Sleeping Cats

Fin

The era of my poesy is ended,

If that era ever was at all.

A man who can't direct his destiny

Really has no destiny at all.

Where's the feel of dislocated magic

That comes from putting words together right?

Many people try and few achieve it.

I'll die in an asylum and alone.

The little bits of hidden understandings

That come to me, whether they are true,

Go nicely in a poem, just what Proust

Said he almost read a novel for.

Once again I am astride a stallion

Waiting for the bell. Below, the waves

Splash up toward the cliff where I am standing,

And down below the thrashing ocean waits.

5-5-14

Two Women

I think what makes her happiest -

And something does, god knows -

Is saying that my rhythms suck,

My poesy is prose.

She came on like a super mom

Out to bolster me,

Dropped her drawers and took a walk

Across my poesy.

An English teacher in her day,

A druggie in her youth,

She spent a year in Italy,

And now she knows the truth -

The truth of man, the truth of art,

The truth of English lit,

Of grammar, life and poetry.

And I am going to quit.

Like her friend Victoria,

She told me I was great,

Until the game grew tiresome.

You simply have to wait.

And now instead of brilliant, she

Finds me overrated.

Victoria was quite the same,

So I was vaccinated.

4-13-13

 

Sleeping Cats

Cats don't blink.

Seldom do they smile.

Princelike on a pedestal,

Unmoving like a Sphinx,

Front legs tucked beneath their chests,

They're calm and sweet as rain.

The perfect little person is a cat.

5-5-14

 

If Everybody's Doing It

Millionaires who give away their money

Are called philanthropists not mental defects.

If everybody gave away his money

To someone low – there's always someone less -

They would not be handled with a chain.

They'd be normal. Everybody does it.

The only litmus test of sanity.

5-5-14

Trying To Help

Americans aren't open, they're just mouthy.

Bigots have an equal right to speak.

A bumper sticker I would like to see:
“I'm not a veteran of any war.”

Perhaps a little thought that no one's thought of -

Arm the Pope and make the planet free.

A gift for every newborn and its mother -

Bukowski's poems and an M-16.

America: A better way of life,

Where every citizen salutes the Bible.

4-5-14

The Good Man

The words of god flow smoothly from his lips

Like feces from the rectum

Of a dying man.

No race or country but his own.

No love except the straight.

More Jesus Christ than any child of his.

When he and god discussed it,

God told him what to do.

And damn the man who dares to contradict him.

5-5-14

 

Encouragement

All the wrong people support me

When I'm writing verse.

Down to the dock they escort me

And help me into a hearse.

The one in New Jersey equates me

With Ginsberg! A time for distress.

The sister who probably hates me

Said verse is my hobby, god bless.

5-5-14

 

“Oklahoma!”

Hammerstein in “Oklahoma!”
Outshines all the others.

A bawdy human sense of humor

No one else approaches.

And Rodgers' music!

Heavenly as gods.

It's not the integration of

The songs. It's not verismo.

It's just that “Oklahoma!”
Is a better show.

5-5-14

 

Facts

He's usually sweet

On the telephone.

He always was since 99.

The river never changes.

How can I be Shakespeare if

I disavow old notions?
Genius doesn't “make it new”

Except in its expression.

Old truths, new truths – a single set

Of truths to fit all times.

So it was since earth began,

And since continued on.

5-5-14