Millay

Happy Birthday!

Billy Graham's still alive,

Looking good at 95.

Let the heavenly bells be rung!

The Greeks believed the good die young.

12-6-13

 

A Poet

No one's more conceited

Than a poet in full bloom,

Awaiting recognition

When he's lying in a tomb.

Tell him that a rhyme is false,

He'll say that's his intent.

Tell him that his beat is off.

He'll say it's what he meant.

If he abandons meter for

A total liberty,

He breaks from 700 years

Of pointless prosody.

12-6-13

Hope

I wrote until the stream was dry

In 1998,

Docile poems all devoid

Of acrimony, hate.

Then the urge recurred in me

In 1999,

A recrudescence of love,

A response of warm design.

Then for years, so many years,

An empty barren plain

Where dumped the sun upon the stones,

Of anger and disdain.

Let me now with phrases mild

Through tangles on my steed

Write poesy that once again

I can want to read.

12-6-13

Millay

Millay the perfect poet

Means everything and nothing

Unlike an elder English

Incapable of nuance,

Unable to be subtle.

She's warmer than the sun.

Rock is rough. And rap is rough.

The British sentimental,

Like children in a room with drapes,

A hearth, and it is raining.

To write a deeply gentle book

Like Gore Vidal a book

That I myself would like to read,

And sleep beside the moon,

Relax upon the ocean,

Beneath a million stars.

12-6-13

 

Metaphors

I was flotsam. I was a web

Torn, a bit of filament

Attached to an ancient tree.

And I was fluttering in the air

As passing breezes liked.

I was a metaphor

With no antecedent.

Today I am becoming.

Tomorrow I'm a man.

As my heart gets stronger

My verse becomes more gentle,

As I shed the past,

Or whatever made me mad.

12-6-13

A Story

I wrote ugly poems for a spell.

I had no heart,

But just a hole to hell.

Underneath the flames were always there,

An opening as dismal as despair.

Humor kept me able to forbear.

The floor burst! Shit!

My hatred was well meant

And adequate to any sane intent.

But I'm no god. And all good men can hate

Circumstances, Jesus Christ and fate.

Now like a kitten in a litter box

I cover that with sand. Across the rocks

A glistening wave of foam and grey unlocks

The gate and disenchants me from the spell,

And returns the sane insanity to hell.

12-6-13