Sly Truth

Sly Truth

When the truth comes slyly,

Then you are insane.

Go to see a counselor.

He will not explain.

Sitting in his office,

Confessing every sin,

Go away as baffled

As you were when you went in.

2-17-14

 

The Lunatic

Sitting in Denny's at 4 a.m. -

The lunatics are out -

He laughs and he hollers like someone were there.

An animated guy!

He's making me angry. I'd like to kick

His dumb psychotic ass!

Yet I remember when I was nuts -

As obvious as he.

The monologue ended. I'd turn and look

To see if he's still there.

But if he's touchy as well as mad,

I could be in trouble.

The waitress is taking this calmer than I.

She seems to know he's sick.

She gives him his coffee and walks away.

Benighted in the night!

2-17-14

 

Caring

She told me you don't care

Even though you say it.

Too long at the fair.

The game and how you play it.

I believe you care.

Some people never learn.

I think someone is there.

To love, but in return.

2-17-14

 

For 16 years

For 16 years or 17

I had myself a friend

Who looked forever for someone better.

She played and took the trick.

For 17 years I berated myself

Because I couldn't love.

It seems I was loving him quite enough,

And just got told to stop.

Nothing makes sense to me. 60 years.

I'm baffled as a babe.

He told me to love him. He told me to stop.

While spitting in my face.

I no longer hate her. It's worth the price

To follow her finesse.

Rather obvious, crude and dense,

It seems where I am sitting.

Getting her druthers (her only aim),

First she goes to him.

Gone at 7 and back at 5.

A stranger errant she.

2-17-14

For Celeste Goyer, Who Published It, a fragment

Pornography is just a harmless pleasure.

Statutory rape is not a rape.

And prostitution shouldn't be a crime.

Without a victim, there has been no crime.

These Christians do not care for liberty.

They never did. I think they never will.

They howl their execrations in the night.

They vilify the homosexual.

They claim to be the species god prefers.

They imagine love in what confutes all care,

Especially in what they do themselves,

And fairness in their own dishonesty.

Living Gold

Aging, warm and fair -

Playing in the streets -

Millay is lying where
I sought to bury Keats.

Keats is living gold,

But messes up my mind.

Doing as I'm told,

I more of madness find.

2-17-14

Crazy Denny's

Bedlam's come to Denny's.

Everyone is bold.

The waitresses are actors,

And no one's growing old.

My god! I hate the music

That comes from overhead.

Loud and unmelodic.

To wait for love instead.

2-17-14

TA

TA is just some funny words
I never understood.

Does it make you crazier
Or does it do some good?

This counseling for Christians

(One of them a Jew)

Has passed into oblivion.

Who knows what to do?

He went to see a doctor

(The only game in town).

Because it didn't help,

He burned the building down.

2-17-14

 

In A Hospice

Why don't people holler when they're dying?

Howl and scream and fight the madman off?

Lying in a hospice on a bed,

Folded, white and cool and stiff and clean.

But death is not a hospice. Death is dirty.

A thousand maggots crawling through your soul.

Imagine it. But do not go to sleep.

Youth is the beginning of it all.

2-16-14

 

The Illusion

A man with an illusion that he's loved,

Believing that psychologists mean well,

Is battered among rocks until they fall,

A landslide on his head. Where did the myth

Of this affection start? The family

That wished him to a grave? Perhaps in youth

Where he with pretty boys had happiness?
Cassandra who in madness said he'd be

To the world just one non-entity?

2-16-14

 

Keats

The immortal nothingness of Keats,

Like bathing among flowers with no thorns -

Fragrance, softness, colors – half asleep -

In perfect safety, harmony and peace.

This my ode to Keats is not like his

To a Grecian Urn and Nightingale -

Such magic has been stuck upon them now

That just the names evoke a poetry.

Don't let go! Just sink into a sea

Of happiness and safety for a while,

A lifetime, and a preparation for

A sweet translation to unconscious.

2-16-14

If you like my poems, I have some books on Amazon, both paperbacks and Kindle.  The paperback are usually $10, and the Kindles are usually $1.  To see them, go to Amazon, click on Books, and write Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.