Kissing Fred

Marriage

Lover's notes and valentines

Become in later years

Rubbish in the bottom of a drawer.

Sentiment withdraws and in its wake,

Disinterest, disgust, and not a trace

Of any thought but curiosity.

A suitor's pawn, like rubber or elastic,

Is bent to meet the lover's expectation.

And people who write poems such as this

Assume the river water's going to freeze.

5-22-14

Strong

Weak when there's no reason to be strong.

Something stronger than the universe,

But not a god and not a trace of love.

People who do not know how to fight,

Naked in the daylight,

Brilliant in the night,

Weaker than a poem or a song,

Where the strong and frightening belong.

Gladiators reek with pain and sweat.

A purring kitten's soft and warm to pet.

5-21-13

Poets

Now I like my poems. They are fine.

Or seem it now because the verse is mine.

Another poetaster in disgust

Will see his sacred poems in the dust.

Brooke is fresh and free

And he is pretty.

And glitters like a colored lamp in darkness,

Coruscating with the life of youth,

Impelling him to fight a war with love,

Unreal as “The Soldier”. He will die,

And death is not poetic on the field.

Millay makes poesy – a gentle ditty -

A skeleton of structure in each song.

Keats was gifted

And a bit absurd -

Bouncing apples off a fellow's head.

He lives with his contemporaries dead.

5-21-14

 

About Poesy

Make your poem real, but make it pleasant.

Pleasure is as real as agony.

It seems that every day another state

Capitulates to fact and fairness, knocks

Away the law preventing gays to marry.

Despite the truths my parents and my sister

Receive from god. And every day I look

And find my verse less dull and odious.

Despite the feeling, I just like the phrases,

Happy, sad or angry. Now I wonder

Would Dr. Simons curl his lip at me

As he did at Keats? How in a bundle

Time lumbers by, but does it very fast.

I really won't dispense with all the facts,

Of god and man and earth and prosody.

I am not a burst of ecstasy -

Like ocean swells exploding on big rocks -

But rather like the calm but splashing water

Over stones. This is my poesy.

14-21-14

 

Kissing Fred

Freddy is cat,

Fluffy, small and black.

I just stole a kiss from him.

I think he's want it back.

5-21-14