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