Pleasures

Rules


I take guesses of the future
By what happened in the past,
And people that I knew
Before I met you.
My poems were an orgy.
Now they're sticklers at the game.
Anyone with talent simply
Writes the way he pleases,
Regardless of the editors,
The rules, the MFAs.
Then he becomes the laws
That genius breaks.


3-29-14

PDL


People at the payday loans
Defy reality.
They talk to you like friends while they are
Sapping all your money,
And you respond in kind.  I think
The loneliness goes deep.
Why must people
Need another person?
Someone like a payday shark
That only wants your blood.


3-29-14

MTM


Mary Tyler Moore (I love her)
Had a good career
Making movies everybody liked.
Now she's old and sick,
Her movies all forgotten.
Perhaps she has the money.
What can anybody buy
To soothe the malady of dying?
Happiness.  Then death.
And finally it's over.
First comes age.  Then dying.
Even Shakespeare died.


3-29-13



Pinocchio


I don't want to be a character.
Perhaps a little funny, but alive.
You bumped me with your nature then recovered.
I'm becoming gentle and reserved.
Nothing like I was.  And also more
And less independent than I was.
You must stay okay for me to do it.
I want to be a freeman who can feel.
I want to be a real little boy.
I read catastrophes can manage that.
I'm facing a catastrophe today,
One that many other people face.
I don't compare myself to other people.
Keats my love said poets are the least
Poetical of people.  He said that.
I don't know how to be poetical.
Consider that, perhaps I qualify.
My early verse is very like an orgy
Of feelings.  And my later verse a prig.
A little wooden boy carved by his parents.
They are dead, and maybe from their mold
The blossom of a single verse will grow,
Pinocchio become a real boy.


3-29-14


Jesus As Is


I just saw a very pretty
Picture of their god,
Enough to make most
Any fagot weak.
But actually that photograph
Was nothing but a fraud.
Here's the truth nobody
Dares to speak.


Actually Jesus had a wart,
Was bald and frequently was constipated
When he settled down to take a crap.
He was an ugly baby.  Almost every baby is.
A wrinkled howling angry little chap.


This isn't sacrilege.  It's simply nature.
People who aren't holy look like this.
If it weren't for cancer and tsunamis
I might be with you requesting bliss.


3-29-14





Pleasures


Every pleasure's sweet.
We live for them god knows.
An old and broken seat,
The smelling of a rose,
A lover when you meet,
But sweeter than all those
Is to rub your feet
And scratch between your toes.


3-29-14

Francis


A Pope to revere -
A man to be killed -
Intelligent, loving -
And therefore despised -


The will of the people
Shall not be suppressed -
All of the people – well,
Some of them – blessed -
God and the devil
Are working the rest-


3-29-13



Still Keats


I love Keats.  I worshiped him for years.
He slightly modified my poesy,
But not much, though maybe when I found him.
And though I still enjoy him, I prefer
Something more substantial, meaningful,
Though also writ in water.  Everything
Is inscribed in water, or the air,
Earth and loves and personalities.


3-29-13

Ending With Roaches


Misunderstood.  Misunderstanding.
Living life completely wrong.
Bolted door and open window
Curtains, through the glass I see
The people talk.  But not a word explicit.
Lots of roaches crawling out the cracks.


3-2-14



Ending With The Church


I feel 20,
Look like 90.
I am 67.
Even though they
Think I'm funny,
Like would be like heaven


If they thought my
Poems good, but
No one says a word.
God is first.
The other fellow's
Second.  I am third.


That's the crap
They teach in churches.
No one really tries it,
Except the guy who's
Parents crushed him.
Predisposed, he buys it.


3-29-14

Farewell

She


A Christian, a republican
And everything that's nice,
And here I sit and talk to you
As though you were not armed,
Naive and foolish,
Loud and silly,
Talking to a snake.
You purchased a diploma
From a private Christian school.
And that diploma dangles like a scalp,
So worn and old the hair's begun to fall.
Your battle cry is “Family!”
So we pretend you like me.
As phony as a seven dollar bill.


3-27-14

Farewell


Flatterer and phony
Who when she is weary
Drives you off,
But she does not reject you,
But becomes so vile
It's imperative you leave.
And she announces this at the beginning -
“It won't me be who ends
This love affair.”


3-27-14

The Cripple


It's physically impossible
For me to say with warmth -
I love you,
I am there for you,
I need you now,
I care -
Without exception
Even without blushing.
I would be an actor
And I couldn't bring it off
While everyone for causes I don't know
Does it daily,
Daily hears it said
So I wash the dishes,
Make your bed and feed the cats -
And often at those special times
When you ask me, spread your soft
Fleece blanket over you
To go to sleep.
My mother beat me brutally
For imitating cripples.
Possibly that's how she made me one.
A kiss no more than nothing on my lips.


3-27-14

Changes


People change in time -
Their personalities -
The friendly ones turn sour,
The hateful ones find god,
And moms forget they used to beat their children.


3-27-14

NYC

NYC


Manhattan – the epitome of Man -
Not clever and delightful, but a beast -
Will trap you in a corner and destroy you
After it has taken what is yours.
And operators on the telephone
Protected by their anonymity
Will seize their chance to rip your living flesh,
And no one ever knows that they were there.
And Broadway, once a source of happiness -
Is nothing but a nightmare made of noise,
A bland conceited stance of affectation.
See New York!  Be trampled in the street -
America's the world – and it is dying -
A giant squid or octopus –  the folks
In little towns – crucibles of vice -
Hang their vulgar bigotries on lines
To dry and warm in god's own perfect sun,
In the sky especially for them,
And send their children happily to war.
No place is better.  And the idiot
Sits in Denny's talking to himself.


