"God's World"

“God's World”


O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
    Thy roaches and thy prickly pears!
    Thy rattle snakes, thy grizzly bears!
Thy mustard gas, thine homophobes!
Thine AIDS, thy germs, thy rap, the robes
Around thy white supremacists!
World, world!  J. Edgar Hoover's lists!


Long have I known the horrors that appall,
    But never knew I this:
    The deadly nightshade's kiss,
Which sounds like something out of Johnny Keats
Whom critics mock, tuberculosis eats;
My soul – well, I don't have a soul – the fall
Comes just before the winter.  That is all.

(with no apologies to Edna St. Vincent Millay)

11-24-10

Awake Too Soon


Head above the water -
Echos of Millay -
Fanciful conceit -
Like the ocean spray -


Gentle loving verses -
Written with a pen -
Like the colored stones
In a diadem -


Detoured from my route
By Keats at 21 -
Music and sensation -
And nothing can be done -


Thinking it was Byron -
Hoping it was Keats -
Rather it's Millay -
A plethora of sweets -


Found her on the shelf -
A modicum of dust -
Printer's ink and beauty -
Instinctively I trust -


9-28-13
Inequity


Putting poems in a folder,
Freddy hit the middle.
I wasn't mad.
I moved him off.
And then he jumped again.
I moved him off.  And then I thought
Had the cat been Kitty,
I'd have raged.  And then I thought
When god is done with killing,
Does he touch the futile brains
Of eager poetasters
And make them think
They're geniuses – like Keats?


9-28-13

Twenty Minutes In Denny's


A desperate day!  A depressing day!
George is distant and reserved.
Nothing but an hour of Bach
To recommend to god.


I'm in Denny's – a magical place
For writing poesy.
The gems that shied from dawn to dusk
Glimmer slightly now.


Millay has nothing still to dread
For the laurel on her brow.
When she nods it won't fall off
For what I'm writing now.


9-28-13

Expired


I've been dead since 75
Despite the sense I am alive.
Wrote three books of verse that soar,
The last in 1984.
Vestiges, a broken spell
Keep me writing, but not well.
I perceive a passe glint
Of talent peeping through the print.
And many songs – none between -
Come daily from this old machine.


9-28-13
Love


All the men I loved who would have loved me
If I weren't incapable of love.
The feeling's there.
I don't know how to show it.
Pretty men, intelligent,
Who sit for Bach and Haydn.
I'm with one now.
He isn't fond of Haydn,
Sleeps through Bach
And has a yen for women.
I don't care.
I could be friends with him
If I knew how.
It's tragic and I laugh.


9-28-13

Playing Bach


When I play Bach, and I know that he wants
To listen to one of his own,
I feel such discomfort, it seems that the Bach
Is boring and shallow and slight.
When I surrender the Bach I feel better,
Despite what he plays in its stead.
But when he is gone, the room becomes rich
And redolent with Bach.


9-28-13

Lies


Lies!  I never thought of them
As other than absurd,
The sweetest lies this troglodyte
And poet ever heard.
Poet?  Well, a poetaster.
Really not the same.
All of it intended and
Sincere.
So not a game.
Not a prince.  So not a tumbril.
Just a common cart.
My only aim since youth – to be
Another Larry Hart.
Brilliant rhymes!  Clever rhymes!
With sentiment and wit.
Tumbled into Keats and that
Was quite the end of it.
That's not to say that otherwise
There could have been a way.
I never had his talent.
I'm discovering Millay.
Will that divert the tide into
A different direction?
It's doubtful.  But she's beautiful,
As even Keats was not.


9-28-13

Thank you, daddy


Smugly he had taken us to supper.
Coming home, the parrots all said “thank you”.
I did not.  I would not join the group.
I wanted him to know I was sincere,
Not by rote pronouncing what was right,
But showing gratitude alone together.
He turned and leaned across the seat and said,
“Jimmy isn't thankful.”  To the grave
He never knew what had been in my mind.
One fact I can be absolutely sure of.
He never knew because I never told him.


9-22-13