Brave & Splendid

Brave & Splendid

Good men die and bad men are immortal.

My father sneered to think that I was good.

Where's the rage? The anger? Don't I feel?

I try to act the part. I lack aggression.

No feeling comes. But I quit reading Keats.

Desultory! Better verse coheres.

God destroys. And bad men never cry,

Except sometimes. To make the good men feel

There's something more than rank and dusty death.

Shakespeare! And his brave and splendid men!

Worms eat dirt and leave it in the soil.

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Eliot

If after Prufrock, Eliot

Had written nothing more

But plays about religion,

And not another verse,

Nothing would be lost to

Yankee/European lit

But a fan club

And a musical.

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The Nuisance

Freddy is a nuisance.

But he's not the kind of cat

Anyone is angry with.

And if it can be done,

By a cat, he does it.

A nuisance can be loved.

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Le Petit Yankee

I'm a little Yankee

With a teeny little heart.

I plan to vote republican

To keep the fags apart,

To put a lot of rifles

Into psychopathic hands,

And keep the dirty immigrants

Off my Yankee lands.

America is free -

The place of liberty -

Not for them, for me.

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Renaissance

He loves me once again.

He said, “Let's

Sit and reminisce.”

He woke me up.

I fell asleep again.

In the dark at midnight

With the cats.

God help the cats!

Dependent, quiet, loving balls of fur.

What god is this

That cares about its creatures?

Washed away in yesterday's tsunami.

Sufficient for tonight.

It's after midnight.

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Songs

I'm in Denny's now. Another

Desultory poem!

I'm the greatest poet

Since Millay, and long before.

Forgotten in the turning of the tide.

Christ! These Yankees love a jungle beat!

They enslaved the black man,

Wrecked his life,

And emulate him.

The lyrics are illiterate

Which every Yankee loves.

Something he at last can understand.

The melody

Is nothing like a song.

Usually female,

And the singer has no voice,

But off the farm

Direct from calling pigs.

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In Denny's

I look at other poets.

I'm superior to them.

(William Carlos Williams eating plums.)

That's half the pleasure

Just as Heifetz said.

However, I like Perlman

With his violin of milk.

It's midnight. I am crazy.

I'll go home and take a pill.

I am getting serious with people.

But it began with Denny's

Nearly 20 years ago.

Then the day I saw and wanted him.

Not for sex.

So let it atrophy.

But for a friend.

Forgetting Jacqui Schiff.

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Sleepy

I fell asleep again.

God damn! He said, “Let's reminisce.”
To sit there in the dark and talk with cats.

Will we come together ever?

Wishing to befriend me,

Or I him,

Will we both be there?

I woke up too sleepy.

Now our penury unites us.

Both of us on medication.

Neither of us works.

His passion is computers.

There is only fame in verse.

Plato said that Sappho

Was the greatest of all poets.

All that's left is just a page of lines.

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Words

Though I understand it,

I do not agree with him.

Use the words the poet understands.

That's none of them.

That's kindergarten.

Yankees don't know words.

Don't let the words obscure the poetry.

So what the hell is poetry but words?

Yankees want it easy.

Even I don't like to work.

Poetry! The simplest of the arts!

Anyone can write it,

Though the humble have a charm.

Democracy is making love to art.

That means it f-cked it.

The triumph of the bigoted and mindless.

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On Some Modern Poems

A couple words to constitute a feeling -

Language, said the poet, is concealing.

In this era of frugality,

Unsparing, absolute reality.

To the joy of modern criticisms,

Like heavy make-up, lots of poetisms.

Honesty, but not too much sensation,

And very obvious alliteration.

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