Bonnie

Bonnie

A malicious psychotic at Denny's

Just will not leave me alone.

She sticks in the knife to the hilt,

Then twists til it scratches a bone.

She looks like a made up cadaver

With a false little bloom in her hair.

She rocks side to side when she's walking.

She's a waitress who'll give you a scare.

A dead disinterred Pollyanna,

Too long above ground she will rot.

She helps with your life or your supper,

Whether you like it or not.

5-26-14

 

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

Longtemps

He said I write too fast

And so my verse is lousy.

How long should I take

To make my poems good?

Should I sit at the desk and ponder

Before I write a word?

Until the phrase that came to me

Already is forgotten?

Should I proof a song for an hour,

And at last take out a comma?
Then proof an hour longer

And put it in again?

Keats scribbled pages of notes

For the Nightingale,

Then went to his room and assembled them.

And now the ode is famous.

Couldn't he think it through

While sitting in the garden?
The comment about the comma

Came from Oscar Wilde.

5-25-14