3-27-14


War


4 a.m.  I couldn't sleep.
I'm tired and I'm sad.
Since New York I've been associated
With a war.
The radio now has a song for me.
A song of few that has a tune,
Harmony and words.
“It's a cold war.”
The song repeats.
Then with ragged rhythm, “Do
You know what you're fighting for?”
Insistent and accusing,
And the words are in my head.
And some 40 years ago,
A woman in the park,
Slouched exhausted on a bench
In a battle helmet,
Put there by Jacqui Schiff or god,
And meant for me to see.
I'm not a warrior.
I just resist.  I do not fight.
And all of my resistance is defeated.
But had I not resisted every
Image that I saw,
I would be a vegetable in Patton.
This is help?  This is contact?
This is an illusion.


3-26-14

The Computer Tech

The Computer Tech


He knows what he is doing.
Sure-footed, every step
Is planned and lands upon the earth exactly.
Computers are his bailiwick,
To build them or repair -
While in his brain is room for other things,
And life and people.


3-26-14


War


4 a.m.  I couldn't sleep.
I'm tired and I sad.
Since New York I've been associated
With a war.
The radio now has a song for me.
A song of few that has a tune,
Harmony and words.
“It's a cold war.”
The song repeats.
Then with ragged rhythm, “Do
You know what you're fighting for?”
Insistent and accusing,
And the words are in my head.
And some 40 years ago,
A woman in the park,
Slouched exhausted on a bench
In a battle helmet,
Put there by Jacqui Schiff or god,
And meant for me to see.
I'm not a warrior.
I just resist.  I do not fight.
And all of my resistance is defeated.
But had I not resisted every
Image that I saw,
I would be a vegetable in Patton.
This is help?  This is contact?
This is an illusion.


3-26-14

Okay

Alfredo Kraus


I just slept and I feel good -
First time in a month.
I woke up optimistic,
Hopeful, happy, old.
My image in the glass reminds me
Of Alfredo Kraus,
Especially the eyes,
An immortal while alive,
A nature and a voice
To make the angels smile.
Possibly he's dead now.
In pictures I have seen -
And none of them were recent -
He's very very old.
Domingo is alive, robust
And bursts with joy of living.
Kraus is gentle, subtle, small
And beautiful – like Nucci.
And Kraus makes sadness, age and death
Things to be desired.


3-24-14


Salvation


Poets who are very bad,
By dint of perseverance,
Put themselves before the public,
Get themselves in print.
They will die like butterflies
Who haven't any colors,
In an hour or a day.
The fairy dust that coats their wings
Will blow into the air.
While poets who are very good
Will also perish quickly,
And whether they are ever known
Is up to changing fate.
Engel said that anyone
Who's good will be discovered,
A kind of axiom of life,
A thing I must believe.
A thought or hope or fantasy
Akin to their salvation.


3-24-14
Art


My god the 19th Century was rich
With things to see and think and write about!
Though it all came from imagination.
Nature, castles, monuments and loves.
All that's left today is cellophane.
The world is now a better place to live
Except for poverty and terrorism.
Gone the ruins! Gone the Parthenon!
(That was gone two centuries ago.
The Elgin Marbles lie on British soil.)
Medicine and luxuries! Alas
Art – all art – which was forever loved
Only by a few – is disappearing
Replaced by meaning and cacophony.
Sex, religion, mediocrity
Dominate the planet. Atlas Shrugged.


5-9-10

A Blow To Freedom


The NRA – republicans -
Today may possibly relent
And limit how much ammunition
Anyone who buys a gun
(And anyone can buy a gun)
May own. 
To shoot somebody fifty times,
Reduced from twenty thousand,
Is possibly about to pass.
What a blow to freedom!


2-19-13

Money


I wish that I could do
Something with my money
Except just pay my bills
Month to weary month.
A check will come the first -
A happiness short lived.
If I buy a thing,
And I am quite impelled to do it,
I'll be stuck before the month is finished.


3-23-14

Some People


Some people have guts.
Some people have guns.
Some have a country.
Some have the runs.


Some people have god.
Some people have Man.
Some have convertibles.
Some a sedan.


Some have it all.
Some are just had.
Some can survive
Without going bad.


3-24-14
Painters


Renoir and Cezanne,
Picasso – I'd like
To see what they painted
When they were old.
Did they still care?
Or had they ceased
To care?
Or was caring
Innate in their souls?
Or were a canvas,
Brushes and paints
Part of their being alive?


3-24-14
Happiness


You're laughing again.
It makes me glad,
Terribly happy to
Hear you laugh.
If it's to something I said, then I
Am happy seven times over.
We needn't fly in a rocket ship
Or on the dubious wings of prayer
To get to heaven.  It's here and now
In the living room.
And if there is more of a heaven to have,
I don't care.
I'll stay here.
And die when I'm supposed to.


3-25-14

Bad Dreams


Last night my dreams were crazy
But innocuous and mild.
Nothing horrid happened,
But I sweat
And woke up dizzy,
Happy to be back among
The waking and the sane.
What was lying in, behind
The pictures that I saw,
None of them ostensibly
A thing to frighten cats?


3-25-14

Okay


Were it illegal for anyone
To discriminate against anyone
For any reason whatsoever,
Jesus notwithstanding,
The world would be worth living.
But it is not though once it was -
The Golden Age of Life -
And will again in heaven.


3-25-14

Unpopular Opinions

Rock Star


I wrote a hard rock musical.
It gave me great success.
Then I wrote another,
Which the public rose to bless.
Finally I thought,
I resignedly confess,
I'm done with this unpleasant
And constricting mess.
If they wish their infancy
Again, let them regress.
There's something more then this
To be imagined, to express.
 So I wrote an opera.
Trained to a degree,
It made another genre's
Hero out of me.
And as for all the rock I wrote -
Bury it at sea.


3-23-14

Ten Books


Nine books of poems
And a single book of prose.
These are all I love
Of what I've written,
And some of them from
Very long ago.
I've written poems later
That are good or maybe better,
Scattered throughout over 80 books.
Some of these I love as much as any.
To weed this massive garden,
Pluck the flowers from the thorns,
And gather them together in one book,
And fling the refuse out into the sea
To settle like forgotten mariners.
I write poems now.  I'm almost glib.
But these nine books were
Efforts from the heart.

