Sick Art

Sick Art

If a poem's inappropriate, it's crazy.

Society's the arbiter of taste.

Shakespeare would be handled with a chain,

And Dickinson get counseled for withdrawal.

Keats is grandiose. And Poe psychotic.

Millay is fickle. Everybody is.

But never was a hospice for the ill

Where everybody practices his art.

Beauty of a century ago

Is no longer beautiful today.

Freud is gone. And swimming in the air

Are the answers doctors never tell.

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Real

I write of life's realities, you live them.

Safely in my cloister locked away,

I sing of life's rare kindnesses, you give them.

You're the ocean. I am just the spray.

I'm naïve. And unrealities,

Like thinking that a butterfly is strong,

Make a thousand doors that don't have keys,

Vulnerable, neither right nor wrong.

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Kaufman

Kaufman as a person.

Kaufman as an artist.

And I like the way that Kaufman worked.

Quickly with a pencil,

Pages were deleted,

And a perfect comedy created.

Then my god! Of course the shining wit.

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Nothing but her youth

Nothing but her youth, and when it's gone

Will she be a mother to her kids?
Heaven blesses corpses neath the lawn,

But leaves them there. Nature's structure rids

Itself of substance periodically,

And gives the earth the freedom of the sea,

And a pentimento of good poetry.

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A Picture

When you're nice, I'm happy.

You are true and square.
I'm a little crazy.

Is anybody there?

Awake you're very gentle.

Asleep like cherubim.

There is trouble passing

Through the interim.

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Fragment

Try to dress as freaky as you can,

Then with mad defiance cry, “Respect me!”

See the pompous patron of the arts.

Art! Genet inhaling his own farts!

New Year's Day (coincidence) I see

Another lifetime filled with poetry.

Poetry! It's all I ever had.

Poetry! Am I good or bad?

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