Eel-Grass Cove

Death

Can death be such a bad thing

If it doesn't hurt?

To hear no more Tchaikovsky -

A shovelful of dirt -

Is death a kind of freedom?

Answer me because

I wonder if it's lonely

As living always was.

Will all my friends and heroes

Follow me as well?

Will there be no love
Or worshiping in hell?

Will solitude continue

With everything the same?

Will anybody know me

Before I changed my name?

12-11-13

 

Eel-Grass Cove

I wasted 50 years with Keats.

I could have read Millay.

This damned eternal loyalty!

I will turn away.

No nuances, no thought,

No gentle subtlety,

Cardboard, concrete, cold -

Is this poetry?

But how I can I renounce

My only source of love

Before I read Millay

And the rain in eel-grass cove?

12-10-13

Johnny Keats

We had a good affair,

Johnny Keats and I.

Can I leave him there

Wherever he may lie?

You can't forget a lover

In life or poetry.

In your dotage you discover

Him in your memory.

Will he be forgotten

In the ground in Rome?

When beauty is verboten

And no one has a home.

12-10-13

 

Ersatz

It's stupid. I can't tell you

How ridiculous it is

To play a foolish game

With lines across the page,

And lower case and upper

(The letters of the words).

But when you have a pencil

And nothing else to do,

It's a substitute for poetry

And makes the time go by.

12-10-13

 

Synanon

Not since Synanon

Where my ship was sunk

Have I been so frightened.

I never was a drunk.

A self-appointed shrink

Who never would grow old

Said to go to Synanon.

I did as I was told.

12-10-13