Thirty Years


Thirty years in prison
For a thing he didn't do.
Thirty years in prison
Only waiting for parole.
Thirty year in prison
With the hatred and the pain
Building up like lava in his soul.
Then the day.  He sat before the panel,
Passive, noncommittal.  He just stared.
Then at last a wise and holy man
Asked him, “Are you sorry for your crime?
When you face your god, will you repent?”
Each question like a shaft sank
Ever deeper in his heart.
Then he spoke.
“You shit, I wasn't guilty!”
The board stood up and left,
And he was taken to his cell.
He would have stayed another 30 years,
Except he died before the time was up.


3-23-14

Shostakovitch


I like Shostakovitch too
Except his louds are deafening,
His softs inaudible,
And he switches back and forth
Without the least suspicion.
I run from seat to stereo
And back again incessantly
To turn the volume up or down,
And never find a satisfying,
Tolerable place.


3-23-14

Unpopular Opinions


Rachmaninoff and Shostakovitch
Are the only great ones
In music since the 19th Century.
Berg was outright odious
And died of syphilis.
Maybe Ives could sell a policy.
Stravinsky wrote “The Rite of Spring”.
Prokofiev PCs.
And that is everybody
Who wrote anything at all.
“Overture on Hebrew Themes.”
“Lt. Kije”.  Two 
Small evergreens
Prokofiev imagined.
If they hadn't tried so to be new.
And Tchaikovsky just before them
Couldn't write an opera.
Nor could Mozart.
Music is a butterfly that lights
Without prediction,
Common sense or justice
Just before it flies away forever.


3-23-14

Money


I wish that I could do
Something with my money
Except just pay my bills
Month to weary month.
A check will come the first -
A happiness short lived.
If I buy a thing,
And I am quite impelled to do it,
I'll be stuck before the month is finished.


3-23-14


Staying Young


My sister said that all the world's the same -
Tattoos that will sag when they are 80.
No one's ever 80 anymore.
They're 25 forever.  And the crap
That keeps them young comes from the radio.
Everyone is pretty.  No one's old,
A fate that's even worse than being dead.
Joints that fail, and brains that cease to think.
It seems that Jesus could have thought of that.


3-23-14

Bad Poems


Over 80 books – well, 83 -
I wish I had in manuscript again,
To rid myself of poems that are bad.
Very bad.  Some thoughts are rough and wrong,
And thoughts can very easily be wrong.
9 books and one of prose that make me happy.
And I worked hard to winnow them from life,
Then dropped the stitch and write them as they come.
I wrote the good ones.  Something in me did.
And what it was wrote all the bad ones too.
But among the other 83
Are some poems better than the best,
Little moments of maturity.
The good ones, if they're ever seen at all,
Are my promise of longevity.
And all the good ones written long ago.
Like Lloyd Webber, I did not die then.


3-23-14

Ego


Incessant fusillade of criticism
Until there is no ego left at all,
Just a lot of impulses that fire
Like fireworks into the midnight sky.


Pejoratives and hateful epithets
Smooth the soul until it has no face,
Like a stone beneath incoming waves
That smooth it, then withdraw, then come again.


The mind is not invulnerable to hate
That wishes it were gone.  It never ends.
It lingers till the haters are defunct,
Then finds a refuge in the soul so hated.


3-23-14  

Desultory Stanzas


I read that schizophrenics are
Bizarre and inappropriate -
Social relativity -
But mostly they're unhappy.


A tune is on the radio
From 1969, a song from
Over 40 years ago.  And music
Weirdly calls me back
To days as I was then.


I have a book of poems here -
Some are good and some are bad -
I will not scrap it for the bad -
Named “What is poetry?”


Writing songs of any theme,
Feeling, thought or attitude
Relieves my pressured soul that's squeezed
Among my aging bones.


3-24-14

Tomorrow


Don't think about tomorrow.  It
Will tear your soul to shreds.
Find solutions for today.
Forget about the future.


But that's ignoring consequences,
Things that will most surely come.
There are no answers and no hope
Except make preparations.
Poesy is futile.


3-24-13

If you like my poems, I have collections on Amazon, both paperbacks and Kindles.  The paperbacks are usually $10, the Kindles usually $1.  You can find them by going to Amazon.com, clicking Books on the drop down, and then typing Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

My Sister's Values

My Sister's Values


My sister joined the protest
At the chicken restaurant
In Fresno.  Proudly and as one
They marched against the gays.


She told me all about it.
I protested.  And she swelled
Defiantly and told me
About other people's rights.


Every time we meet
She finds a moment at the end
To praise the tasty chicken
At that chicken restaurant.


We meet today (it's Sunday
And she always goes to church).
I'll suggest a trip together
To the chicken restaurant.
She can eat the chicken.
I'll just have a bowl of sh-t.


3-23-14

Early Morning Soliloquy


There are some like that, and he is one.
They hoist themselves above you
And spit down.
Psychiatry may understand them.
However, I do not.
And every shrink, a different explanation.
And she, the wolf who occupies a chair,
Insisting I should think of her as “doctor”.
My poesy is excellent or bad,
But she who worships Ginsberg wouldn't know.
I sit alone and write it.  I have sat
Alone in seats identical to Denny's,
And now I have accumulated songs,
Abandoned some, remembered some,
Kept others and recoiled
With horror at the messes I've created.
Tomorrow will this poem be the same?
And everything I just wrote yesterday?
Bach is playing on the stereo,
Talented and tame.  They wouldn't like it.
God and rap and violence -
The earth's triumvirate -
And I'm alone with Bach.  And he is dead.
And them!  They do the things that I'm forbidden.
Psychiatry won't set me on the road.
Too leery and too old to try again.  
They'll sneer at me because I am not “well”,
Express their love for other therapists.
And if I tell the truth, they'll laugh at me.
No!  Jesus Christ!  Keep all the shrinks away!
I never want to see another one.
Just the bitch who gives me medications,
To whom I say as little as I can.
The earth's my enemy, and it is winning
(Except a little clutch of friends at Denny's,
All of whom have families and lives).
The lab results were normal.  I'm not dying.
And I will make the best of my affairs.
No images, just metaphors -
No truths, but just ideas -
They took the tricks, but I shall win the game.
All of us shall die, we're all the same.
I am just a skull that has no name.
My sister hates to see me,
Despite her bought degrees.
Memento mori?  Thinking is the keys.
I can't afford to buy the books I write.
These and music are my two obsessions.
But I can write and publish.  That is free.
I'd sell a poem for a pair of boots.
But several books have sold.  They won't say which
At Amazon.  The vendor in Nevada
Tells me everything. The books he's sold
Are not the books that I would recommend.
But two are great that haven't sold a word.
Everybody doesn't think like me.
A cold and sterile concept.  I'm alone. 
I think it is the cover of the books.


