With The Shrink

With The Shrink

He looked at me and said, “Now Joe,

What's wrong?” I said, “How well I know

No matter what I say, what word,

You'll sneer and mock me. I'm absurd.

I'm the sea. You're not the shore.

I've met psychiatrists before.”

He answered, “Do you think you're mad?”

I said, “I think my soul's been had.

In these dirty, concrete halls,

One man sleeps. Another falls.”

11-20-13

 

Feeling

Between the interstices of

Affection and despair,

Whether there's emotion or

The feeling isn't there -

Like drifting down a river that is

Pouring in the sea -

So went Keats in wordiness and

Grandiosity.

I'm throwing out the ballast and I'm

Floating through the sky.

There is no god in silence. There is

Naught to do but die.

11-19-13

 

Books Of Poems

Quiet muffled poems, cotton things,

They are not sharp as ice like Rupert Brooke,

A single muted violin with strings,

Collected in a plain and simple book.

60, 55, or 61 -

So many books! My mind has been preserved

Until the planet falls into the sun,

Time so long the poet is unnerved.

11-19-13

Doubt

Doubt! The tears I saw,

His eyes got red,

Threatened by the bullies he'd provoked,

Ugly men, a gang.

He was alone.

Doubt! And indecision.

To go back

And take another action

Or go on.

“They aren't like us.”
The human race,

A mix -

All of them alive,

On feet with eyes and hands,

And many gods.

To be a man

Who's stymied by a mob.

11-19-13

 

Boredom

No feeling but a passive agitation -

Nothing in your head except your brain -

A wooden effigy without sensation

Like sleeping without feeling in the rain -

No wish to leave without an urge to stay -

You pace the floor a minute, then sit down -

No one hears, and not a thing to say -

Ambivalence – the only game in town -

Not a thought to recognize another -

Not a thing to write a poem about -

A candle without air begins to smother -

What is verse? You never did find out -

11-19-13