Endgame

Truth

Listen to your conscience

And discover who you are.

Images and voices

Making comments like a star

Shining through the curtains

In cliches afford a glimpse

Of motives all secreted

In the underworld like imps.

11-16-13

 

The Arts

Songs are getting prettier.

Opera is gone.

TV can't be wittier

Unless the set is off.

Broadway without Sondheim

Is a crypt without corpse.

I haven't seen a flick since

Woody Allen's Italy.

Hart's autobiography

(Not Larry, I mean Moss)

Was my last and also was

The second time I read it.

Millay whom I had tinkered with

I fell into completely.

So now I have a thing to love

And occupy my time.

11-15-13

 

Endgame

A gentle man like Eric Berne

It seems could save the minds

Of Bedlam – it's a universe -

Of sex and guns and drugs.

Dancing in the videos -

Flashing colored lights -

Cure you of the need to care -

And poppers are like love -

But a man like Eric Berne

In Carmel by the Sea

Is a phantom in the throng

Ground into the dirt

By dancing feet. His clever thoughts

Describe what people do.

Eric Berne? Eric Berne?

Anonymous today.

11-16-13

 

The Typical Song

From her tin mechanical nose

Come the sounds like singing.

“Turn me on! Turn me on!”

Every twenty minutes

Every night in Denny's.

Do the people love it?

Are they deaf? Or do they care?

America will be remembered

Two milleniums

From today as

When the planet choked,

If anyone remembers it at all.

11-16-13

On A Drive

A voice that's like a razor on a strop -

Popular across the USA

That hasn't got the brains to love a god.

Endless croaking on the radio.

Platinum! It's settled in her throat

Embedded with the diamonds she was fed.

Living men have died for more than this.

11-16-13

 

A Thought

A little bit of good advice,

Some risperdal, a bill.

Am I sick?
I don't hallucinate.

To validate my thinking

(The expression that he used),

But where's the spine?

And is one necessary?

11-16-13

 

My Friend

He's blind. He wants to learn. He wants to know.

Like me beginning 60 years ago.

He resists, absorbing what you say.

Can't medicine do anything today!

A beautiful and terrifying man,

With a brain like rainbows. And a span

That encompasses the sky, the wind, the sea,

And almost everyone on earth but me.

A living definition of the law,

He tells the truth, exactly what he saw.

He gathers from the all-enclosing night

The real and true, and usually right.

11-17-13