Edna Millay

Edna Millay

Millay, the mother of a hill,

And Lancelot lies dying -

Millay is imbecilic still,

Unless the night is lying.

She wants to lie beneath a wave

And let the big fish eat her

When she's dead. Oh splendid, brave!

Will time in time repeat her?

Eons in the future will

Another Edna be?

Juxtaposing genes until

She walks out of the sea?

3-3-14

Millay

I have found a gentle soul mate,

And it isn't Keats or Brooke.

Like a gargoyle's head I fought her

To begin with, in her in a book.

So ridiculous she's perfect,

An enchantress of the soul,

Several threads in repetition

Woven in a single whole.

A misbegotten love for Jesus

Is her fancy. I don't share it.

Bury her far out at sea,

And let me her gift inherit.

3-3-14

 

Millay

I never sought a lover, but

In Keats I thought I'd found one,

A love too alien to me

For years, and not a sound one.

After Keats, a jelly fish

Enveloping my brain,

Jeffers, Byron, Larkin, Brooke,

Like brief replacements came.

And my heart rejected her

More quickly than the rest.

Now I'm sinking in her sea,

The water at my chest.

I think she is ridiculous,

Impossible, sublime,

But I am standing in her sea,

My feet sunk into slime.

I worship heroes, cling to loves,

As steadfast as a star.

You said I can't give up an ex.

How very right you are.

3-3-14

 

Poverty

Gentle person using drugs

Put poverty in verse.

Infectious laugh and happy hugs,

Reality is worse.

She didn't bastardize the pain

Of penury. It hurts.

I'm at Denny's once again

In one of my new shirts,

Still unwashed and yellow, the

First time I've had it on.

I'm a foolish fellow, the

Last dollar will be gone,

Not tomorrow, not next week,

Before the month has ended.

Quit my debts? Or useless seek

The people I befriended?

3-3-14

Difference

If my verse is lost, there is no god.

I don't want to verify this claim.

Are there gods in Syria,

Africa, Ukraine?

Is there poetry? I couldn't read it.

And if I read it, couldn't understand it.

And if I understood it, wouldn't care.

Aren't people universally the same?

Yet every culture has a foreign art.

Even music, language of the soul,

Is alien to every other soul.

A thousand countries, fundamentally

Alike, completely differ from the others.

Another music, and another god.

3-3-14

 

Disgust

Am I too repulsive for a glance?

We bumped each other. I apologized.

So did he, then quickly turned away

With a distant and disgusted look.

Age is a preliminary death.

A soul too nondescript to be remembered,

Passes too unnoticed to forget.

3-3-14