The Triumph Of The Philistines

Music

Pretty music soft -

Ugly music loud -

A beat – the lyrics

Jack off your emotions -

Art is not a mirror

So the people do not like it -

Nature does not love

Any creature it creates -

But the freaks – the geniuses,

The beautiful are loved -

And envied – if not murdered

When Caliban revolts -

12-28-13

Jinx

I've one superstition

And it isn't Jesus,

Astrology, the Pyramids, the Sphinx.

Declaring my ambitions

Even to myself

I'm positive will jinx me,

Guarantee a failure.

Destiny at play.

12-27-13

A Nasty Jingle

Intersections only have green lights

In America. So grab your kids

If you're on the sidewalk and there's traffic.

No one's going to care much if he hits one,

Though if he's caught, his premium goes up.

12-27-13

 

Critical

Only somewhat cynical,

But critical as hell.

He asked me,

“Is there anything you like?
Write them down.

The list will be much shorter.”
So it goes.

I love, but it's a secret.

So seldom, but I still recall their names,

But not their faces.

Jairaj, David, Ray -

Charlie Nance and Francis (he's a boy) -

Uproot my heart

And use it for a pen!

12-27-13

 

Tradition

I am no upholder of tradition,

But if a thing is lovely, let it stay.

And if it clutters up the mantlepiece

With dissonance and ugliness and death,

Let it drift away to its creator.

Make paradise. And I'm just passing through.

I was taught religion. It absorbed me

When I was a child, but now it's gone.

How easy to accept gratuities

When you have no conscience. God forgives.

12-27-13

 

The Triumph Of The Philistines

The philistines are finally triumphant!

But back before they were, and books were read,

When music was a tune you could remember,

And art was not the scribblings of a child,

Wilde and Shakespeare sold in class editions,

Keats and Shelley bound with all their letters,

And all of Freud appeared in little books,

When Dickens (circumlocutory bore)

In little matching volumes with the plates

Stood on shelves – The world wants none of this.

Everyone's a poet. No one is.

12-27-13

 

Bards

I'm coming father from what I want

And closer to what I am.

Out of the maelstrom

Onto a hill,

I overlook the sea.

People with talent just write a poem.

Out come the words of a song.

And as a by-product, how they write,

Theories, opinions and aims.

The pictures in Keats are a dreary affair.

There's only a glimpse of a myth.

The bubble is burst and it fell to the ground.

Slack and in wrinkles it lies.

Why must a bard have an ego of iron

That doesn't equate his endeavors?
The public's a bog of ambition.

That isn't what Dickinson said.

12-27-13

 

Belinda

Cyber orgies on the forums -

Slobber on each other's ass -

Cross someone that Tobi likes,

And she will kick you out of class.

Someone posted to Belinda -

“You're a voice of sanity” -

A brainless living scourge of what

The ancients called humanity.

If this is sanity, then Freud

Wasted over 50 years.

If this is sanity, then it

Is mostly stupid, partly jeers.

12-27-13

If you like my poems, I have lots of books on Amazon and Kindle.  Most books on Amazon are $10 or less, and most on Kindle are $1.  They can be found on Amazon by typing Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar under books.