Ending With Roaches

Joe

I need a better name than Joe.

I used to know a Joseph,

Cruel and despicable -

His obligating love.

I also knew another Joe,

When we were boys together.

He was gentle and endearing,

But I answered love with lust,

And shattered it.

The first Joe was a treasure to be loved,

And loving to a positive degree.

But I loved neither.

And reject the second.

The first Joe still resents me.

And we met again as men.

Remembering some 57 years,

I blushed and he looked angry.

The second Joe?
The less of him the better.

3-1-14

Postmortem

At 67, and he's still alive.

So many years elapsed, so few remaining.

Mistakes, faux pas and blunders! People hurt.

For lack of something else, believe in karma,

As inconsistent as another myth.

An inability to go with faith.

Contradictions, mockery and fraud -

Flattery when truth is obvious.

And yes! The verse is good. And repetition

Won't make bad verse better. The deluded

Project self-love upon their poetry,

Just as Freud regarded every love.

Beyond that distant wall there is a joy.

1-3-14

Superior

Superior to me. An air

Superior to me,

Whose father called naïve,

His father's mother with a laugh

An idiot,

Too selfish to perceive.

Under rocks he never saw

The clarity of sunlight -

Fascinated by the moon in clouds,

Content to be alone and as he is.

If not superior

To anyone in anything,

A kind of grandiose humility.

3-1-14

 

Inside

Sitting on the outside looking in

But drawn by tentacles that do not touch

Into the center of the hurricane.

The glass is there. He's taken. Not a soul

Can pull him through. They reach and try again.

To stay upon the road, go in no houses.

The road is dead. Dead cats lie on its shoulder.

Misunderstanding dominates his life.

3-1-14

Autonomy

All the world's a poem -

Every aspect, each idea.

Just feed it to the alchemy

Of imagination,

And if the Muse is willing, it is art.

One who's self-reliant

Is my ticket into freedom.

Needs are met or otherwise

The organism dies.

Another's independence is

My own soul's privacy.

Either way, the poetry is there.

3-1-14

 

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

 

State Of Affairs

We won't have any extra,

But today we have enough.

The homicides continue.

Were policemen always rough?

They gathered up the sick ones

And took them to the Bay

And left them on the sidewalk.

And then they went away.

Jacqui Schiff is dead.

A blight has been removed.

Tuesday he is coming home.

By someone he is loved.

My verse is like a diary.

It lacks the crystal edge

That would make it poetry.

I'm hanging from the ledge

Still wrenching with an effort

To hoist myself upon it,

As someone told me years ago.

(I cannot write a sonnet.)

9-22-13

State Of Affairs

Kill the fish! Slaughter and blood!

Shoot the birds! They fall with a thud!

Pray to Jesus, Mohammed and stalk

Intelligent pianists playing Bach!

Turn the psychos out on the street

With no where to sleep and nothing to eat!

You're in the twenty-first century now.

Everyone lives, and no one knows how.

Be a beggar and never get took!

Go into practice and write a book!

Violence, bigotry, rap and war.

The world is over. Who wants more?!

3-3-14