Like Bubble Gum Cards

Like Bubble Gum Cards

My books some hundred now are on the shelves.

Collect them all and trade them with your friends,

Like Space Cadets, your favorite baseball players

And Wacky Placks. In fifty years or so

Any set complete in mint condition

Will be worth a lot to rich collectors.

4-15-14

 

A Dumb Mistake

The dumbest thing I ever did

Was major in psychology.

I didn't learn a thing but some

Forgotten voo doo crap.

I spent my money, work and time

While reading Johnny Keats.

The teacher of statistics asked me

Was I dropping out.

I thought I'd learn a lot about

The personality.

I only learned that people who

Are sane don't know a thing.

Nature/nurture. Flip a coin.

But don't forget the twins.

A Jersey high school English teacher

Knows the way it is.

I don't see how her children

Grew up sane.

4-15-14

 

Prolificacy

I write it very easily.

Don't try to be too deep.

Hart could be prolific too.

But Larry Hart was good.

When Sondheim gets to heaven,

Which he will – as Loesser said,

“Remember mediocrity

Is not a mortal sin” -

God will tell him, “Stephen

Prolificacy does not

Mean that you are talented,

But just that you're verbose.”

4-15-14

Three Events

It was several days before I felt it.

Grandpa's dead. Then in and out of days

And nights I cried, unable to desist.

For many days, no matter where I was,

All the tears this body could produce,

Or kept secluded in its cavities,

Erupted. And Vesuvius was still.

One of two events in my existence -

My grandpa's death. And so the death of love.

My mother's death. To pull a rotted tooth.

And both elicited the same reaction.

And Jacqui Schiff and Doctor Kelly

Driving me insane.

They made the ground of Oakland

And then everywhere I went -

A hideous example of black nights and silver stars.

Endlessly drawn deeper into them.

Then I got a shot, and sometime later

All of it turned back to normalcy.

Otherwise a commonplace

Of loss and promiscuity.

Not a song by Dickinson,

Much better than I'm writing,

Let there be a fourth event to me.

Beneath the wing of happiness and love -

My grandpa's gaze – this poetry

Makes a god of me.

4-15-14

Consciousness

The more he is rejecting,

The more my love congeals.

Ambivalence and paradox

And double-messages!

My lines are not so fluent

Spurting from their hidden place,

But consciousness and thinking

Come together. I write poems.

Who am I? The table I can see.

A spot of light like consciousness

Centered in the ambiance

Of things I see around me -

When it goes out, the ambiance

Is gone. And that is death.

An angel in a restaurant

With a cup of coffee

Contemplating death because

He has no where to go.

And many years ago while sitting

In a restaurant,

I wrote a poem identical.

Life (like consciousness) is what I see.

The poem is lost – so many years -

Time is moved like breezes turning pages.

4-15-14

Threshing

Like a thresher constant threshing

While the verse is being written -

A little old, a little new,

A little while it happened

Made my best and early books.

Then I released the string.

Tension gone and lenient,

Too many poems escape

And settle in collections

That are not good enough.

A hundred books. Some are good,

And some in hindsight better.

Except in sweet anthologies.

I gather up good poems

In one book and publish them.

Then publish them again.

I know no rules of prosody.

Just write and pray to god.

4-15-14

 

Consistent

This poem like all other poems

Comes to no conclusion,

But never trust a shrink

Or tell a copper what you feel.

Cops are not infallible.

Their sergeants think they are.

Not according to the morning Times.

When the law says “red”, wear red.

Cops enforce the law.

Tomorrow if it's green, wear green.

Policemen are consistent.

They enforce whatever's on the books.

It sounds as though there are no cops at all.

4-15-14