3-23-14

In Other Words


Killing the intelligence
Of seven little kids
Is not same as bringing up
Your children.


Teaching them to steal and lie
Is giving them your values,
But not the same as socializing them.


And giving them a food stamp card
When they are 17
Is probably a modern rite of passage.


3-22-14

A Statement


I want to entertain, not make a statement.
Everybody makes a statement now.
Death's the last conclusion anyhow,
It seems to me.  It would appear it's so.
Ideas, rhymes and pictures in a flow
From my consciousness are all I know.
And after that, there is nowhere to go.
Mass opprobrium will make you good,
Call a deity out of the wood
And ratify a cold and mindless should.


3-22-14

A Scene


Autonomous fantasies
Flick through my brain
Whenever I shut my eyes.
Colorful butterflies
Slip through the rain
That fills the autumn skies.


Birds in trees beneath the drops
Spread their wings and shake the dew.
When precipitation stops,
And half an oval sun comes through 
The shadowy leafless branches and a cloud,
A place on earth with fragrance is endowed.


12-7-13

A Scene In A Movie


Sal Mineo in "Rebel" -
And the horror of the stars!
The Cosmos overwhelms
A little pebble on a planet,
Nothing could be tinier,
Smaller, more dispensable, -
Or nothing could be larger,
More gigantic or indifferent,
As Mineo crouched whimpering
In the planetarium.


7-14-11

A Scene


The water hasn't risen for a year.
The tide is out and nobody is here.
Sand crabs in the sand around the pier
Make little holes the waves will level out
And smooth away and wash the devil out
To sea where he will thrash and sink and drown.
The devil was the only game in town.
Now the beach is silent and the sea
Is peaceful, like a page of poetry.


3-22-14

Shall I be on the sidewalk

Two Mses


I'm keeping these two manuscripts
Until I have the cash
To print them.
Their progenitors a little less,
But these two books are gems,
Articulate, distinct and getting bigger.
Should I trash the verse I wrote
Ere I became alive?
It can be good.
It may be indecision.


3-21-14

G.

I called and you were sleeping.
You woke up.  We talked.
My heart came back.
I am a real boy.


3-21-14



Shall I be on the sidewalk


Shall I be on the sidewalk
With a shopping cart of cans,
Sleeping on a porch where I'm not wanted?
Going nowhere, everybody's end,
Despite the goals accomplished prematurely.
My sister.  God my sister!
I'll even talk to her,
A homophobe that joined a crowd against me.
I'm so lonesome, I may talk to god.
No motive but to be the greatest
Poet since Millay,
But read her once,
That's all there is to read.
Unlike Keats.  I plunge into his sea,
Forever swimming and forever touching.
It never ceases.  Keats is evergreen.


3-21-14

Rap


New people in my life and I don't like it,
New faces, names and personalities.
Tattoos all.  And rock and rap.  No music
With the charms to soothe the savage breast.
I was not born late, and not too early.
The world is gone.  And ugliness is king.
They took the black man's rights.  And in return,
He gave them rap.   And violence is god.
And the people love it.  This is death.


3-20-14

Off The Cuff


I was just repeating
What the doctor said to me.
I didn't have an inkling what it meant.
Reading tea leaves, searching in
Abstruse astrology,
Are the only answers heaven sent.


She asked me, “Can I help you?”
But a teller in a bank.
I said, “I wish you could.  I really doubt it.”
Do what people tell you or else
God almighty spank.
I've done until I cannot do without it.


3-21-14

Status Quo

Rap

New people in my life and I don't like it,

New faces, names and personalities.

Tattoos all. And rock and rap. No music

With the charms to soothe the savage breast.

I was not born late, and not too early.

The world is gone. And ugliness is king.

They took the black man's rights. And in return,

He gave them rap. And violence is god.

And the people love it. This is death.

3-20-14

Roxie

Roxie is your tabby,

Kindly, not too bright.

To sleep above your head

Constitutes what's right.

Rather old and gentle,

She doesn't want to fight,

Provoke her to the limit,

She's hot like dynamite.

When you were alone,

Day as long as night,

Roxie of her choice,

Led by inner light,

Chose you for companionship -

Responding to your plight.

You've been friends forever,

No end in sight.

3-20-14

 

Feelings

The animal's behavior

Is inexplicable

If you do not recognize emotions.

The nasty doctors sneer

But they don't explain,

Undermining heaven with new hell.

Paradise and punishment -

Something from the Greek -

Charon steering cross the river Styx.

3-19-14

 

Status Quo

Very little changes -

The set, the scene, the props.

Though different the same

Many years ago.

On the mental ward

In county hospitals,

I found the cafeteria

And sat there smoking cigarettes

And staring at the walls.

Now I sit in Denny's.

I no longer smoke.

Instead I doodle poesy

And look into the distance.

3-19-14

A Kiss

Just Sitting Down In Denny's


If the music moves you?
Yeah.  Across the street.
And that two legged splendor
Screaming in the night.


