Another World

Sketch

Another noisy night in Denny's -

Peter Pan in black -

Animated -

Jesus! What's she on?

George is gone – his

Father's funeral – Utah -

Back tomorrow -

Give me him for her -

It's not that easy -

Sick and nauseated – took

A pill for pain – a new one -

Every day my life turns

More oblique -

Obsequies and getting sicker -

Denny's slowly calms -

Peter Pan just asked me how I'm doing -

I just grunted -

5-2-14

 

Books Of Poems

Quiet muffled poems, cotton things,

They are not sharp as ice like Rupert Brooke,

A single muted violin with strings,

Collected in a plain and subtle book.

60, 55, or 61 -

So many books! My fantasies preserved

Until the planet falls into the sun,

Time so long the preacher is unnerved.

11-19-13

A Mozart PC

Mozart the music box -

Cracks in the shell let the pearls escape

In perfect sound – heaven captured -

And icy cold like the sea.

5-2-14

 

Kitty & Love

I think I know why I have been despised

By psychotherapists and sycophants.

Kitty who was never hit before

Stands rigidly his face against the wall -

Penance for his having asked for love.

Frightened of the ogre (this is me),

Yet he will not go when he is shooed,

And keeps returning til I want to scream.

The cats take love then go away

And sleep or play and then come back for more.

Kitty is neurotic. Why is that?

This surely isn't love. At best it's pleasure -

A monkey with electrodes in his brain

Which he manipulates instead of love,

Food or water, sleep or recreation.
Kitty is a very ugly cat -

As I when I fall terrified in love.

5-2-14

 

Another World

I have a world. It isn't perfect.

Norman Vincent Peale.

It isn't Mary's notion of the world.

Norman Rockwell.

And it isn't odiously good

Like Edgar Guest.

Longfellow never ate with us.

My mother wouldn't like it.

And a sermon from my father

Would calcify our bottoms

As we sat until it ended.

It has some scars and glitches

And some things I wish were not,

But tapering from 99

To 67 years,

It's the only other world I have.

5-2-14