Hero's Lane

Keats & Shostakovitch

Keats and Shostakovitch -

Opposites immortal

Achieving the same purpose -

Beginning at the end -

Impersonal with beauty -

Sculpture in the water -

The self as it existed

When the music was composed -

However I am baffled -

How can music tell the soul?

12-18-13

 

Man

No one wants a rhythm.

No one wants a rhyme.

Like drunkards in their vomit

Wallowing in slime,

The Oscar put it nicely,

Falling down in bars,

We're lying in the gutter,

But looking at the stars.

A bigot's only vicious,

But bigotry is king.

Christmas in America,

Where the angels sing.

12-19-13

 

Voice

On every public forum

The well-read man appears

Whose adamant convictions

Are boring me to tears.

He'll educate and shoot you

With arrows from his sling.

He's up on all the mystics,

And doesn't know a thing.

12-19-13

Vernacular

A very funny man,

You'll laugh until it hurts -

The kitten's chewing holes

In all my faded shirts.

No one comes to Denny's

Who has a bit of class.

Appropriate is boring,

And I'm a silly ass.

Once I had a friend.

Now I think she's gone.

Bored beyond belief,

She left me with a yawn.

Shakespeare and The Beats

Were poetry to her.

Shakespeare conjured up

His own vernacular.

12-19-13

 

Hero's Lane

Banners line the street -

Every soldier slain

And his branch of service

Aloft on Hero's Lane.

I'm frightened to disclose it

In verses. If I do

The men who made the banners

Will come and get me too.

High above the street

Like a timeless shroud,

It warms a mother's heart,

And makes a father proud.

12-19-13