Nothing but some drums
With a heavy bass.
Probably guitars.
Racket with a beat.


3-19-14

A Kiss


Either I'm loved or I'm not.
Pretending I don't care which.
On a bridge across a divide,
Looking down in a deep ravine.


Love's only happiness sure.
I'm inarticulate always.
It scuttled my time with the shrinks.
What can't I say?  I don't know.


Holding improbable hands.
Friendship as sweet as a kiss.
Though I never got a sensation
From kissing.  The touching of lips.


3-19-14

Sitting In Denny's


I'm back on shore.
The Schiffs are gone
Deep in the waters
They walked upon.


My mind is calm.
And I can see
Everything
That's up to me.


The muddled rage that clogged my mind
Is disappeared.  And I'm inclined
To touch the diamond refined,
And see myself as god designed.


3-19-14

Status Quo


Very little changes -
The set, the scene, the props.
Thought different the same
Many years ago.


On the mental ward
In county hospitals,
I found the cafeteria
And sat there smoking cigarettes
And staring at the walls.


Now I sit in Denny's.
I no longer smoke.
Instead I doodle poesy
And look into the distance.


3-19-14



Feelings


The animal's behavior
Is inexplicable
If you do not recognize emotions.


The nasty doctors sneer
But they don't explain,
Undermining heaven with new hell.


Paradise and punishment -
Something from the Greek -
Charon steering cross the river Styx.


3-19-14

The Artichoke

Strange Music

Quaint originalities of words,

Not total demolition of all form,

That wake the mind to what is happening,

Poignant like the touching of cool breath

On the skin of hearts that are asleep -

This is what a poet can accomplish

When he is alert to what he's thinking,

And doesn't drown his children when they're strange.

Teachers praise an element of art,

But not the magic of what's being said.

Is magic unawareness of the reasons,

Or is it more than something that mundane?

3-18-14

The Artichoke

Opera! A genre magical,

Eclipsed to some,

A paradise for others.

A fluke in time,

A modern Muse in Europe

For about a hundred years,

Mozart predeceased it,

Verismo at the wake,

The prickly leaves of artichokes

Protect the tender heart,

Before it crude, unpleasant

Music, at the end

Berg and his insanity

Taper into mist.

Regardless what is written

In lengthy explanations,

Like Pollack and his pictures,

The proof is in the glory of the sound

That one need but listen to endear.

Now opera is silent in its grave,

Although misshapen zombies from the tomb,

Barely recognized for what they were,

Come out at night – and crumble into dust.

3-18-14

 

Kitty

I ruined the cat by hollering

When he was in the way.

Now he doesn't know whether to move

Or settle down and stay.

When I touch him or pat his butt

He turns to face the wall,

And stands there like a horse who can't

Turn round inside his stall.

Kitty the terrorized pussy cat!

Men are just the same,

Whether they are wanted,

Frightened, mild and tame.

But pet him as though he's normal,

He'll lie upon my lap,

And just this side of waking,

Take a little nap.

I killed the mind of a pussy cat.

It wasn't hard to do.

Fall in love with someone,

It could be done to you.

I was not born unburdened

By terror of the sea,

But 10 years with my mother

Did the same to me.

3-18-14

Kitty

In the twisted mind of our oldest cat,

He clings to me like ivy,

And will not go away.

At the slightest effort to shoo him,

He turns toward the wall,

Like he's used to being beaten

And suffers it with love,

Julie Jordan to my Bigelow.

An emaciated spectre

That simply doesn't learn,

Flinches at a movement,

Terrified to live,

A foil that strikes back rarely

At our terrorizing kitten,

And who unlike the others,

Cannot endure three hours

Of fasting by our tabby

Who has to take a pill,

He stirs a rage in me that I

With difficulty smother.

And still he will not love somebody else.

3-18-14

To Speak Without Rebuke

The Atavist

What makes the old verse better?

Will I escape the fetter

That keeps me looking back,

Feeling there's a lack

In what I just wrote?

If yesterday is gold,

When today gets old

Tomorrow I will feel

Today holds all the weal,

Though in the dust wrote.

Why can't I break the tether

That holds both days together,

Warmed by a single flame,

And love them both the same,

And simply just write?

Something in my brain

Regrets I was insane,

So many years gone by,

Nothing in the sky,

I feel I must write.

3-15-14

My Masterpiece

I'm the opposite

Of painters who must try

To complete their masterpieces

Just days before they die.

I am like Rimbaud

Who didn't write a song

After he was 20,

Although the days were long.

My best verse was written

By 1985,

Though I continue writing

So long as I'm alive.

3-15-14

 

A Theme

“A theme! A theme! Great nature give a theme!”
One with all the cosmos in a dream,

Amorphous, deep and empty conscious,

Eternal like the sea. No Jesus ever!

Except for all the horrors and his faults

Innate in human kind, and hurricanes,

God would be an easy myth to take,

So much so seems likely. Ah but no.

My head sinks in the pillow, and I sleep

Surrounded by the soldiers of the cross,

Who kill to love. And in the end they'll fade

Into the nothing of their last December,

I think. And it seems likely, apropos.

What else is there in great space to dream?

3-17-14

 

Horrible Writers

Hemingway, Morrison,

Faulkner and Steinbeck -

Bloody guts in a violent world!

Setting people afire asleep -

Dragging men over stones by a horse -

Shooting the stupid -

A room of darkness -

Go away Heathcliff -

Come into the light -

Replace the bulb

And open the curtain -

The people adore them but

Not for a reason -

And Heathcliff was only a man!

3-17-14

 

Millay & The Sea

Millay was insane. She craved to drown.

She begged to be buried where ships went down.

Sucking and spanking the wooden wharf,

(All overseen by a maddened dwarf),

The waves go in and the waves go out.

She dreamed of the ocean and woke with a shout.

Regardless, for salty waves she moans,

Murmuring fossils and water-soaked bones.

She wrote great poems, unusually fine,

That fill me with joy, like the first glass of wine.

