The Girl

The Girl


Believe in something other than to die -
Nor have your love intruded on by lust -
To look at a completely empty sky
And know the sea decays – and so goes trust -


When someone needs your company – that's all -
On pain of loneliness – to be afraid -
Footsteps echo down an empty hall
Swept and mopped and dusted by a maid -


Whatever happens, she will not object.
Ignore her, she will merely wander on.
Defeated absolutely, young and wrecked,
She sleeps in Denny's, when she can, til dawn.


Who belongs to her?  Does she belong
To anyone?  To justify her stay,
A plate of toast's in front of her.  It's wrong.
For fifty thousand years it's been this way.


9-26-13

The Lover


His sin was that he loved me.  And the hell,
Perdition at the bottom of a well.
A gallows swings its shadow cross the sea,
A rope for hanging lovers from a tree


With a single noose that dangles free
For a Muse whose sole autonomy
Is in the liberty of poetry.


All the world will put you in restraints.
A nation of illiterates and saints!
There is no hope.  All hope is in the soul
Of a single poet on a roll.
A trite cliché makes diamonds out of coal.


9-26-13

The Muse


“On Sleep, &c”, “Endymion
Awake” and “Chaps” - three lovers of my heart.
My three books.  My immortality.
All the rest are commonplace and good,
But nothing like a window-breaking truth.
No truth.  You cannot weigh it in a pan.


Now I am becoming complicated,
Self-adoring, narcissistic, proud.
I did not write these books.  Perhaps a god
Or something that's in nature undisclosed.
I merely moved the pen across the paper.
For this a laurel?  Silliness.  A lie.


But I am glad I was the crucible,
And that I moved the pen.  Obedience.
All of life on earth is in a stricture,
In poetry the manacles removed,
And I'm in even more captivity,
Writing as I'm bidden – by the Muse.


9-26-13


Emily


Strong and happy.  Is she happy?
Well, she makes me so.
But concentrating busily
With a job to do.
A Lady Atlas with the planet
Balanced on her shoulders,
But carried like a dancer
On a stage in front of none.
She laughs and smiles.  No.  Giggles.
And as open as the sea,
With gentle lazy waves that lap
The beach a hundred miles.
Like a dream she walks in sleep.
She reads my poesy.


9-26-13
Karen!


Karen, the acerbic prune,
Works graveyard, and it's fitting.
A little yellow net upon
Her bun (that's on her head).


I only just turned 67.
It's been many years
Since someone with a rancid word
Could cause me such a rage.


Very garrulous and stupid,
And she thinks she's 17.
She knows and listens to the classics -
Acid rock and rap.


She tells the patrons everything
They never asked to know.
And if you really need a cup of
Coffee, you will die.


9-26-13