Bad Poems

“Mr. President”

Berlin went out with a

Wonderful whallop!

The glory of his career.

The culmination of all that had gone before.

Characteristic of all his songs,

His particular style,

And every song and lyric

A pleasure just to hear.

And then an Indian Summer -

A last and final song -

For “Annie Get Your Gun”.

The people cheered.

5-15-14

 

Bad Poems

I wrote a sheaf of poems

In three days, over night,

And most of them upset me,

Whether they were right.

And then I just went back,

Reread the status quo.

The happiness was sweet,

The comfort that I know.

The poems are not odd,
Or particularly bright,

The sentiments not alien

To what I like to write.

To what do I attribute

This frenzy of despair?

Just make it go away.

I don't really care.

The vocabulary's clear,

The rhythms very clipped.

Standing on the seaweed

On a rock at sea I slipped.

Poems are not meant

For a common truth.

Or any truth. And Keats

Is by and for the youth.

There! I wrote a truth,

The kind of truth that's right

The kind that lets me sleep

Tenderly at night.

5-15-14

 

Bad Poems

Did Edna publish all she wrote?

Was nothing left behind?

Did she burn the lesser fare

For nobody to find?

4-5-13

Bad Poems

Over 80 books – well, 83 -

I wish I had in manuscript again,

To rid myself of poems that are bad.

Very bad. Some thoughts are rough and wrong,

And thoughts can very easily be wrong.

9 books and one of prose that make me happy.
And I worked hard to winnow them from life,

Then dropped the stitch and write them as they come.

I wrote the good ones. Something in me did.

And what it was wrote all the bad ones too.

But among the other 83

Are some poems better than the best,

Little moments of maturity.

The good ones, if they're ever seen at all,

Are my promise of longevity.

And all the good ones written long ago.

Like Lloyd Webber, I did not die then.

3-23-14

 

Bad Poems

My poems must be very bad.

No one wants to read them.

Even Jill – the last to die -

Puts the books aside.

People who have horrid lives,

Desperate or lonely -

Even people such as these

Write mediocre verse.

Where is god when nations fall

To treachery? And nature

Doesn't care when flowers wilt

Or schoolboys drown a kitten?

Nothing's fair and nothing's right

And very little's good.

In a year you cease to cry

And wait for death to claim you.

Dickinson was very bad,

A basket of bright phrases.

She's the Yankee Queen of Verse.

Bukowski merely silly.

12-10-13

 

Bad Poems

Glancing through some poems

I wrote the other day,

I saw them dull and crazy.

Is everything I say

Muted, bland boloney,

Regardless how intense?

Who would want to read it

When it makes no sense?

The prettiness of poems

(The hell with Ezra Pound!)

Is images and metaphors,

And music in the sound.

The poems that I read

And wrote had none of these,

Not even a slight whisper

From the beach and mortal seas.

9-10-13

 

Puss In Boots

The giant was an ogre.

He hid among the wheat

Seeking tender Englishmen,

A lovely thing to eat,

A ripe and juicy treat,

Succulent and sweet.

Pussy mocked the giant

From whom all others fled.

“You do metamorphosis.

At least I've heard it said.”
“I can grow enormous.

Larger than a house.”
“Piffle!” snorted Puss.

“Change into a mouse!”
“Are you mocking me?”
Incensed the ogre roared.

“Only just a little.

You make me very bored.”

“Bored?” the hapless ogre

Roused himself to say.

And of a sudden hidden

Beneath a stalk of hay

Where the giant stood,

Stood a mouse that ran away.

The mouse was very grey.

“Don't run so fast!” cried Pussy.

“You're such a tiny mite

That I could eat you up

With just a single bite.”

And that is what he did.

And for the clever few

I'll add, Before he swallowed him

Puss bit the mouse in two.

Lest the little mouse

All whole inside the cat

Turn back into a giant.

No. I can't have that.

5-13-14