3-17-14

To Speak Without Rebuke

To speak without reprisal or rebuke,

Sweet air of freedom -

Fishes in a tank

With only water and transparent glass.

A captive only of the things I need,

And seeing I need nothing I can't get.

Poesy is slipping from my grasp

Like a fish

That swiftly swims away.

No more wit

Or cleverness with phrases -

Where paradoxes masquerade as truths -

The universe it self is paradox!

And lips upon its pulse

Was Oscar Wilde.

Maybe giving up the poesy,

I find poesy in what is left.

In a single poet,

Such as Eliot, Millay,

There's a world of things that can be said.

Eliot discovered he was good,

And then turned bad.

Millay was evergreen.

3-18-14

 

Wit

I lost my sense of humor.

It went the way it came.
I used to be insulting,

But it was in such a way

That no one was insulted.

Now I cannot talk.

And when I jest, I do it with a club.

Jesus Christ!

I have no other friends!

Wit! It's more like sinuses congested

With the onset of a summer cold.

Will my awful parents close the show?

Although it had a lengthy run? And I

Will strike the sets and burn the theater!

3-18-14

 

The Teddy Bear

Keats is like my Teddy Bear.

I hug him to my cheek,

Pummel him and pull the stuffing out.

Far away for long, I start to

Crave to be in bed,

Holding him and dreaming of the moon

That regulates the movements in my soul.

3-18-14

 If you like my poems, I have some collections on Amazon.  Both paperbacks and Kindle.  To see them, go to Amazon, click Books on the dropdown, then type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

Larry Hart

Idly

Assuming everybody has

A motor and a gyroscope

Somewhere in his cranium,

I let the kitten go.

He staggered and he stumbled and he

Furtively looked round him then he

Tentatively took steps and then he

Took off at a pace.

Clerks who answer telephones say,

“Who have I the pleasure of -” or

Something just as nauseous.
Just as they were told.

3-15-14

 

Rx

Good old Doctor Chan,

A true American,

Among his peers in medicine,

A doubtful also ran.

When I had the shingles

(Disgusting word, the shingles),

He said it's so contagious

Just to touch the rash

Destroys the mechanism of a brain.

And I believed implicitly

Everything he said.

When my thigh was aching

He prescribed two pills

With no effect what ever.

I asked for something else.

He said to have an x-ray

Which meant a drive to Fresno

In an old jalopy

60 miles away,

Before he'd do a thing.

I took the trip to Fresno,

Came back and told the doctor,

Who kept me on the medicine,

Although it didn't work.

And if I wasn't happy,

He said to have some therapy,

Which I could get in Fresno.

I won't go in for therapy.

I'm sticking to the pills

That do no good. A fool

Who hasn't the diploma that

Would net 100 thou.

3-15-14

 

Larry Hart

I never wanted Keats.

Perhaps a little Poe.

But Larry was my hero.

Sing clever songs and go.

Everybody knows

That love and death are futile.

Ignore them with a happy song,

Clever and inutile.

He's dancing on the surface

Of a glacier to a song,

While underneath the ice,

Deep in the ocean, something's wrong.

I cannot make his rhymes.

Nobody did before.

Everything I write turns into

Something on a shore.

A happy little pixie,

Not so glad at all,

Had a home on Broadway.

There was music in the hall.

My single most endeavor

Is that clever Larry Hart

Got a lot of pleasure

From the genius of his art.

3-15-14

 

Lines

The least approach of living summons death,

Awareness in the offing not yet come -

Memento mori – confiscates my breath

For a moment – shorter than the sum.

Cliches – the bane of song – but Shakespeare wrought

His own cliches – originality

So comprehensive – every minor thought -

And made it seem that life is poesy.

3-15-14

If you like my poems, I have several collections on Amazon - both paperbacks and Kindle.  Most of the paperbacks are $10, and most of the Kindles are $1.  To see them, go to Amazon, click on Books in the drop down, then type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

Poems Of Ideas

A Companion

Now it seems that I must think alone.

No one wants to listen to me talk.

I sit alone surrounded by the cats,

A cranium that's bursting with ideas,

Memories and anecdotes and truths,

Such as I conceive them. So alone

May be good for verse, not for the soul.

3-13-14

Poetry

Jesus, pot and poetry!

To create sensations

With a slew of words.

To resurrect a lover

Who left a year ago.

To delve into the psyche

And fetch a single pearl.

People love their families.

I only love my verse.

3-14-14

 

Mike The Shrink

Mike the crippled shrink knew what was best

For everyone, and Jesus knew the rest.

The patient came to therapy a year,

Listened, talked and never drank a beer.

He begged for more, but Mike was very firm,

Discharged the patient like he was a worm.

He told him, “You've had treatment. Go. Be well.”

Diplomas were his guarantee to hell.

3-14-14

 

Poems Of Ideas

My poesy is poems of ideas,

Little thoughts when they occur to me,

Poignant notions, paradoxes, truths

That are not true at all, though some things are.

This isn't what I like, it's what I do.

I can't write any other kind of verse.

Ornaments and images and phrases

Are not at my command. Sometimes I think

That if I took a while upon each poem,

Such lunacies lurk deep inside of me,

And I could drop a shaft and dredge them up.

Millay and Keats both did that kind of thing,

But does that bar it to somebody else?

Whether or not, I lack the will to do it,

Nor imagine what it would be like.

No poems doing psychotherapy!

No poems about prosody.

And no confessionals!

In union shout the editors of

Trashy little rags.

Defiantly I write what pleases me.

Defiantly, I cannot get in print.

3-14-14

 

Lines

The tooth is out.

The gentleman is love,

And anyone who is in love with love

Is happy in his presence,

In his home,

Happiness and kindness,

Mirth and humor,

And most of all a gentleness

Leavened by a mind.

3-14-14

 

Classes

What people do to children is insane.

The low life scuttles their intelligence.

The upper buys them Jesus and a Porsche.

No parent is arrested for these crimes.

