Meaning

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

Below 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

 

Ambivalence

When I read my poesy

I'm suddenly transported

To a world I never saw

But in my poesy,

A world of love as though I didn't write it.

But other times I read a verse

And feel a bloodless failure.

It's such a bleak and dismal thing

Of mediocrity.

Which is true? Or are they both?

Can somehow they combine

Somewhere in the reaches of my soul?

What's the the theory of ambivalence?

Seldom at the worst do I inquire,

“Where's the other aspect of the mirror?”
Or at the peak I do not wonder why.

12-4-13

 

Meaning

I think I am too meaningful.

I've got too much too say.

Poesy is just a game.

Release it. Let it play.

My rhythms fill a place

And the rhymes are fine.

On the page each sentence

Unmistakably is mine.

Keats disintegrated.

On shelves above the earth

His empty poems manifest

All a poem's worth.

12-4-13

 

Success

The probably biggest joke among thousands

Played upon the snobs

Is the poetry of Bukowski,

And the songs of Stephen Sondheim,

And American art in general.

Anyone in the spotlight,

Which is everyone on stage,

Calls himself an artist.

An act without a cause.

None was born with talent,

And didn't try to learn.

They got their hour of glory

And corner of the bank

From a lack of inhibitions,

Moxie and green hair.

12-4-13