For David Myers, Oakland

Beauty

What is beauty? To you? To me?

Is this what a poem ought to be?

I said yes to a PhD,

Confused to hear him disagree.

What is beauty in poetry?

The frame of a tale in mythology

From which hang inventions of poesy?

A casual moment perhaps defined

Passing through consciousness in the mind?

A naive sensation, smooth or warm?

Any idea that fits a form?

Verse without rhythm suits some I know.

I am not one of those people though.

A structure of beauty composed by thought

In the intellect? Where is wrought

Something that's beautiful? Merely sad?

Is this what makes the Muses glad?
Out of sight, like memory,

Unseen, distant, like the sea -

Are poems written unconsciously?

Or are they less than this, not much.

Something I can see or touch?

12-3-13

For David Myers, Oakland

Life is what you're consciousness of.

A dream's ubiquity.

In absence of awareness,

Hanging from a tree.

The gallows in the summer sun

Is swaying in the rain

Years away from Denny's.

Christmas is insane.

But on the darkness of the sea

A misbegotten boat

Ignores the deity and those

Who shove it down your throat.

12-3-13

Asleep

At Jacqui Schiff I ceased to care.

In my soul is only air.

Now the passions that I lack

Are coming back.

And with them the insanity

Or unforsaken poesy

That wasn't dead, but only lay

Beneath the bay.

Before my birth and like a pledge

Beneath mosquitoes and the sedge

It slept and waited like a clown,

And didn't drown.

12-4-13

 

Old Men

Old men who should be living

In houses that are paid for,

Wearing pleasant clothes

And sitting in soft chairs

Are pushing grocery carts

Along the avenue,

Digging through the rubbish,

And do not comb their hair.

12-2-13

 

Time Line

To run the gamut of age

From infancy to death,

And write a book to mark each passing phase,

Joie de vivre to raison d'etre,

And find no promised heaven.

To sit alone in Denny's

Hearing dreary Christmas songs

Waiting for a line of verse to come.

12-3-13

If you like my poems, my name is Joseph Hart, and I have books on Amazon.  They can be got to by going to Joseph Hart Poetry.  All the books are $10 or less except one thick one ("Ten Chaps") that is $12.50.