Society, their cultures and the courts

Defend their right to crucify their children

Without caution, mind or interference.

No one cares. The parent is supreme.

And when a rich kid blows himself to pieces,

Or a poor one spends his life in jail,

The world laments the trials of a mother.

And Jesus is invoked to comfort her.

3-14-14

Questions

A therapist in Oakland

Stood and yelled at me,

“Ask questions!” And he did it

Very suddenly.

That was long ago.

Today it isn't true.

Instead it makes you angry

Any time I do.

And your little buddy,

For whom the country waits,

When she's asked a question

Just prevaricates.

3-15-14

 

A Jingle

I like a baked potato

With sour cream and chives.

Republicans and Christians

Ruin people's lives.

3-27-13

 

Two Stanzas

The trouble is you have to understand them.

Following the rules is not enough.

A different set of rules for everybody.

Manipulation, avarice

And cunning take the tricks.

And everyone is mad except the dealer.

They loved me at first glance, and then stopped loving,

Garrulous, self-centered and naïve.

They liked my poesy, and then got glutted.

And moving up the ladder to

Superior positions,

Looked down with condescending and conceit.

3-15-14

 

Changes

Loyal to the teeth

To Hart & Rodgers. Those

Fellows (all beneath)

Never seemed to close.

Perceptibly a stir

As evolution grows,

It seems I now prefer

A couple Loesser shows.

3-15-14

Poesy

Profile

You make autonomy a dirty word.

Such an attitude is just absurd.

You're about the biggest name in town.

And underneath your wimple is a crown.

3-14-13

Poesy

Why do I write poesy, whyever?

The goal of Keats was beauty. So unreal.

Millay was unrequited love

And promiscuity.

And everything was Brooke,

But mostly love.

Did only Keats have purpose

In his whole endeavor?

Who can say what poesy is for?
The aims of its creators,

Or nothing much at all.

Why do I write poesy, whyever?

Guilty rhythms slinking down an alley

In the darkness after midnight. Dreams

And fantasies and phrases from

The pilot of my soul.

An immortal nothingness! Like god.

I don't have music,

And my rhymes are old.

Will I write until I perish?

I have nothing more to say.

I was done in 1998.

I'm a zombie living after death.

3-14-14

 

A Brief Goodbye

Like a fly upon the water,

You're floating out to sea.

Your flattery goes with you,

That never captured me.

Your rebukes and censure

And simple cruelty

Are just a little past

And painful memory.

So much for my attempts

To live like poetry!

3-13-14

Ambivalence

I read my poems sometimes, and it seems

There is no joy like this outside of dreams.

At other times, a brogan to the soul!

The gems transmuted back into some coal.

What shame to think these poems have been seen.

Embarrassment is painful, sharp and keen.

How pitiful I am to write such verses!

Good poets die unread. The grave disperses

Their dust to the conclusion of their fate.

Others simply sit alone and wait.

Poesy! Of beautiful intent.

Nothing ventured, no embarrassment.

3-13-14

A Metaphor

Often waking up delights me.

I'm alive and I am here.

For an hour sparrows sing

Within my wanton soul.

Then the castle crumbles at

Its base and its foundation.

Stone and rocks and pebbles,

Once the battlements, collapse

And strew themselves around a fetid moat.

The drawbridge weakens. Naked

I'm beset again and sad.

3-13-14

Sparrows

Sparrows flock and flutter up the flue,

Coming out the chimney like brown smoke.

And at the hearth inside the house, warm love

Like fluid in a tank where fishes swim,

Beckons them return. There is no fire,

Just cold ash and coals behind the grate.

I cannot judge people! They elude

The understanding of my intuition,

Escaping its circumference, the ones

I love the most least worthy of a love.

But him! Whose kindly warmth lights up my soul

And lets me know what love is. She declared

I'm using her. But only if the end
Of every conversation is to fuck.

It is not, as far as I'm concerned.

And if it is, the world is as it seems.

And I never understood the world.

3-13-14

The Trouble With The World

Honesty


I believe in honesty, not truth.
Truth changes every second generation.
Intelligence is saying what I see.
Greater depth takes thought and that is
Usually wrong.
Protean and nebulous,
Truth is like a flame,
Flickering and beautiful
And bending in a breeze.
But honesty is not a battle cry.
And gentleness and happiness
Are better than the truth.
Phony and pretentious, I write
Poems out of thought,
Not instruction or belief.  And like a fist
Of mud upon a window in the rain,
I describe a world I cannot see.


3-12-14

Feelings


Censor your feelings, dismember your song.
Be whole.  The soul cannot be wrong.
Dredge up a feeling from rain-moistened ground,
Then put it in ornaments, rhythm and sound.
Lie in the darkness and swallow the night,
Living emotions – doing what's right.


3-12-14

 The Trouble With The World


The trouble with the world is people think,
Misinterpret someone, and attack,
Too much independence and a
Paucity of love.
People need,
And change their lovers monthly.
Mouths that lie disorient the world.
It's easier to hate a person
Than to understand him.
Understanding is a guessing game.

3-12-13


Rupert Brooke


The only perfect poet I have
Read is Rupert Brooke,
Native language natural,
Words in perfect compliments.
An errant mind in sweet intelligence!


3-12-14














If you like my poems, I have some collections on Amazon.  Both paperbacks and Kindles.  The paperbacks are mostly $10, and the Kindles mostly $1.  To see them, go to Amazon, click on Books on the dropdown, then type Joseph Hart Poetry in the search bar.

Tradition

Mike


I remember Mike,
20 year old tyke,
Who pointed out my fallacies
(The things he didn't like)
With a very rare
Authoritative stare
Like a psychotherapist.
In Berkeley on the square
He stood and turned in circles, but
Nobody seemed to care.


3-10-14

A Wish


If I had the power,
I'd clean my mind for aye
Of the Schiffs and Mary Kelly.
I'd sweep them all away,
Forgetting every word
I ever heard them say.
It would be delightful
To wake up every day
As though they never were.
And not a trace would stay.


