the
kitchen.
The idiots who barely earn a wage
Playing waiters, yell and whoop and
holler.
And if you got a first one, do not
think
You'll ever get a second cup of coffee.
Bedlam is on earth. Intelligence,
Civility and decency and any kind of
wit
Are underneath the bottom of the scale.
It's deafening. It's deafening in
Denny's.
From approximately 2 to 6 a.m.
Some were born to serve and some to
play.
If a waiter speaks at all he's rude,
Unless you're mean and covered with
tattoos.
8-19-13
Johnny
No one played with Johnny.
Johnny was a jerk,
Also a mulatto,
Which I didn't understand.
Johnny was my neighbor
And no one talked to me,
So I talked to Johnny.
I assumed we were the same.
That our values were
identical,
Our feelings and ideas,
Scientific, Atheistic,
Neither philistines.
Until I gave some money
To a charity to care
For animals. He scoffed and
said,
“The stupid animals!”
Then I knew that we were not alike
Then I knew that we were not alike
In any way.
And I had been mistaken.
Where is Johnny now?
Is there a charity for him?
Life
To Syria and Egypt
And the NRA,
What is Man – or any life -
The Lord's Resistance Army?
It is a piece of paper
That I write a poem on
Totally illegible
When I get it home.
I ponder and decipher
And remember more than read.
When I've got it typed, I throw
The paper in the garbage.
No that has decent value.
To the NRA and Egypt,
Syria, The Lord's Resistance Army,
Human life, or any life
Is paper in the john.
That has value too.
Necessity.
That's all the value human life
Has ever had to Man.
Or any life.
The rest don't carry guns.
8-19-13
Old Memories New
Happy memories appear
Uncolored by the present.
All past was hateful just
because
It was the past. But now
has ceased
To cover me with soot and
grime.
No! Soft silt from crystal
streams.
I bathe freshly in the water
Of its memories.
And forgotten in a cloister
Is the misery.
8-18-13
GWL
From the stomach,
From the head,
From anywhere -
It isn't dead.
A joke spontaneous,
A laugh
Will crumble any epitaph,
Sponge the remnants of your
tears,
And draw the bucket from the
well.
Happy, sweet and wet appears
Water to extinguish hell.
8-18-13
Good Poems
Heavy lidded languishing
In Denny's once again,
What perceptive paradoxes
Will occur to me?
What poignant phrases will unseal
What poignant phrases will unseal
The tombs of some, but not another?
Will I fall asleep again
To wake alert in Denny's?
I just found another book
I just found another book
Among the raft of books I wrote
That's worthy of the sea.
67 years! For 50
Years I've written poems
Culminating in the moment
I believe they're good.
8-18-13
The Centipede
Shrinks and neighbors,
Relatives and
Friends with an agenda -
None who knows – how could he? -
The circumstance you're in -
Willingly will tell you
What to do and how to do it.
And the centipede
Looking at his legs discovers
He is in a ditch,
On his back unable
Now to walk at all.
The nightmare is you
Do not know yourself.
8-19-13
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