Rilke

Visalia

I met a man with talent beyond measure

Relaxing in a coffee shop in peace

Drawing perfect pictures at his leisure

With a pencil, beauty in release.

Where is he now? His name should be on banners.

This was more then 30 years ago.

Gone, and all his self-effacing manners.

A drifting talent lost. Or fame comes slow.

11-24-13

Rilke

I can't die. The cats aren't dead.

My poesy's not famous.

Rilke's deep so it's been said.

I'm an ignoramus.

Millay and Keats are all I've read,

And Larry Hart and Poe

And Rupert Brooke. Great minds instead

Read poets I don't know.

Bukowski, Rilke, Stevens and

Merwin, Larkin, Jeffers

Like golden bulls sublimely stand

And tantalize the heifers.

In the fields of art I graze

With poetry that's pretty,

An image or a turn of phrase

Is all that makes a ditty.

Nothing deep, profound and such

So I can't comprehend it.

Poetry my heart can touch,

And senses recommend it.

11-23-13

Autonomy

Man is strong and so's his bitch,

Independent from their youth.

Darwin never burned a witch.

A Christian never told the truth.

When you're old, you are not fair.

Beat a mongrel mad, it

Doesn't need a mother's care.

Some people never had it.

Nothing on this earth makes sense.

The universe is poetry.

Some people at the world's expense

Live in total liberty.

11-23-13

 

Janus

Scrap the crap and try again,

Computer, pencil, pad and pen.

There is no music in my verse,

Nor a river in the glen.

Fierce and feisty, taking aim

At the horrors and the shame

On the planet, always there,

A boring and redundant game.

Bred on Keats, when I was young

With gentle wishes songs were sung

Til I matriculated to

Cold cadavers who'd been hung.

Something empty, sweet and whole,

No heavier than half a soul,

Pretty poems, beauty. I

Could never play the poet's role.

To be cynical I'm loth.

Carving beauty. I'm a sloth.

If I survive a hundred years,

Perhaps I shall have written both.

11-22-13

 

Jokes

Humor! And I breathe again,

Consider there will be tomorrow,

Angry friends will smile at me.

Release the ballast! Let my heart

Rise above the sea.

Love returns. And happiness.

And optimism too.

11-19-13

 

Keats

Insanity! Don't think and be detached!

Make poetry as meaningless as music.

What Shostakovitch said should tell the truth -

A selfish tale about the poet's life.

And what I think must catch up with my rhymes.

And yet there is a wealth inside my soul.

Where for god's sake is imagination?

Am I dead? Is there some connection?
But I see consistency of style,

A length of thread that isn't broken yet.

11-24-13