What To Remember

My Three Loves

The farther back I go for love,

The softer it becomes.

Boys my age of mad demeanor

In their infancy.

I was evil, courting her

Because I loved her brother.

And in the military, he

Was crazy, drunk and warm.

Some years later, my last love

Who carried an umbrella,

Took me to the station where

I vanished into life.

Unable now to love at all

Or rarely feel a thing,

Vicarious through poesy

I diagnose myself.

Maybe I have loved more often.

I don't really know.

But kinder men I've never met

Than those whom I remember.

And now the man I'm living with

Who seems to love me some,

Could easily be my fourth love,

Except the tide was wrong.

3-8-14

Syria

In Syria the archeologists,

Enduring the stupidity of war,

Are digging up the remnants of old gods

While the followers of new ones shoot to kill.

Bones that painted pictures on grey stones

Are buried in the rubble of the ground.

They have no longer anything to prove,

And I believe in nothing except death.

3-8-14

Looking Squarely

A verse devoid of anything

Except an ardent wish to sing

Is less than Shakespeare, more than Keats

And with the nightingale competes.

He liked my poems when we met.

I felt excitement brew.

It's just the pain I can't forget.

Time wearies of that too.

Long ago he liked my songs,

But now I think they're bad.

I didn't know so little time

Was all a poet had.

3-8-14

 

What To Remember

Therapists and doctors

Mocked me with contempt.

With people like myself

My feelings were exempt.

Love and sex commingled.

Books and music met

Gently in she darkness

Underneath the net.

Put aside the pain

It seems that I forget.

Unearth the happiness

I've not forgotten yet.

3-9-14

 

Desperate

Mary Kelly, Mary Nell -

Like sticky jelly coating hell!

I've nearly cleansed my mind of you.

What did you attempt to do?

I wrote a poem, paper, ink,

And showed it to another shrink.

He exploded with a laugh.

Must I admit another gaffe?

Damn! The mysteries devolve

Upon me just the wise can solve!

I am not wise, I am not smart.

My soul belongs to god and art.

3-9-14

Break

I can write confessionals.

I can make them art.

Though they lack the euphony

Of Shakespeare, Keats or Hart.

Lovely! With the metaphors

Of pictures in a glass,

Contented with the summer green

Of lying on the grass.

Anything could happen now.

Nature is a curse!

I could meet a bloody end

While writing happy verse.

Does it make me paranoid

Thinking thoughts like those?

Was I born alone to see

The aphid in the rose?

Damn that hateful epithet!

I hope the shrinks are wrong.

That paranoids will only write

A mediocre song.

3-9-14

Lust

I was never proper.

I was not born a prude.

Efforts made to civilise me

Came across as crude.

Exhibitionism,

Kinky sex and bold,

In men's rooms at the railway stations.

Now I'm just too old.

I never was a prig.

What good men eschew

And Romney calls indecency

Is what I used to do.

But constantly monotonous,

A repetitious bore!

There are other pleasures,

And many please me more.

3-9-14

Back

Regressing back to crazy

When the pain was less,

Therapy was fiction,

Manhattan not a mess.

With values of my choosing,

My poesy was nice,

My cranium a cauldron

I could not open twice.

But I would not be crazy,

Only out of pain.

Either, or. And strangers

Regard me with disdain.

Preachers howled from pulpits

On destiny and sin.

Be like other people

And they'll let you in.

I was on the edges,

A shadow person who

Lingered in the rushes,

And all my loves did too.

3-9-14