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