Like a magnet, sleep

Promises

Bukowski and Sondheim – American dreams!

More like the end of life it seems.

Lovers for months – then in a day,

All their promises go away.

Lloyd Webber lost in a quirk of fate

All the genius that made him great.

Beautiful music – then like dawn,

For no good reason, the gift was gone.

12-20-13

Like Ayn Rand

Rand who like an angel wrote

Disliked to read her writing.

Except the Noel Coward chatter,

She was sculpt in stone.

And also I don't like to read

The poems I have written,

Except upon a rainy day

A little light slips through.

Does this mean I'm good or bad?
A world that does not love

Any longer love or art

Or government, just god.

12-20-13

Like a magnet, sleep

Like a magnet, sleep

Pulls me into dreams.

My brain's a graveyard.

Winter's come at last.

The cats are curled in circles

And sleeping in the chairs.

There has to be a way to understand.

11-9-12

 

Happiness

Why don't you want to be happy?

Is it the fear of death

Unbuffered by heavens and angels?
But not an ersatz joy.

Have therapists ruined your thinking

So that remembering them

Hurts you? Or is tomorrow

Reminding you of today?

Or are your memories painful,

Even innocuous ones?
Why don't you want to be happy?
Is paradox enough?

12-20-13

 

Old Men

Old men cease to care.

Beauty is no longer fair.

Nothing's deeper than the night.

Former treasures don't delight.

They belie the myth that age

Is gentle and profound and sage.

Soft in youth, then older mild.

Keats was written by a child.

12-20-13