What is truth?

Talent

Can talent find a way through paranoia

Like a flower underneath a rock

To blossom in the sunlight? Eric Berne

Said that paranoids are mediocre,

And I was told that I am paranoid.

However do I even have a talent?
A sense of rhythm. Gangster rap has that.

This is real. I am facing me.

Like Caliban, I don't like what I see.

A metaphor I got from Oscar Wilde,

Bloody England's most creative mind

Since Shakespeare, only Shakespeare wasn't murdered.

11-12-13

 

So What?

Everything I write looks good in Denny's.

When I get it home it looks like sh-t.

And after it is published, I despise it.

Self-publication! Everybody's dream -

A fantasy that dies when brains are dead.

Fifty years of crap! I went to college.

It's hanging like a trophy on my wall.

College was a joy. When I was young,

F-cking was a joy. Still I keep writing,

Pretending that my early books are good.

I give my books away. Some people read them.

I'm the Poet Laureate of Denny's.

I ought to die of shame and stay secluded

Underneath a rock. Embarrassment

Dogged me since the day I started talking.

11-12-13

 

 

Overwhelmed

I don't want to hear about the dead

In Syria and Egypt, or the theft

Of paintings, or The Lord's Resistance Army,

The typhoon in the Philippines, the death

Of art around the world, the rape of Paris.

There is no planet left. But 40 billion

Earth-like others in the Milky Way,

Unreachable, but if they have no gods,

No people and no patriots, perhaps

There will be life. I do not want to love.

11-12-13

 

What is truth?

I've lied so much I don't know what I feel,

What's true or false or probable or real.

I thought in poetry it didn't matter.

The truth was made of rubber. It would bend.

Now I'm having parties with the Hatter.

Left on earth with just a single friend.

Little Johnny Honest. Since a boy

Til yesterday that was my sobriquet.

Honesty in poetry's a toy.

I think my verse has value even yet.

In January 99 we met.

11-12-13