From The Gutter

“God's World”

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

Thy roaches and thy prickly pears!

Thy rattle snakes, thy grizzly bears!

Thy mustard gas, thine homophobes!

Thine AIDS, thy germs, thy rap, the robes

Around thy white supremacists!

World, world! J. Edgar Hoover's lists!

Long have I known the horrors that appall,

But never knew I this:

The deadly nightshade's kiss,

Which sounds like something out of Johnny Keats

Whom critics mock, tuberculosis eats;

My soul – well, I don't have a soul – the fall

Comes just before the winter. That is all.

(with no apologies to Edna St. Vincent Millay)

11-24-10

 

Alone Tonight

Ensconced in my seclusion,
How can poesy be fate?

I have music when I want it,

No one at the garden gate,

Stars when it is midnight

And a moon that stops my breath,

Hidden in dark clouds that are

A replica of death.

Far away the ocean

Beats the shore. I cannot hear it

Except in memory. And I have

Never been less near it.

From the dregs of time

The dragon lifted from its throes,

Suddenly in air, and laughed

Like a pink-lipped rose.

Sequestered in my solitude,

No hope and no remorse,

Like the tale of Nietzsche,

I'll run out and kiss a horse.

10-4-12

 

From The Gutter

He hasn't read a book since grammar school,

And didn't like the one that he read then.

He's sitting on a fender like a fool

Jeering at the educated men.

He's made more babies than a dozen bunnies,

None of whom he's able to support.

More pictures on him than the Sunday funnies,

Tomorrow is another day in court.

10-2-12

 

Day Treatment

What's a symbiosis?

I don't know what it means.

She believed I did.

John stole all the scenes.

Begin was a hunk,

Strutted like a king,

Doing therapy,

Didn't know a thing.

Ann was very witty,

Skinny as a bean,

Shooed away the underdog,

Laughing like a queen.

Transactional Analysis,

Always worth a laugh.

The patients sat and stared

In horror at the staff.

4-10-14