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.