3-10-14
Berne's Paranoia


I am not a paranoid.
I never thought I was.
Then I met the Schiffs.
That's what thinking does.


What's a schizophrenic?
I never knew.  I guessed.
Unless the whole contraption
I unconsciously repressed.


I never thought that people
Were any less than I,
Nor wished to change the world,
Or looked above the sky.


God help me if the world
Played another joker
And I'm really paranoid,
Which means I'm mediocre.


It doesn't matter what
The other symptoms are.
My aim to be a poet
Would be a falling star.


3-10-14
My Poems


I washed the window glass.
I see the world aright.
I am deep in poverty.
No succor is in sight.


I do not write like Keats,
Shakespeare or Millay.
I simply put in rhythm
What I want to say.


Such verse is very Yankee
Whose poems are a bore.
What's the good or writing?
Poesy is more.


Ornaments and rhythms,
Rhyme and metaphor,
Images and senses -
My frigate left the shore.


But little Larry Hart
With nothing more to say
Made a verse of pleasure,
Happiness and play.


Still I continue writing
So constantly it's dumb,
As though there's something rubbing
In my cerebrum.


A couple metaphors,
A passing glance at sense,
Rhythms mostly hopeful,
And some ornaments.


It releases pressure
Though only partially,
But I continue calling
This endeavor poesy.

Release


The Schiffs and Mary Kelly
Released me from their tether,
And now it seems that they
Were holding me together.


I did it from within.
I must carry on.
I pulled a couple levers
And all of them are gone.


I'm anxious and I feel
My queasy stomach tremble.
Should I tell truth
Or continue to dissemble?


Am I really lying?
Lying is a sin.
This must be the truth
Because I'm saying it again.


Something is affecting
This remnant of my mind.
Do I crave security
America designed?


To hell with the security
They beckon to above!
I need the gentle voice
Of someone that I love.


3-10-14

Tradition


Tradition the master
And I am the slave,
Carpeting cobblestones
Down to the grave,
Coercion and history
Make you behave -
A legion of robots
So everyone's brave -


3-10-14


Therapy


Do your best with what you are.
Therapy will kill you.
Wish upon a  friendly star.
Perhaps it will fulfill you.


But get their words and faces
Lodged inside your brain,
And you will live in misery,
And there they will remain.


3-10-14

Afghanistan & America

Afghanistan & America

How many million victims bled?

Social customs should be dead.

Not the people who instead

Live as they prefer to.

Dead archaic gods still haunt

Those who marry whom they want.

Patriarchs and bigots vaunt

Myths at those who were to.

Yankees and the Afghans bray

Their prejudice, and preachers pray

That god himself will join the fray.

Love they don't refer to.

3-10-14

What To Remember

Therapists and doctors

Mocked me with contempt.

With people like myself

My feelings were exempt.

Love and sex commingled.

Books and music met

Gently in she darkness

Underneath the net.

Put aside the pain

It seems that I forget.

Unearth the happiness

I've not forgotten yet.

3-9-14

 

Break

I can write confessionals.

I can make them art.

Though they lack the euphony

Of Shakespeare, Keats or Hart.

Lovely! With the metaphors

Of pictures in a glass,

Contented with the summer green

Of lying on the grass.

Anything could happen now.

Nature is a curse!

I could meet a bloody end

While writing happy verse.

Does it make me paranoid

Thinking thoughts like those?

Was I born alone to see

The aphid in the rose?

Damn that hateful epithet!

I hope the shrinks are wrong.

That paranoids will only write

A mediocre song.

3-9-14

 

Patchwork

Shakespeare wasn't simple

Nor were his ideas.

Everything approaching life

Reminds me that I'll die.

If there is no humor,

What is there to feel?

Death is just a rumor.

Life is what is real.

Beggars on the corner,

Workers in a field,

Congressmen and grocers

Do it for the money.

I wrote myself a letter

Remembering the past.

My mind is working better.

Maybe it will last.

Junkets would have been

Shakespeare for a dime.

When Shakespeare's good, none's better.

Bad he's just confusing.

Though callous moneylenders

Readily rebuff,

I think we'll reach tomorrow

With only just enough.

One concatenation

Of catastrophes -

This has been my life.

Let it continue please.

3-9-14

 

Not Conceit

I was born a fool,

A puerile simple ass,

Without any heart,

Without any class.

A verdict shrilly told

By swans with ugly voices,

I'm loved by other ducklings.
This is what my choice is.

My poems when they're good -

The ones I don't destroy -

Are perfect. And to read them,

A consummate joy.

Mommie's little girl

Grew up to be a boy.

That's the way I see

The only seeds I've sown.

It seems that way in Denny's,

Or when I'm alone.

3-9-14

To George & Jill

Now I think I write good verse.

Will this make it go away?

Will my tutelage, a Muse,

Consent to stay?

I wrestled with the god of hell

Debating whether I was bad

Or good. Tonight I read two books,

And I was glad.

I never scored the passages

(Like Keats) in poems I preferred.

I merely took a pen and wrote.

It was absurd.

On the eve of my descent

Back into insanity,

I flunk the acid litmus test

Of vanity.

Poetasters who believe

Their poetry exceeds the great,

And tell the world to look at it

Succumb to fate.

3-10-14

Fate

I used to feel unread

My poesy was bad,

Considered several books

The only good I had.

I felt an awful dread

To have my poems read.

Sequestered in a hole

With rat dung and despair,

No one except me

Ever really there,

Constantly I wrote,

Hopeless like a goat.

Too frightened to believe

That anything was good,

Superstitiously

Thinking that it would

Mean the verse was trash

To think a thought so rash.

Have I overcome

But never understood

This fantasy of fate?

And are the poems good?
Tonight I feel a change,

Familiar but strange.

Or am I deeper in

The crucible of hate,

Drowning like a rock,

Oblivious to fate?
It's all a crazy game.

The poems are the same.

3-10-14